I Obviously Read Too Much

At breakfast this morning I was reading Ibarione Perello's Chasing the Light. I made copious notes for a blog post. Got home and finished an excellent video I had started earlier on what makes the difference between a picture taker and a photographer. Then I watched a short video, Brief but Spectacular, on the photography of  Ken Van Sickle. Since it is short, I will put the Perello post on Photovisualize when I get it written. 

I really like Sickle's comments:

“I am not a concerned photographer. I am not trying to prove anything in any way politically or otherwise. I am interested in beauty and sort of the subtle moments of everyday life.”

 “There are a lot of things that make a good photograph. You have to think about texture and gesture and composition—all the things that painting has in it.”

“Technology doesn’t change the way photography is. It makes it available to more people which means there going to be much much more really terrible pictures taken or pictures that are totally dependent on subject which is alright.”

“I mean if you were there when the Hindenburg caught on fire and you took a picture – that’s a great photograph. But you are not a great photographer because you can’t repeat that in everyday things. What a great photographer does is that they are consistently able to make something in a style that’s personal to themselves.”

The emphasis at the end is not mine, although I would have emphasized it had it not already been. “…they are consistently able to make something in a style that’s personal to themselves.” That’s a great statement.