I love stories – reading them, writing them, telling them. For me, there’s something very satisfying about wrapping words around ideas, but there’s something almost MAGICAL about telling the wordless story through photos. These are the things that inspire me to shoot game photos and write this blog for the Indians.
I’m especially captivated by candid, in-the-moment photos (like these). There’s an extraordinary authenticity, depth and imperfectness in these images whose stories could never be adequately expressed with even more than a thousand words.
Having a good camera, the right lighting, the perfect angle are all important to storytelling done through the camera lens, but far less so than anticipating and spontaneously recording the moments of reflection, celebration, even sadness and frustration from which a wordless narrative springs.
Focus is important too, but given the choice, I’d rather perfectly focus the lens of the story than that of the camera. That’s why I almost always crop my photos (sometimes very tightly) and sometimes convert them to black and white – pruning away everything that distracts from the purity of the story I want to tell. As one of the best articles I’ve read recently about photography says, “Pick a tree in the forest, and tell the story of the forest from that tree. A (good) photo requires deliberate subtraction. Photos aren’t supposed to be the perfect depiction of anything. They exist for our delight.” (Stop Taking Pictures. Start Taking Photos)
It’s gratifying to hear that the photos I take of the Indians give delight to others. I consider it a privilege to tell the stories of these special moments through the lens of my camera.