Something a little different today. I have been encouraged to share a little of an email conversation from several weeks ago. Take it for what it is just my opinion on what importance craft has been given in photography.
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Something was said the other day that got me to thinking about the difference in craft and art. I have had a little experience in both so thought I would rattle a little on the differences as I see them.
My art work came first along with the study of art and time with both my mentors. One of the best things about not being locked into a ‘career’ is I have had time to explore other things (I won’t go into the bad parts of that). So in time I went to school and studied gunsmithing and as usual I went into it full bore and did my best to become one of the best around. In many ways I succeeded in the pistol end of this and in building and custom work on very high end skeet and trap shotguns. I did learn a lot on the nature of craftsmanship and how it applies to artwork and other disciplines from my time working on beautiful objects. Huge amounts of money is spent on these types of firearms and only the best wood, metalworking and workmanship is expected. Although I have seen firearms whose beauty and workmanship would take your breath away I do not consider them art, even when I have heard the term used to describe them. The finest craftsmanship and beautiful materials don’t make a work of art. They will make a beautiful object that is a joy to hold and view, as well as an object that continues to provide that same pleasure over and over every time you see or hold it.
This is true also for some photographs and other works of painting or sculpture, however the part we admire is the skill and ability of the person who made it, not the message or voice of the piece its self, much the same in a fine firearm. The difference is that craft is about the skill and mastery of that skill not the image. Art is about the image and the skill will either add to that or become secondary to the works message and soul. It is my contention that many folks in photography have been caught up in the skill portion of the work and can’t differentiate between the mastery of skill and voice or message. When the two combine it makes the creation of a clear voice easier but it isn’t about how it is told as much as what is said. Not all works have to have the voice of Shakespeare to be eloquent or get the meaning across. Some photos can use the simple voice of Steinbeck and tell a story as well or even use a voice and skill set we don’t know about yet. I admire craft for the skill of the person making the work and I admire them in the work, that isn’t the same as having the admiration for the work and what it makes me feel. If the work can transcend the craft with message and feeling it becomes much more than the makers skill.
This is where I have the problem with so many thinking they are gaining something by trying to copy a skill set of another as a learning tool. In custom work on firearms, you strove to find your own style and way of working not copy someone else, that only led to dismissal in most eyes. Each piece of wood or metal was different so had to be worked that way. I think each persons vision and way of seeing is much like that piece of wood and needs to find its own way of being worked. Basics are basics and after that all effort should go into finding what and how you do things as yourself with your voice. If it looks right to you it is. I would rather be the artist than the craftsman always. Working thru a problem or adding a skill set is important if it adds to what you want to say, and if that is something another has solved then it is time to work on their solution to the craft. If a person asks or is seeking a solution to something they don’t think works then it is time to ask advice or personal solutions to an image. However if it feels right it is. Each piece of wood or metal has its own grain and way of being what it is, the beauty and voice is shaped in accordance with its own nature. You can’t make something into what it isn’t and have it feel real or genuine. Copying someone else’s style or method is an attempt to make something into what it isn’t.
I am not trying to diminish the importance of craft here but I am trying to say that craft without vision or something to say is just exercise. The development of skills and craft should go along with the development of a clear message and direction of the reasons for making something. If it was just about the craft or exercise musicians could just play scales and painters could just mix colors or we could all just copy the same subject over and over.
To often inspiration is turned into imitation of craft. Inspiration should be influence, influence that you use to build on your own vision. All art is influenced by what has come before and the great works use that as a part of or a stepping stone to help their own unique vision. All along in both art and craft I have felt the influence of those gifted craftsmen and artist, and I believe others should influence our work, I also believe that inspiration needs to come from someplace else. Inspiration is the thought that keeps you awake at night, the passion that makes you ask questions, the terminal curiosity that drives you to find a new way of saying something. Inspiration is unique to the individual and not provided by others and their way of seeing the world, what has been confused with inspiration is an admiration of craft and the individuals ability to express themselves. Influence and inspiration are something that really should require another discussion and I will write on that soon.
