There’s a story in news-photographer apocrypha about an old school photographer who went out on assignment to someplace very remote; say, China. Mongolia. Now this guy was old school to our old school; learned to photograph with a 4x5 and knew a time when lens caps doubled as shutters. He went to China with a new nikon 35mm and when he got back, as he was deplaning, an assistant for whatever paper he was working for met him just off the plane to rush his film to the lab. He pulls out his camera, rewinds the roll that’s inside, and hands it to the assistant, saying “Print ‘em both, kid.”

Now, I’m not a fan of the slow, patient photography that this implies; neither am I a proponent of going out to an event and overheating a motor drive taking way too many pictures. I like to take a series of pictures that tells the story over time. But there is something to be said for being patient, and taking less pictures. The night I took this photo, I took two; this one and one of the inside of my bag as I was putting the camera away.



Now I have to go and edit the pictures from the next night, where I shot 500 pictures in a couple hours. There’s a lot going on here at matt mills world HQ, so stay tuned.

Posted by Matt on 2009-09-02T00:00:00Z GMT