Many years ago I met a well known English artist while I was
travelling through Northern India. We happened to be staying at the same
hotel, one of those rather agreeable converted palaces. Each day he
went out with his watercolours, easel, portable chair and sizable
sketch books, as he used to say, ‘to seek inspiration and watch the
world go by.’
One late afternoon I saw him, brush in hand, stooped over his easel
and decided to see how he was getting on. He was well on his way to
finishing his scene but as I looked from his picture to the view, and
back again, I instantly noticed how different they were. What he had
done was to omit a lot of detail and add some of his own. He explained
to me that he rarely painted exactly what was in front of him. ‘I go for
simplicity, he said. ‘ I paint what I think my picture needs, what
makes it work, not necessarily what I see.’ ‘It is of course a
representation, I am distilling the scene but I like to fill it with
interest.’
This, coming as it did when I was just starting out in my
photographic career, was a revelation to me. I suddenly realised after
that brief conversation that I, as a photographer, could work in exactly
the same way. I began to view my own scenes with the critical eye of a
painter. Of course it takes a combination of persistence, patience,
timing and luck but in the process I taught myself to slow down. I took
time to observe things, to wait for subjects to move in and out of the
frame and I started to compose my pictures deliberately and consciously.
I took on projects that required me to learn about the lifestyle of my
subjects, to get close to them, understand them and wider angle lenses
became my photographic mainstay.
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