I’m proud to say I’ve been doing my visual pushups for almost three weeks now, photographing something almost every day. (Unfortunately, I haven’t been so as disciplined about getting the results of those pictures up on my flickr stream) It’s been very fun. Here’s what I’ve learned so far (in no particular order):
- It really works! Just like Dr. Maisel said. After a few days, I found that I was composing more quickly and easily. Also, I enjoyed the resulting compositions much more.
- I photograph better when unconscious. Or: when I let go of all conscious thoughts, cares, and even self-awareness, the pictures get good. Yeah, it sounds like some zen thing out of On Being a Photographer or Zen and the Art of Archery, and it is. I really got in the groove when my entire consciousness dissolved and I was just enjoying the curious shapes appearing inside my black rectangle.
- The zen stuff gets easier if you do it every day. It’s hard to get a former engineer to stop thinking. I’ve ranted about this. I’ve looked for ways to trick myself into this mindfully unaware state. Curiously, I was already practicing the solution. Each day, I’ve found it easier to slip into my new zen master mindset. It reminds me of a story I heard about someone struggling to play guitar. His teacher laughed and said, “Keep playing. You’ll get there.” Or, sticking to the zen theme: Chop wood; carry water; take pictures.
- Expectations will kill you. If I went out expecting to take some interesting photos, I wouldn’t get anything. If I went out not giving a damn, I got some great stuff. This also applies to each image. If while framing an image, I realized, “This could be really good!” I completely froze up.
- It works better at home then out and about. Another surprise since I’ve done most of my work walking around the city. I found I got more of the benefits of this exercise when I stayed at home and shot things around the house. In fact, I found that my street pictures were better and more easily made if I had worked at home for the previous few days. It’s easy to see why practicing at home works better: Home has fewer excuses (it better not be raining indoors). At home, nobody’s watching, so I have zero inhibitions. I don’t care much about pictures of my own house, so its easy to have no expectations. Finally , I can walk around in my socks listening to music while I’m at it (always a bonus). I may vary my schedule to work at home a little more often for a while.
Yeah, lots of this I’ve read or heard before, but there’s a difference between knowing it and experiencing it (insert any number of gratuitous Matrix quotes here). Knowing it is theory; experiencing it is reality.
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February 28th, 2005
by Max
Thanks for sharing your experience, Rob! It’s very interesting reading about what you learned — and seeing that it’s the same things I’m realizing as well
. Is that an accident? 
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BTW, about shooting at home — I guess one more thing that is playing into taking more interesting pictures at home is that you don’t have to go anywhere. Literally, there is nowhere to go, so instead of traveling, and thinking that may be next location will be more interesting, you just look around and try to find what to shoot right WHERE YOU ARE. I.e., you are focused
March 4th, 2005
by Rob McKaughan
That’s an interesting point I hadn’t thought of — I don’t have to figure out where & who, etc. I just look around the house for something that catches my eye.
Something else I’ve been finding: Everything in my house is very, very familiar to me, thus easy to gloss over. Forcing myself to shoot at my house helps me practice forgetting my familiarity and really seeing.