As a Photographer

Of late, I have been spending a lot of time on photography sites looking at some wonderful stuff and looking for tips ands tricks in the process. One thing I never could do with a camera is point it at someone’s face and capture a momnt or an emotion, or even just that face… (portrait, in fact, any people photograpahy is my “photo objective” for the year). My greatest admiration is for photographers who present a face as more than just that - a human being with feelings, perhaps many of them evident in the frame. Then, why why cannot I do it? This candid confession on myflickr profile says it all - I am desperate to try my hand at portraits - I get cold feet (hands?!) when I have to take people pictures. I get all awkward and my imagination shuts tight.

Every time I focus my camera on to a person, whether posed or spontaneous, I get a deep sense of intruding. As I said, a good photographer glimpses into the person way beyond the face and provides a larger, if not complete picture to the viewer.

But wait a minute. That is exactly what I do for a living. I peek into people’s lives, observe, sometimes question and understand the unsaid. And that moment of penny-dropping was the starting point of this post - which has stayed as a draft for too long now. So here goes, disjointed thoughts on what makes a good qualitative researcher - basis my more recent learning experiments in photography.