TWO ARTISTS CAN STAND IN THE SAME PLACE AND SEE TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS.

NOTE 002

Sep 1

Put two photographers on the same street.

Same light.

Same afternoon.

Same surroundings.

You’d think they’d probably come back with at least somewhat similar photos.

But when Rahel and I went shooting together, I started noticing how rarely that actually happened.

Sometimes we were literally only a few feet away from each other.

But there were things she photographed that I barely even noticed.

And things I stopped for that she didn’t.

Neither of us was missing anything.

We were just seeing completely different things inside the same place.

And I think that messed with the way I thought about photography a little bit.

For a long time I thought finding your style meant somehow making your photos different.

Different locations.

Different compositions.

Different colors.

Different everything.

But even when the surroundings changed, I kept noticing the same kinds of things.

And watching Rahel photograph made it even more obvious.

She could find an entire photo in something I had already looked at and decided there was nothing there.

Then I’d stop for something she walked right past.

Same street.

Same moment.

Two completely different reasons to stop.

That’s when I started wondering if developing your photographic eye has less to do with learning what you’re supposed to see.

And more to do with noticing what you already respond to.

You can study another photographer’s composition.

Their colors.

Their editing.

You can even stand exactly where they stood.

But you still might not see what they saw.

And maybe you’re not supposed to.

The place was the same.

What changed was what each of us thought was worth stopping for.

STAY CURIOUS

A note every now and then about photography, filmmaking, and learning to see.