kitchen life # 36 ~ mélange / election by tradition + intuition

A mélange in a bowl ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenFrom the introduction (as linked in yesterday's entry), by John Szarkowski, to the book William Eggleston's Guide:

Photography is a system of visual editing. At bottom, it is a matter of surrounding with a frame a portion of one's cone of vision, while standing in the right place at the right time .... [B]y means of photography one can in a minute reject as unsatisfactory ninety-nine configurations of facts and elect as right the hundredth. The choice is based on tradition and intuition - knowledge and ego - as it is in any art, but the ease of execution and the richness of the possibilities in photography both serve to put a premium on good intuition. The photographer's problem is perhaps too complex to be dealt with rationally. This is why photographers prowl with such restless uncertainty about their motif, ignoring many potentially interesting records while they look for something else.