Photographic Mindset

Mar

2013

Sketches: Lookout-Your Pictures Are Getting Dark

I guess my wife is paying attention. The title above is something she said to me recently. I guess she noticed.

I have been playing with tones recently. I started last year as I decided to take a step backward regarding gear and emulate some of the old-school photographers working with what would today be considered outrageous restrictions – Kodachrome at ISO 50, in a darkened room, or at the edges of the day, without a tripod, or a monopod.

Think about it, these photogs shot with stuff you and I spend lots of money to get away from, and they made iconic photographs.

Damn, they were (or are) good.

So I grabbed my D80 and one lens last fall and committed to it. As others upped their sensor size and crazy-high-iso-capability-I-can-shoot-in-the-dark cameras I went the other way (story of my life, my parents tell me.) I grabbed a camera with an ISO rating that shouldn’t be legally rated above 400 and went at it. Man that was hard.

It was hard because out of the camera my files were not going to compare in quality to what others were shooting. Because I was going to miss and flub a lot of shots – and I did.

But I learned something. Those limits pushed me to look, to search, to seek, to struggle around the edges of things, and to learn to trust my eye and my brain rather than the light meter in camera. I don’t think I shot anything “properly exposed” according to the camera. It was a lot of “half a stop over” or “1.3 stops under” or even “3 stops under” My images began to look like what I wanted them to look, not what the scene actually looked like in front of me.

And that is when I started creating images. Took me some years to get here.

And now maybe a new camera….

Jun

2012

Why Make Photographs?

I went to a lecture a few weeks ago at the Art Therapy Department at my Alma Mater that made me chuckle, gave voice to something I’ve been contemplating for a while, and made me think.

I chuckled at the beginning of this lecture because the speaker, Judy Weiser, Ph.D., LPAT, (a psychologist and licensed art therapist) asked the attendees which among them made photos? Everyone raised their hand. She then asked who kept their pictures? Everyone raised their hand once more. Then she asked, “why?”

Silence.

I chuckled.

I get it. That is a difficult question to answer, even for trained therapists highly skilled in introspection. We have difficulty answering that question. It’s a personal question. It is also a universal question. Why do we take pictures? Why do we keep them?

Each of us knows why. We just have difficulty articulating it. It is just that the “why?” is beyond words, and words don’t do much justice to the answer. It is a feeling state that can only be pointed to, suggested, or implied with words. And even then, if using words, we depend on the other – our audience – to have experienced something similar in order to understand, to empathize. Some folks have a gift with words that way and can touch a place within us we didn’t know we had. Gifted photographers do the same with a different medium. But those moments and memories that touch the deepest parts of ourselves are usually created by ourselves – or someone emotionally near to us – and so they arrive in the world, and stay in the world, full of deep, wordless, meaning.

The photographs that illuminate these memories touch us emotionally; they help us remember; they are a crystalized representational moment of the stream of time we experience as life; they help give shape and form to those people, pets, things, events, experiences that might no longer exist (and that we know at some deep unconscious level – at the very least – will cease to exist one day); they keep memories alive; they help provided meaning; they express our inner world of feelings and context; and they are beautiful; and they are ours; and they matter.

Why do you take pictures? Why do you keep them? Who sees them? Who does not see them? What do they mean to you? How do you relate to them? Which pictures make you the happiest? Which did you not care for in the moment but, years later, were you ever so grateful were made? Which pictures do you wish had not been taken? Which are you proud of? Which would you not part with for anything? Which anger you, hurt you, haunt you? Which bring unimaginable joy?

I started photographing in earnest only about 5 or 6 years ago in response to an inner urge to examine the unconscious material that emerges in my images. I also started because it made me happy and I needed some of that feeling at the time. I continue because I choose to not put down something that makes me happy. It turns out I was doing photography as therapy; who knew?

Ms. Weiser mentioned during her presentation that, “…if something inside is going to out, it will out! And if it can’t out through words it will out through photos and art.” (As an aside, part of one psychological theory is that if something wants to out and doesn’t have a generative way to do so, it will do so in degenerative ways, through addictions, compulsions, self injurious behavior, etc.)

Well ok, then. It will out. Best to give it a medium to out, no?

