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I started photography on digital, and am really glad that I did. It saved me a lot of time, headache, and money to learn the technical ins-and-outs about photography and more about how I liked to work. I’ve mentioned before how, for me, the photographers’ reflections add immeasurably to the value of book. Riboud’s text tells us he was walking the streets of Paris on his first visit to the capital, with just his Leica, a 50mm lens and a single roll of film. He notices the painters high above, climbs up the tower, and makes several pictures, among which is that unforgettable image of Zazou. “I think photographers should behave like him,” says Riboud, “he was free and carried little equipment” (p74).

There are many approaches that photographers use when editing their own work and choosing what they believe is the “best” shot of a sequence.I personally believe that the editing part of photography (choosing your best images) is more difficult and than the photographing. To choose between your images is like choosing between your children — you want to keep them all but at the end of the day you have to choose one image from the scene that best describes it. I don’t mean to say that you have to shoot film, but if you have started photography in digital and haven’t experienced shooting film, I highly recommend trying doing so. 5. Be self-critical and brutal with yourself in editing “Whisper”, Mumbai, 2011. A photograph I took and uploaded online after around 10 months of sitting on the image. Jim Goldberg, from Magnum talks about how switching from film to digital is changing the pace of photographing. He shares that having to reload his film forces him to pause and reflect in the shooting process “to reset, rewind your thinking. The opportunity for that forced pause has been lost.” As has the “containment of a roll of film”. d. The loss of intensity while shooting

Street photography is very hard. It is rare that you can take an image that has a perfect harmony between content and form.Access to Life (Group show), The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Stenersenmuseet, Oslo; United Nations, New York, Asahi Mullion, Tokyo; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

As a takeaway point, realize that photography isn’t just about your final images- but the hard work that goes into them. I encourage you to re-visit your personal favorite images and see the before and afters of the shot. Think to yourself: how long did I have to wait for a shot? Did I “work the scene” and create the shot, or did it serendipitously come to me? Did I take too many scenes of a shot, or not enough? Thinking these things will help you better understand your own working style in photography. 4. Realize the strengths & weaknesses of working in film or digital Tokyo, 2012Whether you shoot film or digital, use the insights from the book and the stories from the Magnum photographers to improve your personal vision and way of working in photography. Strive to create strong and meaningful work, but don’t be discouraged. After all, if the book proves anything is that even the world’s best photographers are doubtful of their photographic ability at times and do get frustrated too. Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam; PM Gallery, London; Visa pour l’image, Perpignan; Fotoencuentros, Murcia, Spain; Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, USA. For example, some photographers (like Philip Jones Griffiths) are famous for being very conservative and economical with their film – only taking about a shot per scene. Another example is Chien-Chi Chang, who is working on an ongoing project in which he takes single, isolated shots of a particular scene. He explains: After being saved, Anderson realized that when he was taking photos on the sinking ship, there was the possibility that nobody would ever see the images. He then had the realization that the reason why he took photographs. He took photographs to explain the world around himself rather than explaining it to others.”