You don't need hundreds of photos to call it a day

All you need is intention. Intention is all we need.

Today I was working in the city. Camera in my bag, like most days. On the way back home, I had a choice: hop on the subway right in front of me, or walk a few stations down the line and see what I could find over Manhattan's crust, a.k.a. the surface.

It was 2 degrees Celsius. The kind of cold that makes your fingers stiff within minutes. Film gets brittle, batteries drain faster. Everything was telling me to just get on the train.

I walked instead. I made five digital photographs, which later then I used DxO FilmPack 8 for a Fujifilm Neopan 400 film simulation.

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Here are the photographs I took in this session, in a cold, but still good looking city.

This guy had the choice of using one of the tens of the available Citibikes, but instead he chose to go on his own, that caught my attention.

Followed by these restaurant chairs, parked there perhaps for weeks. This indicate that the ice slows down everything, including the local economy.

What's frozen and humanless in one side, has lots of emotions and entertainment on another. These people playing ping pong near Herald Square is a frequent scene, and I always photograph it. I think that if I find all photos of people playing ping pong in this specific urban ping pong table, I can make an entire book out of it.

As Valentine's Day approaches, I saw many men with flowers, I tried to make that a theme, but I was only able to photograph the two pictures below. Perhaps if it wasn't too cold, I would go with that intention on photographing this specific matter: people with roses, Valentine theme.

What does it mean to be a photographer?

As you might know, I carry my camera almost every day. I carried it today at 2 degrees with every reason not to. That’s what being a photographer means to me: the camera is part of your daily life, and I am always ready to use it.

I have friends who call themselves photographers, but spend entire photo walks just talking, and bring their cameras just to keep it locked inside their backpacks. They don’t shoot. They don’t study references. Ask them about Daido Moriyama or Saul Leiter and they don't know who you're talking about.

I mentioned these two because in these photos, there are lots of inspiration from them. To me, that's what photography is about, and it becomes way funnier when you have references and go for it.

I'm saying that because I've been on the other side of the game. I was the guy who was all about owning a high-end body and a fast lens with an entire portfolio wide open at f/1.2, everything blurred into oblivion, a subject floating in bokeh.

Every. Single. Image.

Tacky as fuck.

What I mean is that buying gear doesn’t make you a photographer any more than buying a piano makes you a musician. Study the culture, consume photography books, have conversations about art, watch photography documentaries, write about it, research references, that's what matter.

Just go!

You don’t need a plan. You don’t need a full afternoon. You don’t need to fill a roll. And you definitely don’t need the latest body or the fastest lens.

You need the intention, and the willingness to walk a few extra blocks.

Your cellphone does it.

PS: If you want a 15% off discount on DxO FilmPack 8, use the code RAF15, that’s exclusive for you, CameraClara reader.