Paul Furman wrote:

Something I found interesting is a guy on one of these groups talking
about how his does simply documentary street scenes, with the intent
that they be valuable historical documents of life in our time. He was
insistent that there was no art to it, he simply picked a
'representative scene' and strove for perfect technical capture. They
were quite nicely composed. The boring technical approach can produce
good art in fact. The art was in the honesty and care.


Yes, this is what I think I do. When I am behind the camera I am
striving for technical accuracy in focus and exposure. So much so that
my whole thought process is occupied with the technicality of taking a
photograph. Ofcourse, I do fuss around composition but there is a
certain something that seems to come some other photographers very
naturally but doesn't seem to come to my brain.

For example, me and my friend were taking some photographs of an old
lady feeding stray dogs. My friend got several nice shots of the lady
and some more shots around of people. And all I got was some odd shots
with not so great expressions. Most of the time I was either late to
shoot or my exposure was wrong. On the other hand, I was sitting on the
beach with the sun setting and I got some good shots. Or, I was on the
beach and my friends were in water playing and I got some really good
shots of them. Just wondering if there is really a difference in the
way our brains work or its just a mental block of some sort.

- Siddhartha