PixelatedImage Blog

I’ve been on a tear about sharing lately. Earlier this month I did a webinar with the Manfrotto School of Excellence and while my topic concerned so-called Going Pro issues, I still managed to get hung up on the idea that the most foundational concerns of the photographer are creating and sharing photographs. The rest is peripheral. And yet somehow we (and by that I mean, I) tend to lose sight of this at times. So last month I began my own renaissance of sharing, renewing my own resolve to use my camera more, and to finally curate and print collections of my work.

Sharing our work is not only about keeping the gift moving, it’s about creation itself, because the way we create and the reasons we do so, are affected by the sharing. There’s a critical feedback loop that happens and the more we share, the more that feedback allows us to grow in our craft, and in our art. So when Stuart Sipahigil, author of Close To Home, asked me about a book on the whys and hows of sharing our photography, I was pumped. If you know Stu, you know he’s practical and down-to-earth, and he’s a great teacher.

SHOOT + SHARE is about the creative process, but specifically the sharing. Stuart talks about sharing across all kinds of media, including social media, self-published books, prints, canvas and more. I was already excited about sharing my work, but reading Stuart’s ideas and suggestions gave me a bunch of new ideas, which I’ll be working into my own process and output.

There is something about the digital world, and the lack of prints we once had almost automatically with film, that makes it a little too easy not to share our work, but the flip-side is an opportunity like never before to share in new ways, faster ways, cheaper ways, and in ways that give us far more creative control than ever before. Like all the books in the Craft & Vision library, SHOOT + SHARE is beautifully laid out and full of great content and inspiration, and if you buy it in the next few days, it’s only $4.

For the next five days use the promotional code SHARE4 when you checkout so you can have the PDF version of SHOOT + SHARE for only $4 OR use the code SHARE20 to get 20% off when you buy 5+ PDF eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm (PST) April 28, 2012.

A couple large prints would look great on these walls.

Photographers are a funny lot. So easily distracted. I just came back from the camera store where I came within an inch of buying the new Fuji X Pro 1. I resisted and had a cupcake instead. But as I drove home I thought about it. I had been working – happily printing my Antarctica series at the Loft – when I got it into my head that I needed to look at this camera. Not sure what I was thinking. I mean, it’s a nice camera, but I don’t need one. What I need to do is my work. The work. Anyone who’s read Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, will recognize this as what Pressfield calls Resistance, that self-sabotaging force that convinces us that almost anything is more important than doing our work. What is that work?

Create. Then Share. Then do it again.

Sharing is a theme I’m thinking a lot about, and you’ll hear more about it in the coming month. The truth is, I’ve neglected sharing my own work the way I want to, for a couple years. Yes, I put it in books and blog posts, and a monthly wallpaper, but I want to do more. I want to show bodies of work, I want to print large, I want to curate my own collections and, in the words of Rabbi Hillel, though I’m taking him wildly out of context, “If not now, when?”

The amazing thing about sharing our work is that it keeps the gift moving. But it does something else. It improves our craft. The feedback loop that is created when we print our work large, for example, sends us back to the negative to print it better, to be more attentive to the small things. It also makes us aware of mistakes we make chronically; in my case I routinely underexpose by a stop or more, and I pay about as much attention to the cleanliness of my sensor as I do to the Easter Bunny. The only difference is the Easter Bunny doesn’t keep showing up in my final photographs.

Sharing can also force us to heed our edits. Knowing others will see our work, though this is not true, it seems, of hundreds of thousands of people on Flickr, pushes us to be more selective. Printing does this even more. When you know each print costs you $20, you think twice about whether you need to print every one of the 100 frames of your cat that moments ago, while you were posting up a storm on Flickr, were all pure gold. A collection of a dozen well-selected photographs is usually much more powerful than a loose collection that you haven’t taken the time to edit.

