photographic mindset

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?

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.