Is shooting without looking through the viewfinder really photography? Or just the random collection of images? Or what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-IOEAlBpSo
It's all just a random collection of images whether you want to call it photography or not. These days, what's in a name, anyway?
Whether you shoot 1 16x20 Polaroid in an hour or 12 to 20 glass plates over a week or 1000 images a day, looking through a viewfinder or not, in the end, it's what you'll be remembered by. After a lifetime of photography, how many photos does the world remember EW, AA or HCB by?
I figure, if I get one "keeper for the wall/book" per outing, I'm doing well. I know that if I'm wasting my time blasting away, I'm not really looking and the quality of my seeing suffers. I also know that if I'm spending time pouring over contact sheets or LR Grids of images, I'm wasting good time that could be spent refining my work either in the field or on a print.
I'm am constantly coaching my students that their time should be spent in the looking and the seeing, not the shooting. That way they spend less time editing and more time photographing - which is what it's all about. For me anyway.
Ed. For spelling