One of my Favorite Photographic Mantras

Photo: (Above) Stormy sunset light on electrical transformer box and telephone pole, Pleasant Hill, California

Got any good photographic mantras?  What’s a photographic mantra, you ask? It’s more than just a saying: A mantra is something you carry with you as part of your personal arsenal; an empowering combination of words that cut to the core of an issue, something that can move you forward with resolve. I’ve had the good fortune to learn from a master, and there are a number of his saying that I pass along to my own students and in seminars – with all due credit, of course.

Some sayings will elevate themselves to that of a mantra. A saying is nice, but a mantra bears the weight of something that would seem to be universally true.

This is one of my own sayings:

“A boring subject in great light will always make a better photograph than a great subject in boring light.”

The always-mentioned follow-up comment is the mantra I urge students to keep in mind whenever they are out in the field or looking through a viewfinder.

“We Photograph Light; Subjects are just the things the light (or shadows) fall upon.”

If the light is wrong, having a great subject will only get you so far. If the light is great, any and every subject will benefit. Matching the right light to the right subjects is a great skill to develop whenever you’re working in the field. If the light isn’t right where you are or for whatever subject you’re shooting, you can look for new subjects that match the light where you are, you can wait for the light to change on your subject, or you can move to a new location where the light or subjects might be better.

There are plenty of times when I’m standing in front of a great subject — like this photo of Mesa Arch in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park — and I just know the subject is in the wrong type of light to create a powerful or evocative image. Of course, I may still take a photo at a place like Mesa Arch or Half Dome in Yosemite, because it is, after all, a great subject. Yet in the wrong light, even a photo of a great subject can fail to take our breath away or leave any kind of lasting impression.

At other times, I may be sitting in my backyard staring at a mind-numbingly boring scene of suburban hallmarks; my neighbor’s roof, and the exceedingly non-photographic telephone pole in his front yard. Then, an instant of special light transformed this scene I’d passively observed for twenty years into a moment of action which prompted me to run and grab my camera. I managed to get two frames before the light suddenly faded away, returning my boring subject back to the normally unremarkable and perfectly forgettable scene. Yet it was that great light that caught my eye, took my breath away, and made a lasting impression — at least for that moment — out of a telephone pole.

I can now say that it’s taken me nearly two decades to get a good photo of that telephone pole, but I finally got it!  All it took was being able to recognize that some special light was happening and I just needed to aim my camera at whatever subject it happened to be hitting.

 

So, have you got any great photographic mantras you keep with you whenever you’re out shooting, something you repeat to yourself to help guide your work? Please feel free to share or add your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks f0r looking and reading,

~ Gary.

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Gary Crabbe is an award-winning commercial and editorial outdoor travel photographer and author based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, California. He has seven published books on California to his credit, including “Photographing California; v1-North”, which won the prestigious 2013 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal Award as Best Regional title. His client and publication credits include the National Geographic Society, the New York Times, Forbes Magazine, TIME, The North Face, Subaru, L.L. Bean, Victoria’s Secret, Sunset Magazine, The Nature Conservancy, and many more. In 2018, The USPS selected a nearly-unprecedented seven of Gary’s photographs to become U.S. Postage ‘Forever’ Stamps as part of the O Beautiful collection. Gary is also a photography instructor and consultant, offering both public and private photo workshops, as well as being a professional Photo Editor and Content Creator.

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