getting back to basics

[removed account4]

no idea if this is philosophy or aesthetics or mechanics ...

even if you have been using a camera most of your life, have a style
and ideas you put out in your photography, do you still stop what you do once in a while
and get back to basics.
this could be just taking your time in the darkroom and making a simple print,
or it could be putting down your high-end camera picking up something simple
( maybe a manual slr, maybe a p/s camera ) and just forget everything you were doing
and concentrate on the basics - composition, lighting, shadow .. whatever.

 

[BrianShaw]

It's a great question but I have not a good answer. I'm not sure I've ever progressed beyond the basics, and when I learn something new that has become the basics for me. It's a moving baseline.

 

[NedL]

I'm not sure if this is what you mean or not, but a lot of what I do has finicky details and takes a lot of time. Right now I'm in the middle of testing a new way of salting/sizing paper for salt prints. And I have several rolls of film to develop that I want to print in a certain way that will take time and effort.

Sometimes I just want to be more free... the other day I grabbed one of my coffee can pinhole cameras and threw it in my knapsack... no worries no particular goal and nothing to lose. Sometimes the best things come when I just let go and see what happens. I didn't use it that day, but it's still in the knapsack for the next time I go for a walk... sometimes when I feel this way I won't carry a film camera with me for a month, and that's fine.

 

[markbarendt]

I think I have to modes: experimental and normal.

Normal mode is for when I want to go shooting and it matters.

Experimental is for when I want to learn/try something new.

In normal mode I fallback to things I truly understand, things I don't have to guess about.

Things that I have truly learned in my experimental mode do get integrated into normal mode, so normal my has evolved over time.

 

[LAG]

Excuse me

There must be always a way back. I always begin from the very beginning, and each time the road is longer, the better.

 

[sepiareverb]

I certainly do. Out today with some ORWO N74 to test in FX-39, and back to the basics of a scene with a complete range of tones. Thinking of Paul Krot and an assignment he gave us, shoot a scene at every shutter speed on the camera and make a print from each negative to match. An excellent primer in why exposure matters.