Ways of seeing

 

Despite owning many cameras over the years, I wonder whether it really matters if an image is never reviewed, edited or even re-viewed. Seeing is all. Maybe even taking a photograph is unnecessary. It would certainly have been unknown to those of 250 years ago who found "picturesque" mountain views so immense and awesome they were only comfortable seeing them backwards in the mirror of a Claude Glass. A moment in time can be captured in the imagination, but these days frozen in social media. Yes, photography freezes useful reminders of what I was doing last week or last year, accompanied by a few “likes” along the way.  It may even help stave off cognitive decline.

I remember taking notes in lectures, because that’s what I thought you were supposed to do. I never ever looked at them again. Just the process of writing added a layer of thought, and committed the information to memory somewhere. Maybe that is the point.

While still at school, a teacher asked me to photograph people’s ordinary lives in a supposedly deprived area of Portsmouth, as part of an inner city project. He even lent me a posh wide angle lens for my Zenit-B. If only I still had the negatives. I enjoyed the expansive camera angles in what would have been my first exercise in psychogeography, a field unknown to me then. With no idea how they might respond to this 16 year old would-be photographer, the locals happily posed for group shots in the street, maybe enjoying the recognition. I never knew if they were just humouring me, but their strong community spirit was evident. 

I bought my inexpensive but trusty old Russian SLR 55 years ago for around £25. The changing value of money means that a similar price today would be that of a mid range “mirrorless” at over £1000. At least everything was manual then. Now different camera brands bring their own characteristics [dare I say personality?] to the process. Their various ways of seeing what’s on the other side of the lens seem more noticeable today thanks to the increasing and frankly irritating use of AI algorithms. Like it or not, they are there, even in manual mode. They do the thinking for you. It’s a process parallel to searching for online information. No matter how you tweak and cheat the search parameters, the marketing-driven search engine knows best.

Before the digital era, I relished the slow process of checking exposure and aperture using a hand-held light meter, or by estimating from a chart on the film carton. When moving in and out of a scene in the days before zoom was common, you had to be careful to not walk backwards over a precipice, just as a few Claude Glass owners surely did. Any accidents, as they stepped backwards for the best view, foretold the hazards of today’s selfies.

I still try to see  a photo in the mind’s eye as I walk or drive. Mindfulness in the moment is more important than whether or not the shutter button is pressed. I’m tempted to return to film, but despite the appeal of the discipline in ensuring every frame is not wasted money, it is however prohibitively expensive. A pity. I would have enjoyed the exercise in patience, not knowing how the photos will turn out until a few weeks later. To paraphrase a song from the film Snow White (1937): “Some day my prints will come”. Reflecting on the Claude Glass, perhaps I should just travel with an empty camera.

Nevertheless I have found a preserved moment of the one behind the lens c1970. 

LINKS
Now I see photography as mindfulness, it's changed my whole outlook | Digital Camera World
Stealing the soul from the soil
Big heaps of stones
The Claude Glass Revolutionized the Way People Saw Landscapes - JSTOR Daily