How Not to Take a Picture

World Trade Center ©1979 Robert Daniel Ullmann

I shot this in the middle 1970's - which seems like three or four centuries ago - certainly ancient as far as the technology involved has changed. While I may seem a tad outraged at the metamorphosis the world of photography has gone through, I am also very glad that for the first time in the history of photography one can obtain exactly what one wants using digital tools.
I especially love the healing tools in Photoshop - the number of times I would botch a print by inept spotting I can not begin to count.

OK - so what's with all this how not to stuff ,outside of my love of the essay "How Not to Tell a Story, or the Literarary offenses of Fennimore Cooper" by Mark Twain? Twain points out all of the maddening inconsistencies perpetrated by Cooper, and is writing about the low level of thought applied to a creative process, in the search for effect. It's a bit like watching someone jump out of a vehicle that is supposedly going 80 mph, and suffer nothing less than a small owie.
One of my favorites is the diving through plate glass and not getting cut to shreds.

Good art is thought out and is, I believe, part of the process of consciousness. Consciousness being a process, not a thing.

So - how not to take a picture:

Use all of the latest doo-dads your camera has to offer. Set the camera to recognize smiles, faces, night shots, use direct flash and red eye suppression, take close up shots of faces with the lens set wide so people look like fish... I'm sure there are more auto everything removing the brain from your activities stuff in the newest cameras so USE THEM!

However - if you want to make images that are powerful:

Turn off all the auto whiz-bang thought and decision removing gizmos. No face recognition, no smile recognition, no letting the camera decide whether your taking a scenic, a portrait or a nap.
Stop using fill flash and let the light work for you (Gene Smith once taught a course "Photography Made Difficult). If you are photographing a person, engage with them, talk to them... Think about the shot.

We are discussing making images that, one hopes, transcend photography.