Perhaps now’s the time to get your collections in order, cull out the dross, do a second edit to find missing gold, and then share them. In the past 5 years I’ve done Blurb books, put carefully curated albums on my iPad, made large canvases, and made and framed fine-art prints. I’m beginning to put new work up on Google+. Today I saw greeting cards made from MOAB fine-art papers – why not print up a dozen and give them to people as gifts, or one at a time when someone does something nice for you? My new loft has given me other options and I’ve just put a cable up to easily hang a large print on a rotating basis in my entry-way. Where can you show your work at home? I even heard of one photographer who prints up a new collection of work every couple of months, installs it in his home, and does a one-night gallery evening with wine, and invited his friends, many of whom buy and collect his work. Why not take some time to finally get that 500px account you’ve been talking about, and post a dozen images. How about looking into MOO.com to make cards showing your best work. Even if you never plan to work as a photographer, how great would it be to give people a card with your phone number and one of your photographs? Get your work out there, give it room to find a life outside your harddrives.

How do you share your work? I’d love to hear from you.

Monument Valley, 2011

With the advent of digital photography, and even more importantly, the internet, our ability to share and experience photographs has changed dramatically. The wet darkroom, once so necessary for creating prints we could touch and feel, is much less common than it once was, and if I were a betting man I’d wager that the majority of digital photographers out there have never printed their own work, and never had the joy of seeing their work large and framed, never felt the richness of a rag paper with their art on it. That impoverishes all of us. High tech, but low touch.

I have always printed my work, though there have been notable hiatuses in my printing, the last 2 years among them. Sometimes I’ve done it myself, to varying degrees of success, and at other times I’ve had anyone from mPix.com to professional printers do my prints. But no matter what, sharing photographs on paper is a beautiful experience. That alone is why I print, and have returned to printing as a student. But there’s more.

I think photographers, and this is something my girlfriend taught me, need to live with their work. Not just on an iPad or laptop, but printed. Large. You need to feel it. Need to live with the lines and tones and moments. Feel the colours. Doing so reveals the flaws (dust spots on the sensor, anyone?), and the weaknesses. Could those lines be stronger? Could there be more tension? Are the colours right? In short, it can return us to craft. It can focus us on more than the momentary experience of seeing a photograph on Facebook, and give the image the dignity of being created in the real world.

For me, this return to printing has pushed me back from the edge of laziness. To see, in 17×22 inch detail, the flaws in my work, has pushed me to become more diligent. Not because I want perfection, but because my art deserves better than to be treated with the flippancy that digital can encourage me towards. And because, like the rest of this past year, it slows me down. It forces me to pay attention. It opens me to renewed receptivity. And, perhaps this is the real reason, the prints are simply more beautiful in my hands and on walls than they will ever be on my screens.

I encourage you, even if you never print at home, to print your work. The artist’s life is about creating and sharing, not creating and hording. If you don’t have a printer, look into mPix.com or WHCC.com and do some test prints with them, or go to your local Costco and try them out. But print your work. Do one a month and at the year’s end you’ll have 12 beautiful prints. Do two of each and at the year’s end you’ll have 12 to keep and 12 to sign and give away as gifts. The ability to see and experience the world, and express that experience through your work, is a gift; keep it moving.

If you’ve not read it, and printing your work yourself intimidates or frustrates you, take a look at Martin Bailey’s ebook, MAKING THE PRINT. It’s $5 and worth every penny. I wish I’d had it 5 years ago.

Iceland, 2010

I spent part of today doing a second edit – nearly two years after the first one – on my Iceland 2010 images. These second edits are important to me, for two reasons. First, we miss images on our first edit, and the closer that edit happens to the moments of making the photographs, the more we get seduced by those moments, our expectations, and our disappointments. A little distance, like a few months or years, can help bring some objectivity. Or a broader perspective to our subjectivity. Either way, at least for me, it reveals images I had once passed over.

The second advantage is that while the images may not have changed in two years, our vision has, and so has our technique. Revisiting the images for a second edit can allow us to work on those images more slowly, and with an improvement in our craft that we didn’t have two years ago.

Take some time in the coming days to revisit your libraries and give your images another glance, you might be surprised what you come up with. I discovered a dozen images from Iceland and a whole B&W series that was just waiting to be discovered. These are some of them.

