Demented spider. GA. Highway 193, Walker County.
(Adapted and expanded from a post on September 15, 2021.)
What does it mean to have a photographer's eye?
I think the indispensable ability is the ability to notice things. Most of us bumble through life half-aware of our surroundings. And then we pick up a camera and expect to start seeing interesting things. It doesn't work that way. We have to develop the habit of being aware of the world around us at all times, not just on demand. That's the difference between photographers who regularly produce good pictures and those who, infrequently or never, have a lucky accident.
Ford 8N tractor in shed, U.S. Highway 19, Lumpkin County, Georgia.
After the ability to notice things comes a sense of light. Very often, it's the light itself that makes a subject noticeable. Learn to study light -- observe how it falls at different times of the day and different seasons of the year until you can almost feel the way it works with your subject. This is a lifelong learning process and I'm still working at it.
Bottoms up! Diving swans on Berry College campus, Rome, Georgia.
The third element is composition -- the ability to arrange the subject in the camera's viewfinder so that whatever it is that caught your eye stands forth most clearly. If necessary, zoom your lens or move, so that your frame is clean and uncluttered, including only the essential elements that tell the story.
Good street photographers such as Elliott Erwitt and Henri Cartier-Bresson have an almost magical ability to simultaneously notice both a subject and the light and compose a photograph in an instant. Others, myself included, are not so fast. But not all kinds of photography demand such quick reflexes. Jay Maisel notices and photographs an incredible number of interesting subjects. Some of them do demand quick reflexes, but many of them are just sitting there, as it were, waiting for someone to notice and photograph them.
As Robert Louis Stevenson said,
"The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."
Photos: The spider: Canon EOS A2, 28-105mm RF lens, Fujichrome 100 film. The tractor: Canon EOS 5D Classic, 24-85mm EF lens. The swans: Olympus OM2n, Zuiko 85mm lens, Kodachrome 64 film.
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Photography and text copyright 2011-2025 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
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