On pictures and photography

Two cameras, five rolls of Portra 160 and an iPhone is all I have to take pictures. If things go as planned, I won’t run out of film before finding the first lab of my trip, and won’t fill the internal storage of my phone anytime soon.

“Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop” is a quote attributed to Ansel Adams, and can you can do whatever you want with it. It either makes you look at your own projects and collections in a more critical way, forces you to capture instants as single and distinct frames… or you can simply think that he was wrong, and keep shooting your own way.

Many people told me they were looking forward for some pictures of my trip, and I can reasonably assume that there were some expectations behind it. A couple of instagram posts per week, and perhaps even more stories. A dump of pictures on a whatsapp group. A link to a folder with many edited and curated pictures, at some point.

I got on a boat tour of small islands around Phi Phi, and the first stop was Maya Bay, made famous by the movie “The Beach”.

I think of this picture as an “easy” one. I don’t believe the framing and the light are anything special at all. As I approached this viewpoint, I knew (How did I know? I have absolutely no idea. This is hard to explain.) I wanted a portrait orientation instead of landscape, and a bit of the foliage in the frame. The place would effortlessly do the rest of the job. There was a couple walking to the right and I waited for them to line up with the light coming through the opening of the bay. Not now, not now… ok, now. Click. Exposure is a bit off. I’m not used to my phone’s ultrawide lens yet, so that’s too much green at the bottom, but that’ll do.

Why do I think of it as an easy one? I mean, it’s alright, I don’t hate it. I think it just misses a story. I could make one up, but if the picture was good enough, it shouldn’t need one. If I had to keep twelve pictures taken this year, this one definitely wouldn’t make the cut.

I have hundreds (maybe thousands?) of pictures like this one in my archives, that I have never shared, and for which I have this feeling. I’m pretty sure Roland Barthes wrote about that, and I should definitely read it again.

My favorite picture of this entire day trip is probably frame #4 or #5 of the roll that’s currently in my camera. And I already know that I’m very unlikely to share it. For all these reasons.

While you wait for me not sharing more pictures, I recommend reading the entire story about the bay’s recovery here. Without the measures taken to save the place, this picture wouldn’t even be possible.

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