I had lots and lots of great ideas from podcast listeners about Camera Position 125, “Thinking in Monochrome.” Several listeners suggested a digital tool that I’d not thought of before and that was to set the camera for B&W, but to also set “Raw + JPEG” as the file format. Other listeners talked about the great options provided by electronic viewfinders on some cameras that allow you to actually see the framed scene in black and white. And that reminded me of the monochrome viewing filter I recently unearthed as I was packing up my office for a move.
We all try to spend time with photographs by photographers whose work we admire. We spend time trying to figure out how to emulate their work, then produce work that is similar in style to what they do. But here is the rub; our problem is that once we get to a point where those photographs are good, solid derivatives of what our photographic influences are, what’s next? How do we make our pictures so that they are different in style and substance from those who came before us?
My friend, the great contemporary photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen, has nicely wrapped up a set of ideas about this problem in this transcription of a talk he gave called “Stay On The Bus”
