We were talking about photography as he was looking over some of my photos.
He kept asking me what I had been trying to say with this or that picture, and while I understood what he meant with the question, it was annoying:
I hadn't been trying to say anything as I had taken those shots.
Now, it's different; I guess in a way, my focus started shifting from following composition guidelines to the story in front of the camera.
I'm not trying to say that all of a sudden, I'm "photographing stories" or something like that.
If anything, I'm trying to focus on compositions having something to say: elements coming together or contrasting in some way, pictures of something happening - be it a story, description of a mood or something different.
Back then, when composing my shots (as much as I can say I did), I kept looking for obeying what I considered "the technical rules" (rule of thirds, golden ratio, diagonal lines and all that jazz).
Then I read somewhere that "there's no such things as rules in photography", so I tried seeing them more as guidelines.
I often obeyed them (and tried deliberately breaking them), but my shots still had nothing much to say.
It's not that all of a sudden, my shots are very expressive; More like ... lately this is what I keep looking for.
I'm more interested nowadays in - for example - creating a relationship between subject and it's environment than in following any established composition guidelines.
And my pictures keep getting better ...
... err ... I think.
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