Thoughts on What a Photo Should Be

Back of the Village

“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures” - Don McCullin

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever. It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” - Aaron Siskind

These are two quotes that wonderfully help to define my own thoughts about what it is to take a photograph. For me to understand the feelings or the mood viewed through the lens, I look for the way the scene should be framed: what should and should not be in the frame, what should and should not be in focus, what the background is doing, what is the light showing on the subject.

Is there stillness or movement, is there darkness or brightness, is there happiness or sorrow, is there new life or decay, is there excitement or dullness?

I tend to be able to answer most of these questions right away when looking through the viewfinder because of the inward emotions produced by the brain’s “mind’s eye”. This process happens almost automatically as I zoom in or out to edit what I want to capture. The inward feelings dictate when and what the shutter finger will produce.

Afterward, as I review what I’ve done, I will know at once if I have achieved the desired effect of telling a story that can be felt by the viewer.