The Biggest Quality of them All - Audacity

by Klive Oh
I thought “The Great Picture Hunt” by David LaBelle was the exact set of guidelines for me in this point during the course where I am about to take some photos of total strangers. Most helpful were photographs set right next to each rule and explanation. They were so deliberately put together with a purpose to illustrate exactly what the rules meant; most photo examples spoke for themselves.

The best photographer I personally know is my brother. Whenever you have him on a trip together with a camera, you can be pretty sure that your Facebook will be loaded with some nice pictures. However, he probably won’t make a good photojournalist just yet, mainly because of his bashfulness. He is the kind of guy who is gentle, a little too much at times, and detests talking to strangers. That means even if he has a great idea, technique, angle or whatever to shoot the perfect picture, he might miss the chance to even start because he can’t reach the subject matter. If he were to be a photojournalist, he ought to get beyond himself and talk, mingle and react with them. I think this quality – audacity – is one of the most important, if not THE most important, characteristics of a photographer.

Coming from Korea, a country interspersed with IT, I am a blogger myself. I like to pick a photo out of my camera and write a couple of sentences – sometimes about the photo, or sometimes thoughts arising from that photo. I have considered myself a photojournalist in my own little world. Through my amateur experience, I guess I have had a chance to learn some of the major points made in the reading. However, I think the article was significant in that it give an idea of how to make all of that actually happen in your viewfinder. Everyone knows that emotion in a photo is important, but in order to reach out and grasp that emotion, that angle and that humor – you will have to be audacious. Yes, LaBelle speaks of hunting and puts the photographer in the position of a hunter for feature photos; a hunter requires being audacious most of the time, too!

The latter parts of the reading about his tips regarding hunting methods are written down in my notebook. Although some of these points may be obvious, I think abiding by the rules as a novice will be of great help in completing my future assignments.

About David Snider’s street photos, I just loved how everything was black-and-white. My favorite picture was one with little kids on a playground bridge. It seems that the kid on the left is trying to wiggle the structure and the kid on the right is scared (I won’t assume the gender of neither). I just love it because of the humor and emotion in the picture. It was also a good example of what were said in the reading.