ExquisiteLines

Today, at ScottKelby.com, John Loengard posted for Guest Blog Wednesday.

(who is John Loengard – check out this post by Joe McNally who works for/with him)

Some amazingly beautiful images. I loved the portraits of Georgia O’Keeffe. Check them out.  She was so stunningly graphic as a person – simply in the way she dressed and carried herself. Of course it doesn’t hurt that she was photographed by some of the best photographers of the age.

The following are quotes from his article that honestly and clearly define what it means to make a photograph.

It is not important if photographs are “good.” It’s important that they are interesting. What makes a photograph interesting? I’ll count the ways: It can be our first look at something. It can be entertaining. It can evoke deep emotions. It can be amusing or thrilling or intriguing. It can be proof of something. It can jog memories or raise questions. It can be beautiful. It can convey authority. Most often, it informs. And, it can surprise.

Before I became a picture editor, I assumed that “good photographers” took “good pictures” because they had a special eye. What I found was that good photographers take good pictures because they take great pains to have good subjects in front of their cameras. (Reflect a moment on what cameras do, and this makes sense.) Good photographers anticipate their pictures.

This quote reminds of something Jerry Garns, the first photoographer I worked for told me: ‘If you want to take good looking pictures of people, take pictures of good looking people’.  I’ve always remembered that.

No photographer can go out today and take a photograph that sums up the Obama Administration. Photographs don’t generalize. But a detail, when photographed, often conveys a sense of a whole. A finger, the man. A leaf, the tree. A curbstone, the city.

Read the full article here.

Chase Jarvis posted this excerpt:

“The reality is that it’s easier to be inspired than it is to create an original idea and we are hardwired to take the path of least resistance. It’s easier to jump onto a design inspiration gallery site than it is to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. It’s easier to follow a pattern than it is to test-drive new options. It’s easier to copy a style or idea that works than try something that might miss the mark or outright fail. Above all, it’s cheaper mentally for us to rally around what’s already been done and emulate it…”

Read the whole post here, at Viget.com – don’t forget the comments.

I loved this comment from Rob Gilgan:

My own experience has been those with a traditional arts background tend to lack originality and produce largely derivative work. I have colleagues who are short on education and long on space and form conception – they produce, by and large, stunning work without a debt to other artists.

I always impart the anecdote from a show I produced, where a local art educator and ‘expert’ couldn’t determine if he liked a piece until he found out where the artist had trained.

Now – I’m not ripping the value of education – I just think that we use it as to much of a crutch. It is somehow easier to read a book, take a class, read a blog rather than go out and shot, draw, build. I know I fall into that trap.  It makes us feel like we’re improving our selves, but at the end of the day, we haven’t produced anything. That is the true test.

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.

The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.

Albert Einstein

This isn’t really focused on creativity, but it has enough overlap I felt like it was worth posting.

 A refreshing perspective in this realm of negativity we live in:

I just hooked up with Zack Arias’ blog and was reading back posts when I came across this one:  Is it Photography?

The post is built around a comment he recieved from a previous comment he made.  Read the entire post – it is great.

But I’d like to borrow the text of the actual comment, because I loved what this guy said about why we do this, the growth process.  Zack gave his name as ChrisDavid42.

First, my opinion about art vs. commercialism:
Art has always existed at a cross-roads between commerce and human expression. Artists who wish to benefit from their art will always be subject to the aesthetic of those who are willing to commission, or pay, for that work. On the other side of the coin are the artists who reject all control in pursuit of a “pure unadulterated expression of their vision.” I recently read of a photographer from eastern Europe who was discovered in his sixties or seventies. He spent much of his life in poverty and two decades in a mental hospital. I don’t want to be that guy.

I believe a key element of art is the interaction between artist, medium, and subject. Though at times this may not be conveyed successfully to the viewer, an arguably necessary component of “successful” art, the joy of the creation of art, in my mind, is as important as the result.

Zack consistently pushes his listeners and readers to strive for excellence and individual vision in their work, and I agree. And, I have been encouraged by his message. However, I must respond to a couple comments, including the comment about getting a side job rather than producing mediocre work, or as in one of Zack’s repeated quotes “competing with Wal-mart.”

