So I didn’t even need to pick up my camera for this weeks exercise in my 52 week project. For this exercise, from “The Visual Toolbox”, I instead revisited some old images that I wasn’t pleased with before. In “The Visual Toolbox” author David DuChemin refers to this as sketching.
He argues that there is value in not strategizing and setting up “the perfect shot” but instead advocates a sense of curiosity when it comes to shooting. He calls this process sketching. The idea is that you approach a scene with an attitude of “What happens if I do this?” or “What does this scene look like if I stand here? Or here?” He goes on to advise that you don’t delete ANY of the images, especially in camera. (ProTip: deleting images in camera is hard on your memory card and can lead to card corruption, which is no fun.) DuChemin says keeping some of the sketches around on your hard drive gives you the opportunity to revisit them and on second or third or fourth viewing you might see potential you didn’t see before.
So this week, I reached back into my archives, way back one year ago to May of 2013. We were still living in Connecticut. I had rented the Sigma 35mm lens to give it a test run before buying it. I was so disappointed with these images when I first uploaded them into my computer. They are full of technical imperfections and I felt like the lot was just a bunch of boring compositions without any real story, just lots of clutter.
Upon looking at them again I was able to see something a little different. Still lots of technical imperfections. Still lots of clutter and distractions. But what I did find was some great colors, some beautiful light, and lots of atmosphere.
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