You’re Getting Better — Photo Journal 2017, Weeks 12–14
When I was a kid, there was an ad campaign for Loving Care hair dye that proclaimed, “You’re not getting older, you’re getting better.” At 10 years old, your brain hasn’t developed the concept that there could be anything wrong with getting older. I wanted to be 17, then 21 and eventually 35 — at which point I was indeed touching up a little gray here and there while beginning to embrace the second half of that award-winning tagline.
Not everyone that gets older gets better, that’s for sure. But it’s pretty certain that if you are better at something, you are older. Practice makes perfect isn’t an ad tagline, but a life one. It applies to playing an instrument, making an omelet and, of course, taking photos.
I never learned more than two chords on the guitar (I needed one more to be in a punk band), and my twice-a-month omelets are hit or miss. But my photo taking improves for the most part because I take a lot of them. I may not go out photo walking every day, but I do head out several times a week.
In my experience, there is no better way to gauge your progress than to look back at your work from a few years ago and compare it with what you just shot.
When a group of my high school friends invited me to join them in New Orleans for a long weekend of oysters, Sazeracs, jazz and cemetery wanderings my answer was an immediate yes! Of course I wanted to see these girls all together in one place after so many years — but I also wanted another crack at taking photos in New Orleans.
If you’re not a photographer, you might think that’s a bit shameless, but otherwise you probably understand.
Travel is a stimulus for the developing photographer. It gets you out of your comfort zone, forces you to recalibrate how you manage decisive moments in different settings and exposes you to so many new subjects it can be overwhelming. But that’s a good thing.
I was shooting with an iPhone 4s in 2013; today I have a 6s. All apps have upgraded either a thousand times or vaporized. Gone are Vine and LomoQuick Pro. A new favorite is the VSCOCam app. Hipstamatic’s combos are limitless and you can now edit a photo after the fact (which feels a bit like cheating, but who among us #Hipsta_Junkies hasn’t made a tweak here or there).
Probably my biggest change has been switching my digital game from a 35-mm Canon Eos Rebel XT to the 28-mm Ricoh GR II. The learning curve has been steep. I made the switch a few years ago to be able to get closer to my subjects and eliminate the zoom. I get frustrated with the Ricoh a lot — but on this trip, I ended up being happy with about 50% of my shots, up from the usual 25%.
Getting to go back to a magical place like New Orleans and try again gave me a great opportunity to re-examine where my photo work has been and see where it’s going.
While my technique and equipment are getting better, I’m happy to say that the themes I was starting to hit on back in 2013 are very much the same. My style hasn’t changed much — and neither have I.
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