May 22, 2002

Photoj Q&A: Developing your photographic "eye."

See all columns on this topic on my PhotoJ Questions and Answers page

I recently received the following questions about photography and one of his photos shot in Dana Point Harbor from Jake Schiffelbein of San Clemente, CA. He sent me two versions of the photo, one in black and white and one in color, both included at right:

"I am 13 years old and I have really admired your work. Right now I shoot digital photographs and edit them on my computer and I was wondering if you could give me any advice that you might have. If you could that would really help thanks. Oh and attached is one of my photos and I was wondering if you could review it for me if you could that would help me a lot thank you."

Dear Jake,

You've got a good "eye" and that's the one thing that really can't be taught to photographers. I remember one of the first pictures I took with my first 35mm camera I bought when I was 13 that I really liked.

My dad had washed out some paint brushes with green paint in a puddle of water beside our house that had run off the roof. The water was green in the puddle, and clean water was still running off the house. I stood above it and took the picture and it looked like an aerial photo of a lake with green pastel water, with a waterfall cascading down from the sky into the lake. Who knows what happened to that slide, but I learned something that day.

The angle you shoot and what you include in the frame are all that the camera sees, everything else is left out, so you create your own version of reality by how and when you choose to push the shutter button.

And the only way you can create memorable photos is to have a sort of "mind's eye" that can visualize a good photo before you ever put your eye to the camera and determine whether what you see in your mind can actually be shot with a camera.

That's what I mean by a good "eye", and I can clearly see from your photo of the boat, the edge of the dock and the rocks, that your "eye" is working.

Keep shooting. The more pictures you take, the better you get, and remember an old adage they taught us in photojournalism school, "film is cheap."

You're not even using film, but the point it, shoot and shoot some more and keep on shooting until you're sure you've got the photo you want. In your case with a digital camera, I would say "pixels are cheap" or maybe "space on your memory card or your camera's memory storage is cheap."

Use it all to be sure you get the right shot. Because the photo you will never have is the one you didn't take, the one you thought you had and walked away from because you stopped shooting before you really had it.

Photography is capturing little slices of life and little moments of time. That particular setting with that particular quality and angle of light might never occur again exactly the way you saw it.

So when your "eye" sees a photo, shoot it, and keep shooting until you're sure you've exhausted all the possibilities in that moment.

P.S. I think I like the black and white version better, though it's hard to say why. I suppose the sort of sickly green of the water draws the eye and spoils the composition somehow. Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder, and sometimes it's hard to say why you like something or don't like it. I suppose that's more about the "eye" you have to develop as a photographer.

I haven't shot in black and white for more years than I care to remember, but some things just look better in B/W. I can't imagine one of Ansel Adams' gems in color.