I also take issue with Zack’s comment that an image can be a photograph, but not photography. I agree completely with the sentiment that there is way too much mediocrity in the industry and in the media. I cringe at most of the photos our local paper runs, especially after years of reading Zack’s blog and Strobist and knowing that 5 more minutes of effort could have improved those pictures. And yet, that tolerance for mediocrity is the what will allow me to build a small portrait business and get the experience that you can’t get from blogs, or shooting your kids and neighbors, and pay for the equipment that I can’t pay for out of my household budget.

As a photographer, I find incredible joy from making images of people. I find joy from growing in my craft technically, or, to say it differently, interacting with my camera and equipment. I find great joy from interacting with people and creating a photo with them, not of them. My goal is to someday have the skill that allows my images to show the world “my experience” or “what I see in my subjects.” However, I am still producing mediocre images, because of where I am at technically in my photographic journey. But, my skills are improving, and I am seeing more and more improvement in my images.

I have recently had the opportunity to do two evenings of “event portraits.” Setting up in a corner at a community event and doing a hundred mini-portrait sessions over the course of two hours. The blogs and videos very much informed that experience, but having to shoot successfully under pressure is something that you can only learn from experience.

And I loved every minute of it, every compromise, every success, every time that I had to sacrifice composition to a technical detail, every time I was able to show them a picture that was better than they expected; even the failures when I couldn’t overcome technical difficulties, or connect with my subjects. Every second of that was PHOTOGRAPHY.

Even if it doesn’t translate yet on my website, it was photography. Even if I spend two years competing with Walmart for customers. It was photography because it was a labor of love for the craft; even if the viewer cannot see it. Someday it will be GOOD PHOTOGRAPHY and the viewer will see it. And that is my problem with Zack’s criticism, you can’t always ascertain the process from the product. however, I think we could agree it is a communication failure, the failure on the photographers part to successfully communicate his/her vision.

Perhaps where I take issue is that I perceived an insult to the process, and I see the process as inseparable from the product. (Honestly, what is really tweaking me is that I really identify with the first person you critiqued. One of the first things you read from her e-mail was that she had been doing this for one year. I look at what I was doing after a year and think “wow. I didn’t have the guts to put together a website after a year.”)

Zack commented in earlier critiques that kid sports photography may be boring, but he will buy it because it is his kid. I totally get what he means here, it is like watching a movie where somebody’s dad dies in the first scene, you are emotionally connected to the movie whether it is poorly scripted and produced or not. Same thing with the pictures, you buy them even if they make you cringe. However, I think that the answer is not to berate the photographers for making lifeless images, the answer is to stop buying the images. Vote with your wallet, pay a more envisioned photographer to make images of your kid in his softball uniform. Keep encouraging and educating photographers and the overall level of the industry will rise.

In summary, thanks for taking the time to read my rant. Your critiques are successful because they are thought provoking. I love listening to them. I listened to your critique on Tuesday and have been arguing the ideas in my head all week. I absolutely loved your talk at Photocamp Utah; it inspired me. I will continue to cull my best images for my portfolio, and I will continue to shoot whatever people will pay me to shoot (or let me shoot for free), and i will likely display some of that in my portfolio, if that is what my customers want and are paying me for.

enough said.

From “The Agony and the Ecstasy” by Irving Stone

“One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.”

Pg 83

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K drew this self portrait for me so I will remember her while I’m at camp.

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The other day I looked up while sitting at my desk.

Something new from a twist of my head.

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Our first morning JP (John Paul Caponigro) instructed us to find the story. He told us we should go so far as to write it down. Of course I cringed inside. Writing goes deep, it requires engagement of muscles that I seldom use.

But I did it.

After that first round of shooting, while I was waiting for the last couple people to finish I wrote the following:

the Story

nouns – actors

verbs – actions

- qualifiers

- acted upon

The Literal Story

The Virtual Story

—-

Literal

The process of accumulation and erosion

Building up then tearing down

Slow, constant change

The beauty of ruined structures

I felt majesty – someone used the term temple and that felt right

—

The awesome majesty you feel as you approach these structures is what the builders of the cathedrals attempted to capture.

They captured some of that feeling – but these structures eclipse those.