Excellent craft can become ‘invisible’ when we are surrounded by it, message and vision can’t. One is unique and the other is a learned skill. Learned skills are for everyone, a unique voice is individual and not something that can be duplicated.
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::PS I see that David duChemin has written a post on the same thing today and would encourage everyone to go read what David has to say, it is much more eloquent than my email conversation and right on the money as far as I can see.
Great post on JerseyStyle Photography this week on Josh Bradley for one of Marks Sunday Focus segments. Josh is a fantastic photographer and if you haven’t seen his work go read about him and then check out his website and some of the projects he is working on. Josh reminded me why I bought the E-P2 and basically I hadn’t posted any from that camera for a while. So here is a couple from Sunday while waiting to hang out with Sabrina for the day.
It is good to have friends when you are in a bit of a slump on ambition, no matter how much you keep plugging away, it always gets better when they lend that little spark that makes it fun again. Best day I have had in a long time. Looked at images and shared ideas on photography, art and life in general. The kind of friends and day that make the whole business worth while.
Some doors you just have to go through no matter how they look.
Do you see stories? I know it sound like a bit of a funny question but I do. It may come from a lot of people watching in airports or public places. One of the things I do most is sit and watch folks and try to figure out their story. In a lot of cases if it isn’t obvious I will make one up to go along with the way they look, walk, stand etc. It is an exercise in imagination, sometimes the really interesting things are the stories that should have been instead of the ones that were. If it isn’t there make it there. If it is there tell that one, but tell a story that is worth listening to.
More ideas and truths are expressed in fiction than ever in non-fiction. Fiction doesn’t have facts to get in the way of truth.
As usual I am on another ramble that will only make sense to a few readers, the point I am attempting to make is see stories in everything around you. See the story that went into the shopkeepers job and life, the story that went into making the hot rod at the car show, the story that walks with the elderly at the supermarket and so on. See the story that happens when you combine things that don’t look like they fit together, see the story in the sunset and the gardens you photograph. Seeing these stories will add meaning to the images you make and help you to see even more. See past what the world hands you!
If the world won’t provide the images to tell a story you have, bring the parts together and tell the story. Beg or buy the parts, beg or borrow friends to stand in, beg, borrow or buy the props and make it all real. It is your story and your idea and your truth, tell it the way you want.
For the record the above was kind of how the image here came about. Random additions to what we were doing and it makes an implied story or even a story that you can interpret any way you want, point being it became more than just a model photo. Next post I want to tell you about the couple of days hanging with Tim Engle and shooting with the Coast P7 flash light.
This post was because it might be time to share some of the thoughts I normally reserve for Sabrina and Mark. The making public of some of these thoughts might begin to make the whole tv in the woods story seem like that was sane but there you have it. Ideas are free and each of us has an unlimited supply all it takes is unlocking that imagination within. I take an hr or so each day to lay on the couch and daydream ideas to photograph, the real ‘What if’ with no constraints of budget or “oh I can’t do that because….”. If the idea works well enough then it is time for the lets figure out how to make it happen. If it is good enough and you are passionate enough there will be a way to get the image. Just use your imagination, its free.
Before I get into what has been in the works, tonight I wish I was in Vancouver for dinner and conversation. Dave, David, Mary and Sabrina are getting together to talk photography and have dinner. I was graced with an invitation which means a lot to me from this group of folks. Unfortunately due to a personal project and timing I can’t make the journey, I really wish I was there tonight. However this is one of the last two nights of shooting on the project in this location.
Personal projects, even the small ones sometimes take on a life of their own.
After all the years of riding I know a lot of different people and from all sections of the biker world inculding a lot of the guys in the Christian Crusaders MC. They are a ministry that preach to outlaw bikers and move a tent meeting around the western US. About the time I was starting to work again on a series of portraits of guys who have been riding for 25 yrs or more, I found out the CC would be setting up a revival tent in my area for 2 weeks. I managed to call in a couple of favors and secured permission to shoot the whole time they were here both in the tent meeting and in the camp they take with them wherever they go.
