Shout out to Jonathan Lacy.
I was talking to Jonathan for about 10 minutes and he was telling me all sorts of things.
He’s from New Mexico, and we got into this whole conversation about history, philosophy, education, reading, and life experience.
One thing he was talking about was why he values learning and life experience so much.
Basically, all of that knowledge gives you a starting point.
Then you take what you’ve learned and apply it to your own situation.
And that got me thinking about photography.
WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY LIKE?
How do you know what you actually like about your photography?
What’s coming from your own experience?
And what’s something you’ve simply been taught to think is good?
That’s difficult to figure out.
You look at one of your own photographs and think it’s good.
But why do you think it’s good?
Do you actually like it?
Or do you like it because you’ve seen similar photographs praised by other photographers?
Were you taught that this is what a good photograph is supposed to look like?
I think figuring that out is this never-ending battle of realization.
TAKE LITTLE CHUNKS FROM EVERYTHING
And I think this goes back to what Jonathan was talking about.
You take every little chunk that you’ve learned throughout your life and apply it to your photography.
Take a little chunk from a photographer you like.
Take something from art.
Architecture.
A building you like.
A place you grew up.
Something that happened to you.
Whatever.
It doesn’t really matter.
Take all those little chunks, think about them obsessively, and apply them to your own photography.
I think that’s really the only way.
Constant trial and error.
Constant learning.
THE PROBLEM WITH OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
But then there’s another problem.
How do you stop all these outside influences from overwhelming your own work?
That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.
I actually try to stay away from a lot of photography content on YouTube now.
I’ll watch a couple videos here and there.
Every once in a while I’ll be bored and start watching one of those POV street photography videos.
I used to make those myself.
I started doing POV street videos on YouTube back in 2021.
But when I watch a bunch of them now, everybody’s work starts to look kind of similar.
A lot of the photographs are composed correctly.
They’re technically fine.
But everything starts blending together.
And that’s what I don’t want.
IF I COULD START OVER
If I were starting street photography right now and knew I was going to be doing this for the next 20 or 30 years, I think I’d approach it completely differently.
I’d shut out as much outside influence as possible.
Then I’d shoot.
A lot.
I’d shoot hundreds of photographs every day and obsessively study my own work.
Shoot.
Edit.
Cull.
Look again.
Shoot more.
I’d use my life experiences for inspiration.
I’d use this pier for inspiration.
I’d use Santa Monica.
I’d use the things I see every day.
I’d use everything I’ve experienced in my life.
But I’d be much more careful about letting another photographer tell me what my photography is supposed to look like.
Because I think the urge to copy someone’s work, even unintentionally, is incredibly strong.
OBSESSIVE TRIAL AND ERROR
I’ve been shooting for seven years now, pretty much every day.
I’ve made an enormous number of photographs.
And I honestly think that if I could go back to day one and spend that time obsessively shooting, editing, culling, and studying my own photographs, I might have figured myself out faster.
No chasing Instagram.
No worrying about what photography YouTube likes.
No constantly looking at what everybody else is making.
Just figuring it out on my own.
Trial and error.
Obsessive trial and error.
That’s what I would do.
PUT IN THE WORK
A year sounds like a long time when you’re young.
When you’re 21, a year feels like an eternity.
I’m 44.
A year is just another year, man.
It goes by quick.
So the idea of spending a year intensely photographing and studying your own work might sound extreme.
But if you want to photograph for another 20 or 30 years, what’s one year?
It’s nothing.
And think about how much you might learn about yourself during that time.
Not just how to make better photographs.
You might actually start understanding what you like.
MORE YOU
Unfortunately, we can never completely escape outside influence.
I certainly can’t.
I’ve already looked at too much photography.
I’ve studied photographers.
I’ve watched videos.
I’ve absorbed all this stuff.
It’s in my head now.
And really, nobody is completely free from outside influence anyway.
We’re always picking up little fragments of the world around us.
Maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate those fragments.
Maybe the goal is to become more selective about which ones we keep.
Take the pieces that are actually useful.
Take inspiration from them.
But don’t let them become your identity.
That’s the part you have to figure out yourself.
And I think the only real way to do that is to put in the work.
Shoot.
Edit.
Cull.
Repeat.
Pay attention to what you keep coming back to.
Pay attention to what you photograph when nobody is telling you what to photograph.
Pay attention to the pictures you love even when nobody else cares about them.
Maybe that’s where your actual taste starts to reveal itself.
Anyways, shout out to Jonathan.
You never know what you’re going to learn when you stop and talk to somebody.
That conversation got me thinking about all of this.
And now I’ve got something else to obsess over.