I ask myself a lot of questions as I make my photographs. What’s this scene really about? What do I include, and what do I leave out? What possessed me to get up at 5 am and sit in the rain? Those kinds of questions. Like you, I also ask myself what I might do with my exposure, how I could be thinking about aperture and shutter, and whether changing my lens would be a good idea.
Could is Better than Should
I never ask should questions, and when I find myself doing so, I am quick to change my wording. Should implies an obligation. It implies one single good choice among many. Should questions pull me away from possibilities and make my thinking more rigid. It’s something I learned while doing comedy improv: always ask questions that lead to more options, not fewer.
Asking, “What could I be doing here?” helps you land lightly on the possibilities rather than settling on any one of them too quickly, assuming you keep asking that question all the way through your process.
Asking, “Which lens could I use for this scene?” leads to more creative thinking than “Which lens should I use for this?”
Am I splitting hairs? Isn’t this just semantics? I don’t think so. Word choice guides our thinking, and if you want to be thinking more creatively about a scene or subject, then words that ask you to explore your options rather than settling too quickly on one solution (often your so-called “go to”— the one you favour to the point of overuse) lead to less obvious solutions.
What Will it Look Like?
So long as we’re asking questions and trying to avoid prescriptive “should thinking,” I would give an arm and a(nother) leg if I could get photographers to swap out every question about aperture/shutter/lens choice and ask this one instead: what will it look like?
In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, we are told that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. A lesser-known phenomenon: every time a photographer asks, “Hey, which aperture should I use?” their muse falls into a dark depression, starts drinking from the mini-bar, and stops doing whatever it is muses do to guide us into greater creative thinking. It’s true; I studied this in school, so please don’t fight me on this. Should kills creativity.
Which aperture should you use? I haven’t got the foggiest idea! What do you want it to look like?
Answering your question with a question. How very Socratic of me. Couldn’t I forgo the smart-assery and just tell you? Well, yes, I could, but only if you agree to sell your cameras and, instead, take up painting by numbers. It takes no skill and requires no thinking or agency on your part (more smart-assery, sorry. Please don’t sell your cameras.)
Asking which aperture you should use is like checking the paint-by-numbers to be sure you’re using the right colour in the right square. Is that why got into this?
Asking which aperture you could use, and basing that decision on what you want the picture to look like (whether you want the foreground to be as sharp as the background, for example, or whether you want to render the highlights as out-of-focus bokeh) gives you options.
You’ve got to stop thinking of the aperture as merely one of your “let more/less light in” options. More or less light changes how the picture will look and feel, but the aperture isn’t the only way to control that, and every stop up or down will also change what does and does not capture my attention in your picture. It will change the whole look of the image.
More focus, more attention. Is that what you want? Ask yourself which aperture you could use, consider the visual effect of your choices, and for the love of Ansel, start making those choices based on what you desire—what you prefer in an image. If you don’t yet know what you prefer, then try it all and figure it out, pay attention to what quickens your pulse.
Stop asking others what you should do before you inquire earnestly of yourself: what do I want?
Which shutter speed? Same thing. Every time you spin that shutter speed dial, you let in more or less light, but you can make that up in other ways. What do you want the image to look like? Tack sharp? Freeze the motion? Blur the movement? What do you want it to look like?
“Yeah, but which lens should I use for landscapes or wildlife? I read an article that said…”
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. There is no “best lens for landscapes” because “landscape” is a genre—a broad category that is as meaningless as words like “portrait” or “wildlife” when it comes to what the picture will eventually look like. Those words describe subject matter that can be photographed with any focal length at all, depending on the photographer’s intent and the way they answer this question (say it with me, with feeling): what do you want it to look like?
Make Courageous Choices
Stop looking over your shoulder. Stop asking should questions. You’ll make choices others do not, and that will make your photographs different, and that’s not something to avoid; it’s something to pursue.
Your individuality is not a problem to be solved.
If you love the work you make (even if that love is a little complicated because you know you can do better and one day will make similar pictures that are much stronger), then that’s enough—and you’re one step closer to discovering your voice as a photographer. Your distinct voice will be found in the ways you differ from others; it will come from a place of personal preference and courageous choice, never from some sense of should.
