“You do not photograph with your brain, but rather with your heart” -Ernst Haas


I think I’m in love with a statue!

Good photography involves learning to see. Learning to see, means developing a relationship with your subject. All good relationships take time. You have to work at them. You have to fall in love with your subject!

I happened upon this statue on a cloudy afternoon at the Guild Inn near my home in Toronto. She is missing a toe, there’s a chip off her nose, her fingers are broken and yet she maintains a quiet gracefulness despite the neglect. Good art weathers the ravages of time I thought, as I was irresistibly drawn to her.

I sat there just looking, asking myself what I liked about her. The tilt of her head, the regal curls around her brow, the poise with which she sits. Before clicking the shutter, you have to ask yourself why you want to take this picture. What is it that you find interesting about what you see? What are you trying to say with the camera?

Only after soaking up this information and evaluating the scene did I start to take pictures.

Serious photographers rarely take just one photograph of their subjects. They explore shapes, form, shadows, textures and relationships, with their lenses. They ask themselves whether the subject would be better photographed vertically or horizontally. They examine different points of view; different angles and they try to find interesting perspectives. You’ll often find them lying on the ground or climbing trees to get a better vantage point.

The only limit imposed on their creativity is fitting three dimensional realities into tiny two dimensional rectangles. For this reason you have to learn to see through the camera lens. I often cup my left hand over my eye as it looks through the eyepiece so that I can block out the rest of the world. I try to imagine the result as a finished print and I constantly browse through the work of other people in books, galleries and online to determine what kind of images I am drawn to.

After several hours, reality intrudes on my love affair. It’s getting dark, the air is cool and my stomach is telling me it’s time for dinner.

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There is very little colour in the pictures below so that the emphasis is on line, shape and form. The sequencing of the pictures has been changed and two of the backgrounds have been modified slightly to avoid distractions. The photographs are simply meant to illustrate some of these ideas as seen through my eyes.

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