Slow down. Be better.
I have begun, over the past year or so, really rethinking the way I do a lot of things. I had an accident followed by some health issues that really caused pause and reflection. One of the aspects of my life that I did a lot of thinking about was my work.
I started in photography. I started in film photography specifically, prior to moving into motion pictures and video. From there, I went into television and then into advertising. I started Diesel Pictures to get back into the production side of the business. Then, after my health issues, I started thinking about what I wanted to do moving forward. I knew I wanted to be more present in everything I was doing. And better.
I have been saying for a while now, this stupid little phrase; Be better. I find myself telling myself that so many times throughout the day and I really work on it all the time. Be better. I want to be a better husband. Be a better dad. Be a better friend. Be a better photographer. Just, be better.
Something else I am constantly telling myself is to slow… down. It’s so hard for me to do that. But I need to slow down and be present.
So in my rethinking, I have decided that I want to get back to my base, to film photography. I know, I know, it’s a hot-button topic currently. Just cruise YouTube or Instagram for a few minutes and you’ll be hit over the head with film photographers. However, I feel like everyone shooting film on social platforms are doing it for those platforms. It’s just the new thing. I’m not going at it like that. I’m going at it from a place of reformatting.
Shooting film MAKES you slow down. You don’t have all that instantaneous metadata your camera records into the image file, so you need to do it. I need to compose the shot. I need to meter the frame. I need to note the time, the frame number, the date, the weather conditions… I just need to slow down. And MAKE the photograph.
For a while, I had adopted the spray-and-pray method that many photographers you. I focused on just how fast I could shoot, how many frames per second I could write to the card. It ended up just being time consuming after and the quality of all the images wasn’t there. I would have 25 shots, or so, of one thing and only one, maybe two, would be good. Then I’d move a bit and repeat. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to slow down, and be better.
By slowing down and focusing on what I WANT to shoot, HOW I want to shoot it, I will end up with better photographs. And, at the end of the day, a better sense of being.
So stay tuned. I have been working in my notebook with ideas and will be creating photographs. Slowly, mind you.