Slow Photography #37 The Antithesis of Automatic

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For a personal project, last winter I set out to photograph people who were born in the Bahamas islands. To quote Mark Twain, two things were necessary to succeed with the project: "ignorance and confidence." Meeting and photographing these people led to 4 lessons:

When it comes to quality, sometimes slow is better at first. 
Manual focus is a vital skill, and an effective way to engage with a subject. 
Balanced portraiture is 95 % people time and 5 % gear time.
If a photograph is good enough to share, it's good enough to print.






" When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." 
Mark Twain

It was a slow photography project. As it progressed, I kept up with new camera technology. Fourteen frames per second. . . autofocus tracking . . .dual digic 5+ plus processors.We're making photographs faster than ever. All this got me wondering.

Are we losing our souls? Have we lost the joy staying in the moment without photographing it quickly and moving on?

If the answer is "Yes", it may be time for a change called The Slow Photography Rebellion.

“Life is short, Break the Rules.
Forgive quickly, photography SLOWLY.
Love truly."


The goal of slow photography is not just time to think, to pause and reflect, but the quality of our visual ideas. To engage this quality, we can do a Live View with our minds neural camera first, before exposing with our plastic one. There is also a creative field of photography that explores the art of time exposures with slow shutter speeds. For example, the excellent eBook Slow by Andrew S. Gibson. The Slow Photography Rebellion is not about time exposures or shutter speeds. 

What is needed now in photography is "remindfulness" of the joy of breathing it in, heart and soul.

Slow photography is a state of consciousness. I do slow photography by watching the light, thinking about spatial composition, and walking with the camera and tripod.

Slow photography is awareness, compassion for our subjects, a safe process, and the joy of photography once again. It is mind focus, not autofocus. It starts with a deep breath, and continues with the joys of being here, now, with or without a camera.

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