A time-honored adage that I learned way back in my early days as a newspaper photographer was: “If you can’t make it good, make it big.” In other words, if I had an assignment that produced a boring photograph, I took my weak-ass negative in hand, crept into the darkroom, bypassed the normal 8x10 printing paper, and pulled out the 11x14 (the other photographers on the newspaper staff did the same thing.) I guess that we hoped that our editors might be less likely to tell us we had made a crappy image if the print in question took up most of the space on the editor’s desk.
Bigger images often have more impact than smaller ones. A large, weak image doesn’t scream “I suck” quite as badly as a small one.
These days, with my newspaper years behind me -- heck, with newspapers folding left and right, most photographers’ newspaper years are behind them -- I’ve resolved to shoot not just professionally, but also for my own enjoyment. “Keep Photography Fun” is my mantra for my personal work. And, because the inevitable weak image does still make its way into my camera (yes, that occasionally happens, for all of us) I'm curious about new ways to pump life into the lifeless. Yesterday I photographed a teepee that one of my neighbors has erected in his pasture as a playhouse for his grandchildren, a structure that got a pretty nasty battering by the wind during recent storms. I wasn’t excited about the resulting photograph, so I sat at the computer and goofed around a bit.
I prefer it that my pictures have a strength that doesn't rely on gimmicks, and I can’t say the image you see below gets my heart a-pounding. But it was fun to play.
