The Strangest Photography Advice I Might Share…

Learning to ‘see’ your image before you take it

When I’m putting together concepts for this club, I’ll generally have one of two reactions: this is great or this is weird. This morning, I’m sharing one of the weird ones. The challenge with these posts is contextualizing a thought through text as opposed to in-person or video. But here goes.

When I was travelling through Kolkata last year, I was spoiled with interesting scenes. There’s just an abundance of things happening with incredible humans that it becomes a little overwhelming. It’s an environment that can introduce decision paralysis for some people, where you don’t know where to begin. Well, it’s in these moments that you have to be able to narrow your gaze and—the topic for this week—see the photo.

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The Details

This image was captured on my Leica M11 with the Summicron 28mm F2.0 lens. The aperture was set to F5.6 and the shutter speed and ISO landed at 1/320 and 1,000 respectively.

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The Story

When I’m walking around as a street photographer, I’m walking with this wide gaze and letting my eye dart around looking for things of interest. And since I’m not walking to a destination (I’m out here with the intent of practicing photography), I’m consciously trying to perceive what my eyes are landing on. My eye sees a car, I perceive the car and observe it. My eye sees a face, I look at the face for what specifically got my attention. As I go through this process, when I perceive something that feels like it deserves a photograph, I stop and start to narrow my gaze.

The world starts to feel smaller and I’m now trying to frame the photograph in my head. I’m aware of the lens that I have—in this case it was a 28mm perspective—and positioning myself where I believe I need to be. I look through the viewfinder, take a test shot, look back at the scene, and with time on my side, I start to envision what the best version of this photograph could be.

With this photo, there was a natural interest to the street barber. I see him cutting hair on a brisk morning, with the bright blue accents around him, and my eye is immediately curious. I have time on my side, so I get in position, take a photo, and I’m met with hospitality. So I keep going.

I take a few more photos to find the borders of the image. Where do things get cut off? Once, I have a rough idea, I step back and just observe the scene with my eyes. Now, this works best when you have the time and in this case, I had plenty. I started to scan the frame in front of me trying to ‘see’ the photo. What does the best version of this photo look like? I’m actively trying to visualize what the finished image could convey. Within a few seconds, it finally hit me!