Is people. Particularly people you love.
This subject, in my view, leads to the greatest contributions in photography for most of us. And as a photographer, it is the only subject I feel an obligation to engage with.
Now, there’s an asterisk in my title, as I don’t want to discount anyone’s authentic interests. Perhaps landscape photography is your passion? Wonderful. Enjoy your predawn hikes and large format cameras. Nature photography? I also dabble.
But these are secondary contributions. Most of the work you will produce in these other domains will not be the “best” image of any given subject. For example, how many photographs of Half Dome are there? How many more will be taken? Certainly millions. Billions? What are the chances yours will be something truly new and worth sharing? The most likely outcome is that your photograph will serve only as a kind of note of when you visited.
Pictures of people are different. We all are, for better or worse, ever evolving creatures. Like trees, our appearance does not change dramatically from day to day, but does so from year to year, and especially decade to decade. A photograph serves as a sampling point along that trajectory. An artifact, when done well, that captures something true about who we were at that particular moment. And when viewed later on, we learn something about ourselves or others when we compare the current moment to that photograph. The value of such comparisons, either in how it makes us feel or what there is to be learned, only increases with time since the photo was taken.
Photographs age beautifully.
It has never been easier to take highly competent photos. We all carry the necessary equipment in our pockets every day. For some of us, we buy purpose-built devices to get even better images. The photos we take serve many purposes, but the only ones we revisit often are those of the people we love. And somehow, there’s never enough! Good photos of people, those that capture something true about them at that moment, are perennially scarce.
So, if you’re a photographer with the means and talents to take good photographs, I argue here that you should be taking photos of your friends and loved ones. It’s perhaps the most valuable thing you can do with your camera.
A note to my people
I mean what I wrote above and I’m very glad to help contribute to our village in this way. If I whine and complain or am hard to schedule with, please know it is not you, but rather it is because I chronically overcommit and likely have too many things going on. That is no excuse, however, and I wrote this blog post as a kind of declaration to say that I feel it is important to periodically photograph you and your family in an earnest way (if so inclined). Please don’t feel like you have to pay me, or really give me anything, as making the interaction a transaction sullies a lot of the magic for me. Making something that resonates with you and ages well is reward enough. If that makes you uncomfortable, though, I will accept small treats :)
