A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view. Henri Cartier-Bresson

(About PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY)

Respect - one of the best ways to show your interest in the people you work with. Respect will truly connect you with one another. Respect paves the way for understanding. Next minute universal love honors you with it's presence. All the tricks we have acquired to put up a show, to impress, convince, or win over someone will never work as good as true honest and openly shown respect for the uniqueness of another. As always, if we want to apply anything in connection with others, we must have learned to do the same towards ourselves first. So it is a good idea to do an inventory with ourselves, how consciously do we actually value our own wants and needs, our desires and dreams, our commitments and pledges? In portrait photography, when someone opens up and shows some glimpses of their true selves, these moments are extremely precious. We need to prepare for these moments in order to be ready for them when they occur. How can you show great respect towards yourself and others? The more you can openly value, appreciate and acknowledge yourself and what you are doing, the more you can do the same towards others. This will build a beautiful basis for a true and meaningful connection between you. It will open a door to trust, then trust will invite truth to emerge. Choose to respect, and real fulfillment will arise and grow. It needs some true listening, observation, empathy, some standing back. Sometimes it might need boldness to respect yourself first, and not compromise your own view for the sake of money, attention, or approval. True respect will create true connection almost automatically. The moments gifted from a connection based on respect are just simply the best! You will just know - everyone knows - somewhere deep within your heart…


Find out more about
Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Maja Moritz Photography / Portrait Portfolio


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If you want to see something, you have to hurry. Everything disappears. Paul Cézanne

(About VIGILANCE)

This is a call for conscious looking. This time the quote is not from a photographer. Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter (1839 - 1906). One of his main themes was painting still lifes, another was painting landscapes. A main feature of his work is his intense observation of simplicity - apples, pears, lemons in his still lifes, or trees, hills, plains in his landscapes - all coming to life through colour and light. All these objects in his paintings are pretty static and we don't have to be quick, because they do not disappear. It is all about the light in which the objects or the scenery appear. The light casts a certain mood or magic over a scene, caught in Cézanne's paintings and with it a fleeting moment of beauty turned eternal being captured by the artist in his paintings, just like with photography. These moments of unique and fleeting beauty must have been fascinating for Cézanne. Not one of his still life paintings looks like another, they all depict basically similar type of fruit, but appear at the same time so diverse. I have learnt to be vigilant for the magic of the fleeting moments of beauty, but still find that the most frustrating aspect of being a photographer is the fact that I SEE so many more beautiful moments than I ever can turn into photographs! The abundance of beautiful moments is overwhelming at times, and in appreciating this I can relate to Cézanne's saying and also his concentration on similar subjects again and again, chasing the magic of the moment. I feel drawn into such attempts as well, when I find myself photographing a similar situation over and over again in search of some special magic which I have perceived or sensed in it, but so far haven't been able to capture it adequately with a photograph.
It is magic in itself to follow these calls of vigilance and exploration, because there always seems to be another possibility for a new revelation of fleeting beauty, unseen this way before, something beyond of what was possible so far. As hunters and gatherers of fleeting moments, photographers enjoy this thrilling chance to catch that very special one, the chance to show it to the world in a photograph, and the chance to offer some exciting new visual discovery and memory to other people by the way of their view of this particular moment of life.
Just imagine for a moment, if you have to be quick to see the magic something in static things or situations, how quick you need to be to catch it in movement…. There is no "one way" of achieving this, which works for all, but there is your "own way" of getting there. Find your own way and you will not need to know anymore how others did it. Start to be vigilant and discovery will follow.


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Paul Cézanne

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Photography Challenges

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Maja Moritz Photography


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Pressing the shutter release at the right moment becomes a matter of instinct. Beaumont Newhall

 (About "The Decisive Moment")

Often you hear people saying that photography is all about light. In my opinion photography is more about the moment. Especially in photojournalism the right moment probably beats the right light in 9 out of 10 cases. Henri Cartier-Bresson (one of my heroes in photography :) was the one who celebrated the moment like no one else. "The Decisive Moment" is his legacy.
In sports photography the decisive moment is naturally paramount, but also in portrait photography, for example, the more subtle version of a decisive moment makes all the difference. You can set up your light, location and situation as perfect as possible, but the moment a true smile emerges or a smile turns sour, that is when you will win or loose the essence of your image. The smile is just an example for any expression we might try to bring out. Whatever mood we seek, the main thing is to be aware about its elusiveness and that it is actually a gift when it happens, and nothing we can make happen with a guarantee of achievement. These gifts can be received when we are in tune. In tune with what? In tune with the NOW of what is happening, in tune with the bigger picture beyond our efforts in the foreground, and in tune with your shutter release. To be in tune means to be responsive to the events in the NOW while at the same time knowing what we are doing and WHY we are doing it. If earning money is your number one reason or priority, this might not be easily accessible to you, but if the answer to the WHY is soaked with meaning, it will get you there almost automatically! Knowing, why you are doing what you are doing, is the key. Then allow your intuition to take the lead!
Hunting for the photographic expression of a meaningful message will lead you to decisive moments. You will know when you've got it, because you won't be in doubt anymore. The decisive moment is extremely satisfying. It has it all, it says everything (about the specific scene). The decisive moment is so rich that it makes you feel that nothing is missing to tell the story.
Light can have it's decisive moments as well, so does focus, and other aspects of photography. The more you explore it's magic, more dimensions of the decisive moments will reveal to you. If decisive moments keep being elusive on you, maybe it is time to redefine the Why and purpose of your photography, and how you are doing it. Once you know what you want, combined with alert patience, decisive moments will become more frequent.
Hunting for decisive moments driven by intuition, our senses or our instinct, as Beaumont Newhall puts it, will get you there.