Over a year ago I released Vision Is Better, essentially an eBook version of this blog, and it’s become one of the best-selling titles under the Craft & Vision umbrella, which I think is (a) awesome and (b) amusing. I’m not quiet about the fact that Vision Is Better, and now Vision Is Better, Volume 2, is really just a great re-hash of this blog; the last thing I want is to quietly sell you something you could get for free. The reason we offer it is because, well, you really can’t get this for free. We’ve taken the blog, pulled out a ton of the somewhat dated content, announcements, and general chaff, then we added a couple previously unpublished essays, took out some (but not all of the original typos) and had our Design Ninja, Luke Taylor, re-package it. And it’s yours to access on your iPad, or laptop, whenever and wherever you like. No surfing, no frantic looking for a wifi signal, no huge data bills just to find that essay you want to re-read.

Vision Is Better 2 is similar to the first in that we’ve collected the best essays from the blog, and bundled them together. It differs because this year was profoundly different for me, and so there’s some of that journey too. If you read this blog (and you do, don’t try to tell me you don’t!) you know this year wrapped itself around an unexpected life-changing adventure for me, and some of that is in there too. So is the Life is Short stuff. And the usual rants. And bigger photographs than what you get on the blog. Frankly, it’s what this blog should be, but isn’t because I’m busy and these walls don’t just fall off themselves, you know. (Inside joke which you will totally find hilarious if you buy this ebook.)

If you read this blog (see comment above!) then think of this as your yearbook. If we meet in person I’ll sign it. If you do not read this blog (ahem), then you’ll still want it because, I believe, it can make you a better photographer. No, not like that new lens was meant to do. If there’s one thing I believe will make us all stronger photographers, it’s mindfulness. Intent. (Please don’t make me use the word “vision” again.). The subtitle for Vision is Better was Free the Mind, Free The Camera. This time it’s Free The Mind, The Camera Will Follow. Same, same, but different, (as they say in S.E. Asia) because the reason I continue to write remains the same: the way we think is the way we see, and we’ll make better photographs when we spend as much time honing our minds and our hearts as we do memorizing the buttons on the camera.

As you can imagine, there’s a ton of pages in this thing. If you love this blog and don’t want to shell out $5, it’ll still be here as it always is. Free. But if you want to access this content over and over again, in a format that’s easier to read, a little more intentionally curated, and includes a couple essays I’ve never published, then it’s all yours, as it always is, for only $5. Unless you buy it this week, then it’s only $4. And of course, those of you with a subscription to the Craft & Vision Community, this is yours to download for free this month.

Save $1 – Pay just $4 if you use coupon code VIB4.
Save $3 – Get the Vision is Best Bundle for $7 if you use coupon code VIB7.
Save 20% – Get 5+ PDF eBooks for less if you use the discount code VIB20.

These discount codes expire Wednesday, December 21 at 11:59pm (PST).

By now you know me well enough to know that I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about the so-called photography industry. Weird enough that I even wear a bonnet, right? But the continual focus on gear at the expense of creativity  is why so many who love this craft are frustrated. Too much time on the peripherals – gear and technique – without tending to the core.

If you have any interest in expressing yourself and creating beauty, if you’re more than just a camera-collector but a photographer, then creativity is your core asset. It’s why I pushed so hard for people to read Corwin Hiebert’s book, Your Creative Mix, when it came out. And it’s why I’ve written a third volume in the Inspired Eye series (find Volume One HERE and Volume Two HERE or check-out “The Bundle” below).

The Inspired Eye, Volume 3 is a series of articles about the creative process, specifically for photographers, and I wrote it because the questions and discussions I hear most these days are not about depth of field and selective focus; they’re about creativity and expression and the frustrations we all experience trying to get beyond mere technical proficiency. Technical proficiency is highly over-rated. To be sure, there’s value in it when you need it, but a camera is still just a box with a hole in it. If you can make a good exposure, and focus the camera, the rest is about your choices – your own creative decisions in making a photograph. It’s those choices – your creativity – that make the photograph. If I had only 4 hours to spend working on my photography, I’d spend one hour on technique and 3 hours calibrating my creativity, that’s how important I think it is.

