Fragments. Broken shapes. Pieces of things, but never the whole. What does it mean to frame something? The rules say subjects should be centered. Or off to the side. The golden ratio. The rule of thirds. But can an image be made of just a fragment? After all, that too is a frame. And someone might say, “You tried to capture an object, but you failed.”

But what does it even mean to fail? And why should framing always mean capturing the whole? Are full images ever really whole? Maybe what we call ‘whole’ is just another illusion. A comfortable lie we tell ourselves so that things make sense.

Many of these fragmented shots happen because I use a rangefinder. It’s a sophisticated tool, sure. Precise, even. But it has its quirks. The viewfinder doesn’t show exactly what the lens sees. Sometimes it gives me images where the subject doesn’t quite fit. The edges get cut off. A hand missing here, a face slightly out of frame. The composition feels… accidental. Do I mind? Not really. Even these mistakes have their own kind of intrigue. Maybe they even have a reason to exist.

What I post here isn’t a finished product. It’s not a project. Not even a carefully planned series. It’s just a way to see what the camera creates on its own. Maybe I’ve said this before, but I love the idea that a camera can produce something I wasn’t fully aware of when I pressed the shutter. A fraction of a second. A moment lost and found. Something unexpected creeping in at the edges.

Call it a mistake if you want. Fine. But mistakes can be fun. Mistakes can be revealing. And in the end, fun is what we make of it, right?

The photographic mistake as a cognitive tool: it is in its shadows, its flawed shots, its accidents, and its lapses that photography reveals itself and allows for a deeper analysis of its nature. The extreme relativity of taste—what is considered a mistake in a textbook may not be seen as such on the walls of a museum. Moreover, today’s mistakes could be tomorrow’s masterpieces. László Moholy-Nagy, one of the most important figures in avant-garde photography, learned a great deal from the mistakes of amateurs and famously declared, “The enemy of photography is convention, the rules of how to make.”

In the end, photography—if you love it—is a pleasure. Whether you’re a professional, a sports shooter, a wedding photographer, a fashion photographer, or a celebrated artist, deep down, you want the camera to surprise you. To show you something you imagined—or something you didn’t even know you were looking for.

The relationship between man and tool is never vertical. It’s always horizontal. The tool has a voice of its own. It whispers. It resists. It demands to be heard.

I come from the world of art. I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. I remember the thrill of buying new pencils, how different brands gave different results. However small the difference, the tool always imposes its own limits—or opens up new possibilities. That’s the game. That’s the challenge. And that’s what makes it all worth it.

Shot on FUJIFILM Color 400 with an old Canon Autoboy S somewhere near the astonishing Qiandao Lake a man-made lake located in Chun’an County, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China