During the past 10 years, and especially the past 5, there has been an absolute boom of photography. Many lament this democratization of the craft. They call it the dumbing down of the art, that so many ships on the waters have resulted in lowering the water level. Hogwash. Sure, the economic opportunities for professional photographers has changed. But this is not what this paradigm shift is all about: it is about people claiming a voice for their experience that does not require words, or cannot be said in words. To my mind, since words are merely representational – they simply point to an idea, they are not the idea itself – giving a visual voice to millions of people is a good thing for those people. It matters. Photos matter.

Apr

2012

Do What You Can

The problem with being a creative is not always the lack of ideas; the problem with being a creative is sometimes too many ideas. Ted Orland, in Art and Fear, a book he co-wrote with David Bayles, mentions that often times the problem is better identified as a lack of creative discipline regarding the ideas. We get overrun by them and they can get it the way of actually creating and completing projects.

The other day I complained to my wife that I hadn’t had enough time to go out and photograph what I wanted. Her reply was not what I expected. Nor was it what I wanted to hear, “yeah, but you’re getting better at shooting what you CAN shoot…!!”

Ouch, but true!

What she meant was I was getting better at photographing our kids and our family life. She’s right. If I keep at something, keep studying, keep applying myself, learn new techniques and ways of seeing or interpreting, the images get better – mostly because I get better as a photographer and editor. And that means something.

All of us are limited by our life situation. We like to think we are free, and we like to yearn for more freedom. But we are as free as we are and lots can be done with that. The challenge often is not necessarily to strive for greater freedom, for greater access, for more time, for more gear, for more, for more…; rather the challenge is to focus on what is possible. To dream what is possible where others might not see it.

There is a story I heard years ago about a woman in India who was revered as a meditation teacher. Early in her life she had married and her husband forbade her to practice formal meditation. She acquiesced. But still she somehow practiced. When asked much later in her life about how she managed to develop such strong meditative practices and such great inner peace without formal practice she answered, as many meditation teachers will, with a question: “what is meditation?”

Her students dutifully responded, “the practice of paying attention in this moment and this moment only.”

She then continued, “and so, when I stirred the rice, I stirred the rice; When I swept the floor I swept the floor; and when I ate, I ate.”

She did what she could with what she had, and she perfected her practice.

What can you do in this moment, in this situation, to practice photography despite your situation? What can you do without changing anything externally, but rather turning your attention to what you CAN do. Can you focus there? (Pun not intended.)

I can’t always photograph what I want to photograph, but I sure can photograph what is available to me. And can you guess which option will actually result in an image – perhaps even a good one?

Mar

2012

Form and Shape

I’ve been reading a book lately, “The Mind’s Eye” by Oliver Sacks, where the author, psychiatrist, and neuroscientist explores the effects of damage to the brain on vision. Initially I had thought the book would be about challenges for people who had lost their vision, either completely (blindness) or partially (legal blindness). As a counselor I was interested in learning more about how people adapt to such drastic life changes. However, as I read I discovered Sacks was exploring something altogether different, and I was intrigued with its implications for photography.

Early in the book Sacks meets, befriends, and studies a woman who has suffered a non-debilitating stroke in the visual area of the brain at the back of the head. Not only was the stroke not debilitating in the way we are accustomed to recognizing stroke victims, it actually went unnoticed to the victim-at least initially.

What was damaged in this woman was an area of the brain that processes visual stimuli-the area of the brain that makes sense of what we see. In effect, she began to have difficulty recognizing common objects for what they were. She could “see” them just fine; that is, there was nothing wrong with her eyes. It was just that her brain was not able to make sense of the visual input; the software got confused, as it were. This was most notable with sheet music (she was an accomplished pianist) as well as the written word. She was suddenly unable to read! (Oddly, the ability to write was unaffected-that skill is controlled by an altogether different area of the brain). Eventually this inability to recognize symbols and objects spread to simple, common, things like a banana or a bottle of mineral water.

Imagine seeing the shape and form of a banana but not being to recognize it as such.

So this got me thinking; after all, this photography passion of mine (and yours, yes?) lies in a visual medium. What would our photography be like without the ability to recognize common objects as such? Some of my friends already play in this area of visual space; they are quite good at photographing space, shape, form, shadow, contrast. They can be drawn to it.