The Inspired Eye, Volume 3, was written for just that, as were volumes 1 and 2, for that matter. If you belong to the Craft & Vision Community, Volume 3 will be delivered to you today. If you don’t (ahem, why not?! Find out more HERE) then you can get The Inspired Eye 3 for $5, or $4 if you use coupon code EYETHREE4 before Saturday, September 24 at 11:59pm (PST). As always during these launch discounts, you can get 5 for the price of 4, this time the discount code is EYETHREE20. If you’re a member of the Craft & Vision Community already, now’s the time to download it.

The Inspired Eye Bundle! Get all three volumes for just $12. The first two eBooks have new covers but the layouts and content is unchanged.

Agra Fort. Agra, India. 2008.

I rediscovered this sequence of photographs while putting together Photographically Speaking. In the book I discuss one of these images and explore the elements and decisions that make the photograph what it is. But looking at the 3 together I think there’s a lesson along the lines of the stuff I’ve been talking about lately, specifically the idea of inspiration coming from work, and my more recent post, Do The Work.

It’s easy to see something, to photograph it, and to move on. But you can photograph even the most amazing scene – the one where you’re sure you “got the shot” from an almost limitless number of angles. Add that to a variety of focal lengths, and you’ve got your work cut out for you. This is the photographer’s equivalent of the writer sitting down at her laptop to write the next chapter. This is the process of experimentation, muttering to yourself, then trying something else. It’s creating 100 sketch images to get to the next one. It’s why we need to understand the elements of the visual language; so we recognize them when we see them and put them to good use. Because, frankly, there is no “got the shot.” There are thousands of potential photographs in these scenes, not one, and how long you’re willing to explore, how receptive you are to what is in front of you, determines how many of them you create. I thought I had the shot when I took the top photograph. I was giddy. I nearly ran off to show someone how amazing I was. My (misguided) ego nearly ruined this series. Sure, you could stop at one. But sometimes the good gets in the way of the great, and I think this series together is more powerful than the first photograph alone, but even on their own, these three – and making them – brought me more joy than I’d have had to simply stop at one and call it a day.

The writer doesn’t stop and pat herself on the back when she’s written a really great sentence. She keeps writing. She does the work. Because she knows there’s a better sentence around the corner, and they’ll fit together brilliantly and the combination of the two will be even better than both alone and no amount of patting herself on the back will create that next line. Just work. The work. YOUR work. Being open, receptive, and observant, comes with practice, not as a stroke of luck. Keep at it. I shot this, still struggling (I know, my angst is exhausting) to get comfortable with my craft, after 20 years as a photographer. I’m getting there. So are you.

All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice. ~ Elliott Erwitt

Finding my own rhythm again hasn’t been easy, but it’s still there. Sometimes the waves just seem to take longer to crest, but they do. This was the first time I really picked up a camera since the accident. It took me two months to get there. Photo: Cynthia Haynes.

Every creative person I know goes through ups and downs, as though our creative life rides on top of the water and rises and falls with the waves. We experience brilliant highs and depressing lows. When the wind kicks up and the ocean is wild, the highs are higher, and we feel glorious, unstoppable, and they crash harder, the glory gone. Stopped.

What helps is not looking too closely at the wave, but at the ocean itself. Pull back, look at the water from a hill ten miles distant and the water looks smooth as glass – as your creative life does, or will, from a distance. The dips and peaks evened out. This helps not because it makes one bit of difference when you’re at the bottom of a wave cycle and you feel like you’ve made your last good, beautiful, photograph or written your last honest word. It helps because it allows us to understand the cycle, to use it, to ride out the waves, even building momentum.

Our creative life, the very nature of how most of us work internally, is rhythmic. Brilliant creativity is unsustainable day-to-day. A wave that has a high, but is not flanked by lows, is not a wave, it’s placid water. No lows, but no highs, either. We have a word for it in the creative world – mediocrity. Todd Henry, in his book The Accidental Creative, says, “mediocrity is a high price to pay for a lifetime of safety.” You can’t have this creative life, ask for the highs, and never get the lows. That doesn’t make the lows easier, but it’s nice to feel normal, isn’t it?

