Five years ago, when I first started editing and producing podcasts, I didn’t plan on sticking with it for long.
I was a huge fan of the medium, but I certainly didn’t plan on building a team around my production business, writing about it in-depth, and dedicating the majority of my waking hours to thinking about it.
No, initially, it was just a means to an end. A way to start an online business that would allow me to travel and work from anywhere in the world, while giving my real passion a chance to incubate and grow into what I was certain would become my real business.
That passion was photography.
In the end, the photography business never got off the ground, mainly because the podcasting one did, leaving me too little time to actually put the work into growing the business side of my photography work.
And while photography has become a much smaller part of my life than I once thought it would, it’s still one of the great teachers to me on how to approach creative work with patience and intention.
Recognizing The Potential For Interesting
After two years of neglecting the practice almost entirely, lately, I’ve been making an effort to bring my camera out with me more often, mainly by bringing it along for each of my morning walks through Belgrade.
One crisp but sunny morning this week, I was walking through the grassy park abutting St Mark’s, a striking Serbian Orthodox church, built of huge tan blocks of stone sandwiched between angular rows of red mortar. The design is both simple and spectacular and is one of the most recognizable landmarks of the city.
As I make my way to exit the park, I watch as one of the old, Yugoslavian-era tram cars parked pulls up just inside the park, coming to a stop beside the large walkway leading up to the church’s entrance.
These old trams come in a variety of colours, most commonly dull hues of red, green, and yellow, all of which are mixed with a significant amount of rust. And despite their dated, utilitarian design, there’s something quaint about them that I’m always drawn to.
With this rusty red car, in particular, and the scene it’s set in, parked as it is in the foreground of this spectacular old church with similarly coloured adornment, something catches my eye.
I can’t tell exactly what it is. Some kind of subtle symmetry between these two objects perhaps? Analogy? Juxtaposition? Whatever’s going on, it’s interesting.
And so I start exploring the perimeter of the park, trying to line up a photo that captures this curious relationship between church and tram in a compelling way.
After a few minutes of hunting for the perfect angle, however, the tramcar pulls away, leaving me empty-empty handed.
Sometimes, more often than not, in fact, that’s simply the way it goes, especially when it comes to street photography.
Work With What You Have
As opposed to portraiture in a well-controlled studio, with street photography, you as the photographer have little to no control over any of the variables at play.
The lighting and arrangement of the elements comprising your shot are often fixed by your environment. In many cases, your subject itself is liable to walk (or in my case slowly lurch) out of your frame if you wait too long to snap the shutter.
What you have, and what you must learn to rely on, is your awareness, perspective, and ability to get creative with how you position yourself.
With so little control, you learn that great photos are not made by carefully curating and arranging the elements you’re working with, taking a number of test shots, and adjusting the lighting and placement as you go.
Instead, great photos are made by developing a keen ability to recognize the component parts of a potentially interesting image, and then getting yourself into a position to bring them all together in a novel way.
You might see the potential for interesting down the street, two objects or people that play off of and speak to each other visually in some way. And while the potential for an interesting shot may certainly exist, there’s no way of knowing if an interesting photo itself is actually possible until you walk over and get yourself into position.
As with the tram and the church, more often than not, the potential for interesting does not, in fact, add up to an interesting shot. The framing doesn’t work, the lighting has changed, or your subject has moved on.
But you’ll almost never create any interesting photos if you don’t first learn to spot the potential for interesting, and explore it thoroughly when it comes across your field of view.
And once you’re able to spot that potential, there’s another way of using that knowledge to your advantage.
Use Your Position To Your Advantage
When you develop a keen awareness of the potential for interesting, rather than spotting that potential from afar and chasing it down the street, you can position yourself in a spot that already has one or more interesting raw materials, and simply wait to see what comes across your frame.
Sometimes you end up waiting a long time. But wait long enough and you find that something interesting is almost always bound to happen. When it does, you’re already in position to simply click the shutter.
Sometimes you wait for a specific subject to enter the scene to complete the photo. More often than not, however, the interesting thing that enters your frame and makes the image special is not what you were expecting it to be. In fact, it’s often something you would never have dreamed up.
What great street photographers and creators of all kinds know is that more important than any of the technical skills, gear, or editing, is their ability to recognize the potential for interesting, position themselves in the heart of it, and then wait for the scene to unfold before them.
A question for you this week: Instead of chasing interesting, how can you position yourself in a way that it will come to you?
Explore how to navigate a creative life that matters
This article originally appeared in my weekly Listen Up Newsletter. Each issue is the product of a week of work, and contains something not available for sale.
Fresh perspective, a shot of encouragement when you need it most, and maybe even some genuine wisdom from time to time.
Each week, we explore a different facet of the question “How do we navigate the wilderness of creating work that matters?”
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to share it with you.
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