I find I have a hard time with this. Sure, I can photograph some lines and shadow, but they usually surround, are infused, and represent actual, recognizable things. Abstracts are much more difficult for me. I tend to be drawn to people, place, story, to humanity, to my human interaction with the world around. It’s really quite narcissistic when you think about it-as I see it, my world around me develops its meaning (at least for me) from my interaction with it. What would happen if I lost my ability to recognize shape and form as “things” or “people” and began instead to just see them as shape and form? And what meaning would I make from simple shape and form? How would that affect my photography. How would it affect yours?

Many times I share with my family an image of something I like and the question that arises almost immediately is “what is it?” We want to make meaning of things and knowing what something is helps us to discover what that meaning is. It’s not a bad thing, but it can be limiting for an artist and photographer.

Lately, as I’ve been mulling these thoughts in my head, I’ve taken to playing with an old Pentax K1000 film camera. It is a fully manual camera and lots of fun. Having to shoot manual has suddenly freed me to play with focus. You see, autofocus and our generally conceived idea that pictures of things need to be sharp almost forces us to shoot things in sharp focus-bokeh not withstanding, but still there is an area of the image (the selective focus area) that is sharp. The K1000 has helped me to see that playing with focus can help remove the idea of the “thing/person” I am photographing and pay more attention to shape and form. It is a lot of fun and leading to a whole other way of seeing images in the world, and hopefully allowing me to stretch as a photographer.

The image above was intentionally shot out of focus. I don’t know if it works for others, but it works for me. Of course, I’m biased because I know what is in the image. The image at the top was an accident and caught me by surprise when I imported it into Lightroom. At first I was going to delete it but as I looked at it I started to see the possibilities and in the end I love it for being so representational of the melee of Snow Geese I was photographing that day. It is one of the images that gives the feel of the place for me.

What about you? Do you ascribe to the sense that images are best when sharp, focused, clear in visual representation and intent. Or do you like to play with representational shapes, lines, form, blur, out of focus?

Nov

2011

Fall in Love

Going to bed last night I had a thought. One of those “slap your palm against your forehead” kind of thoughts that resonate so deeply; that “Aha!” moment; that moment of sudden realization that students of Zen seek so stoically called Satori.

I had it, last night.

I didn’t write it down.

So I’m left here to attempt to reconstruct it. Bah! (The picture above is me frantically trying to reconstruct the thought stream right before writing this post.)

“Bah!” because I also know those Satori moments are moments beyond words, and a great way to know if someone has “got it” is that they are unable to explain what it is they “got”. It’s as if it is an intrinsic knowing-a feeling-not a thought. So to try to distill it down to a thought, a series of words, doesn’t seem to do it justice.

But here I go:

From what I have learned recently, artists view art as a verb. Consumers of art view art as a noun-a thing. To artists-those that make art- art is a verb. It is an action. It is the act of creation. And to be an artist means to be a creator-continually creating. (I didn’t come up with this on my own, mind you. I got it from Art and Fear, a great little book about artists their challenges.)

As such, for an artist to be artistic they need to focus on doing the work. Without the doing, without the act of creating and doing the work, the artist isn’t an artist. In fact, studies have shown that those that are the most prolific at creating art are also the ones that create the best art. Holding out until the right time to create the masterpiece doesn’t really work; creating lots of work births the masterpiece. That is how the process works.

But there is a challenge: the artist’s vision stays one step ahead of the artist’s skill and this can lead to a perpetual dissatisfaction with the work. After all, if you never quite have the skill to fully create what you envision, you won’t ever be truly satisfied. Many fall prey to this challenge and drop out of artistic endeavors. Best to focus on continually creating-Do the work.

It’s funny this thing called an artistic life: we get into it because we want to have done something creative we can be proud of-we imagine being proud of ourselves to have produced good work. It just doesn’t really work like that. We probably won’t be satisfied with it, despite any accolades we might receive from our peers or consumers of our art. So best to focus on the creating.

So then, the photograph doesn’t matter really. It is the act of photographing that matters and will, with enough work, create good photographs. But we’ll be dissatisfied, so best to keep photographing.

Do you see where this is going? Sure, we need to develop a critical eye, edit well, sequence well, expose well, pan well, choose depth of field well, process well, all that jazz. But we have to learn to love the act of creation; we have to love making photographs!!!

