[Leica] Working methods

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

>> Any knowledgeable experienced photographer/photojournalist would do just
>> that!...
>> tripod rock steady and the subject not going anywhere!!
> 
> I just don't run into that type of a situation very often...I guess if one was
> a Geological photojournalist...


Yeah, we haven't even gotten into one very important point, which is...by
what method do you go about *knowing* beforehand what's going to be a good
picture? I'm not saying it's impossible to know--some people do. Joel
Meyerowitz took a mere 400 sheets of 8x10 film in St. Louis to get the 100
shots in his book _St. Louis and the Arch_. That's a 1:4 hit rate. That will
always seem incredible to me.

The very reason I'm a 35mm photographer is that I have no damn idea what the
good pictures will be when I'm out looking for them. Sometimes I have a
pretty good idea I just got one, and of course the reason anyone takes any
picture is the hope that it will amount to something somehow. But mainly, my
process is: go out in the world to poke around. Use the camera as a tool for
looking at stuff. Take a buncha pictures of anything and everything that
seems promising. Develop and proof. Pick however many pictures on the proof
sheet interest me (usually 1-6 per roll). Make workprints. Put the
workprints up on the board for a few days or weeks to let them sink in and
sort themselves out. Make fine prints of the few that I love at the end of
that time (or, sometimes not <g>).

Looking through my pictures, it's obvious that most scenes I photograph
dissolve way sooner than the time it would have taken to set up a tripod
(many dissolve sooner than I can focus the camera and hit the shutter
release, but that's another story). But the more important question is, how
would you know beforehand that that picture is...well, going to be a
picture? I seldom know what's any good at the taking stage. I don't _want_
to worry about it at that stage. I often don't have any clue before I've
gone through my whole process, or at least until some later stage in the
process.

- --Mike

P.S. I really gotta get a website where I can put some of my pictures up for
other people to see.