Photography is easy, right? It's just "click click", or so I'm told...
I have two wonderful nieces aged 10 (Rebecca) and 6 (Chloe). I recently took them out to the woods for a picnic on a warm Sunday afternoon. The 10 year old is very bright and curious and she was asking me about my photography. I'd just been away for a few days preparing a workshop and so I was telling her about what that involves and why people come away for a few days with a photographer to improve their skills and enjoy a nice location. I could see the cogs whirring away inside her mind at high speed as the slightly quizzical look on her face sharpened...
"I don't really get it" she said, "taking a picture is easy, its just click click, right?!" - These are the words of a 10 year old who's just got their first mobile phone! After an initial hesitation about opening this particular can of worms my obvious answer was that yes, the action of taking the picture is easy, it's just the click of a button. However, there can be pictures that are more interesting or less interesting - I was trying to avoid good and bad, and don't get me started on calling them images not pictures!
As she has some musical prowess I gave the example that playing a note on the piano is easy, you just press it, but playing a piece of music is a bit more complicated. I was making progress in winning her over on this so then we got into what makes a photograph more interesting. Anyone with kids can imagine this was just the start of being pulled into the conversational rabbit hole where the questions come at you from often very unexpected angles of thought!
The 'Golden Spiral' - The proverbial rabbit hole of compositional hypotheses!
After 10-15 mins or so of me trying my best to distil my thoughts on composition, light, form, nuance, subtlety and the work of the great masters she rather diplomatically took pity on me and said "yes, I suppose some pictures are more interesting than others - I took a great picture on my mobile phone of Chloe wearing rabbit ears and it's amazing!"...Rebecca 1-0 Sam
So, next time you're agonising over a composition, just stick some rabbit ears somewhere in the scene, go click click and you'll be sorted :)
