PixelatedImage Blog

Self Portrait, iPhone.

There are rules for engineering bridges, and flying airplanes. There are laws about how you drive a car and file your taxes. There are no rules or laws in art. Art is a beautiful anarchy, a place wherein we express – or try to – the inexpressible, to “eff the ineffable” as author Nick Hornby once wrote.  Art is a place where we play and do and create, and share, according to our will, our whim, and our stubborn determination. It is the one place in which we can ask the question “What if?” with near total abandon, and (mostly) free from consequence. There are no art police, and no authorities, and those who would be should be eyed with suspicion or torn from their high places.

Your art, the thing that stirs from your heart, mind, and soul, the thing that moves you, and I hope, moves others, is a free agent, and the moment you begin to ask “What should I do? or “How should I do this?” you allow you art to teeter, to lean towards conformity and away from authentic expression. Unless it’s the muse herself to whom you direct the question. The same is true of your path in the creative arts if you make your living there; why do we do this at all if not for the freedom to beat that path into whatever direction that suits our fancy, or to paint the cobblestones any damn colour we please? To do what we should in art is bondage. To tell others, with our art, what they should think or feel or do, is propaganda. And to tell other artists how they should do their art is presumptuous, and unkind, and tells the muse we’ve learned nothing at all under her influence.

We need more anarchists in photography, more people willing to abandon the stupidity of megapixels and brands and red stripes on their lenses and get back to making beauty for the sake of its joy. We need more people that make photographs that surprise us, not mimic others, and more people creating simply to create, and to share their work as a gift, not a request for praise. We need a resurgence in pinholes, film, wet plates, and any damn technique that makes you happy and in which you find your muse. We need to scrap the word “professional” because it implies authority, and simply allow everyone to be an artist, their work judged by its own merits not the camera used to create it or the clients that paid for it. We need people who understand how composition and light makes us feel, not which third of the frame to use, or which light is “bad light.”

Photography is still young. As an art it is still in its awkward, beautiful, childhood, but we stunt its growth, and our own, when we seek and follow the so-called rules, instead of just getting on with it and doing our work: making and sharing photographs that please our eyes and our hearts, that say – even imperfectly – the things we can’t find words for.

I’m about to get on a flight to Milan, via Frankfurt. 3 days of private lectures in Switzerland, a week with an old friend and my camera in Stockholm, then to Italy for 2 weeks of Within The Frame Adventures. If I’m quiet, that’s why. Maybe just sign out of Facebook, close the browser, embrace your inner anarchist, and go make some photographs…  See you soon!

Shooting sunset in the Maasai Mara, while a ranger keeps an eye out.
Photo credit: Regis Vincent.

When Nicole S. Young’s ebook on MicroStock came out last year on the Craft&Vision site, we caught some flack for “supporting the microstock model.” We were told how unfair the model is, how it’s going to put photographers out of business, and how irresponsible it was to put out a book that helps people navigate these waters, unfair as they are. Then I read some bits and pieces of woe about the state of journalism and the decline of print media. Then this morning I spent time reading the blog of Joe Konrath, also not a photographer, but a well-known self-publisher in the fiction world. The pieces came together.

In VisionMongers I said that our businesses should be an act of creativity as much as our photography is. I believe that more now than I did before. So, if you’ll indulge a rant/sermon, hear me out on something. This rant’ll get worse before it gets better, so read through to the end. I promise to try to end without completely shipwrecking this.

One of the currents I detect in the arguments against microstock, though this rant is not specifically about microstock, is the same one I think I’d get from a whiny teenager whose father won’t let him use the car, except in the business world there is no father and if you want a car, you have to buy it. No one is going to hand it to you, no one owes you anything, most especially not a business model that’s just like the so-called good old days. The good ol’ days never were. The world changes, it’s not easy, it’s not fair, but it’s the same playing field we’ve always played on. People whining about the unfairness of the microstock model, or __________________ (insert random unfairness here) have forgotten that if they are self-employed, they are the rainmakers. No one else. So bitch about the lack of rain or get out and pound the button on the cloud-seeder like a rented mule. The question is not: is it fair? The question is: how badly do you want it?

Yes, once upon a time you could wait for the phone to ring and someone would pay you $500 for a photograph of a plate of pasta. ChaChing! They would tell you how to shoot it, when to shoot it, and you’d do it with a stylist and art director hovering over you, making you wish you were photographing drooling kids against wooded backdrops in KMart instead. But now the phone doesn’t ring. So some photographers, wanting to spend their time creating instead of bitching, still shoot the pasta. And pizza. And, well, whatever the hell they want. No art directors. Few stylists. And no, no one writes them a cheque that takes 6-8 weeks to arrive after you’ve invoiced them twice. Instead, they post those photographs to a microstock site, and they make $1. But they make that dollar 500 times. Or 1000 times. Or they don’t make a penny because their photograph isn’t remotely as good as others available to the same market, and they have to go back and do it better, get a little more creative and make a photograph that hasn’t already been shot. Unfair? It’s the fairest it’s ever been – it’s fair because it relies on how good your work is and how hard you hustle. But let’s be honest, the business world isn’t about fair. It’s about responding to how the world functions, and the needs of the people in that world, and finding a market for what you offer within that world. The ones who meet this challenge in the most creative ways, and with the most amount of elbow grease are the ones who make it, not the ones whining over a latte in a Starbucks somewhere.

So why did I mention self-publishing? Because the world of publishing is changing the same way the world of photography is. Is there as much money to be made by authors? Absolutely! In fact, there’s more! But it’s different. The same is true of journalism. Things are changing. Is it easy? No. Is it fair? Does it matter? EVERYTHING is changing. It always has. It always will. If you are in business for yourself as a photographer, your job, as the CEO of You Inc., is to meet those changes head on, to navigate the rough waters and do it in a way you love, while not sinking the ship. No one promised you safe passage. No one owes you a waveless voyage. You will get “there” (wherever there is) not by how good your photographs are (there are a lot of amazing photographers out there, have you noticed?) but by how creatively you engage your market, and how hard you hustle. Read that again. If you are floundering, it’s not because you don’t have a better camera or the same 85/1.2L lens that that other, more successful, photographer on the other side of town, or the other side of the internet. It’s because you aren’t being as creative as you thought you were or you aren’t hustling. That’s a broad brush to paint with but I believe it with all my heart. Everything I’ve learned in business tells me that. Stop buying gear and start buying books about business and new media. (BTW, how good your art is matters tremendously, it’s just a different conversation about a different thing.)

Yes, things are changing. They always have. But you can either make the change or react to it. Either way you need to be creative. You can do two things with your time on this earth – play the cards you’re dealt with all the energy and conviction you can, or whine and moan about how lousy your cards are. But whining and moaning never once changed the cards in anyone’s hand. Yes, Detroit was decimated by the economy, and it was left in literal ruins. But it’s making a come back. Not because it sat there feeling sorry for itself (ok, some did, but they aren’t the ones making the comeback), but because they got creative. They stood up, dusted off the seat of their jeans and looked the situation square in the eye and said, “OK. Now what?” It’s hard work. It’ll take time. And if you don’t love that work, give up now.

The opportunities to make  a living doing something you love in the creative arts has never, ever, been like they are now. The same things causing the massive shift away from old models (insert whining) are the same forces allowing us these new opportunities (insert creativity and hard work). There are more opportunities to show and sell our work, whatever that is, to more people on this planet, than any photographer or artist has ever had in any previous generation on this planet. If you want to make a go of this, the time has never been better. Assuming one of the reasons you want to do this is to be creative, to sail your own ship, and to enjoy the journey. There is no path waiting for you. You have to make it. There are no charts for where we’re sailing to, these are unknown waters. No one promised us a safe passage, and anyone that thinks they’re owed one will never get there – not because the waters are rough but because time spent whining and feeling entitled is time wasted while others are creating new sails and patching holes in the boat so they can sail a few days longer, or a little faster. It’s not easy. If you want easy, you signed up for the wrong journey. But make no mistake about it, everyone is on a boat. You can sail your own, or you can work for another captain. The difference is merely in who makes the decisions, not how rough the water is. We all weather the same economic weather, and ride out the same waves of change in technology, history, etc.

I want to say “you can do it!” and be really encouraging. And some of you – no, many of you – can do it, and can do it brilliantly. But only you can decide how badly you want it, how hard you’re willing to work for it, how creative you’re willing to be to get it, and how wet you’re willing to become in order to get there. To get to the other shore you need to let go of the one you’re leaving, accept the unpredictability of winds and waves, and shout into the raging storm at times, “is that all you’ve got?!” and then pull the sails a little tighter. I wish I could tell you more. But all I’ve learned from my journey that universally applies, is that the journey is worth it, and that it’s often harder than we wish it were. You’ve got a handful of years to do your work, don’t you dare waste those moments whining instead of creating something amazing. Don’t leave a legacy of risk-aversion and “I wish I’d…” to your kids. Don’t settle for hours in front of a large screen TV when you can have a larger life. Don’t settle for watching great stories when you could spend your time living one. Whether you can or can’t, whether you do or don’t, is up to you.

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).

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

This is a pragmatic post, and I hope it doesn’t sound too preachy. But one of the things creatives struggle with is finding time to create. We all do. I get emails all the time asking how I cram it all in, how I “find the time to do everything I do.” I posted a longer, different response to that question HERE last August, if you want more on the subject. But if you want to get right to it, here’s how to find 45 days.

I was reading Todd Henry’s new book, The Accidental Creative, this morning. There was a little piece of math in there that twigged in my mind. He said he’d spend one minute each morning doing a futile, seemingly insignificant task, until he added up the minutes. 1 minute each day for a year adds up to 6 hours of time wasted. Gone.

Every creative person I know has at one point told me they didn’t have enough time for a personal project, to re-build an aging portfolio, to learn a new skill. Most of them seem to find or make the time to send out tweets, pour over Facebook, or check emails a couple dozen times an hour. Many of them have seen an entire season of whatever the last big TV show was.

So I did some more math. If I freed up one hour a day it would give me 365 hours. Broken into 8-hour days, that would give me 45 days of time. To do the thing I said I most wanted to do, but “just didn’t have the time.”

I know that some people truly are stretched for time. They probably need to slow down or cut back on a few things, I don’t know. But I do know this. There is never “time left over.” You won’t get to the end of the year and find you’ve got 3 weeks longer than you thought left over. It’s the same with money. Our expenses fill to take up the slack, and for some people they overflow. But you can’t get time on credit. So 24 hours is all you have in one day. I also know that you can’t save one hour a day and have 45 days left over at the end to spend on what you want. But you can pay yourself first.

Paying yourself first is important if you want to save money. Paying yourself first with your time is also important. It’s putting the big rocks in first. Spend that hour a day working on your latest project, then use whatever time you have left for Twitter. Take the 2 week trip first, then allow some of the less important things to remain undone at the end of the year. If it’s important and it matters to you more than whatever little things fill the countless little 5 and 10 minute blocks of time, then book it. Put it on the calendar. Pay yourself first and let the little things fit in where they can. But fill the days with little things first and there won’t be room for the big ones.

Break it into whatever pieces you want, and spend it on whatever you want. But remember time is not money. Time is far more important than money. You will never be able to borrow back the time that’s gone. And mortgaging your present in hopes of time later (I’ll do it when I retire…) is just plain crazy. Your kids will never get any younger. Your personal project will never complete itself. But Twitter will always be there. So will Facebook. LOST will be on DVDs until Jesus comes back. You can watch it later. If you have time.

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

There is much talk in artsy circles about being “original”. I’m not even sure I know what that means. (Or if it exists.)

Of all the places to put our energy, I think this is among the more futile. It’s the wrong answer to the right question.

Is desiring originality (insert vague personal definition here) a good thing? Yes. Of course. If we can agree on the meaning. But however you define it, it’s merely a by-product.

You are already unique. If you do the work you do with honesty, integrity, curiousity, boldness, and courage, you will find your work as unique – and original – as you are.

If you aim for originality you may produce work that is indeed original. It’ll be unlike anything else, including you.

Quick snapshot by Corwin, one morning this spring in Death Valley. The over-zealous use of the high-pass filter can only be blamed on me though.

_____________________________________________

 

Keep reading, I did the draw for the Artist Print of Twilight I, Tahoe this morning and I’ll announce the winner  at the end of this post.

_____________________________________________

Another idealistic post this morning, I’m afraid. I blame Gary Vaynerchuk. Once in a while I re-read his book Crush-It! or watch a podcast and he fires me up, reminds me that even the sermons I preach myself could be preached with greater conviction. Two nights ago I watched this video and since then have re-watched it at least a half-dozen times: Watch it on YouTube HERE or click the graphic below.

You should watch it. It’s 15 minutes of ranting by a very passionate and intelligent man that has the chops and credibility to back up what he says.

Last week I did a podcast with Martin Bailey, a photographer I both like and respect. He recently discovered he had a brain tumour. My massage therapist just buried his mother. Others that I know have lost and are losing loved ones. Life is short. And as Gary says, we have one chance at this. One. And if you thought I was on a tear about how short life is and how intentionally we need to live it, with every word and breath and waking moment, it’s going to get worse.

Here’s some soundbites from Gary (warning, the language gets a little rough) Some of these bites will apply to everyone, some are more specific to the VisionMongers in the crowd. But if you get nothing else from the video, ask yourself – what am I that passionate about.

“Let’s start with passion. There is [sic] way too many people in this room right now, that are doing stuff they hate. PLEASE STOP DOING THAT. There is no reason in 2008 to do shit you hate. None. Promise me you won’t. Because you can lose just as much money being happy as hell.”

“Let’s talk about community. Listen to your users, absolutely. But giving a shit about your users is WAY BETTER. People listen but they don’t do anything. Doing something, answering those emails, giving a crap, caring about your user base – that’s what you need to do.”

“You need to care about everything, and it starts with yourself. Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, What do I want to do everyday for the rest of my life? DO THAT…whatever you need to do, DO IT.”

“Stop crying and just keep hustling. Hustle is the most important word ever. And that’s what you need to do. You need to work so hard.”

“Legacy is greater than currency.”

“If you for a second – a half a second – don’t believe in what you’re doing, whether it’s your personal brand or the product you represent, GET OUT NOW. We only get to play this game once. One Life.”

“The only way to succeed now is to be completely transparent. Completely. Everything is exposed. Everything you do. So your legacy is your ultimate life. It’s all you’ve got. And you can build so much on that. When you have brand equity so much can happen.”

“I don’t want to hear about this nine to five bullshit. I don’t want to hear about this 2 job thing, 9-5, I don’t have time. If you want this, if you’re miserable, or if you don’t like it, or you want to do something else, and you have a passion somewhere else. Work 9 to 5, spend a couple hours with your family. 7 to 2 in the morning is plenty of time to do damage. But that’s it. It’s not going to happen any other way.”

“If you’re doing something else and you want to do this thing you love, you do it after hours. You work 9-6, you get home, you kiss the dog, and you go to town. You start building your equity in your brand after hours. Everybody has time. STOP WATCHING F*CKING “LOST”!”

The reason this hit me so hard recently is I keep putting out these thoughts, and I get pushback – reasons people can’t do what they want to do. But you know what most of it is? It’s reasons they won’t even try. And if I can push just one person over the edge to travel the world, to build an amazing business, to pursue a personal project, then it’s worth it. Because you’ve got one crack at and your kids aren’t an excuse. Don’t you dare use your children as a reason not to pursue something you think you were made for, or called to. Telling your kids they can do anything then leaving them with a legacy of safety and risk-aversion and mediocrity is no way to love your kids. Yes, you’ll do things differently, but do them all the same. If it’s travel, and so many on this blog are travelers, then sell your second car, forget the big-screen TV. Scrimp and save and hustle and do whatever it takes to do that thing you lie awake at night thinking about. Clear your debt, work your ass off, but there is no excuse not to do what you love. Don’t have enough time? I love that last line from Gary. Stop watching f*cking LOST. Turn the TV off. Sell it. Use your time for something that will really and truly make a difference in your life. Or at very least stop telling people you’d conquer the world if only you had time.

_________________

After 760 comments on the post about Twilight I, Tahoe, we used the Random Number Generator to bypass the desire to pick someone cute and single, and instead are happy to announce that this print will be shipped out to Steve Scherbinski. Congrats Steve. Please treat it well. We’ll send you an email and get you particulars.

This March, I spent more time making photographs with my iPhone down the coast of Oregon than I did with my D3s and Pelican cases full of gear. Many of the images I made in those days are among the best of my recent photographs; unobstructed by all the gear I was more able to play. But not once did I simply point and shoot.

Point and shoot is an attitude, an approach to photography; it is not – nor to my mind should it be – a category of cameras. So while this post is more of my usual hair-splitting over semantics, I believe it’s important. It’s important because it says something about how we think about the tools we use and – more importantly – perpetuates the same kind of nonsense as the trumped up importance given to Pros. As in, Buy This Camera, Shoot Like a Pro. The implication is that we should want to shoot like a pro because to be a Pro is to be at the pinnacle of this art. I call bullsh*t. But that’s not my point.

When the Fuji x100 was announced there were mixed reactions, as they always are when a new piece of gear is released. We polarize so quickly on some of this stuff. Many of the reactions could most easily be summed up in a comment from a friend on Twitter this evening.  The x100 is just a $1200 point and shoot camera.

It struck me as a funny thing to say. And the more I thought about it seemed completely irrelevant. Not the comment, so much, but the fact that that comment should even mean something to me. And that something is: that’s serious money for a camera that’s not serious. Might not be what my friend meant, but it’s what I inferred and I’ve heard it elsewhere unambiguously.

So what makes a camera serious? Must it be a $3200 body with a $1800 lens? Does it need a certain sensor size? Must it be a DSLR? At the most basic our tools are boxes with a hole in them. Our media are time and light. We use optics to create a quality of focus and manipulate the geometry in the frame. We need to control the amount of light coming into the box, knowing that doing so with aperture and shutter allows other aesthetic effects. But as far as I know, beautiful photography has been created with pinhole cameras, antique rangefinders, and iPhones, as surely as a Ltd. Edition gold-plated Leicas and $10,000 pro-bodies have produced an astonishing quantity of crap. The recent enthusiasm towards plastic lens cameras (eg Holgas) is a great example. I’ve seen some incredible work created by photographers using the Holga and I’ve seen work I think we’d all agree was junk, even with a gracious and liberal allowance made in order to avoid being called a “snob”.

My x100 is a beautiful camera. It does everything my Nikon D3s does in terms of creating a simple, compelling photograph. It has constraints, to be sure, but I see those constraints as an opportunity for greater creativity, not less. I’m unlikely to serve clients with this camera, but I’m very likely to create work that I’m most proud of with it. And at no point would I describe my approach to photography, regardless of the camera I hold in my hands, as point and shoot.

Point and Shoot. The words imply automation. They imply a lack of intention and care. And to me those words trivialize the efforts to create something beautiful with these fundamentally simple and elegant boxes. To me it’s about the way we approach the entire art, however it is we do that. I guess my point is this; you can point and shoot, if you choose to, but your camera can not. Having a serious camera is not the point and never has been, because in the hands of an artists, a child’s toy will create beauty. Client needs aren’t the issue, that’s different. That has to do with the best tool for the job argument. My plea here is that we alone accept responsibility for creating something great, and we do it with the camera we most enjoy.

I suspect I’m naive and idealistic in hoping we’ll see an end to some of this nonsense anytime soon. It’s perpetuated by the same engines of commerce that want to convince every still photographer that their career is in peril unless they learn video – a completely different discipline and language. I’m probably banging my head against the wall, and I’m OK with that. Where I take it personally is when my friends, readers, and students -  people new to the craft and so full of enthusiasm – are convinced every 12 months to part with serious money because they’ve been convinced the newer, bigger cameras, are more serious. And they go from promise to promise. Red herring to red herring.They learn to divert what was once an enthusiasm for making photographs to an enthusiasm for better and better cameras. God forbid they should be caught making photographs with a point and shoot camera.

Get a camera you love to use. Make photographs you love. If that’s a simple, used, $50, beat-up 35mm camera, or a $700 iPhone, or a $10,000 Mamiya, just do what you love: make photographs. Leave the pointing and shooting for others. Your photographs are judged on their own merits, not the tool you used to create them.

A cable vanishes into the clouds in a marble quarry high above Carrara, Italy, the place Michelangelo sourced his marble for David. Much of my own artistic journey feels like this, more of what I’m looking for is obscured than revealed at first glance. I spend a lot of time waiting for the mist to clear.

When it comes to the voices we listen to, I think there is much more to discuss than my short article could possibly cover earlier this week. Here are a couple more thoughts, some of them jarred from my head by comments left in response to the last piece I wrote.

One of the voices I touched on, but didn’t really address was that of mis-aligned ego (that’s what I call it, call it whatever you like, the name doesn’t matter). I mentioned the toxicity of a desire for fame or praise, which reminded me of a line from a Josh Ritter song – “I’m singing for the love of it; have mercy on the man who sings to be adored.” (Snow is Gone). It’s a strong voice and one many of us probably wrestle to silence for much of our lives. But fail to silence that voice and the inescapable result is work that is self-conscious and less a gift to the world than it is the photographic equivalent of fishing for compliments. I’m not saying the desire to be acknowledged is necessarily unhealthy, but that when that voice become the loudest voice, art suffers. How do you deal with that particular voice? Most religions have tried at length to address this same struggle, so you won’t find a simple answer here. But practically, I think it begins with learning simply to recognize that voice and then finding voices that speak truer things. This is part of what it means to struggle with the so-called human condition and the artist’s life.

If that voice of the mis-aligned ego might be described at times as arrogance, the flip-side of it is no less distracting. I don’t know a single artist that doesn’t wrestle with cycles of self-doubt, second-guesses, and listening to the radio station in our heads that Ann Lammot in Bird By Bird calls K-F*CK (the * is mine). We all wrestle with this one and it’s one of the reasons we need both fans and critics – to give us something closer to an objectivity that’s clouded by the collective voices of K-F*CK. Those voices come from the past, from unkind words spoken by people who ought to have known better. Parents, teachers, other kids. We know as adults that the cruel words of people from our pasts are only that, but they hold no less power subconsciously. Finding new voices to listen to begins a long process – perhaps life-long – of hearing truer, more positive things. They won’t be silenced, but they can be replaced. Until we do that those voices hold us back. “Ridicule,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “is a terrible whitherer of the imagination. It binds us where we should be free.”

What I do know is that this stuff is harder to work through than simply learning to chose an f/stop. It’s big picture and it’s lifelong and it probably looks like more navel-gazing than some people want to do. But folks, Art is hard. Art, to be art at all contains something of the artist within it. And to do that requires self-disclosure, courage, and a willingness to face these voices and intentionally chose truer ones. It won’t come through pretending the voices aren’t there, and it’s hard to hold a camera when your fingers are in your ears to stop the voices you don’t want to hear.

Vincent Versace wrote an article on Scott Kelby’s blog yesterday, and among the nuggets was a short discussion about the voices we listen to. I suggest reading the entire article because Vincent’s one of the rare voices of sanity in an art addicted to gear and technique, and when he’s this lucid ( Vincent gets hard for me to understand when he drifts into the academic) it’s worth a read. Here’s one of the quotes that caught my eye yesterday morning, and it offers a different solution to one of those voices.

“All artists hear a call to express themselves creatively, but too often, that voice fades with time and is replaced by one that says, “You can’t do that.” or “If it was such a brilliant idea someone else would have thought of it first.” The quickest way to silence that voice is to do exactly the thing that you think you cannot.”