On Shooting
My photographic goals for six weeks in Japan were hardly ambitious. I had no intention of capturing the spirit of Japan. I’ve practiced long enough to know that any representation is partial. For most of the trip I had no photographic plan at all. The only part for which I had were the visits to five baseball stadiums.
As with many projects, the conception was grander than the final product. Perhaps what sets the good photographer apart from the average is taking the time to reflect in order to try understand why the output didn’t line up with expectations.
I researched the five stadiums to learn as much as possible about the environment and any events I might be able to witness or take part in. I made a list of places, people, and activities that I might like to document. If I had followed this plan strictly, I might have produced a more extensive and deeper body of work.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle was the busyness of travel. Once on the road, I found it difficult to stop, to slow down, to reflect on what I was doing. Almost as soon as I woke I was thinking about where I would be going next and as soon as I got to my destination I was thinking about where I would be going after that. I ended up shooting more on the fly than circumstances might have warranted.
I finally became aware of this late into my visit. When I got to Yamadera, only a week away from returning to Dubai, I knew that if I rushed I would finish the day early and have nowhere to go and nothing to do. So I deliberately set out to go slow, to take my time, to pause now and then to synchronize. And while the photos may not reflect it, this was one of the best days of my trip. It was leisurely and had greater resonance.
I didn’t print my stadium shoot list in advance of my first stadium visit and worked instead on memory. It’s absence was perhaps not a great hindrance at the beginning - I remembered quite a lot - but I might have benefited on later days from reviewing my purpose.
I shot more often and on a wider variety of subjects at my first stadium. I succeeded in making an interesting collection of portraits at the third. By the fourth I was feeling tired and lacked the energy to do much. Many of the images are poor and visually unappealing. By the fifth and last stadium I was suffering from a cold; the first night there I couldn’t even stay for the full game. Even though I visited that last stadium for three games, I produced the fewest number of images there.
What I found missing in my image collection was a more varied selection of images of fans and workers; almost nothing of fans in the oendan; and a poor selection of concessions and pregame activities. In short, I came up short on most of the subjects I had intended to shoot.
It seems I was, perhaps, more interested in having a good time watching baseball than I was in producing images of stadium culture. Such a project requires a strong commitment to ignoring the game in order to focus on the subject.
On producing an album
My Lightroom catalog contains approximately 900 baseball images from Japan. I processed and exported 170. I grouped these in the following folders:
- People
- Stadiums
- Concessions
- Mascots
- Hall of Fame
- Signs of Baseball
Signs of Baseball contains images taken away from stadiums depicting something about baseball as it appeared in the context of daily life. I published these on Flickr as a separate album. The other groups didn’t have enough strong images to be presented as groups.
Another possibility was to group images by stadium. Unfortunately, only the first group had enough usable images.
What remained was to build a composite. But based on what theme? What suggested itself was the chronological-physical movement experienced by most visitors, approaching from a parking lot or train station, lingering a bit at the concessions, then entering the venue to participate in the game.
I have now gone through several iterations of this theme, shuffling, deleting, and adding images that might offer the best moments, the smoothest flow. At some point I have to stop, upload it, and move on with the next project.
The results can be viewed here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/80283129@N03/albums/72157669824426913
No comments:
Post a Comment