I hate subject matter, cameras, and film.
Photography, of all the expressive arts, is hostage to subject matter and the material limitations of lenses and light sensitive materials. And there is no way around the problem without ditching photography and becoming a painter or a Photoshop expert; painting by numbers in effect. A photograph, if it is aimed at doing more than showing what something looks like, if it is intended to reward intense looking, needs to have deeper levels of meaning. These deeper levels are carried by visual metaphors and similes. For example if you want to express "drama" then a gothic castle at night during a thunder storm will do fine; for "beauty" try a sunny landscape with rocks, flowers, trees, clouds, waves, and so on. It is the hardest thing to find subject matter so that your photograph will say what you want it to say. Plus it's doubly hard to have camera and film on hand at all times just in case the subject matter decides, just for a moment, to deliver. Mainly it's a litany of disappointment with rare flashes of fulfilment.
I love subject matter, cameras, and film.
Photography is the only way of making a picture that is directly and physically linked to subject matter. Cameras and film are the essential components that make that link achievable. An 8x10 sheet of film actually absorbs about 10 to the minus 25 kilograms of stuff that a moment before was part of the subject matter. The penetration of this stuff, at 300 000km/second, into a sensitive surface enables the photograph to be revealed at the site of impact. Photographs, of all picture making processes, are certificates for reality. It is a shocking thing that photography teaches us: there are real things out there that can say "truth", "beauty", "grace", "sadness", and so on. It's enough to give you goose bumps!
That is the power that subject matter, confined and captured by camera and film, confers on photography.
