Last week I suggested that older photographers see in profoundly deeper ways than younger photographers. This raises an obvious question: How (or does) this deeper sense of seeing translate into richer images?

I am not proposing a “better” or “worse” competition. Clearly, there are young photographers making amazingly wonderful images. And, of course, youthful vision has its own, unique advantages. However, I wonder if it is possible to see a different quality in the images made by more experience photographers.

Now that I write that, it sounds kind of absurd, but at the same time it does not. Kids picking up a camera and snapping away have a tendancy to take surprisingly fresh images. But it seems that older photographers are on special ground when making images with more depth.

For an example of how older, more experienced photographers harnesses their experience in unique ways, I return to Stewart Cohen, who I mentioned last week. In the blog post “My afternoon with B.B. King,”Cohen shares a story in which he plays a game of “cat and mouse” with the blues legend, in an attempt to make a unique image for his book Identity:

I was going for something very natural and wanted his personality as a human being to show through, not his showbiz personality.

Cohen’s challenge was that B.B. King would rather go to the dentist than have his picture taken — at least without his guitar. And, as B.B. King really hates going to the dentist, and as Cohen really wanted to photograph him without his guitar, the photographer had a real challenge on his hands.

Cohen’s challenge went far beyond the mastery of photographic techniques or the ability to see in the purely visual sense. He had to see his vision for photographing B.B. King in a non-”showbiz” manner, and he had to see a way to achieve this, which was not easy. (See his post for details.)

I would never argue that Cohen’s image of B.B. King is the “best” out there, but it certainly is a unique vision of a highly photographed subject.

Ultimately, I think what makes the images of more experienced photographers more interesting is that the photographers have become less interested in the images themselves, less interested with the process of photography itself.

Do you find that older professional photographers make a different kind of images than younger pros, or am I just waxing poetic here?

Tags: B.B. King, My afternoon with B.B. King, Stewart Cohen, The Art of Seeing, The Value of Experience