A combination of things lately compelled me to write about developing my style. Something recently just “clicked” after a few years of photography. I feel like I can finally (SOMETIMES) deliberately capture the image and emotion I see and feel internally.

The style started to develop as I started shooting more abstractly and stopped obsessing over perfectly capturing the subject. It’s almost as when you allow yourself more freedom over how you take the shot, the more emotion enters the photograph.

I first experienced the emotion in my own photos when I would just pull the trigger. It started with flash photos. Quick snaps. Far from perfectly-composed subjects. There was something emotional and beautiful about these photos. From this point on I stopped focusing on composition and capturing the subject and focused more on the physical act of capturing. ==How do I capture the emotion of the moment?== Not, how do I capture the subject.

First, you must identify the moment’s emotion. Is it quiet? fuzzy? exciting? chaos? peace and calm?

Also, something about the abstractness of a photo leaves personal, emotional interpretation to the viewer. There’s something about the abstractness that allows the viewer to connect more. The abstractness feels like a memory. It strikes that same feeling. Memories aren’t perfectly clear. Also, these motion-blur images remind me of what you get when you give a kid a camera.

So much of the emotion of a photo is lost when it is clear.

In my trip to SF, I took this photo. Multiple people picked this specific photo as their favorite. I, too, had an emotional attachment to this photo. Frankly, it’s a bit more interesting in color because there are strong pops of green and yellow. I no longer have the original color image. Also, while in SF, I stopped by the Leica store and Brandon Ruffin’s work was being exhibitted and a motion-blur portrait caught my eye as soon as I walked in the door.

As you can see, after this photo, I started to play more with taking photos that were deliberately out-of-focus. Admittedly, the motion blur is “stronger”, emotionally, than out-of-focus.

https://www.mccurdyc.dev/photos/2024-03-sf/

After returning home — on one of my long treadmill runs to make up for the lack of running while in SF — I watched “TURN OFF THE LIGHTS WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED PT 1” by an inspiration of mine, Austin Augie and the blurred, punchy contrast, black and white photos struck me. I was going to recreate this style.

You can see me trying to recreate this motion-blur style in https://www.mccurdyc.dev/photos/2024-03/

Tangentially, it was on this same trip — in fact this after-work photo-walk — where I discovered that I could increase the contrast of the “Leica Film Simulation”.