A Holistic Approach to Minimalism

One Thing Leads To Another

The apparently simple act of jettisoning forty years worth of accumulated camera bags set in motion a change that rippled through my entire relationship with photography.

Moving to Spain

When I moved to Spain full time three years ago I was aware that I would be giving up what had become a moderately successful photography studio in the uk. It had become hard work and although I loved some of the businesses I worked with, my success was leading inexorably to bigger and bigger clients, more stress and more pain. Both of us (Viv and I) agreed we wanted less stress.

Brexit signalled the end of my tether – I reached for the ejector button. It was clear to me that the UK was over. Sure enough, before two years had elapsed around 50% of my client list had shut up shop. Britain was no longer a place to run a small photography business.

Refocusing

I decided I would refocus my photography in the mountains, deserts and cities of Spain, I was not aware of how this wide ranging but apparently simple decision would change my entire approach to photography. In fact, it took a couple of years to sink in.

The first thing I did was to trade my studio setup for a smaller set of kit more suited to landscape photography. Out went a whole slew of lenses, lights and studio kit and in came a simple three lens setup – a 16-35mm, a 24-70mm and a 70-200mm. I kept my Macro 100mm, my Fisheye (because you never know when you’re going to need a fishes eye view of the world) and my 50mm. I was ready to rock.

Superfluous Camera Bags

I also sold (almost)every bag I had collected in forty years of photography (I estimate around fifty bags). In came just three to replace them, a lightweight bag for everyday use (F-Stop Guru) a midweight bag for single day hikes (F-Stop Ajna) and a large bag for overnight treks (F-Stop Tilopa). I also kept two Peli cases for travel and a couple of ThinkTank Retrospective shoulder bags.

I liked this new simplicity, a lot. I’d jettisoned whole genres of photography (product, property, event), freed up an entire room in my house and replaced it with something I’d always loved, landscape photography.

There was a lot to learn, instead of controllable studio lighting I had the sun and the clouds, and once I’d mastered the technical I began to think about the more nebulous topic of what was I trying to say. And after that, what equipment would help me to say it.

Rising above the Detail

The problem I had was that I had become, by experience if not by training, a very technical photographer and although this is very useful in the sense that there are very few problems I cannot solve in my photography, it led me to pursue the perfect, pristine, picture. This is not necessarily a good thing because perfect pristine pictures are ten a penny on the internet these days and AI will continue to provide them by the bucketload.

So with my landscape photography I found myself in the position of making “nice” photographs that nobody apparently connected with, because where they came across them, on social media, there are a million more to swipe past.

While I was ruminating, an unexpected health issue started me thinking about losing some of the weight I was carrying 10 or 15 kilometres every week. I don’t know why it was unexpected, I’m 68 years old! Canon lenses are fantastic, but heavy and I hit upon the notion of photographing with intent. I’m sure I’m not the first and its unlikely I’ll be the last but it is an idea worth unpacking.

What does “Intentional Photography” mean?

Intentional Photography

I have experience in a lot of genres of photography, there is little I haven’t tried and less that I haven’t enjoyed. I love photography, I love the problem solving aspects, I love post processing, printing and looking at the results. I love my photography!

To me photographing with intent means breaking every expedition down into a project. It might take several trips to cover a location properly and each one would focus on a single or at most dual objective.

It occurred to me that there were three genres I was particularly interested in. Landscape, Macro and Architecture. I could add wildlife further down the line. Now these are essentially the same thing, big landscapes, little landscapes and man made landscapes but each requires different tools. 

To be specific, a Landscape kit looks like wide angle, mid range and zoom, Macro looks like macro, lights and mid range, Architecture looks like Ultra wide and Mid Range. Wildlife suggests a different camera body and longer lenses.

Every expedition now requires an assessment of intent and equipment is jettisoned accordingly.

Where is the Story?

It occurred to me that if I focused my efforts on the story rather than the infinite photographic possibilities, what would I then need? Well to tell a story I need context and detail. In all three cases, the context represents the bigger picture, the detail is a more personal view, because it involves choice, choice of what to shoot and what not to shoot. The context is the book, the detail is the story, my story, your story.

So I decided to try to take no more than two lenses out at a time and focus the point of an expedition into one or other of those three areas. 

This made me think much more about what I was shooting and changed the essence of what I was trying to achieve with my photography. Or to put it another way, I had become confident in my ability to take a good photograph in all circumstances and started to think about the entire story rather than the individual frames.

Competing with Myself

As my focus moved away from producing the ultimate photograph, my sense of satisfaction in my daily photography practice stabilised, I no longer experienced the frustration and dejection that is an inevitable consequence of always trying to get a better picture than the previous day. This is replaced by better all round selection of frames – once you get beyond trying to select the one killer frame, there are plenty of good frames to choose from that can add to your story. The killer frame is replaced by your unique selection of frames and sometimes one of those turns out to be a killer frame in any case. Once you stop looking for it, it finds you.

Embracing Minimalism

So there has been a stripping away of clutter, not just in my head, but in my kit and my approach to photography and it occurs to me that this is also a useful approach to composition. Strip away anything that doesn’t contribute to the story.

Naturally this is a journey and I’m by no means finished, but I see a positive effect on my photography and if I’m not yet embracing minimalism in the purest sense of frame selection, I’m throwing out the trash as far as I can.

There is still work to do, my studio is still a mess, my lenses and cameras continue to proliferate as I explore the further reaches of architecture, landscape and macro photography but I like to think I’m making progress and the additional focus that photography with intent brings is certainly having a positive impact on my photography as a whole.