Omit needless words When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentence short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style Less, but better brevitysimplicityminimalism
Be A (Re)Visitor An Article by Rob Walker robwalker.substack.com I was thinking about this not long ago while reading in Petapixel an essay by a photographer named Scott Reither, “Long Form Study: Why Photographers Should Repeatedly Revisit A Scene.” In it, he described photographing one particular stretch of beach, over and over, throughout his career. Of course that landscape has changed over time, and of course he’s had moments when he felt he’d captured the same territory so many times there was nothing left to see. But there was always something more to see — maybe because of a change in Reither’s life, rather than in the physical environment. seeingchangephotography