Wow.

A recent blog by Paul Indigo pretty much hits the nail on the head when it comes to creativity and enjoying photography.

He goes on to explain how people who find themselves always getting hung-up on all the technical aspects of the photographic process tend to lose sight of where they were going “creatively” with the photograph they were trying to take.

Not the first time I’ve seen this discussed , but Paul does it in a well organized way. I think this problem is epidemic, some of the most creative photos on Flickr are not by people who know all the technical-aspects of Digital-photography, but by kids who are just handed a digital-camera and all they know how to do is press the shutter button.

He does, of course, state that knowing what you’re doing is important, but his lists at the bottom of the blog concisely put many of the aspects of modern photography in focus.

This new era in photography reminds me of the “Pictoialsts” who, with the invasion of “point & shoot” cameras for the masses (most notably the Kodak Brownie), which made the field of photography so congested with images (sound familiar?) that the Pictorialists started to make photography more difficult by using more difficult processes and adding “brush strokes” and the like to photos to make them more work and, thus, more “painterly” and on a higher level than “regular” photography which was now accessable to anybody with a dollar to buy a Brownie-camera.

After that, the return to “real” photography was brought about by the likes of Paul Strand who brought back in-camera creativity and good fundamental photographic knowledge.

You can read about it here…it’s a good read, especially if you find yourself in a technical-rut (and are not an Engineer ).

Nice job, Paul!

“Beyond the Obvious”