I am drawn to the images that Matt Brandon and David DuChemin publish but more so to the ones that are faith based. Their work is in the east but to me a revival meeting is as foreign as any celebration in India. Knowing some of these folks and a little about them I sensed a lot of that same passion and power in these folks that I see in others images. My curiosity and need to see took over and away I went, looking for that kind of emotion and power. The color of a foreign land isn’t there but the rest is. Being the whole project is taking a somewhat photojournalist feel to it, the images take on a B&W feel to them that also fits with the folks and location.
Lots of white backgrounds and people who are focused on the sermon not on the photographer is a real different feel than my normal way of working. It makes for a different aesthetic than I am used to and also drives home the fact that color and location don’t make a style, vision does. The expectations I had going in have all been thrown out the window and new ones replaced on a daily basis.
The plan is to put this whole mess into some sort of coherency as a book and couple of slide shows. So I will be updating the progress as it occurs along with a few here and there from the Rhody parades which I covered for 4 full days (that is a lot of parades). Wish I had more to say on all this but for me it is tough to describe the swamp when you are standing in the middle of it.
Also now is about time to thank Jeff, Mark and my darling Sabrina for the support and inspiration for this project, lots more gets done when you have friends that allow you to fail… or succeed. Few more images from the ton of them on flickr. It has been an intense and productive week and I recommend that anyone who is serious about people photography, social photography or telling stories to take a look around you there are as many as you would ever want to tell within reach.
It doesn’t always require a plane ticket to make a difference or find important images, the most important thing you can do is tell the story your neighbor or community needs told. In a lot of ways it is harder and more important to tell the story close to home, it prevents the familiar from becoming invisible. My current paying work involves images for a land trust and people getting into their first home. Real people with real needs and close to home, working to solve the problems around us so we can all help to solve the ones in other lands. Anything is possible if we take it one small step at a time. I want my images to matter to more than just being something nice to look at and hope that these kinds of projects can help me to see more of what is important to others and tell their story. I may or may not agree with the stories I try to tell but they all deserve to have a voice and I might just learn something. Go make pictures that matter today.
Wow didn’t mean to get up on that box, back to a regular schedule next week of images for others. Course now that this is in print I gotta come thru with something worthwhile……
This looks better large on black so check this link Tulip set. Thanks to my friend Mark K for pointing this trick out for me it makes things easier for quick slideshows that I don’t want to custom build. Check out his latest from the Big Apple, I really would like to spend some time there as well as the tulip fields.
A week turns into two while you gather thoughts and take care of all those little things that keep you from clarifying the thoughts you want to write down. Next thing you know a whole month has gone by and you haven’t posted a thing. In the meantime a lot of images have been made and those ideas you thought about sharing have been resolved to the point of not really needing to write about them. Life goes on, faster and faster. I know we deal in split seconds of time when an image is made and as we get a little older the split seconds that are life stack and pass at an accelerated rate as well. The last month a lot of images have been made and not really shared, a lot of ideas have been sorted and rough drafts written but not shared. Limbo of the worst kind I am thinking.
Spent a couple of days with Sabrina Henry, Mark Olwick, and friends Dave, David and Mary. The importance of sharing both images and ideas was reinforced over time spent in the tulip fields and coffee. It is hard for me to express how much I enjoyed the time spent with these folks. So as Sabrina is planning on a project involving images within a mile of her home, I think I will plan on sharing images that I make, have made and have planned, along with the ideas and thoughts that rattle thru my head much more often. Feel free to remind me if I forget to get something up here in a timely fashion.
In that spirit I will add a few more of the tulip images and there is a set on flickr that will fill out from the shoot as I process the images. I can only describe editing the 300+ images from both the SLR and the E-p2 as color overload. The colors and amount of color has to be experienced to really be believed. Acres and Acres of colors, almost mind numbing. So as they say More to Come.
I have been a little remiss on posting, all my time has been taken up reading the great stuff others have been doing lately. I also have been preparing a post for Urbangrafix on what my whole take on style really is how it relates to what we all do and how we do it.
