In the past, I’ve written about both personal and general motivations for photographing; I’ve also discussed a sort of real time seeing checklist of sorts, which isn’t so much underlying reasons for picking up then camera as what we do once we have it in hand and that initial impetus has happened. In general, a given scene or subject must offer sufficient emotional or intellectual motivation to make us pick up the camera, aim it in the right direction and go through the whole process of both framing and curation* and the requisite effort. The more experienced one is as a photographer, the higher that threshold becomes because the number of subjects you’ve seen and/or photographed in the past only increases. One’s personal ‘activation energy’ increases, if you will. I’ve not only photographed a lot of things, but at this point in my career I’ve also photographed everything I’ve wanted to and beyond – so I figured it worthwhile to discuss what personally motivates me to get out the camera these days.
*Really, the same thing but one happens before the shutter is preset, and the other, after.
Ming Thein | Photographer 