Looking through my old photos..

And I just noticed I used to document my day to day life a lot more in the past.
Now I take more "art" photos, more photos that include things other than my life. I can't remember when I have taken a photo of my everyday life.

Do you guys notice this as well?

Discuss.

Markok765 said:

And I just noticed I used to document my day to day life a lot more in the past.
Now I take more "art" photos, more photos that include things other than my life. I can't remember when I have taken a photo of my everyday life.

Do you guys notice this as well?

Discuss.

Click to expand...

Yes.

no

Some of my very favorite photos are the of interiors of different apartments I've lived in. I never seem to take enough pics of my messy bedroom, piles of dirty dishes in my kitchen or the smallest bathrooms in history. Last year I decided to bring my camera to the laundromat once or twice. I wanted to find out if I could feel the urge to take photos while doing of my most detested chores. It worked. It made doing laundry a whole lot more fun...

Kathy

hi marko

i have never been a person to document my day to day life.
from time to time i photograph the things around me -
family, friends the world that passes me by, and the things
near me that will be missing soon ( buildings, places &C ) and
strangers that i have met ... not about ME but tangentially my life
as i see things or from my perspective.

i can't say much has changed over the years, other than i don't shoot as often as i used to,
even a few weeks ago ...

Marko, perhaps your older photographs appear more documentary in their nature is because, well, by virtue of being older they actually are documentary.

Your "artsy" prints of today will appear documentary to you tommorrow. Even a print of a tree and cloud, it will remind you of where you where, who you were, and all the things you know now that you didn't know then. Sounds like a song lyric in there somewhere.

Why not both? I think it can be helpful to put personal content in a photograph. Whether it's your day to day life, or a broader aspect of life such as your religious beliefs, political, or opinions on something. If you try to incorporate a part of who you are into your photographs, I believe they will be better because you will be passionate about it.
My last series, called 'By The Water' is aimed at describing how I feel when I'm near a large body of water. Calm, tranquil, beautiful, but also a little bit scary that big water is. Who knows what's beneath the surface?! I tried very hard to reflect that in the prints, and to me I was successful. That's tremendously satisfying, and it's a big part of my day to day life.
- Thomas

I've always preferred to take pictures of beautiful, interesting things. So, I also can't remember the last time I took a photo of my everyday life.

I was a teenager in a different era when cameras were expensive and relatively speaking, materials and processing was even more so. You've got the best of both worlds. Cheap but great analogue cameras and more importantly great film and chems. Negs are 10 a penny or a cent to produce. Take more than you think are value for money now. Be reckless in what you take, especially contemporary scenes and people. In 40 years when you are middle aged I suspect that what you will have in your possession may be even more priceless than what we think of as priceless negs of our early years stretching back to the mid 50's

As I write this I am looking at an amateur movie film of Charlie Chaplin taken in the early thirties by the great journalist Alistair Cooke who may have been barely able to afford such equipment then. Priceless. It may sound crazy now but someone, maybe you, is taking priceless analogue stills now which will be part of history be it big or small history in 60-70 years time. What amateurs take on film may be all that will have survived in this changing superfast technological era.

Today's "crap photos" may be tomorrow's priceless pieces of history.

pentaxuser

I can think of a dozen or so photos that would have been priceless to me if I had only fired my Spotmatic. Lesson learned too late, take a few extra pictures of what is going on around you for posterity. I wish I had a photo of my late mom in her brand new ’66 Mustang. I just completed restoring that very same car…..

There are days I document. There are days, quite a few moreactually, that I do not. If I feel the need to create I get the heck out there and fire away, mow'em down. If not, it's Sudoku and the magazine. Eventually I will go further than realizing I have a lot of processing work to catch up on. But until then where does that stupid three go . . .