There are some that advocate forgetting about the gear and loving the photograph. That the primacy of photography is the photograph. I don’t disagree with them, but I’ve spent many an evening falling asleep wondering why people love their gear so much. And I am beginning to realize that the love of the gear is an integral part of the process. We have to love making photographs and loving the gear is part of that. If I hate my gear I am not going to make pictures, simple as that. But if I love my gear, if I am excited about it, well….that is another story.

So that is my attempt at reconstructing a thought that came to me during that in between space between wakeful reality and dream reality. What are your thoughts?

Nov

2011

On Being Vulnerable in the Creative Process

I watched a TED.com video a while ago. It was recommended by David duChemin in an article when he was talking about how to stop trying to sell through social media and rather attempt to connect with others. I usually try to follow David’s recommendations because, to me, he feels really connected. He feels connected to his readership and students; he feels connected to the photographic world at large through his social media outlets; he feels connected to the people he photographs for NGO organizations. But mostly I imagine him to be connected with himself, his life, and how life is.

Why do I imagine this? Well, it comes from something Brene Brown mentioned in that TED.com talk (see below for the embeded video). During her talk she mentioned that joy, happiness, contentment, comes from feeling connected with others; feeling as if we matter to another; that we belong and have a place in the world. And, she makes the point that to feel connected with others and with ourselves we need to be able to tolerate being vulnerable.

Now, vulnerability, as I see it, is tied to some very strong emotions, the strongest among them being fear, but also involving anxiety and shame. These are challenging emotions for many and our mental health hospitals and counseling offices are filled with people attempting to come to terms with them. (I know, my day job is in the mental health field and I deal with these emotions in others and in myself on a daily basis.)

What does all this have to do with the creative process? Well, that also comes from something Brene Brown mentioned in the video: Life is messy. Life does not go according to plan; others fail to live up to our expectations; the world betrays us at times; things are unfair; we are crippled by our own fears and doubts. Often times life just lines up according to its own-maddening-set of rules and we are often left feeling as if we weren’t given a playbook-let alone a rule book. As a result, living, and being creative, requires a large measure of courage. Courage to face our creative process in all its messiness. Courage to try things that don’t seem easy and have a high failure rate. We require the courage to be vulnerable in the face of those that would criticize our work and our efforts; the courage to dive into a creative endeavor without the promise of success at any step along the way.

And yet it is necessary, this thing called vulnerability. It is a necessary step in the creative process; it is a necessary step in connecting with others; and it is a necessary step in coming to terms with living this human life contentedly, happily, joyfully. It is a necessary part of the process in creating anything really: from new business venture to creative scrapbook, from professional power-point presentation to your wedding photobook. We throw ourselves headlong into the abyss of the unknown future with little more than a blind faith that we will be alright in the end. This is vulnerability and we are swimming in a sea of it called living. We do not create anything new by playing it safe.

So, what do you want to create? One image? A dozen? A series? A book? A canvas? An ebook perhaps? Some stock images? Do you want to create a photographic business? Do you want to create a notebook to give to others? Or perhaps a calendar? All of these involve risk: the risk of being rejected, hurt, embarrassed. All of these can also include the risk of being successful. And yet, there it is. That is what we must face.

Oct

2011

Looking and Seeing

Quite often as I read books, articles, and ebooks that attempt to teach me some of the art of photography I come across a section that attempts to give me some ideas on how to learn to “see” better. The instruction is well meaning and often helpful but something about it usually leaves me a bit flat. For the longest time I could not discover what about it was leaving me feeling this way. Then, after watching this interview by master interviewer Charlie Rose of master photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, something started to slowly dawn on me.

You see, Cartier-Bresson attempted to communicate to Charlie Rose a basic tenet of his method. Granted, he could have done better and Charlie could have listened better, but it is in there. Repeatedly the Frenchman stated the key was to stay present, sensitive, and receptive.