Creativity happens in the space between taking in and incubating as many influences as the world allows us, and the sudden rush of a newborn idea who comes into the world in a mix of hard work and joy, sweat and tears. The birth of that idea, and the execution of it, are often on the crest of the wave. They are the high points for which we live. If the high point of that wave is adoration and praise, then you’re missing out. Singer/songwriter Josh Ritter sings, “I’m singing for the love of it, have mercy on the man who sings to be adored.” Russian actor (and originator of Method acting) Konstantin Stanislavsky, said, “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.” But that’s a digression, not really my point.

My point is this (man, he’s long-winded!): it’s in the lows of the wave where we feed inspiration. If we are conscious of the shape of the wave and the way our process works, we know that wave will crest again. What we do at the bottom of the wave determines how much momentum we have at the top. We can spend that time being depressed and feeling sorry for ourselves, or we can feed the muse. We can go to the museum, the gallery, the coffee shop, the library, the theater, wherever it is you find your own paint stirred. Forget how you’ve suddenly lost your brilliance. Go find the brilliance of others and let it feed your soul. Go be with your family, read a book, and then, most importantly, do the work. Don’t set your camera down simply because inspiration hasn’t yet come. Inspiration, says French poet Charles Baudelaire, comes from working.

Riding these waves gets more predictable the longer you do it; you see the rhythm in it, you begin to know your process. I will often mumble this to myself in the lows, when I am doing the work and my Muse (wretched, unreliable, prodigal Muse, where the hell is she?!) is nowhere in sight. “Trust your process, David. It’ll come.” and I keep working, mumbling other things, less savory and less family-rated things, but I keep at it, and the movement of the wave carries me forward, pulls me upward, as it always does, and I begin to get excited about what I might find at the top, and I get more grateful for the Muse (wonderful, reliable, always-present Muse!).

Do the work. Trust your process. Ride the wave out.

Creativity is our single greatest asset. If you want to nurture that asset, and understand your process more, here are two suggestions. Corwin Hiebert just wrote an eBook called Your Creative Mix and it’s a brilliant book about creativity. Read more HERE. And I’ve got two eBooks – The Inspired Eye and The Inspired Eye 2. Both of those talk directly about ways we can understand and strengthen our creative process as photographers.

Most of you know I consider my manager and best friend to be a bit of a superhero. Dude just gets it, and gets it done. Without him I’d be floundering. What makes Corwin unique is his ability to understand – and operate on – the difficult bridge between creativity and commerce. While Corwin’s business chops are super-solid, he understands that as creatives our first task is to tend to the creative stuff. He knows the creative stuff is the fire in our souls, he knows it’s the only asset we have when it comes to business, and so he places the highest value on it. And where he sees a chance to take it up a notch, he does it- or makes me do it – without prejudice. He’s a little scary, actually.

So this month we’re releasing Corwin’s Your Creative Mix. I think you should buy it for the cheeky cover alone. The cover shot comes from photographer Martin Prihoda, and while it has little to do with the book (I just love the shot, and Martin’s a genius), it comes from a mini-case study in the book. Corwin not only wrote a book about creativity and collaboration and how that can help build both your art and your business, he did so creatively and collaboratively. This one’s full of stuff. We don’t make page counts a selling point anymore because, well, frankly, it’s not relevant, but also because we now paginate one full spread as one page instead of two. So, if we were still mentioning page count, and we aren’t, this one would be almost 80 pages on the old system.

The title, Your Creative Mix, comes out of the conference Corwin creates in Vancouver each year called Creative Mix. He brings in brilliant speakers to talk about creativity and community. Same thing in this book. Only then he adds photographs, rants, and a boat-load of great content and ideas.  If there’s a VisionMonger in you at all, or you’re interested in the power of collaboration to push your creativity, then you’ll get much more than your $5 worth out of this one. But then who are we kidding, we all know y’aren’t paying $5. See below for the discount codes. One last thing. Would you do me a favour? When we rebuilt the Craft & Vision site a year ago we made sure there was a way to give helpful reviews and comments. So if you have a moment, leave an honest comment or helpful review for this or any of the other C&V books you’ve loved? Those comments are helpful to others. Thank you!

