Winter Contemplations and Photographic Rediscoveries

New year’s are traditionally times for reevaluating one’s life, maybe setting some new goals for the year (I hate the term ‘resolution’) and generally thinking about what you want to do for the upcoming year to change your approach to life in some way.

I find at this time of year I have an overly contemplative mind whereby I spend far too much time thinking about what I want to do with my time rather than getting out there and actually doing it. In short, I become bored and stasis sets in.

What better way to jolt myself out of this state of mind than a brisk winter walk?

Saturday 11th January turned out to be that day; the coldest day of the year so far (-4 centigrade in my part of the world) felt like a good day to go out with a camera to get some frost and fog images. Whilst I had no huge expectations of capturing anything too special, I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

The images I captured, which I most liked, are all shown below. During my walk I also discovered, or actually re-discovered, three interesting things about photography which I thought I would share.

Rediscovery Number 1 – Don’t Dismiss Local

Whether you’re into street, landscape, architectural or urban portrait photography the temptation often is that you are not going to get any great shots unless you jump in a car, train or plane and go to other places to make images.

Wrong.

Whilst I have no doubt that a change of scenery can open your mind to new and creative photographic opportunities it’s equally true to say that the intimate knowledge you have from living and working in a place can also mean you see things others may miss whilst they are rushing through a location.

After all, Saul Leiter spent most of his life photographing the streets within a few blocks of where he lived and built a corpus of work documenting that part of the world.

“You don’t have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you.”
Lee Friedlander

Rediscovery Number 2 – Gratitude of Small Things

As I’ve said before, as one gets older and realises the fragility of life, and indeed our existence, the importance of finding solace in ordinary things seems to take on a greater meaning and significance. One of the things I loved about the documentary photographer Elliot Erwitt was his unpretentiousness about photography. According to this obituary in The Guardian he disliked over-theoretical analysis and simply defined photography as “an art of observation” or “a biography of a moment”. He suggested that artistry lies in “finding something interesting in an ordinary place … I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

Just going out there and immersing yourself in the everyday small things is a meditative experience in its own right and certainly one that can help dispel some of those New Year blues.

“Photography is not documentation but intuition, a poetic experience. It’s drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, then sniff, sniff, sniff – being sensitive to coincidence. You can’t go looking for it; you can’t want it or you won’t get it. First you must lose yourself. Then it happens.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson

Rediscovery Number 3 – Appreciation of Your Camera

All the below images were taken with a Fujifilm X-T4 and a 33mm F1.4 lens. I’ve had the camera for a number of years now and the lens for maybe a couple. Although the camera is not the latest in the X-T lineup it is still a superbly capable camera to carry, to hold and to create images with.

I think we sometimes forget just how amazing modern day cameras are. The sheer skill, ingenuity and innovation that has had to come together to make that piece of glass, magnesium, plastic, silicon, steel and software work together in a seamless and efficient way that allows you, the photographer, just to make images is nothing short of miraculous.

How we got to this level of sophistication in just over 200 years – photography as we know it was invented in 1822 by French pioneer Nicéphore Niépce – is surely something to appreciate and be grateful for?