beauty and narrative

The more I shoot, the more I'm realizing these two factors need to co-exist and give each other space to shine. One to attract and the other to retain.

I wrote an earlier entry on how style and aesthetics are king. This has always been my natural inclination with photography and I think my focus was on making photos that could stand on their own, but from a purely technical or rather "academic" perspective (mastering techniques but lacking depth and thematic consistency). Colors, tones, geometry, and composition would need to be really solid but there might not have been any sort of narrative, tension or feeling of transience in the photo.

These are no longer the kinds of photos I'm interested in making now and it's been quite a journey this year breaking out of that mental trap of just making eye candy. Still guilty of it at times but the intention and awareness really helps as it’s a continuous practice, not an overnight shift. Every photographer has a voice but it takes work to dig inward and find out what that is. A photographer's style should be more than just a tone curve or focal length.

Shooting street and then also shooting topographics for my upcoming project have been liberating in that aspect. I wanna make photos that try to navigate the subject's intent, rather than just capturing the literal subject itself. At the end of the day, I think factors like location, color, and geometry are just tools, not actual soul of a photo. That should come from within. Whether a photographer starts out having their color game down from the get-go or fully banking on their storytelling abilities, eventually maturity is about having both aspects complement each other. It feels really nice knowing that I still have a long way to go while still breaking past a mental plateau.