I was just thinking about something that changed in the way I take pictures.

At some point, I used to try to take pictures that would show the equipment in the most advantageous light. Partially it was because I was writing equipment reviews for a photography e-zine, but also because I subconsciously tried to avoid criticism of not being a good enough photographer to get the best out of the gear. I tried to make the pictures look as spectacular as possible, regardless of what I actually liked.

At some point, I stopped caring about that, because it made me feel stupid. Did I buy the camera to do the stuff I want to do, or did the camera buy me in order to show off its capabilities? Sure, I like making spectacular images occasionally. However, something I like making completely unspectacular images of nothing in particular because it reflects my mood, or captures some idea. However, I initially took pictures without any regard for the audience, then started taking pictures in order to prove something and impress the audience, and now I’m back at doing it for myself and not giving much thought to what anyone would say.

For instance, here are two versions of the same place, from different parts of the summer. The first is when the lavender was blooming and I was taking pictures of butterflies there with an ultra-wide lens, which is a weird thing to do, but I felt like doing it because I got bored of doing it the “right way”, with a telephoto.

The second picture is at the end of the summer. The lavender is gone, the butterflies are gone, and even the sun is gone at the end of the day, and there’s nothing there but stone walls, fence, dry grass, and emptiness. This emptiness is the subject matter of the picture – everything that was worth looking at is gone, and what remains is what caught my attention, and I photographed it in very dark black&white tonality to showcase the total, utter absence of anything meaningful.

How am I supposed to do that? By using all the colour the camera is capable of capturing? Despite the fact that there’s nothing of colour there? Am I to try to capture it in a dynamic way, making a composition that tries to engage the audience? Why? There’s nothing dynamic there. It’s exactly the static, empty remainder of a once colourful scenery that caught my eye. Photographing it in the most static way possible, that accentuates the stillness that remains when everything meaningful is gone, is the exact point of that picture. It’s not supposed to evoke colourful and dynamic sentiment, it’s supposed to evoke the emptiness one feels playing Witcher 3, visiting Kaer Mohren after the main mission is complete, and everything is as you left it, only without anything that used to give it meaning. The people are gone, the meaning is gone, but for some reason the lights are still on. You don’t photograph this with Velvia or EBX; you photograph it with the most depressing kind of Ilford B&W. It’s not supposed to showcase the gear. The gear is merely a shovel that moves the manure. It’s not the subject matter of the picture. In some pictures, the gear is the obvious part of the composition; the first thing people will ask is what gear that was taken with, because it looks spectacular. In some cases, however, the picture could be taken with anything, and the gear is supposed to be the last thing on your mind when you look at it.