Paul Lester Photo

The starting line for SoFoBoMo is nearly upon us. When it was announced with a May 1 start date, some months ago, I thought that that was a long way off. Now, it seems very near. 8 days. I find myself making more frequent trips to David DuChemin’s website, Pixelated Image, reading the articles that he has written, and thinking about my own photographic vision.

I can say, with a great deal of honesty, that I’ve never been taken with any particular photographer. That is, I’ve admired the works of others such as Alain Briot, Moose Peterson, Joe McNally, Freeman Patterson and, of course, Ansel Adams; however, I don’t own a single print from any of these artists. David’s work is different, or perhaps it is his writing. I feel that he is writing from the soul and it resonates with me, seriously.

He talks almost exclusively about vision. Vision driven photography; Vision-driven workflow, etc. It’s an idea that I’d never really considered before, but it makes a great deal of sense to me. His vision driven photography works a bit like this:

• Decide what it is that you want to say. Perhaps you’ve received it as an assignment from a client, or made it up yourself.
• Create a possible shot list that will help to realize this vision.
• Choose the tools (camera, lenses, filters, flashes, etc) that will help you to attain this vision.
• Scout the location, if possible, looking at light, angles, etc. Again, with your vision in mind. Do you need to have an overall warm feel, cool, bright, subdued, glowing, etc? What are you trying to say with this body of work?
• After you’ve taken the shots, continue with your vision in Lightroom or Photoshop all the way through post processing.

This certainly has given me lots of thought cycles about what it is that I want to say during my SoFoBoMo project. I think that I need to go sit in my field and ponder it. I have a vague idea, but not a clear vision of it. After reading his articles, I want to get a clear vision of what I want to say before I actually start to say it, which may cause a slight delay in my start date … which is what the fuzzy month allows, anyway. Having this vision ahead of time will make things easier, more cohesive, I think.

Perhaps this sounds like I’m over complicating things and taking this too seriously. I don’t think so. I think that it is just the first brick in a path that I wish to continue to walk upon. Perhaps this is my first step in my journey of 1000 miles.