Normally when writing for this blog I keep my posts under the umbrella of some general theme, like last week’s post on night photography, but for a bit of a change I figured I’d just show a few photos I took this past week that I’m fond of and talk about my approach a bit as well. In regards to the photos I included, they aren’t really directly related at all in any any other direct way than that they were all created within the last eight days or so (and also their abuse of the rule of thirds) but they are good examples of the sort of things that I like to shoot when I don’t really have an assignment or goal in mind.

I generally like to challenge myself to find forms around me that I find interesting, I feel as if succeeding in that way is more rewarding than if I go somewhere where I know I’ll find interesting subject matter. In shooting this way I sometimes end up getting work that I would say I am proud of, and occasionally I even learn composition or focal tricks, I also sometimes end up with photos that look like totally uninspired stock google images so I guess it’s a bit of a give and take. The most fulfilling part of my own photography is when I successfully make common things seem more interesting than they may be, to a certain point I imagine that this is probably why photographers like Lazlo Maholy Nagy and Josef Sudek have appealed to me. In fact, Maholy Nagy’s summary of “the camera as a “new eye” that can be used to see the world the way a natural one cannot” served as the inspiration for much of the photography I was responsible for in this past school year.