Winter projects - steel wool photography

I need to try this out. The winter is dark.

Slow photography

Just stumbled on an old article from Slate discussing the concept of "slow photography". It rhymes really well with what I want to try this year. I have used photography to keep a record of everything that happens and it is taking some of the fun out of the exercise. It is time to slow down.

"For most people, including me, photography is most often about documentation or record-keeping. It is about taking a photograph as an effort to grab a moment as it rushes by, to stage a tiny revolt against the tyranny of time. That's why traditionally we photograph at moments you might think of as scarce. Few people photograph their daily commute, but most of us only go to high-school prom once—or maybe twice. A baby soon becomes a child, but humans look vaguely middle-aged for decades."

(...)

"No, the real victim of fast photography is not the quality of the photos themselves. The victim is us. We lose something else: the experiential side, the joy of photography as an activity. And trying to fight this loss, to treat photography as an experience, not a means to an end, is the very definition of slow photography.

Defined more carefully, slow photography is the effort to flip the usual relationship between process and results. Usually, you use a camera because you want the results (the photos). In slow photography, the basic idea is that photos themselves—the results—are secondary. The goal is the experience of studying some object carefully and exercising creative choice. That's it.

He further references an even older essay written by Fred Conrad that includes some examples:

New year, new camera

Got a new camera and inspiration, will from now on be more frequent in posting here. Working on a west coast portfolio for fun.