On that sort of take I sold a lot of things I have had laying around that haven’t been used for a while to purchase a new tool, and Olympus E-P2. I have been fascinated with what Kirk Tuck and others have been writing about the Micro 4/3 system. For a long time my G9 has served well, but I wanted something that worked a little better in low light and did usable HD video. We started doing video work for our clients 4 or 5 yrs ago and have a lot of very good equip for SD vid but with the latest innovations in DSLR and HD video it was time to up the ante. Research on both the Panasonic and Olympus system made me believe one or the other would fit my need well. I settled on the Oly because I have a lot of Nikon and Leica lenses from my film cameras that will work on this system with the right adapter and still retain IS for lower shutter speeds.
What I didn’t figure on was how much fun this camera would be. It is like going back to the rangefinder I started photography with, small, discrete and fast. Never had a camera that has in cam processing so I tried out the “Grainy Film” filter and was just blown away with how much it was like the old newspaper photos that made me want to be “that guy’ with the camera on the street. Of course this led to adjusting the monochrome setting to my liking and shooting in real low light at ISO’s I would never have tried a few yrs ago. The above image was one from wandering around PT late Sat night, there are a few more on my flickr stream as well. I am flat out in love with this little rig, the shooting I did Sat night was after a 3 hr shoot with the D700 and a very pretty young lady working on her portfolio. I had more fun walking the town with the E-P2 than I have had in yrs. Set to Monochrome I see the image just like it will be. I am going to give the G9 a similar setting and see what it will do as well. The adapter will be here Monday and then the Leica f2 50mm is going on and we will see how well the manual focus works out. I am flat out excited. B&W and street work and I get that same feeling I did when I first tried to be the guy that shot for Life magazine when I first got hooked on photography as art.
I know and believe the mantra that “Gear is good, vision is better”, but at times you need to remember more or better gear can get in the way of vision. The D700 with a Nikon 24-70 is a beautiful thing and I love what I can do with the files that come out of that machine, however when you raise it to your eye on the street in my part of the country it is like waving a 12 ga shotgun in everyones direction, duck and cover is the main reaction of most. At the least you are noticed and the natural feeling of the scene disappears. Not so with a small rangefinder or P&S style camera. I can see and be part of an urban or work environment and still get images that feel right. Stuart over at thelightwithout has started a month long run with his GF1 and a single lens and I am finding a set of ideas to follow along with his example, more on that soon and more on what I finding with this new found freedom as it develops.
The M4/3 systems handle color pretty well as well. I am pretty committed to shooting raw almost exclusively until I saw the jpg files from this camera and I will be writing more on this soon as I finish out the tests I am doing both with this and the big Nikons on the next few shoots I am doing. I’m not sure how to rationalize this purchase but I am sure glad I made it. I am shooting everyday and getting a lot of images I like. I guess I have been hording a lot of my images lately and will try to publish more of them as time permits.
Stay tuned for the stuff I am trying to put into coherent words for Urbangrafix and for here over the next week or so and I’ll try to make the posts more often and worth reading….
In the meantime check out Jays work and his interview at JerseyStyle, and the work and words that Sabrina has been doing.
This was one of those short series of images that I couldn’t get out of my head. It took 3 days of driving into town and retrying to get everything lined up to get it right. Timing the bus runs, weather, and getting the camera settings right to get what I thought I saw in my head.
No not an earth shattering set of images but they are something I wanted and it ended up with a little bit of added story to go with it in the image. Point is I failed the first few times I tried it and kept at it til I got what I wanted, bonus was I learned a lot in the process I wouldn’t have learned if it went right the first time.
Click the image and then go thru the rest while it is on screen. It was fun to shoot, I like being in that zone that you get to when you are going for something in your head. We have a hell of a bus system for a rural area and I have more ideas for them that I’ll publish as I get the images.
