Hi there, I hope you're having a good time here in the UK — it is a little bit warm, shall we say. Not exactly the best weather for wandering around outside with a camera, but there you go.

The Main Frame

Recently, I made a video on Saul Leiter, and someone left a comment on it that I wanted to touch on today, because it comes up quite a bit whenever we talk about what makes a photograph special. The comment went something like this:

"Photographers like Saul Leiter were brilliant, of course, but they had it easier because there were fewer people with cameras. There wasn't a barrage of imagery flooding their eyeballs all day, so it was easier to stand out — easier for a good photograph to be seen. Today is different. Everybody has a phone, billions of images are made every single day, and it's tempting to think that a photographer like Leiter today would just get drowned out."

All of that seems reasonable on the face of it.
​
But I think it's worth spending a bit of time on why it's wrong, because it fundamentally changes the way we approach our photography — the physical act of taking a photograph, and, importantly, the act of thinking about a photograph.

The first thing worth noting is that great photographers weren't always recognised in their time.
​
The original comment suggested it was easier for Saul Leiter to stand out back then because not everybody had a camera, but the irony is that he didn't stand out.
​
He wasn't looking for validation, and he was basically ignored, because at the time, colour photography wasn't considered suitable for serious artistic work.
​
​

​
​
The gatekeepers said colour was for holiday snaps and adverts, and that black and white was the only serious medium. It wasn't until the early 2000s that Saul Leiter's colour photography began to gain traction in the wider world.

There's also the argument that nowadays everybody is a photographer.
I don't think there are more photographers per se, but more people with cameras - cameras that cost nothing to use.
​
But while many people owned cameras back then, most only used them on special occasions. I seem to recall a Kodak survey from the 1970s that found it took a family on average an entire year to expose a roll of 36 images.

The thing is, the 'better' camera itself is not what enabled photographers to stand out.

Having a pro-level camera in the 1950s, 60s, 70s — or even today — doesn't make your photographs any better.
​
I know it's a well-worn path to say gear doesn't matter, but it bears repeating, because it's true. What was rare in the 50s and 60s, and has always been rare, is the photographer's eye.
​
The ability to look at an ordinary setting and see a photograph in it.
​
​

​
​
That skill, present in generations and generations of photographers, is what sets a person's photographs apart.

The fact you're reading this newsletter suggests you already enjoy the idea that it isn't just the camera that makes the photograph — it's the photographer using their eye in conjunction with the camera.
​
If you ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of people out there shooting photographs, take solace in the fact that most of them never give a second thought to what they bring to the image in a unique way.

When you begin to understand the language of photography, you start to see things. You start to create photographs that are unique to you.
​
These days, plenty of photographers emulate Saul Leiter and draw inspiration from him, and that's perfectly fine — it's an important learning step.

​
​
Find someone whose work you like, and understand how they made it, why they made it, and what they were seeing.
​
Train yourself to see the way they did. But all of us have to go further than that and bring our own perspective in.

I've talked a lot about standing out, but there's something we need to consider here: standing out and being good are not the same thing. If you genuinely just want to stand out, be controversial.
​
I remember about 15 years ago, when The Walking Dead was at its peak, a photographer in the States used children to recreate scenes from the previous week's episodes — scenes where people had been k****d. It got attention.
​
They were not good photographs, but they stood out.

I like to think we take photographs first and foremost for ourselves. Saul Leiter certainly did.

​
He sat in contentment rather than obscurity — by his own admission, he didn't really want to be famous and well known, and just took those photographs for his own pleasure. He was a painter, drawn to a Japanese aesthetic, and he looked at some woodcuts and thought, you know what, I quite like that — I'm going to give that a whirl in my photography.
​

​
He made those photographs for himself. He wasn't trying to stand out. He wasn't seeking attention. He was just quietly working away at his photographic eye, developing a look and a feel that was for him, first and foremost.

The Learning to See primer (which you should have your copy of — and if you don't, let me know and I'll send you the link) is the first step to developing this eye.
​
And if you want to go further — if you want to be around other photographers who think the same way, who encourage each other to create work that's true to their own ideas, and who help each other discover those viewpoints in the first place — then come and see the conversations inside the Tribe.
​
I'm off to go and jump in a pool and cool down.
​
See you next week.

Alex

​
​
​