What can I photograph?

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera. 
- Lewis Wickes Hine

Addie Card, 12 years. Spinner in North Pormal [i.e., Pownal] Cotton Mill. Vt.

Lewis Hine is a photographer I have studied and admired and I think of him when I struggle for something to photograph. Like Hine, I started my studies in the social sciences.  I studied social work and would quickly realize my calling was to be photojournalism. 

Lewis Hine studied sociology at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and New York University. He became a teacher in New York City at the Ethical Culture School, where he encouraged his students to use photography as an educational medium. The classes traveled to Ellis Island in New York Harbor, photographing the thousands of immigrants who arrived each day. Between 1904 and 1909, Hine took over 200 photographs, and eventually came to the realization that his vocation was photojournalism.

Hine went on to work for the Russell Sage Foundation, created to improvement of social and living conditions in the United States. After just a couple of years with the foundation, he went to work for the National Child Labor Committee. He did this for 10 years where his work helped to change the labor laws for children.

During WWII he worked for the American Red Cross covering the work in Europe. In 1930 he would photograph the workers building the Empire State building.  To get the photos of workers through the years he would take similar risks the workers were taking. To get that unique angle while working on the Empire State Building project he was in a special basket 1,000 feet out over 5^th Avenue.

Raising the Mast, Empire State Building, 1932

The reason Lewis Hine’s work is so powerful is he knew what he was photographing and why he was doing it.  He was doing something useful with his photography.  Hine said, “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.”


The fun in photography is when you take on a challenge and bring all your creativity to it to help communicate an idea or concept to your audience.  When you use a lot of routine cliché’s it quickly becomes boring.


Not knowing what to photograph is a good time to ask yourself what you stand for as a person.  You need to have an understanding of your relationship to the things around you and their meaning to you.  This is how you form thoughts and convictions about the world. It is not from formal education—it is from a sense of caring about people and the world in which you live.

Child laborers in glassworks. Indiana, 1908

When you have this gut check it will give you the inspiration to take on a subject and communicate how you feel about it and not just a documentation of its existence, but rather its significance to you.  You want people to respond and this is what motivates you.


Struggling to find subjects is often lack of personal convictions. 


The secret for me is to think about where the photos will be used when I am done. This gives me a goal in mind. I must really love the subject or hate it to get my emotions going and create a mood and feelings that I want to communicate beyond the obvious.

 

A moment's glimpse of the outer world. Said she was 11 years old. Been working over a year. Rhodes Mfg. Co. Lincolnton, North Carolina.

When you find yourself in a mental block there is a tendency to scapegoat your responsibilities.  This is where you often will look for a formula or even copy someone else’s concept.  I see this most often in sports photography.  You see the photographers all standing together.  One of my friends Scott Cunningham who photographs the NBA for Getty Images is rarely sitting next to other photographers.  He is in the stands and always looking for something different. 


Another scapegoat photographer’s use is they don’t have a piece of equipment or their equipment is limiting them. Remember we still haven’t exhausted all that is possible with the simple point and shoot. Be careful that you are not buying new equipment as a way to inspire you.  Take the time to think and feel about your world.


“What shall I photograph?” will not be an issue. Instead, the problem becomes “How can I say it clearly and with enough emotion that my audience is moved to action because of my photos?”