Two years ago I attended the first Leica M-Vision workshop, hosted by Camtec Photo in Montreal. It was terrific! Last year I couldn’t attend M-Vision II, but this year, Mr. Italo and I once again spent the week-end with two top professional photographers and a small group (15) of students, honing our photographic visioning skills. The most important lesson I learned was one that I’ve really known for years (but keep deviating from): “Shoot what you know!”

We spent the two days “on assignment” with various themes related to the neighborhood in which we were working: the Plateau and Mile-End area – full of funky people, graffiti, and a clash of old and new as the area gets gentrified. In a nutshell…my work sucked! Gone are the good old days of shooting homeless guys and prostitutes in a derivative pseudo Henri Cartier-Bresson style. Oh, the stuff looked pretty good…just not to me! I had a strong feeling of being ingenuous and pretentious….man, I don’t know much about prostitutes and homeless guys (yes, Dear….coming!), so what am I doing playing photojournalist? Its easy for work to look catchy when working with funky or exotic subjects…tattoo parlor patrons, drunks, cops hassling vagrants, etc. But it doesn’t come from the heart, its just technique, and frankly, when you’ve been shooting for 40 years it gets pretty easy to fake it and look reasonably good.

From here on, I’m only going to work with subjects that I have an understanding and feeling for.