Fellow blogger Juha Haataja recently brought up the topic of photographic expertise, speculating about how much time photographing it would take to become what everybody would deem an “expert”. It caused me to write a lengthy reply that I won’t repeat here, go over to Juha’s site to read it, but the more I think of it, the more it gets clear to me, that the simple act of repeatedly doing is, what eventually brings forth expertise.
I don’t believe in the idea that a genius goes out, does what he never did before, and that it’s good. Things don’t work that way.
Well, probably sometimes they even do, but I firmly believe that there is always room for improvement, and this improvement comes from intimate familiarity with your subject.
Bicycles are a subject that I’ve got quite familiar with. They fascinate me for their simple geometry that nevertheless often forms the most poetic constellations of lines, ellipses and circles. In a way bicycles have become friends, and photographing them, I feel quite comfortable by now.
The Song of the Day is “Just A Friend Of Mine” from the 1987 Vaya Con Dios debut album. See a video on YouTube.