RE: [Leica] Re: What makes a good photo, by Ted Grant

[Jem Kime <jem.kime@cwcom.net>]

- -----Original Message-----
From:	Ted Grant [SMTP:tedgrant@home.com]

Hi Alastair/Jem

Surely you don't see everything looking great and then stand there making 
an
esoteric analysis of the scene delaying the shutter click for more "brain"
input? Certainly when your gut is screaming at you, "SHOOT IT!"
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Ted, of course not. But often the analysis comes when working on a series 
of pictures that you've been attracted to making and you find yourself 
wondering why. I have a recurrent interest in signs which have become 
faded, lost, misplaced or seem irrelevant, maybe that's because I like to 
question where we're going in life. Signs traditionally point the way, but 
'the way' is rarely clear. Life tends to be 'shades of grey' rather than 
black and white.
Or it maybe that I just think there's something slightly funny in a sign 
which has lost it's meaning!
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Even  a still life situation has a moment when the photographer, in my own
case when doing non breathing things, there is a moment when everything
looks, "just right" and you feel that, well OK I do. Others may not and
maybe that's one of the things that makes us different in our approach to
photography.
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Yes, I don't doubt we have different approaches to photography - some 
times.
Some times I aspire to 'work' as a real photojournalist like yourself. 
Other times I find myself aligning myself with differing, more 
contemplative, styles of photography.
==============
But is this done because you see something and have the feeling that the
moment is right? Or what is the motivation for shooting? I don't imagine 
you
shoot first and ask questions later as there must be some motivating factor
for the first frame to be exposed.
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Yes, of course there's always a motivation for exposing that frame, even if 
it's only to get to the first unexposed frame on the roll.
Remember that discussion about those roll-end pictures which made an 
exhibition? Ridiculous? Very probably, but the artistic credibility for it 
could be in the recognition of the unobserved. In a way not dissimilar to 
what a photojournalist does, trying to capture that moment which most 
everyone will never see - except in that picture. One could deconstruct the 
reasons for that (or any other) exhibition's relevance over and over, and 
I'm sure we'd rarely agree.
- ----------------------------
Again I ask the question, "what makes you shoot when you do?" Instinct?
Experience? Gut feeling? What and why?  Over to you my friend.
================
There are artists I know who decide on a theme to explore before making / 
taking a photograph. especially with abstract concepts, such as 'time' (for 
example). How do you depict 'time' in photography? It takes a lot of 
thinking about before you start on the business of pressing that button. 
And they choose to explore a theme because that, to them, can be a way of 
self exploration. And that may be because they want to define the way in 
which they see, or relate to, the world.
In many ways, you should count yourself very very fortunate! You have no 
uncertainties, no self doubts, no time or desire to deleiberate, whether x 
means y or z. You seem to know yourself and do not need that conceptual 
exploration of the cerebral artist.

best regards,
Jem
(wishing these discussions could take place face to face, rather than 
through several thousand miles, and hours, of cyberspace!)

Ted Grant Photography Limited
www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant