I’ve been making photographs for as long as I can remember. Always tinkering with something, a camera within reach. It’s in my nature: curious about how things work, how they fit together, and driven to capture it. Not for the picture, but for the story underneath.
What I want to capture has shifted over the years. The technique I had down early enough. The eye I didn’t. That’s what I slowly got better at: seeing what actually matters.
The problem with the first ten thousand photos
There’s a line often credited to Henri Cartier-Bresson, though I doubt he ever phrased it quite that way, that your first ten thousand photographs are your worst. I think the idea holds up, but not for the reason people assume.
It isn’t about practising technique. It’s about unlearning what you think a good photo is.
Beginners shoot the postcard. The skyline. The moment you already know is beautiful. The trouble is that the moment is dead the instant you spot it, because you’re only reacting to a cliché.
The photos that stay with me, my own work and other people’s, are the ones that catch something I didn’t expect to see.
What wine taught me
Wine works the same way for me. The best tastings are the ones where I drink something I don’t understand, where my tongue registers something outside my frame of reference. That discomfort is where the growth is.
Photography does the same thing. The photo that surprised me most was taken on a rainy afternoon in a wine cellar in the Jura. I was there for something else, my camera slung over my shoulder. Then, all at once, it was in front of me: the light through a tall window, the shadows of the barrels, a man standing with his back to me.
It was there for a breath, and then gone.
The discipline of throwing away
From every deliberate session I throw away ninety-five percent. Not painfully, not anymore. With relief. Every discarded photo is proof that I’ve grown sharper about what I want to say.
The camera never lets go of me. But I’ve also stopped trying to capture everything.
Some things are only there for the people who happen to be present in that moment.