Series based photography - The Art of Photography response to Ted Forbes

This is my response to Ted Forbes of The Art of Photography channel regarding his video on Series Based Photography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bpM660dCr0

Though Ted is correct in most of his video I wanted to add a third perspective he either overlooked or did not think was worth mentioning. My disagreement arises from putting photographers into two camps: the single image artist and the series based photographer.

Although projects/series are viable and accessible to beginner's they are not the only way of producing compelling coherent work. The idea supposed in the video is that artists should seek to illustrate an idea or concept, this creates a foundation from where to build a good series of pictures.

I argue that working from an idea or concept is very easy, that's what makes it accessible to beginner's but it becomes a trap for moderate and even advanced photographers.

Friedlander for example always carries his camera. His countless books and series he has commented are generated through the editing process. He photographs whatever is interesting indiscriminately and then after analyzing his results has been able to identify themes, ideas, and patterns that can be harvested from the negatives into a solid sequence of images. This is what I refer to as trusting the process. Work only towards becoming the best photographer you can, from that process good work will begin to germinate and eventually a series/sequence/book will follow. Instead of chasing an idea trust the process and grow organically instead of falling into the "project trap".

The project trap happens when you blind yourself to the infinite possibility of images in front of you because you are so locked in on illustrating a concept. Don't be that guy.

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