Why Are You Shooting What?

This shot of Hong Kong's city view was done around ten at night. Although the slow shutter did exaggerate the brightness of the lights a bit, light pollution is an issue in Hong Kong.

The May issue of an international magazine, Sky and Telescope, made the night view of the Victoria Harbour of Hong Kong aglow in neon lights its cover, which is not a good news at all. In that issue, the magazine writes on the topic of light pollution.

I have learnt that the Ricoh R10 camera will soon arrive at the Hong Kong stop of the "Ricoh Around the Globe" project. Being the first of the two photographers at this stop, I am brewing a photographic theme. Light pollution is the likely choice.

So this brings us to today's topic: Why are you shooting what? There are two parts in this question - what you should chose to shoot and why.

Except those super-brainy persons like Aristotle (the Great Mind also wrote about cosmetics!) or Leonardo da Vinci (too famous for almost anything), most people are okay at doing a large variety of things but good at just a small amount of them. A life, unless it is not intended to be well spent, should eventually be spent mostly on what we are good at; that is if the person is to achieve "success" in a general sense.

A pack of colour pencils can be a trump for an illustrators; for a painter it is anything but. Give a pin-hole camera to a sports photojournalist and he will end up in frustration, and with failed shots too. Just as the right tool for the right person is important to a job well done, the right job for the right person is essential for a great result.

You may wonder how this is related to the question above. The relation is actually direct: scan through your photos, observe and think carefully. Eventually, you will surely find out that you have been better off doing shots for certain themes than others. Now, keep sharping your skills by specialising in those two or three themes you are talented in. You may even make yourself a photography project to that purpose like Dean's The Wonderful Game which we looked at last week, or like those here, here and here.

Take for another example the success story of SY HSU of Taiwan. He has been introduced here (search the site) and some of you may recall that he is good at doing female portraits. He is now doing a Crying Ladies project. A large part, if not most, of his works is about female portraits. He has won some international prizes and fame for this portraits.

When you are clear about what you should, or to be exact, can shoot for a better result, give yourself some reason. Why? Because we are sane. Doing a task for a reason actually gives us the drive to excel at it. Just in case you can't think of a good reason, we may adapt George Orwell's, the British writer, for what he said about why he wrote books. The reasons are sort of grand but they are good ones to ponder on:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in lights and shadows and their right arrangement.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word 'political' in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.

Now, take some time to scan through your photos.