It’s hard to do less in photography.
The tools of the trade demand more and more. More light, more sensor, fuller frame, detail on detail on detail. And we, we want to suck the marrow from the bone. We paid for it all, let’s use it. All. After a while, doing more is just what we do.
I’m fighting my way back to simplicity.
In a recent shoot with an actress, I’d set up a backdrop and two lights. But I kept looking over at the light by the back window. My studio can get really bright, so I’ll often clamp up a large cloth to control the light. A small piece remained uncovered and cast a small swath of waning sunlight toward my desk. “Can we just try this?” I suggested. And I turned off all the lights and we moved from the more of the front to the less of the back.
More and more these days, I’m moving toward less.
At another recent shoot, I was photographing a dance rehearsal. I shot far less than I normally do and spent more time watching. I missed a lot of shots that I might have taken last year. I let them go in favor of some more precise moments that only occurred to me because I wasn’t busy pressing the shutter. It led me to try different things with different lenses.
