The Red Gate: opening the door to a little silliness.

[TIL #6] Slow down and shake your camera, because sometimes that is the path to deeper images.

Tales of Ink and Light are short stories and poems told with words (the ink) and photographs (the light). I send the Tales every two weeks. Every other week, I send Touches of Ink and Light: considerations on a photograph and the story behind it, as well as brief thoughts on photography and the creative process.

And today’s image is …

The Red Gate

This is an image made during a photo walk that i was guiding through the neighbourhood of Graça in Lisbon, Portugal, last Saturday. The theme of the walk was Capturing Movement, that is, making movement visible through intentional camera movement, panning and generally a slow shutter speed (on a sunny Lisboa afternoon, a neutral density filter was well necessary).

The decision to make a blurry picture goes against the commonly held view that a photograph should be perfectly sharp (at least, the subject should be in perfect focus even when a touch of blurriness is used to direct the attention towards it). And shaking your camera around - which is very precisely what you’re doing when practising intentional camera movement - is a sure path to being considered a very silly person by any passer-by unaware of your particular photographic quest. While this approach appears contradictory to the dominating paradigm of precision and sharpness, your intention, in fact, still needs to be precise enough to guide your choices and your movements: are you trying to make an abstract image? What sort of light lines or strokes are you after? Or are you trying to use the movement in a way that will allow your image to say something specific about your subject?

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In my project trees, i used intentional camera movement to make images that echoed a certain childhood memory of forests. You can view the project at https://www.pierrefdocquir.com/trees

And you can get your copy of the ebook trees for free by using the TIL+TREES code at checkout.

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Whether you have a clear outcome in mind or you’re just exploring, making an image becomes experimental and playful. Sure, you should know enough about your camera to understand slow shutter speed, but letting go of control and indulging into a little childlike silliness are integral parts of the process.

Hey, thinking about it, wouldn’t it be healthy to welcome a little silliness and childlike naivety into your (artistic) life or even into your office life?

Looking at the results from the photo walk, there are a few images that i’ll probably keep. The red gate is my favourite. I am pleased with the colours, and, in my opinion, it has the right level of motion blur: we still can see what the subject is but the movement adds a layer of mystery, so that what actually is the gate to a public market in a residential area becomes an entry into wherever your imagination feels like taking you. The image achieves what i was looking for, it has become a deeper image than a ‘simple’ depiction of the market’s entrance. Let me know what you think of the Red Gate.

Guiding photo walks is an experiment that i’ve started a few months ago. I view it as a small contribution to the community i live in (it branched out of a larger group driven by a similar intention of doing something for the community). While i’m still figuring out the ideal format, i am very happy to be receiving positive feedback from participants - i’ve even enjoyed a couple of flashes of pride when long-time inhabitants of Lisbon confessed that they had seen an aspect of the city that they had not seen before.

The group is called o café da fotografia (‘the photography café’). Admittedly, i kept the brainstorming session dedicated to ‘defining the brand’ fairly short there, but the name evokes the idea of taking time to enjoy photography in the company of others and it echoes my daydream of one day running an actual café and library dedicated to photo books. The walks are open to anyone who has an interest in photography, no matter their experience or favourite gear. Participants are invited to share their three best images of the day and to exchange comments in the spirit of a benevolent peer review.

In addition to being a friendly and collaborative space, i hope that the café also provides opportunities to slow down in order to become more mindful about photography. Ours is an age of fast and continuous flows of images, and i do not imply by that any negative quick judgement — social media certainly have their flaws but they also connect us with others and with art. Very simply, i believe that being conscious of the photographs you view and make is a key skill to navigate the 21st century landscape. What do you think?

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P.S.: If the Tales of Ink and Light work on you — that is, if they make you smile, dream or think — would you do me a huge favour and share them with the people around you would love them too?