The Round Blog

Tool over Emotions: Is this the photography people want?

The last few books about photography I read, or I tried to, almost disgusted me, and the number of blog posts that generates the same effect on me is even in bigger. It is because the only thing that seems important is about the tools you should have to be able to take good photos.
Not a single one of those books made me think about the emotions I want to covey from my photos or the way I can free my mind to welcome the creativity I so strongly desire.

I may be solitary in this, but if I had to write a book about photography I would tell about how to take the photo. I would like to be able to pass the passion I have when I try to capture a moment, framing its essence and telling a story with it. I would say many things, but probably I would not say anything about the tools I use. I fear that it would be a book destined to be a very small group of reader.

Those who know me, know I love street photography. I love it because it allows me to enter in my world, to connect with thousands of strangers I have never seen and that will leave a trace in my life only through the photos I will take of them. I do not like posing my street subject, I like raw emotions, I like to capture the simple, everyday moments that make you stop in front of them.

When I see a great photo, I ask myself what was going on in the heart of the photographer, what was going on in the mind of the subject. Believe me if I say that I have no idea what camera my favourite photographers use.
I try to know what was going on in their creative self when they clicked it, I try to know how they did it, not which tools they used to do it.

One of my twitter contacts, @thetrudz, pointed that "You can tell someone what to buy. You CANNOT tell someone what to feel. Can't be done." That is absolutely true, you cannot teach how to feel, but you can teach how to put your emotions into the frame, how to pack your own personal experience into a photo.
Of course I am exaggerating, of course there is the need of tools and, from time to time, the need of good ones. The point is that the market is so intent in pushing the latest technology, the latest camera or lens, that too many times it loses the focus on the main subject: photography itself.