Much of the pleasure in photography is seeking out the subject, appreciating the light, dialling in the settings and pressing the shutter.
For some, not so much of the pleasure is the scrolling through dozens of burst-mode images of the same thing trying to decide which one is sharpest and captures the essence of the subject best and deleting the others. Sometimes I’m happy doing that, but to be honest, the capturing process is the real fun, unless a truly unique image emerges from the roll. I’ve written about a couple of philosophical aspects of photography previously. One article was entitled Patience – an internal app to help you take better wildlife photos, which was about being mindful and taking time to get the shot you want. A second item was about stifling the urge to seek out validation for one’s photographic output on social media. That article was entitled In time, we discover ourselves.
In that latter article, I mention a friend called Andy, a professional-grade, but fiscally amateur photographer (just like me, hahahah). We often discuss the trials and tribulations of photographing nature. Of the lack of decent light, of too much sun and shadow, of not finding the subjects to snap, and of poorly performing camera settings that don’t give us the perfect shot that we hoped for. And tha endless roll scrolling and deleting.
It occurred to me, having had one of our conversations, that the best way forward would be to simply take the card out of the camera, set the camera to allow photos to be taken without the card in place, and to enjoy the moment, the thrill of the chase, the silent click of the shutter. We could simply forget about the afterburn of sorting and editing. As there would be nothing to sort nor delete. It would also save us a fortune in memory cards and cloud storage.
Indeed, one might go a step further and leave the camera at home too. Just spend time seeking out subjects or even simply appreciating those photogenic places we visit without the need to do the photo gen. Zen and the art of imaginary photography…
…of course, without all those rolls to scroll, there’d be little to do trapped indoors on a rainy day with a stinking head cold.