What am I Shooting?

One of the photographers who has inspired me to get out and spend time in nature with or without my camera is Kim Grant. Please check out her website Photographic Connections where you will find the beautiful images she creates as well as various learning opportunities and links to her YouTube, Instagram, and Spotify channels.

I recently purchased her book “From Shooting to Creating: How changing your language can transform your photography” and have been thoroughly enjoying working my way through the exercises. While going through the section specifically about the word “shoot,” I had some interesting insights into my relationship with that term, and with photography more generally.

In her book, Kim presents several exercises that help readers to explore things like whether a camera in any way resembles a gun, or if using it gives any of the same vibes as shooting a gun. Having spent a lot of my youth in the desert with a BB-gun or a 22-caliber rifle, I can say that, for me, the experiences are quite different.

There are some obvious similarities in terms of locating subjects/targets, lining up the composition/shot, and pressing the shutter release/trigger, but the emotions and feelings involved are not the same at all. For starters, using a gun is at its core about causing harm to something, where using a camera is about preserving something. A gun is a tool of violence and destruction where a camera is a tool of creating and sharing.

One other similarity for me specifically, is that most of the time when I was out with my gun, I was looking for trash or other discarded items to shoot. My targets were often old bottles or cans or abandoned vehicles and such. The same is often true in my photography. I’m often drawn to dead trees or crumbling structures as subjects to photograph. This is an interesting bit of information, and I feel like it will be helpful as I continue to explore my creative voice.

I’d say that the biggest difference between a camera and a gun is in the potential outcome when I press the shutter release vs. squeezing a trigger. The physical sensations have some similarities, but the weight, sound, touch, and smell are quite different. Cameras don’t recoil or require earplugs, nor do they smell of gunpowder. And the emotional feel could hardly be more different. The worst thing that happens when I press the shutter release is that I don’t get the image I was hoping for. Squeezing a trigger can kill a living thing. Very different consequences.

Another thing Kim points out is that the term “shooting” carries with it a sense of urgency. For the most part, that isn’t a sense I want to associate with my photography. There are times and specific situations where I do want to convey that sense, but a big part of what I am learning here is how important being at peace and in stillness and quietude is for my overall well-being, and my creative health in particular, and that is also what I want to pass along to my viewers.

There are two things that stand out for me as my biggest takeaways from this exploration. The first is that I want to avoid creating images that give the sense that I was rushing and not taking the time to check for different angles and compositions to tell the story I want to share. I am mostly an intuitive shooter at heart, but when I get home and look through the “shots” from an outing, I don’t want to get the feeling that they are not well thought out. The key here, will be in learning to trust my instincts in terms of choosing subjects, and then taking a breath and working to refine the composition to show what I want, rather than just taking a quick snapshot.

The second is just how significant a role both guns and cameras play as an excuse for me to get out and spend time alone in nature. I’ve always known that was something I loved to do, but it wasn’t until I started really examining my feelings around these activities that it became clear to me just how important it has been and continues to be to my well-being.