The other day, I saw an ad in the NYC subway that said that photographs don’t have personality — and that video does. I almost wanted to report it for misinformation because the truth is the opposite. Good video has personality in the same way that good photography has personality. When they’re both mediocre, they’re both the same degree of boring. But something that photography can do that video cannot is long exposure mystique. A good long exposure can hypnotize someone in the same way that good video can transport us to a dreamy scene.
Indeed, if you take away the social media platforms, people will have no issues looking at still images. Sure, they’re also going to enjoy watching videos on Youtube. But at the same time, they’ll also enjoy looking at carefully crafted and well-done still photographs. I realized this a while ago, but I didn’t make it come to fruition until a while ago when I did some sponsored work for OM System. The lead image of this article shows a long exposure of the NY subway system in a way that isn’t shown very often. Let’s dissect what’s unique here
- It’s above ground, which only happens in certain places.
- It’s at sunset
- You can see a train pulling in and pulling out
- It’s a long exposure, so you also get a balance of the movement and not-moving subjects
- It’s showing a passage of time in a single frame. But it also helps us observe and understand the chaos that’s happening in such a short amount of time. Our minds otherwise throw out all the information that this image gives us.
This is something that a video can’t do. Videos sometimes try to do this by making time-lapses, but that’s also feeding you a ton of information overload. A single photograph is something that the brain and eyes can sit there exploring for a really long time. What’s most important here is that the still image is showing you something that you can’t normally see with the human eye. Arguably, this could be the most mystical part of the whole process.
These days, we’re bombarded with so many photographs online. Several of these images are just snapshots. And so it’s really easy to see all the things that humans normally experience. But the long exposure isn’t a moment that humanity really experiences. It’s a very particular take on a scene that otherwise can never be duplicated again. I’ll never see the waves crash on the banks of North Williamsburg the same way I did before. I’ll also never get the same streamline of cars driving by on the BQE. But more importantly, I’ll never get the passage of the trains in the same way ever again. These are unique moments that absolutely cannot be duplicated.
Perhaps capturing a never-before-seen and never-again-experienced moment are what help to make images like these so incredibly special overall.