Lastly, I’m a big fan of Todd Henry, the Accidental Creative, and because this book is about creativity, we’re giving away 3 copies of Todd’s great new book, The Accidental Creative, and bundling it with his Personal Idea Pad.  Anyone buying Your Creative Mix during the discount period will have their name thrown into the hat and we’ll randomly give these away as thanks to three lucky, random, readers.

Special Offer on PDFs
For the first five days only, if you use the promotional code MIX4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of Your Creative Mix for only $4 OR use the code MIX20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST July 23rd, 2011.

A week ago I left what might have been my shortest post ever: Originality is Overrated. It generated some good discussion, and from the comments it seemed to really resonate and get some thoughts going. My own thinking has been stirring too, but before I tell you where those thoughts have -for now – settled, I wanted some ghosts to have their say:

“Insist upon yourself. Be original.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Originality is the art of concealing your sources”
~ Benjamin Franklin

“Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.”
~ Jean Guitton

“What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.”
~ Eugene Delacroix

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
~ Herman Melville

“Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.”
~ Ansel Adams

“Originality is merely an illusion”
~ M.C. Escher

“The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.”
~ Thomas Carlyle

“Utter originality is, of course, out of the question”
~ Ezra Pound

“Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.”
~ James Stephens

Not all of them appear to agree. But I think all of them are right in one sense or another.  There are three apparently different things being said by these voices. The first is that originality does exist, and is desireable. The second is that no true originality exists.  The third implies originality is in fact possible, but is not relative to what already exists, but to the artist himself. I think we’re using the same word to mean slightly different things.

So here’s where I’m at on the issue, without over-thinking it any further. And if it seems I’ve flip-flopped on the issue, I don’t think I have, just looking at it a little broader.

I think the search for originality burdens artists. Does it exist? I think so. But I need to qualify that, and that’s hard to do without being prescriptive. But in general I think that making the pursuit of originality our primary pursuit as creative people, results in work that is different, but not necessarily honest. And for many it is crippling, because imitation and influence are among the first steps to learning our craft. Originality is not the greatest good.

I believe in originality in this sense:

Sense A. Creativity is about combining existing elements into new combinations and there are nearly infinity possibilities out there. Yes, all art is derivative, but that doesn’t mean borrowing influence & inspiration, from, say, Monet, Leonard Cohen, and a turnip, can’t result in something new. Something that is, in a real sense, original (even though we’ve not defined the word.)

Sense B. While the basic truth of being human is that we share profound commonalities, we are all different. That makes us, as creators, unique, with the possibility of creating unique work. Being true to that uniqueness and creating work that is honest and imaginative, opens us to the possibility of originality.

My friend Anita, a woman with an artists heart and inquisitive mind, used a great word recently in a discussion about this. The word was possibility, and that’s why I’m using it so much here. We’re trying, in debates about originality to pin things down without defining our terms, all the while avoiding the possibility that originality and uniqueness exist. She said, “I think it should be less about defining originality or debating its existence, and more about being open to possibility, creativity, imagination.”

And that’s where I end up in my thinking as well. Do I believe in the possibility of originality? For me that still depends on how we’re using the word, but yes. I like to believe in infinite possibility. It allows room for my imagination. It implies creative freedom is possible. But it’s still a by-product of a search for something else and not the goal itself. Our creative minds and hearts will flourish more, and create with greater faithfulness to who we are, if we stop making originality the goal and allow ourselves to be overtaken by the pursuit of  honest expression, play, and imagination. Be yourself. Do the work. The rest will follow.

We all do things for different reasons. For me the goal is to create, express, and communicate, my reactions to this life and this world, in a way that is faithful to who I am. Whether it is ever seen as original doesn’t matter. I’d rather it be faithful. I like how C.S. Lewis expressed it:

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
– C. S. Lewis