Photography by numbers

For most of us our first artistic moments were in our childhood with a colouring book. We simply had to stay inside the lines and put the appropriate colour in the right section, if you did this you were guaranteed a masterpiece worthy of any fridge door. The colouring book thought us well. It improved our penmanship and gave us some idea of what colours went where. However it only thought us the rules,  I don’t think any of us would hang a colour by numbers picture on our wall. We all know that art is often guided by but never bound by rules.

So what does this have to do with photography, well it has a colouring book all of its own. Histograms that you are taught to stay inside of , proscribed lenses and f stops for portraits and landscapes, compositional rules that push your subject’s towards the same places time after time. It seems to me that adhering to these rules can only recreate cliche after cliche.

Don’t get me wrong I love my colouring book and it thought me some very important lessons but it gets to a time when we must scribble outside the lines. All of the principles, rules or guides should be treated as that,  a guide. They can tell you where you are and if you go this way or that what you are likely too see, but don’t forget its your adventure.

I only write this because, if I am sure of anything, I am sure that blind obedience to a set of rules will stagnate any art form. This mediums history demands that we succeed from the bland and the mundane.  if this relatively young medium is too flourish as an art form during these fast changing and revolutionary times then its up to us to try and too encourage the daring and the brave.

So I am going too try to doodle outside the lines and submerge myself In images that break a few rules and hope that a few of you will join me in this adventure.