He was attempting to describe to Charlie what Charlie was not being at the moment: present, sensitive, and receptive. When we are in this state the world presents itself to us. We don’t have to go seek it. It is a state of mindfulness that stays open, saying “yes, yes, yes” to that which is presented to it. It is a very subtle difference but one that I think makes a crucial difference in how images are made

There is a difference between “looking” and “seeing” and that difference is one of activity and intention. Looking is active. It is a search. By looking we are actively searching, attuning our eyes to the light and seeking. We are going into our environment to come in contact with something, or someone, and photograph them. Seeing, in the way that Cartier-Bresson was doing it, is not active; it is receptive. He is open and waiting, staying present to the moment. The only action comes when he presses the shutter release button. It is a meditative state, I believe. I think Cartier-Bresson meditated his way through the creation of the photograph.

This is why, I believe, he is so resistant in this interview or take credit for the images. He didn’t do anything; he not responsible. He simply prepared the environment, both internal (by preparing his mind to be receptive) and external (by placing himself in optimal environments) and remained receptive and responsive. Then all that was left to do was obey the muse a press the button when she instructed him to.

So, while all those exercises in the instructive books I read will teach me to look really well and will be helpful in increasing my ability to notice, in the end I will need to learn to be present, sensitive, and receptive. Only through this will I be ready to receive the photograph.

Sep

2011

On The Hunt (on not turning your photographic subject into prey)

I can’t help but keep noticing the language we photographers like use when describing photographing: shoot, shot, capture, get, take. Sounds a little violent, doesn’t it? With this crowd I feel a bit like a hunter.

I think it comes from a mindset that the world is out there and I need to go get it, take it, capture it, shoot it. It is a predatory mindset. I understand it and I know it is part of the nature of photography. I also think we need to be careful. Predatory mindsets are singularly focused and tend to dehumanize and devalue its prey (whether human, animal, vegetable, or other). Predatory mindsets tend to decrease the respect felt for the object. In photography, as in hunting, the value the subject becomes decreased to only the value that the photographer gives it, not its inherent value, or the value to itself. I know this is not what most photographers intend, but it happens. A lot.

Eli Reinholdsten’s recent post about photographing alone together reminded me of this dilemma. Have you ever been out on a photographic excursion (notice I resisted the urge to write “out on a shoot…” 😉 with other photographers and you find someone interesting to photograph. You ask them if you can and they agree. Then suddenly 5 people are shooting over your shoulder like paparazzi. They are of course paying you a compliment on your sharp eye that discovered such a wonderful subject, and they are trying to get “their” shot at the expense of you and your subject’s agreement. I know I’ve been guilty of this as much as I’ve had it happen to me.

The result often is a startled subject and less than optimal photographs. In that moment of frenzied ~~shooti~~… er, photographing, the subject has been reduced down to an object, the person and their contract with the original photographer has not been respected, and the original photographer’s effort and intent has been passed over. In that moment the quarry was hunted without so much as an afterthought.

I wonder if we could, collectively, begin to speak (and think) of photography in a more collaborative way? Less shooting, taking, and capturing, and more making, co-creating, representing. What if we looked upon photography as a gift to the subject rather than to ourselves and the world.

To get an idea of this put yourself in front of the camera. Notice how you feel. Notice how you are treated, interacted with, respected (or not.) It can be a very subtle thing, but it will infuse the photograph with your soul, or not. That will depend how safe you feel in front of the photographer’s lens. And that depends to what degree you feel like prey.

Sep

2011

Daily Practice

Submit to a daily practice. Keep knocking and the joy inside will eventually open a window. -Rumi

Things have been busy here in monkdom. I know many of us have busy lives; it is one of the things that tends to define us as Americans, it seems, and I notice it often as a casual yet telling response to a friendly greeting in my parts. “What you been up to?” the greeter asks. “Oh, not much. Busy, busy…”

Not many more details are given and none more are requested, as if to say “well, if you won’t volunteer it, or don’t remember it, then it’s not that important to me.”

Well, here, we’ve been busy, busy. And I’m gonna tell you about it, mostly because I’m enthused about it and also because all this business is separating the wheat from the chaff for me and the role of photography in my life.

The quote above is a quick little ditty that has deep meaning for those spiritually oriented, but it also speaks true of those of us in the quest for that satisfying artistic expression: our voice. “Submit to a daily practice and have faith” that quote seems to say. Work daily, practice daily, be mindful, daily and what you seek or what you need will somehow, somewhere, present itself.

