5. From Random Capture to Urban Abstracts

How labels helped me understand and refine my photography

3rd Street and Pierpoint Lane, San Francisco

Pictures on the bathroom wall

From around 1990 to about 2005, I shot countless rolls of film in New York and San Francisco.

This was a good time to shoot film. It was low hassle. There were tons of mini-labs around—many making great prints and you could usually pick them up on your way home the next day.¹

I’d take the prints home, throw the worst images into the trash and stack up the rest. While watching TV I’d keep flipping through the stack until good ones started to emerge. I’d then take a few of those and hang them on my bathroom wall, and every day I would sit there looking at them again and again. Every few days I’d pull down the images that were starting to bore me until finally, I had just a few keepers left on the wall. These would get printed, framed and hung in my apartment.

Random Capture

My photography was not focused—I just looked for anything that caught my eye and shot it. I definitely had not discovered projects yet. As a result, the gallery on my wall ended up being a bit random.

Some of my original New York urban abstracts

I didn’t have a large photo vocabulary beyond landscapes, portraits, architecture, and documentary photography, so when I talked to people about my photography I didn’t know how to describe what I was shooting.

Urban abstracts

Back around 2002 I met a great photo teacher, Jenny Jonak, and worked with her for a few years. She helped me pick prints for an exhibit of amateur artists I was invited to show at. I was struggling to write an artist statement, and at one point she mentioned urban abstracts. It was the first time I heard that term. It wasn’t perfect because I had many pictures that were not abstract, but it was the closest I had, so I embraced it.

Over the years, as I expanded my photography vocabulary, I moved some of my images into other buckets and narrowed my definition of urban abstracts. Below are some of the images that remain in my current urban abstract collection—but even now, I think some of these belong in another category. A larger group is here.

Children's Creativity Museum, Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco

Burlingame, California

View of Sebastiani Theatre from Murphy’s Irish Pub, Sonoma, California

South of Market, San Francisco

Hyatt Regency, San Francisco

The power of names

I’ve seen numerous people saying it doesn’t matter what you call your photography, just shoot what you want. And while I agree—and continue to shoot what I want—having names, labels, categories (or whatever you want to call them) has been powerful for me. As I put pictures into cohesive themes I can better look at and try to refine my work in that particular area.

A big thanks to Suzanne Gannon

While on the subject of names, a huge thank you to Suzanne Gannon, the fantastic writer, writing coach, and college essay coach. When I was developing this newsletter and wanted a better name than Josh’s Photo Journey, she brainstormed with me and came up with Random Capture—the moment she said it, knew it was just what I was looking for. Thanks Suzanne!

More on Urban Abstracts

There are a lot of great urban abstract photos on Instagram but I have not seen a lot written about the topic (or at least not by name) the best writing on the subject is Steve Gosling’s fabulous 2017 article Urban Abstract.

I’d love to hear about your journey or your work and if you enjoyed this subscribe so the next issue lands in your inbox.

1. This was the time many labs took the time to calibrate their machines frequently. Mini lab technology had reached its peak and with this tiny bit of care, they returned awesome prints at a reasonable cost.

If you want to see how beautiful 4×6 prints can be when someone takes the time and cares, check out Mpix.