Paul D'Andrea Photography

Variables

To experiment ceaselessly is the only reward for a photographer. Yousuf Karsh

I’ve been listening to the Lenswork podcast by Brooks Jenson lately. There’s a ton of them and they’re all excellent. From one I heard this last week: “The richness of a system is determined by the number of its variables.”

There’s only so much you can do with bread, peanut butter, and jelly. With a full ‘fridge and a rack of spices however, there’s no end to what you can create. This is one of the things that I really enjoy about photography, that it is so endless.

There have been times when I thought that maybe I was slightly ADD; it was hard to concentrate and get into what it is that I needed to work on. It took me a long time to figure out, and with a lot of self doubt along the way, but the trouble is that I simply get bored easily. I need big problems to chew on, something really challenging or it won’t hold my interest.

Photography fits. It’s so easy to get lost in its infinite subjects and ways to express them.

This is the danger though, with so many options it’s easy to become overwhelmed. We seek out formulas and how-tos and stop there; always creating from the cookbooks and never really moving on to “chef”.

Commercial photographer in Indianapolis, IN.

Comments

  • Ange (formerly Writer Mom)

    August 12, 2008

    Feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment, but also ignited by the possibilities of Lightroom. Just can’t get beyond the initial snags and it’s bottlenecking everything else.
    So I’m leaving Tom alone in the office today, and going outside to weed.

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