Find out more about
Beaumont Newhall
Henri Cartier-Bresson

Read more about "The Decisive Moment"
Photography Challenges

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Maja Moritz Photography / Sports Portfolio


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In my opinion, you cannot say you have thoroughly seen anything until you have got a photograph of it, revealing a lot of points which otherwise would be unnoticed, and which in most cases could not be distinguished. Emile Zola, 1900

(About DETAIL and MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY)

I just started a summer series of marco shots, and my friend, in whose garden we were taking the pictures, expressed his surprise about the results later by email "You don't realize how beautiful the flowers are until you see this detail". That is exactly what Emile Zola conveyed more than hundred years ago. Photography, and macro photography in particular, offer this privilege of the exceptional close look. A whole new world unfolds before your eyes, normally invisible because of the fleeting transient ephemeral nature of life's moments or simply because we are unable to look close enough. Photography has the power to bring eternity to a moment of life. The ability to freeze a split second, and make it last, allows us to escape the rush of time, stop and review. The frozen moment can make a variety of meaningful layers visible, which have the potential to take you into another dimension of understanding. Significant moments, filtered from life's flow by photography, have made history or are just gifting us daily delight, making it possible to enjoy the very special smile on the face of a loved one over and over again. A photograph may suddenly make us realize something about others or about ourselves which we hadn't noticed before. We could judge the quality of a photograph by how much it is able to tell us. Macro photography opens the eyes for detail and beauty which normally eludes our perception. By emphasizing what we normally don't see, it fascinates. Either way, the fascination is sparked by surprise about seeing things in a new and different way.


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Emile Zola

Read more about Macro Photography
Photography Challenges

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Maja Moritz Photography / Macro Portfolio


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To produce an intimate portrait rather than a banal likeness, the result of mere chance, you must be in tune with the model, capture his thoughts and even his character. Nadar, 1856

(About PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY)

Some essential things never change, and still we seem to forget or not believe, go long distances to prove otherwise, only to return some day to find that it still is working the one way……How is this possible in a world of constant change? Well, all change, as already the old Buddhist teachers say, revolves around some stable center. This means, as I understand it, there is some unchangeable core around which all movement and change happens, but this change depends in the end on the stable core, on its existence, stability and deep significance. The change around it invents itself so to speak in always renewing cycles of new interpretations of the one same old core! This happens as unlimited and diversified as we nearly 7 billion human beings are. All different in our expressions of the same core feelings of joy, worry, or whatever it may be that moves us. A bit too deep? If you want to explore the true fascination and source of an authentic captivating portrait, there is no shortcut to this.
Tune in, as Nadar already found in 1856, and probably many artists before him and before the time of photography. Being in tune with your model needs compassion, understanding, love. The realization and awareness that we are all one beyond all surfacey differences also is very helpful. However your approach to this sort of knowing may be, that doesn't matter. What really matters is that you can connect on that deep level somehow, sometimes it doesn't even have to be conscious, it even could work unconsciously, if you are truly tuned in somehow. This is one of the most exciting journeys in photography and beyond, to discover and uncover the treasures which are there waiting in all of us to be found. Photography is such an amazing tool in revealing these individual treasures to the rest of the world.


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Nadar

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Maja Moritz Photography / Portrait Portfolio


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The tool in photography is not the camera, but the photographer. Eve Arnold

(About CONNECTION)

Photographic equipment is hugely overestimated in photography. Although it is nice to play around with the latest gear, this actually has not much to do with photography beyond the technical. No matter what camera you are using, your perception of what you see, your understanding of your subject and how you interpret it, is what counts. The visual translation of your interpretation into a photograph might depend on your equipment to a certain degree, but that is marginal in comparison with the input your very personal perception and impression of an experience has on your photography. Being connected does the magic, connected with yourself, with others, everything in the end. Your level of connectedness is of prime importance to this. It is mirrored in your photographs. There are many levels of interconnection and meaning to everything and I cannot recommend enough to dig as deep as you can! Your ability of doing this, however your way of doing it looks like, this is what will make your photography truly interesting and ideally timeless beautiful and meaningful. Start exploring this by digging deep within yourself - it might be enough to feel things, because your own photographs will make you understand, just keep open to it and you will surprise yourself ;)


Find out more about
Eve Arnold

Read more about criteria for a good photograph
Photography Challenges

It is so much more easy to see but to capture,
we all struggle with our equipment at times...
PHOTOGRAPHER IN ACTION


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Photography „will show more of the real truth of the affair to someone who was not there than the whole scene.“ Robert Capa

(About the BIGGER PICTURE)

I have found this to be very true, and, if you as a photographer are aware of what this means, then you have found a very powerful tool to lift your photography to the next level. It means not only being a visual witness, it means consciously adding meaning, meaningfulness to your selection of moments.
Obviously 10 different photographers might be able to give 10 different meanings to the same situation......what is your truth? What is the truth that you see? Truth in the end is sooo big that all our different truths have their place there. So what is truth when it can be everything? If your own truth resonate only within yourself, you probably will not reach many people with your visual interpretation of it, meaning your photographs - but if your own truth resonates with many people then you will be a successful photographer!


Find out more about
Robert Capa

Read more about criteria for a good photograph
Photography Challenges

View my images
Maja Moritz Photography / Sports Portfolio


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