The next best thing

If you can't take photos look at them, if you can't look at photos read about photography - and I don't mean the technicalities.

I re-read Parr by Parrover the weekend. I'm not sure I 'get' all of his output, but he has interesting things to say and his photos bear repeated consideration. Some of his comments are repeated in the brief interview in my latest book-buy, Image Makers, Image Takers.

Even though I wasn't au fait with many of the photographers, and not always keen on their work shown, I was struck by how similar their outlooks were even if their ways of working and images were different and wide ranging. I guess the commonality is the urge to make photographs.

It was both surprising and pleasing to read Anton Corbjin cite an approach to creativity utilised by Brian Eno - "limit your tools, focus on one thing and just make it work." This is an approach I have appreciated and used for as long as I can remember, and not just in photography. While many amateur photographers feel limited by taking just one lens in case they 'miss the shot', I am quite happy to do so as I feel it makes you look more intensely to find photos that it will make work.

While I enjoyed reading the photographer interviews, and those with photo editors, the few with gallery oriented people brought back my old feelings of mistrust of the art world and it's hypocritical embracing of fashionable trends and commercialism. The gallery system is less about art than it is about capitalism. But I shall resist that particular rant for now.

All in all a good book to read once and dip into again and again. Some good photos I was unaware of too, which will have me Googling some of the names.

Which makes me wonder why anyone who is interested in taking photos wouldn't want to look at photos by prominent photographers, or to read about their ways of thinking and working. But from some of the posts I see on photography forums it seems I am in a minority. I recall one thread in which the consensus was that you can learn to take great photos. The consensus of the interviewees in Image Makers, Image Takers is that you can improve, but you can't acquire 'a way of seeing' - you either have it or you don't.

As usual I'm out of step with hobbyist photographers. In fact I don't know where I fit in. I take my photos to please myself, like a hobbyist does, but I feel as if my reasons are different. I try to avoid the decorative for one thing, although I mostly fail. The images I consider my best lack the 'polish' that a camera club would praise. Looking back through my selection from 2010 there are some shots I like which look to me as if I took them, they fit in with what I think of as my style, and some which remind me of photos I've seen (even if only remembered unconsciously). The ones which I'm most pleased with are the few that do neither. Like this sheep.

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