It is a challenging thing to do because submitting to this daily practice is supposed to challenge you. It is supposed to make you question what you are doing and why you are doing it. It is supposed to take you right to the edge of the limits of what you know about your art (and even perhaps yourself) and make you peer, seriously peer, over the edge at “what if?”

For me this has been coming through stress, challenging work, lack of sleep, deadlines, limits, and illness. Life has been full, my responsibilities feeling so vast, that there seemed to not be room for photography in it. I actually asked myself if I should stop for now; if I was trying to do too much.

I haven’t fully answered that question yet but I find myself coming through it all with greater clarity and with a realization that despite all the challenges some wonderful things have taken place throughout it all. I was recently paid to photograph a Baptism and was quite pleased with the result; I’ve had a photographic series published at Rear Curtain (the first and hopefully not the last); I’ve started lightening my gear bag as I wander and travel with wonderful results and more enjoyable trips; I’ve completed a new photobook I am excited about and awaiting the proof with anticipation; I’ve edited down a huge series to 6 images that I think tell a story with greater impact; I’ve begun to expose myself to varying art forms with greater enthusiasm and energy.

This past Saturday I convinced my family to take a drive to Santa Fe and had the chance to visit the Verve Photography Gallery there. It is a wonderful place with a welcome and accommodating staff and some of the most astounding photography gracing the walls. My purpose there was more directed than just taking in the prints displayed. I was after a book, or books, by Norman Mauskopf. Ever since Daniel Milnor (aka. Smogranch) had mentioned Mauskopf in a blog post I’d wanted to see his stuff. Both Milnor and Mauskopf are undertaking or have undertaken projects close to my heart: Milnor is engaged in a lengthy project on New Mexico and Mauskopf has completed fantastic works on horse racing, rodeo, and the Latino descendants of Spanish settlers in Northern New Mexico. All of these projects rank in the “holy crap” level of difficulty.

These two are in the stratosphere of documentary photography and noticing my attraction to their work has made me realize the pull I feel in my photography. What that is exactly still remains to be seen-that will require more practice-but the idea and the way has begun to take form in the fog.

By the way, Mauskopf is teaching a visual storytelling workshop in Santa Fe this October through Santa Fe Photographic Workshops and Daniel Milnor is leading one in Peru.

Aug

2011

The World Is Your Oyster (or some pitfalls of this wonderful world)

This is a wonderful time! This is a wonderful time to be a photographer! The digital age, with its cameras, Photoshop, Lightroom, plugins, widgets, websites, apps, wordpress, blogs, FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, has allowed us to connect and share faster, with greater accuracy, and with a broader reach than ever before. Lest we take it for granted it would do us some good to remember that this is a wonderful time for photography.

This is also a challenging time. There is so much available to us so quickly that we can be at risk for developing an inability to tolerate disappointment, boredom, or frustration. This ability to tolerate uncomfortable mood states is an important skill that we begin to learn early in life provided we have some good mentoring through attuned caregivers. Parents will recognize this as the tantrum throwing ages of 2 or 3 when each little disappointment becomes a major crisis for a while. Eventually we learn that small disappointments are different from large ones and, hopefully, we stop “losing it” every time something does not go our way.

The challenge, however, is to continue learning this skill in smaller and more subtle ways as we continue our journey through life. Our current “distraction available at every turn” world threatens us gently, time and again, with the reward of distraction from discomfort rather than encouraging the tolerance of it.

And this threatens our art.

That LCD on the back of the camera offers much distraction in the form of chimping or learning our internal camera settings that it just might detract us from developing the patience to watch the light slowly change over a landscape. The computer, that wonderful device that has opened this whole new world, threatens to distract us through Twitter, FaceBook, Google+ing from sitting and focusing on our editing, book-making, working efforts. (I was made vibrantly aware of this just the other evening…and as a result my latest Blurb.com book remains uncompleted.)

All hope is not lost however; we continue to have dominion over our own minds for the time being. Just becoming aware of our tendencies, and the tendencies of our continued connection to Web2.0, can do wonders in making mindful choices to focus on what will actually feed our soul, nurture our creativity, and produce the work that is precious to us and-I would argue-to the world.

How have you found yourself distracted from your goals, projects, or photography? Stay tuned for another blog post on some ideas how to overcome “distraction-itis.”