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A new approach to photography

A new approach to photography

To keep it short: I no longer care about technical quality.

Like a lot of photographers and filmmakers, I used to worry a great deal about "preserving image quality".

You shoot in "log" or in "raw", at full resolution, to keep as much room as possible for post-production. That's where the real decisions get made.

Now I decide everything as I shoot, with no way to change it later.

Format, color, framing: all of it is locked in on the spot. I don't retouch a thing.

Then when I get home, I delete 98% of the photos straight away. Immediately, no agonizing.

Even the ones I used to keep because they were "not bad".

Either I feel a pull I can't explain, or it goes.

And yes, that means I've given up film. I think I was shooting it out of snobbery.

Let's be honest, I loved the results. The grain, the character. The nobility of film.

These days, the only thing I care about is the process.

Spontaneity. Deciding on the spot. The irreversible choice that captures the emotion of one exact moment.

So much of what I used to do was built on the fear of regret. Keeping everything "just in case". And in the end, it just piled up. For nothing.

I don't want to pile things up anymore.

After three days of this, I've already learned things about my own taste that decades of raw and film never showed me.

I'm not a fan of photos of people – even when I catch a beautiful moment. Nor much of landscapes.

What I like is material, texture. Corners crammed with detail, dense and rich, with a bit of light here and there.

That's the central question of what I'm exploring in photography right now, but also of everything else I'm building at the moment:

"What do I actually like?"

2 comments
Mohamed Khalil

Bonjour Nicolas,

Bonne analyse à propos de la peur de manquer.
J’aime la philosophie du photographe américain William Egglestonc je cite:
" je ne prends qu’une photo de chaque sujet, comme cela je ne m’embête pas à choisir "

Bonne journée.

Mohamed

Merci.
Exactement.
J'ai réalisé qu'indirectement, une grande partie de mon process artistique est construit sur la peur : manquer l'instant, ne pas avoir assez, garder la liberté "pour plus tard".
Je comprends les artistes qui ont des "doctrines" très claires et fortes comme ça.

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