Head, Heart, & Hands - An Introduction
Every photographer knows about the exposure triangle: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. These three elements - exposure time, light quantity, and sensitivity - are the foundational elements of every photograph, and without input from any one of the three the image could not exist. When one factor is altered, the others must compensate in order to ensure an image does not get over or underexposed and the unique combination of the three decides whether a photograph features motion blur, bokeh, grain/noise, or any number of other outcomes.
Likewise, I think that there is another important triad that goes into the creation of every photograph you make and are of equal importance in the way an image comes together, the key foundation for what we call style or vision: The head, the heart, and the hands.
The Head
The Head stands for the philosophies, ethics, and other context, knowledge, and background that every individual carries with them into any given situation. It informs why they choose to photograph what they do, how they go about it in a way that makes them feel good, and the way they see, interpret, and understand a given situation that unfolds in front of their camera.
The Heart
The Heart is the inspiration that fuels our artistic creativity. For many of us photographers, we draw our inspiration from other photographers and the ways in which they see the world, the techniques they use, and the subjects they find. But inspiration is not limited to others in our genre or in our medium, and photographers can draw inspiration and ideas from other forms of art, like music or painting or performance.
The Hands
The Hands are the skills, technique, gear, and other technical aspects of the craft. Photography is essentially equal parts art and science, and the equipment we use, the techniques we practice, and the other practical matters that go into selecting the gear we carry is as important to image creation as the knowledge of how to use it effectively.
Every photographer internalizes all three of these factors, acquired with time and experience, and every image they create is as much a result of the unique combination of those factors as they are the result of shutter speeds, apertures, and ISOs recorded in the EXIF data of your camera. Yet it is the intangible and fluid nature of the head, heart, and hands that never gets recorded as a data trail, and it’s these factors this blog is dedicated to. Each post, filed under one (or more) of those three categories, explores topics pertaining to the many influences that I personally bring to my work. My hope is that by publishing this blog, it helps my fellow photographers and artists reflect on their own head, heart, and hands and can more effectively and consciously turn them into great images of their own.
-Brandon
