More about Noticing Things

You think maybe he was unhappy with the postal service or perhaps UPS?

(Found on a makeshift plywood shed beside an old highway in southwest Georgia

-- from Georgia: A Backroads Portrait.)

Canon EOS 5D Classic, 24-85 f3.5-4.5 EF lens

In the first decade of this century I had been slowly gathering pictures for my book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait. In 2011, I decided to finish the job, and in May of that year took some money I had received for an architectural photography assignment, loaded an air mattress and sleeping bag in my 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan, packed my Canon 5D Classic and  20D cameras and some lenses, and set off on a trip around the perimeter of Georgia, photographing whatever I found wherever I found it. Among the many interesting and unusual things I saw was this crudely-painted sign on a little plywood shed in a thicket beside an old highway in southwest Georgia. 

The ability to notice things is essential to good photography, or at least to the kind of photography I like best. The great Elliott Erwitt had an almost supernatural ability to walk down any street and come back with little gems -- photographs of people or things (or dogs) that most of us would never have noticed.

And while Erwitt's milieu was street photography and most of his pictures were of people and dogs, I think the art of taking notice applies at least in some degree to all kinds of photography. It's definitely responsible for most of my best pictures.

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone