PixelatedImage Blog

Richard Avedon, Self Portrait. 1923-2004

“I hate cameras. They interfere, they’re always in the way. I wish: if I could just work with my eyes alone. To get a satisfactory print, one that contains all that you intended, is very often more difficult and dangerous than the sitting itself. When I’m photographing, I immediately know when I’ve got the image I really want. But to get the image out of the camera and into the open, is another matter.”

“And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible.”

“I believe that you’ve got to love your work so much that it is all you want to do. I believe you must betray your mistress for your work, you betray your wife for your work; I believe that she must betray you for her work. I believe that work is the one thing in the world that never betrays you, that lasts. If I were going to be a politician, if I were going to be a scientist, I would do it every day. I wouldn’t wait for Monday. I don’t believe in weekends. If you’re headed for a life that’s only involved with making money and that you hope for satisfaction somewhere else, you’re headed for a lot of trouble. And whatever replaces vodka when you’re 45 is what you’re going to be doing.”

I’m not sure Richard Avedon and I would see eye to eye on everything, but I love his passion and there is something in the spirit of what he did and the things he said about what he did that warrants learning from him. Take some time online at some point, or at your local library, looking at the work of Avedon. As far as portrait photographers go, he was his own man with his own voice. Remember, the point is not to find photographers you like or even agree with, but photographers from whom we can learn.

Reminds me of a line from an early Bruce Cockburn song, Maybe The Poet:

You and he may not agree/but you need him to show you new ways to see…

Hey look, it’s an “E”! Speaking of E…

This week I launched the fourth in the my eBook series. Chasing The Look is now available. Still for $5. More information HERE.

Canon Blogger did an interview with me last week and it’s now live. The audio is a bit low, so you might need to crank it, but it was a conversation that took different directions than many of the interviews I’ve done. You can listen to it HERE. (If you have issues, download it directly from THIS LINK.)

Joe McNally, a man I admire for both his words and his images, posted an article on his blog on Monday (Nov. 09) that was particularily good. Read Letter To a Young Photographer HERE.

Freelance Switch has an article called The Part Time Photographer in this weeks archives. I admit to not having read it, it was a busy week, but it’s still open on my browser and if you want to beat me to it,  you can read that article HERE.

Think Tank Photo, of whom I am a huge fan, released a new bag this month. It’s the Urban Disguise 70 Pro and it’s much like the already-large Urban Disguise 60, which I have and love, but it fits a pro-sized SLR as well. As if it were’n't already huge enough. I don’t use my UD60 for shooting, just as a carry on, but like all things Think Tank they hold tonnes of gear and are extremely thoughtfully made. More info on the Think Tank Photo site HERE.

The feedback from yesterday’s post was great, thank you. Looks like I hit a nerve. So to take us all into the weekend, a couple quotes that remind us of the weightier matters.

“We don’t take photographs with our cameras, we take them with our hearts and our minds. They are a reflection of ourselves, what we are, and what we think.” ~ Arnold Newman.

“It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly. as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes ‘art’ in time.” ~ Alfred Stieglitz

There’s this great story about William Shatner ( aka Capt Kirk aka the Priceline.com guy) at a Star Trek convention. Clearly a bit put off by his fans he yelled at them to “Get a life!” Ok, not much of a story, more like a cautionary tale about biting the hand that feeds you, but I’ve always liked it. And it relates. Sort of. (Updated: Turns out the Get a Life thing was an SNL skit. But it was still Shatner. I stand corrected. Thanks. That’s what I get for blindly telling apocryphal stories without consulting the Google. )

I just finished listening to a short audio interview of Jay Maisel by Chris Orwig and in it Maisel says a couple of things that, if you read between the lines, are his way of imploring us to get a life. Want to be a better photographer, he says, be a more interesting person. Want better photographs, don’t study photography, study life, that’s what he’s saying.If photography is an act of expression, and for most of us it is, there must be something there to express. Want more to say? More texture? More depth? You need to be a photographer who first has more depth, more texture.

Maisel gets a bad rap as being a real hard-ass, and he might be, but while I suspect it’s only one of those gruff NYC exteriors, I think it’s still important to listen to him. Each time I’ve heard him speak he says something that makes me think, re-calibrates me. In fact the more I listen to photographers like Jay, people who’ve made a life and a living through their lens for a long time, the more I wonder why they truly don’t seem to give a damn about all the trappings that the pixel peepers are bent out of shape about.Why? They’ve found something they care about more – life. Now, whose photographs do you want to look at? Someone who cares deeply about cameras and inverse square law, or someone who cares deeply about life?

Listen to Chris Orwig’s short interview with Jay Maisel HERE. If you’re wanting to here what someone with substantially less to say, you can listen Chris Orwig’s short interview with me, HERE.

**

I’ll be out for the next few days. I’m taking some time to get away and do my annual thinking and planning with fewer distractions than home. And then I’m spending 24 hours with my friend and manager, Corwin, for our twice-annual Think & Drink – a planning session that is un-necessarily helped by some good single malt scotch and coffee. Not together. Coffee in the morning. Scotch in the evening. So, that might mean a couple shorter posts this week. But I wanted to leave you with two things.

1. My friend Mitchell Kanaskevich has two ebooks out, I’ve directed you to them before. He’s offering a Two for One sale and if you don’t have these two pdf books, they are well worth looking at. You can find him and his books HERE. I’m a fan of Mitchell’s work, take some time to look at it while you’re there.

2. This November is packed for me; too much going on. I had planned to release the next ebook closer to the end of the month. It’s done and ready to go, but I got a few comments last time to the tune of, “For the love of Galen Rowell, slow down, duChemin!” So I know I promised to space these things out but there’s just too much going on behind the scenes for me to space everything out perfectly and if I leave it too close to Christmas y’all are going to have to decide between buying a $5 ebook and that knick-knack for that co-worker you don’t really like and I don’t want to put you in that awkward position. So, Chasing The Look is coming out this week.  And by “this week,” I mean tomorrow. And the official release of VisionMongers is a week from this morning. Like I said, busy. But ya gotta make hay while the sun shines and that means I get these things out while I’m not on assignment or working on my next print book.

Thanks a bunch for your kind anniversary wishes. Sharon and I had a great time getting away from it all. We were socked in by rain which was just perfect for spending a weekend in a cottage nestled into the BC coastal forest with a fireplace, endless pots of tea, and the one I love. Thanks again for the kindness.

My buddy Chris Orwig, a man who combines the poet & geek with grace.

A few quick quotes this morning to bring us all back to thinking about the uneasy – but necessary – connection between the artistic and technical sides of ourselves, or our craft. It seems everywhere I look as I study creativity and the creative process, I see reminders that it’s those who give not 50% of their attention & pursuit to skill, and 50% to creativity, but those that give 100% to each, however mathematically improbable that sounds.

“The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally; skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.”
- Will Smith

“You’re only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft. Craft is where our best efforts begin. You should not worry that rote exercises aimed at developing skills will suffocate creativity. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that demonstrating great technique is not the same as being creative.”
-Twyla Tharp

“Without passion, all the skill in the world won’t lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.”
-Twyla Tharp

Next week I’m going to announce a giveaway related to the launch of VisionMongers, Making a Life and a Living in Photography. Until then, have a great weekend. Get out there and shoot something you love.

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity. - Edwin Land

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work. – Rita Mae Brown

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Scott Adams

A few years ago I had one of those mind-altering epiphanies and before you jump to conclusions, it was completely drug-free. I picked up, and read, Joey Reiman’s Thinking For a Living. Amazing. Made me see, among other things, that creativity is an asset, and harnessed well you can live on it. How many of us would love to make a living doing what we love, being paid to do what we do anyways, just for the love of it? Reiman is a former ad-exec, so the book is written from that angle. One day he’s running an ad agency and overnight he realizes that the clients are essentially paying for the ads to be executed but getting the creativity and the thinking for free. So he switched gears and turned his former ad agency into an ideation firm. Now they get paid to think and should the client so choose, they’ll execute the idea as well.

There’s a couple take-away nuggets in this for photographers. 1. Find the book and read it. 2. You should be selling your creativity and vision, not your ability to wield a camera. If you sell the former then the price is higher because there’s only one of you. If you sell the latter, the price is lower, because these days everyone claims to be a photographer. Simple supply and demand. Scarcity drives the price up. Your creativity and vision is an asset. For those of you that skipped Vision Week because it had “no real world application,” you should go back and read the articles and discussions. If you think creativity and vision are not the rarest of commodities and therefore valuable, well you couldn’t be more wronger.

Furthermore. You should read Hugh MacLeod’s How To Be Creative, and that’s available free as a PDF right HERE. I’m halfway through it and it’s fantastic.

Lastly, if you are in Vancouver, be sure to check out Creative Mix, Vancouver’s Ideation Conference. It’s a one day conference about creativity and pulls together an astonishing array of speakers at the top of their fields as creatives. There’s a chef, a juggler, businessmen, designers, a photographer (I’ll be speaking on Creativity and Constraint) and others. More info HERE. It’s just gaining momentum and the site’s not complete, but this is going to be great day. Book time off to be there. Thursday, October 22. At the Roundhouse in Vancouver.

“The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.

The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he beleives techinque is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when insptiration does comes. The professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.”

Another one from Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, to begin your week.

“A pro views her work as craft not art. Not because she believes art is devoid of mystical dimension. On the contrary. She understands that all creative endeavor is holy, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She knows if she thinks about that too much it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. Like Somerset Maugham she doesn’t wait for inspiration she acts in anticipation of its apparition. The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers.