Every choice you make affects the resulting image: how it looks, how it feels. It is our job to get fluent with those decisions. How? Try it all. Some choices will work; you’ll love what they do to the image, and you’ll have a new tool in your visual toolbox. Some will not work in the moment but will have potential. Some will be a disaster. Fine. Lesson learned.
Make the choice and see what it does. Consider the combinations. Then listen to your gut. You will not learn to be more creative as a photographer until you start making these choices, not because you were told to—not because “it’s how it’s done” or some pundit (me included) does it that way—but because you understand what your technical choices do to the look and feel of the image and make choices from there.
There are no rules. There is no should. There is only could and the wide gamut of possibilities that represents in any scene. Finding those possibilities, really seeing them, is what makes your work different from anyone else’s. It’s some of the hardest work you do as a photographer. But it’s also the most rewarding.
For the Love of the Photograph,
David
Comments
That is why I love photography. All is in my responsibility. If it went wrong, it went wrong because of my decision. If it went well, it was my decision to.
It is my choice to get up early or not. It is my choice where to go and seek the light. And it is my choice as well to be disappointed about the weather and the produced photos. I can instead make the best of it and learn from the bad pictures.
David, the crunch is your last paragraph. Sums up exactly, at least to me, the situation. This modern world over thinks itself so much, creativity is lost and we spend more time sitting on our backsides and miss the picture completely. Thanks for highlighting our modern problem. Spontaneity eradicates creativity due to our over thinking process.
The important question for me; “do I like the image?”. If yes, does my wife agree with my assessment? If not, then try again. Photograpghy, like Art, is personal. Don over think it.
I have a TARDIS, next stop 1830~50, the Daguerreotype station. Choices were simple back there.
Love the comments so far. Great thought provoking as to “why” I take a photograph.
Hi David, I loved this article. I removed should from my vocabulary years ago and to read your article from a photography point of view was wonderful and interesting. Thank you!
The idea that there are no rules is a helpful and sometimes necessary lie. What I mean is that we usually operate in opposites. And the rules we cannot escape are, for example, those of communication. Starting from the question of what effect our image should have (and when we take photographs intentionally, we impose a “should” on ourselves), it is important to ask how our image will be interpreted. At least, that is how I understood a photographer from whom I have learned a great deal – his name is David DuChemin… 😉 But David, you are also right when you remind us that it is the open questions without “should” that motivate us to use our creative space more actively, to enter into this space. In this respect: Thank you for your blog posts, which always inspire us to consciously choose and shape our own photographic path!
This is such a great article! Photography is a hobby for me, but it also applies to my primary career of recording and creating music. There are so many people who try to tell you how to do things, when it’s your creativity and uniqueness that makes it special. I didn’t get into music to copy anyone else. I have something to offer the world. It’s not for everyone, but that’s okay.
Thanks for the great reminder.
Thank you for another needed recognition. In reading this, I realized that despite moving away from so many other shoulds, I hadn’t shed what might be the most important one. Since I started reading your books and your essays, I have been building a different scaffolding for myself based on freedom of expression. But in this one very important area, I have still been asking a goal-oriented question. I hear your message, loud and clear, possibilities over goals. I will use the quickening of my pulse as *the* signal that I’m in the right place of experimentation and discovery.
“What do you want it to look like?” is EXACTLY the right question. It’s how I teach my beginning students. Do you want to motion sharp or blurred? Do you want the background clear or blurred? Choose your settings accordingly. It works for me & I hope it works for them. 🙂
Good thoughts on changing mentality. It’s like my wife saying, when I say something disparaging about myself even in jest, “you may not mean it consciously but your subconscious doesn’t know the difference and accepts it as truth”. “Could” allows freedom in expression through photography
Love your thoughts on this, David. There is a tonne of difference between should and could! Thanks for the great reminder!
Reading your column Sunday morning is a highlight of my week. (My week actually isn’t that boring but your column is wonderful to look forward to reading.)
Cheers and best wishes.
R.
Loved this article. Made me smile which is hard to do in present times Thanks