COLLECT, MARINATE, LOOK, REPEAT.
According to Merriam-Webster, to marinate, is to steep (food such as meat, fish, or vegetables) in a marinade; and/or often, to coat or cover (food) with herbs, spices, etc. and let rest before cooking or serving. And just like food, photographs require the same technique. But in a world where society has been conditioned to have immediacy in everything we do even in areas like entertainment, education, money, art, and tech, nothing is given the chance to survive the test of time. Why is this so?
Waiting in Red, 2021
I don’t see myself as the person with a legitimate answer, however, I do believe that since I have some experience with following the Path of Immediacy, I for sure can say following it was detrimental to my development as an artist. My impatience had a negative influence on what I considered “good”. I’d categorize what I was looking for; a harsh critic unaware of the beauty he’d send to an abyss by deletion.
HOW MUCH HAD I LOST?
HOW MUCH HAD I LOST?
By getting rid of those snippets of human error or impulsive shots, I was eliminating what little evidence I had of my genetic code. Thankfully though I had inadvertently found the key that’d open my eyes to this problem when reading Daido Moriyama’s How I Take Photographs. In the book on page 74, Daido says:
“When I started with digital, I did review all my photos. I also deleted any shots I didn't like on the spot. Now, I won’t do that - I purposely don’t delete any. Because you never know - you might not like a shot immediately after you take it but, often, when you look at it again a bit later, you think ‘Hey, this is actually surprisingly good!’ So my advice to anyone who’s still new to digital photography is, don’t review your shots.”
In other words, the only way to strike gold is to remove what biases we have and let the photographs sit. Our photographs can achieve much stronger flavor not just with additives (light manipulation, color grading, and texturing) but also the constant flow of time.
Hard Rock Redo, 2021
Let them sit, and visit another day. You’ll be surprised.