—

Sounds of scuffling feet, tripod clinks and the chitter of the swallows in the cliffs, swirling around above as they chase one another.

I’ve been struggling since I decided to re-start my visual exploration. It is the same struggle I felt when I started in college, the same one that made me quit 15 years ago. I come from a working class family. We work for a living. Everything has a purpose and that purpose is focused on making a living. It’s a cycle that I can’t seem to break free of.

I fell in love with photography as a Boy Scout working on my Photography merit badge. I still remember standing in that darkroom and watching an image appear on the blank sheet of paper. It was magic – a magic that I could do. And that sense of wonder never went away. I lived for the moment when I put the exposed paper into the developer and watched an image appear. Every one of the thousands of times I did that I loved it. I miss that moment now, but there are other moments that the digital world provides that are almost as powerful.

I love exploring and finding that hidden image. Just walking around, camera in hand, looking, seeking and eventually finding. Or that image that I grabbed as I was walking by. I wasn’t really looking, but I had a camera in my hand I saw something significant, I grabbed it and moved on. Seldom do I realized at that moment that what I caught was great, but later, when I’m going through my shots and I see it – wow, I love that moment.

I love the moment of my life that I can capture and hang on a wall. Not just the picture – but the memory of that moment. It is there forever. The smells, the sounds, my feelings. I remember that moment more clearly than any other moment in my life.

And I hope my work has some of the same impact on others. I can’t speak for them, but I hope it does. I’ve won a few awards and enough comments that I believe it does.

But I keep getting caught up in the why. The how will I make a living at this. I need to pay for it – I need it to have a purpose that relates to the material needs of  life. Yeah, I read the quotes of how art lifts and inspires. How it is what pulls us up out of our earth-bound realm and allows us to see greater possibilities. And I believe them. But I have a hard time maintaining that for the long term.

It’s like when I’m involved in something spiritual, when my mind and heart are touched by that greater realm and I’m filled with that peace and joy and hope. Then I walk into my door, eager to share it. Then reality smacks me in the face. My kids are yelling, the dog is barking, I fall over something left on the floor and it’s gone. And there’s just a big hole where a moment before there was an all encompassing light and I feel worse for the loss.

I keep losing the true why to the noise of the earthly material why. At heart I’m overtly practical and art isn’t practical. It rises above practical and I find myself trying to make it practical. And every time I fall into that pit I don’t like it anymore.

Here are a couple of quotes from photographer Paul Caponigro, son of John Paul Caponigro. I’ve been spending a lot of time on John Paul Caponigro’s site because I’m impressed by his grasp of art, his approach to it, his peace with it. Something I seek but am having a hard time finding. These quotes talk about maintaining that innocence, about ‘Not Doing’ so you can step away from the process and be free to create. It really hit home with what I’ve been struggling with.

The full conversation was first published in the May/June, 1995 issue of View Camera magazine: www.viewcamera.com

Castaneda and Don Juan have a perfectly wonderful dialog together on the business of ‘not doing’ as opposed to ‘doing.’ Don Juan tells Castaneda that he must learn to ‘not do.’ Castaneda says, how do I not do? Life is doing. Yes, that’s precisely the problem. Everything that you do is based on something you already know. It has already been handed to you. Everybody is doing according to a formula and that’s what keeps it all in place. This is all too obvious. Not doing means that you’re aware that that process exists and you step away from it in order to see clearly. The ability to be free, from that process, even though you are a part of it, enables you to ‘see.’ Then it’s not difficult at all. Then the essence becomes available.

Photography attracted me before I ever knew that it was a part of a structured world. I saw a camera which my grandmother wielded. I thought it was fascinating. I didn’t know about famous artists and museums and magazines. I innocently met that process. And I excitedly engaged it to the best of my ability. Later, because my excitement was so strong, I realized that this could be a medium through which I could work. Then I had to meet the whole world of photography; manufacturers, materials, hype, galleries, dealers, critics, etc. Somehow I did not lose sight of that initial innocence. I realized that unless I could stay free, unidentified, unless I could keep my personality from going crazy with the adulation or the lack of it I was not going to maintain that innocence. I realized that the innocence was the important state that called forth the inspiration into the process.