I don’t plan what I am going to post about very often it all just seems to happen when it does. Lately I have been reading a lot of blogs where the consensus is that text needs to go with a photo to add context and meaning. I feel that if it needs words it has failed. Universal ‘truths’ or stories shouldn’t need an explanation to prop them up. Photojournalism was cited as one example however all to often I see poor writing held up by great photos or poor photos held up by the writing.
We only get better if we reach for that one image that says everything so clear it doesn’t need anything else. I would like to believe that the Steve McCurry photo Afghan Girl would have the impact it does without the back story. I still don’t know the story behind the image but I feel every time I see it.
On another note there is some new stuff over on my flickr acct that some of you may like to see and there is another photographer I have been talking to that does work I wish I could. Please take a look at http://whilestandingstill.com/ beautiful subtle work.
Not to mention that Jeff Lynch still has some openings for his Spring Safari in Tx. Jeff is a must read for those of you Canon shooters and for doing landscape work. And as long as you are cruising the photo web check in on K-man’s trip to Japan and part east, fantastic images coming out of this world jaunt and he is calling it work.
Go look there is a lot of inspiration out there and a lot of folks that are shooting everyday.
The have been a lot of posts written the past month about self assignments and I figured I’d throw my take on the issue into the mix. To often I see a take on self assignment that involves technical issues, the idea of only using one lens or fstop or something that has to do with the tech of making an image. This is great for learning the gear but it won’t make better photographs from a vision point of view. Technique is fine but isn’t a substitute for something to say. I am as guilty as the next guy for making technically good image that isn’t something that you really want to go back and look at twice. One of my mentors in sculpture Gerry Conaway once told me that “Great art was art you saw something new in every-time you looked at it”. For what it is worth I believe these should be words to live by if you want your work to mean something and stand the test of time.
I know not much of an image it is for illustration purpose
So for a self assignment I have reached back into something I used to do in the old film days when I was broke and a student. I take an old ‘not so worth keeping’ slide (I’m pretty sure most of us have a few) and cut out the film then slip it into my wallet. When I see something that may make a decent image I take out the slide and frame the image and then once I have an idea of what I am trying to say here I think thru the tech of Dof, exposure etc. The point is to see the image without all the tech stuff getting in the way.
The most well lit, perfectly exposed image can also be the most boring thing I have ever done if all it has to go on is the technique that was used to make the image. Less gear!- is the rally cry that seems to be gaining momentum and I think it should be- Right gear for your voice! I don’t think they built the Taj Mahal with using just a hammer. Gear gets in the way to often I will agree but using the right tool for the job is also what good craftsmanship is about. So I say learn your craft and gear, but first develop the eye and vision then buy the tools to make telling that story in the best way possible. Don’t let gear drive the vision, let vision drive the gear. Using a piece of paper cut out for your aspect ratio or an old slide to see thru, then using your arm as a focal length will cut down on gear for learning and using your mind and imagination to build the image before you ever take the camera along will in my mind make you able to see better.
Give it a try it only takes up a little space in your wallet and it is always with you. Besides it isn’t as noticeable as a camera and will get you plenty of space in the coffee shop if it is noticed.
I do so frequently
There will be more on this if I can ever get the ringing in my ears to stop from all the head banging. Make new mistakes today, it is a sign of progress.
If the sound bothers you mouse over above the thumbnails and adjust it on the right or let me know and I’ll remove it( changed the start-up to manual so hit the play to start). With that said, I spent a day last summer when things were slow for everyone following Diane around her work for a couple of hours. This is the result of a few hours in a high quality print shop. Diane is a 4th generation printer and been at it herself for over 30 yrs. High stress work which made me think in B&W for the effect. Had to put together a slideshow with sound and this has been sitting on the HD since last summer. Made with Slideshow Pro in Adobe Flash and the sound was done in Audacity. Figured ambient sound for the print shop would work for this after seeing what Matt Brandon did for his The Hands of Rat Island slide presentation. Matt is a master of doing interesting slide presentations and I do my best to pick up ideas from his work, not to mention the images he makes are truly inspiring.
rlketcham.com
