As both a reward and a challenge, I held myself to shooting with wild and reckless abandon for the entire duration of a recent family holiday. This was a sharp deviation from my usual method and means of shooting (studio portraiture, controlled environment) and allowed/forced me to shoot what was there and rely on the instant assessments made by my eye and brain. In short, I had to abandon my usual ordered pattern of shooting and embrace the chaos.
What I realized -- as I shot, as I processed and scanned, and as I looked through this week's wonderful photo stream submissions -- is that no matter how ordered a shot is, there will always be an element of the unpredictable. And, conversely, no matter how chaotic a scene may be, there will always be a tendency for pattern. And the element of the unpredictable and the tendency for pattern both reside in the same place -- the eye of the viewer's mind.
And so for this week's photo stream, I looked for the patterns that wound through the utterly unconnected photographs, the repeating beats in the wild that were echoed in the street, the random connections my brain would make between two unrelated ideas.
The order in the chaos.
AN COILEACHAN | WELTAFLEX TLR | FOMAPAN 400 | TRISTAN AITCHISON
PROPELLER | HASSELBLAD 500 C/M | HANS-PETER LINZ
TO ENERGY INDEPENDENCE | PROVIA 100F | KEVIN ROSINBUM
FIELD | HASSELBLAD 500 C/M | HANS-PETER LINZ
BROKEN SKY | PENTAX SPOTMATIC | ANDREY ORESHNIKOV
DANCERS | LEICA M6 | DAN MILLER
BEACH | YASHICA LYNX 14E | HANS-PETER LINZ
(UNTITLED) | HASSELBLAD | KODAK GOLD 200 | GARRICK FUJII
QUIET ON THE DOCK | ROLLEIFLEX SERIES E TLR | BILL SMITH
WET SOHO SIDEWALK | NIKON FM2N | KODAK PORTRA 160 | SHAWN HOKE
DALLAS 2015 | NIKON F | ILFORD HP5 | AMY JASEK
STREET FOOD MARKET | NIKON FE | HANS-PETER LINZ
PHARMACY | REVUE 400SE | HANS-PETER LINZ
FOLLOWING LEWIS FOLLOWING CLARK | FRANK SOLIDA III | PROVIA 100F | KEVIN ROSINBUM
JAN SERYCH | LEICA M7 | LUKAS ERBA
NIGHT STOP | PENTAX MX | CINESTILL 800T | KEVIN ROSINBUM
ENDLESS | HASSELBLAD 500 C/M | JESUS JOGLAR
COWGIRL | NIKON F | ILFORD HP5 | AMY JASEK
TOFFEE APPLE | KONICA AUTOREFLEX T3 | JANE MCLOUGHLIN
DAVIE STREET DISCONNECT | PENTAX MX | SUPERIA 400 | KEVIN ROSINBUM
CROSSROADS | VIVITAR V3800N | GINA GORSEK
(UNTITLED) | CONTAX G2 | KODAK EKTAR | COLTON ALLEN