Why Do I Keep Taking Pictures of This Stuff? | Rows

This is the first post in a new series I’m calling, “Why Do I Keep Taking Pictures of This Stuff?” If you happened to dig through my photo archives from the last 25 years, there are certain themes, genres, and types of photos I return to time and again. You could chalk that up to my curiosity in particular style of photography or my bone-dry creative reservoirs. It’s probably a little of Column A, a little of Column B, but possibly still worth examining why I repeatedly come back to familiar tropes over and over again.

This week we’ll be examining my propensity to capture similar or identical items neat (or not so neat) rows. I’ve compiled an exhaustive list of photos I feel fit this categorization over on Flickr. As of this moment, there are 97 photos in that album, and that doesn’t include any non-public photos that fit the requisite characteristics and some clunkers I just couldn’t bring myself to give any more daylight. In and of itself, 97 is not an particularly overwhelming number when compared to two and half decades of photos. If you like statistics (and I mean who doesn’t?) I have 7005 publicly viewable photos. Of those shots nearly 1.4 percent of them are of “row-related.” That’s not nothing.

Many of my row photos take on a similar look and feel. I shoot the subject at a slight angle on the horizontal plane and then use shallow depth of field to isolate an individual item in the row. When I first started out in photography, employing this technique was an easy way to understand how aperture affected what was in and out of focus in my shots. Additionally, I discovered this method of shooting was a means to make chicken salad out of chicken shit from a composition. Something about distinguishing a singular item out of the indistinguishable was compelling to me. Some of my very first photos I took for pleasure were “row” photos, and I still take them on the regular to this day.

So what is it about row photos that appeal to me? My love of patterns and how geometry can comfortably and pleasingly reside within a frame probably plays a large part. Symmetry and how that symmetry can be broken up for effective graphical impact is something I’ve always explored. That can certainly explain the visual appeal to me, but is there something deeper going on? Does drawing out a single subject from the crowd of seemingly identical items speak to a personal deeper desire to stand out, be different, gain recognition?  Maybe. Internally, I always wage a never-ending battle between the parts of me that equally hate the spotlight but also want to be acknowledged.

I guess it’s something to consider: the types of subjects we return to time and again and speak to us most deeply aren’t just a collection of pleasing visuals but rather a tiny creative manifestation of our subconscious desires.

Or maybe, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

PHOTO GALLERY – ROWS