The sign of the amateur is the overglorification of, and preoccupation with, the mystery.

The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.” -Steven Pressfield, The War of Art.

I think there’s alot in here worth unpacking, so rather than write something similar, I thought I’d go straight to the source. Care to discuss? Comments are open.

Near the beginning of my photographic journey I was given two books – both of them by Freeman Patterson. The first I have recommended several times here, Photography and the Art of Seeing, the second is Photography For the Joy of It. Re-reading them now I suspect they are at the very centre of who I’ve become as a photographer.

I want to leave you with a quote from Patterson, and the recommendation that you add Photography For the Joy of It to your reading list. Here’s the Amazon link. And here’s the quote:

In making photographs, two things are important above all others – the subject matter and you. Photographs are what happen when you and the subject meet, and you use a camera to describe the meeting. A photograph is a visual description of the relationship between the subject and the photographer; and a good photograph is one which clearly shows the character of the subject while revealing the photographer’s response to it.

If you think of a photograph in this way, you’ll find your personal direction as a photographer emerging and becoming clearer. Sometimes it takes a while to understand what’s happening, and to decide upon what you expect from the relationship. Good relationships require a lot of give and take, and a lot of hard work. But the process of coming to know yourself through interaction with someone or something else is very satisfying. In the end, you get the picture – of both of you.

If things have gone the way we’ve planned, I am still in Ladakh. We overnighted in Leh last night but will be heading out to a more remote village today, overnighting there after photographing in the village for the evening, then back to Leh tomorrow. We fly to Delhi on Saturday ending the Lumen Dei tour. I fly to Kathmandu on Sunday, the 28th, and will be – should be – back online shortly thereafter with an actual update. Thanks for hanging in there with me through this last few weeks.

I’m giving you another well-deserved break from my rants – not all of which, it seems, have been appreciated by others. I was accused, of all things, this week, of exhibiting sour grapes towards the very people for whom I freely labour by writing this blog.

My rant about gear being paramount to vision rubbed some the wrong way. Alas, the internet is a tough place to express an opinion, unless you clarify everything and put italicized caveats on every thought, you’re bound to be read out of the current context by someone. If I’ve been sour to to anyone out there, let me know and I’ll happily apologize. But if you think gear is a substitute for vision or having something to say, we’ll just have to happily disagree.

To be great, art must point at something. To be a good artist, one must have something to point at. The better your craft, the more clearly and powerful your pointing can be. Gear only makes it a little easier, a little faster. The hardest work is creative, getting what’s inside, out.

In an effort to give you all a break from my soapbox, and point you in the direction of another one – here’s an inspiring lecture by David Griffin of National Geographic on the power of the photograph. Follow THIS LINK to the TED page to watch it. Thanks to my friend Wes for pointing it out.

It is time again for another hodgepodge of resource, gathered from the far reaches of the cyber galaxy.

First, in the interest of keeping as many photographers from bankruptcy and therefore living the dream as long as possible – check out Freelance Switch’s article 10 Items You Absolutely Need For Financial Security.

On the same topic, Photopreneur has a post about raising your prices HERE.

Eric Frischling, aka Flying With Fish, just got a book deal! Congrats to Eric, and good for us who travel with cameras because The Traveling Photographers Essential Pocket Guide is going to be a great resource to us.

Terry White was the guest author on Kelby’s Photoshop Insider this week, and gave a good tutorial on outputting images for an iPhone or iPod Touch. Link HERE.

David Hobby, aka Strobist, has a review of the new Nikon SB 900. I’m not a Nikon shooter, but these are sweet strobes. Nikon shooters toying with the idea of shelling out for these new strobes will want to read this.

A couple weeks back Scott Kelby asked the world to save August 23rd on their calendar. Keep it open, folks. I can’t say why. Just do it for me. Keep it open. Pretty please.

Yesterday Matt Brandon took a comparative look at VistaPrint and Overnight Prints on a recent business card project. Even I was surprised at the cost – and the cards look good. If you still haven’t got business cards that make prospects say “wow, nice card!” you need to step up to the plate.

Don’t forget to get your name in for the Free R-Strap Giveaway. Hey, while we’re talking about the R-strap, check out this two-camera set-up on Tony Schreiber’s blog. It’s similar to something I’ve been playing with, but while I’ve been toying with velcro, he’s gone and used straps. I like this alot. Check it out HERE.

Finally, a quote, found on the PhotoQuotes site. If you’re looking for inspiring out-of-context quotes from your favourite photographers, this is the place. It’s actually a great resource and the quotes are very well referenced.

A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
- Sam Abell

Have a great weekend. Shoot what you love, love what you shoot. Go make some mistakes.