New Ideas

I was watching a video clip of Jonas Bendiksen where he was talking about his work and photography in general. He mentioned that looking around the world today in the digital age you can see thousands of new photographs on web sites like Flikr that are very good. He went on to say that he believes the successful photographers in the future will not necessarily be the ones who have the best photographs, but the ones who have the best ideas.

This really struck a note for me because although I've always known good ideas are important, I never realized just how important they were in comparison to taking the good photograph.

Jonas Bendiksen, 1977, is a Norwegian photographer living in New York. He is a photojournalist, but he is more than that. Represented by Magnum he travels around the globe extensively to the most remote places one could find. In 2008 his book The places we live was released. A three year project on poverty all over the world. Taken from 500Photographers.blogspot.com

A while after listening to Jonas speak I remembered an image I had taken in Nepal last year that I had shown to a friend who thought it was fabulous. At the time I didn't think it was so good because I hadn't achieved the focus I had wanted. Last night I was reading a book by David Noton called Waiting for the Light and in the book was an image of the same prayer bells that I had taken last year in Nepal. The difference in the images was that I had run my hand over the bells then ran back and took the photograph.

Technically, the image in the book is better but mine is far more interesting because of the idea to spin the wheels.