"It is often those photos that we take for the hell of it, in between our 'serious' photos, that capture the kind of punctum that Roland Barthes celebrated." This sentence is part of the loose guidelines for Lens Culture's first photo contest (click here and here). Sorry, I don't qualify for that one. I don't take pictures "for the hell of it". Never did. To me the word "focus" has a very comprehensive meaning. I need a purpose before I touch a camera, before I feel the need and ability to arrange the world within a frame - ideally only one purpose at a time. Not sure whether this is a deficit or not, I just made the observation that my pictures tend to suck if the mental focus was not strong enough. That is not to say that intuition does not come into play when I am out shooting - quite on the contrary I hold that my picture taking is very intuitive. I just need a specific purpose as trigger and framework for that intuition.
What about you? Anyone out there with a similar handicap?
