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!

Old Havana, Cuba, 2009

I got some questions after we released the latest eBook, Forget Mugshots, 10 Steps to Better Portraits, that I thought I’d answer here. Some of this stuff was answered in Within The Frame, The Journey of Photographic Vision, but I don’t expect everyone to have read that, so here’s some additional ideas that have come up. Matt Brandon and I talk about some of them, and others, on the next Craft & Vision podcast, so if you’re a subscriber, that’ll be up in the coming weeks.

How do you overcome the fear?

Honestly, I’m not sure I ever do. I still struggle with this. But I love people and I love the exchanges with people I’ve never met, in languages I don’t speak. I think we don’t so much fear saying hello or talking to people when we ask to make a photograph, we fear being told “No.” So if you can hold that a little more loosely, even make the photograph secondary to the simple act of meeting people and encountering something “other” in a stranger, then it makes it a little easier. But pragmatically, the best approach for me has been to take a deep breath and walk up to the person before I second-guess myself and turn and walk away. It’s not unlike what I used to do when I went on stage; I’d put on my character, smile big, and walk on pretending I wasn’t scared. And it worked. Now of course, this all relates to photographing strangers. If you’re scared of approaching people you know, then you either need to work it out and work through the fear, or perhaps admit that people photography isn’t for you.

Do you pay your subjects?

This is a tough one. I’m not a photojournalist. But I also know that my approach to the people I work with is going to change or reinforce the way these people will interact with other photographers. Pay one person, the argument goes, and you ruin it for others. Agreed. That’s true. But sometimes these arguments come off sounding so miserly. I think, first of all, if you have some kind of relationship and it’s not a run-and-gun kind of approach you’re using, then you get asked far, far less. Hell, stick a camera in my face without introducing yourself or talking to me, and see if I don’t ask for a couple bucks. I also think there are other ways to create an exchange, without giving money. You give time, attention, a print – either right there and then with something like the Polaroid Pogo or by mailing prints back to them. You can buy something from their stall or shop. You can buy two cups of tea and share it, or offer a cigarette (I don’t, but if you smoke…). What I’m getting at is that relationships dictate the possibilities for exchange. Be open to them. Does money ever enter the equation? Sure. Sometimes I’ve been with a subject long enough that compensation for time spent is reasonable and generous. Sometimes they have a need and I make it clear that I am grateful for their gift of time spent with me and would like to reciprocate with a gift of my own, making it clear that it’s a gift, not a payment per se. Sometimes they get it, sometimes not. There are no rules, but if you’re giving cash because it makes it easier and is a substitute for the harder act of spending time and muddling through language, then take the higher path, put the cash away, man-up and spend some time.

What about model releases?

I’ll be brief. A. Model releases are about USE, not about whether you can or can’t make the photograph in the first place. If all you want to do is make portraits, then go for it. B For everything else, because this is about USE, ask the people who will be using the images. Ask the client or stock agency (the answer will be YES!), or publisher. For grey areas, speak to a lawyer, because this is a legal matter. But if what you want to do is make photographs, and a model release isn’t needed or desired, then make your art and don’t let the issue trouble you. By far the vast majority of my people photography is done without a release.

Any other tips?

I thought you’d never ask. I want to reinforce the idea I’ve mentioned before: patience and curiosity are some of the most undervalued photographic skills, especially when you are working with people. Ask questions, spend some time, don’t be in such a hurry to pick up the camera. I know people want me to give them a magic formula, but there aren’t any. Use any lens you want, pick an aperture you like, use flash or don’t; what matter is how you connect with the subject.Be nice, kind, respectful, and the majority of people will respond in kind, and that will show in the photographs. After that a photograph is a photograph – pay attention to light and moments and the geometry of the frame (composition). But start with your people skills. Then pick up the camera.

Got any other questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll do what I can to discuss them.

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

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

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.”
~Emile Zola

Lately I’ve had nothing but time. My feet are still weak and the closest I come to walking is fearful crutch-work across the kitchen floor as I put more and more weight on the feet. I have visions of the screws and plates popping out. It’s scary as hell. But if there’s one thing I know about physiotherapy, it’s this: recovery doesn’t show up on your doorstep. You don’t say, “I’ll do the exercises after my feet heal.” You do the work, the healing comes.

The same is true of photography, writing, or any creative endeavor. You do the work. There is no muse; at least not one that is beckoned by anything but work. There is no amount of talent that compensates for lack of work. Everything I have read about creativity echoes the same thing. And it is that we do the work. Our work. The work that others will call art, or for which they’ll credit us with genius (or not). But however highly we think of it, or don’t, it remains simply work.

There are frustrations aplenty in the creative life. We work within constraints. We have highs where not a soul could touch us if they tried, and lows where the same is true. In other words, it’s hard enough without on top of that worrying about the size of our talent compared to others, or whether the muse will show up, or if we’ve thought our last creative thought, made our last beautiful photograph. When you get frustrated, just begin. Pick up the camera and do the work. Sit down at the laptop and start the edit. Do the work.

Don’t worry about getting inspired, being original, or any of the other things that haunt the creative mind. The muse will show up, she always does. It’s she who’s waiting. Just start. Do the work.

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”
~ Picasso

“Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.”
~ Igor Stravinsky

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.

Impression I, II, III
All three photographs were made with my iPhone 4, cropped to 4×5, and processed with the Magic Hour filter, all in the Camera+ app. I tweaked curves slightly, and added borders in Photoshop after import.

One of the first things I did when the Ottawa Hospital finally let me have a Day Pass to go wreak havoc in Ottawa was make a bee-line for the National Gallery with a friend. What I most wanted to see, and hadn’t for a few too many years, was the work of the Group of Seven. I could stand in front of them for hours. I’ll let you look them up when you have a moment, but I strongly recommend you do. They were my first love affair with impressionism, and if you have time, and ever find yourself in Kleinburg, Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection has what I believe the largest collection. But I’m getting off track.

There’s something about the impressionists, and I’ll as happily spend a day in Paris’ Musée d’Orsay which houses a lot of European Impressionist paintings, because they feel like something. More than mere illustration they illicit, at least in me, stronger emotions. I never studied Art History; I probably should have. But I know what I like; I know what moves me. And standing in front of paintings of Algonquin and the north shore of Lake Superior, I wondered how I could put that kind of mood into my own work, in ways beyond the obvious. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks.

And then last Friday we drove Corwin, my manager, back to the airport and it rained and rained. I spent the entire drive with my iPhone pushed up to the window, having more fun creatively than I have had since the moments before I fell off the wall in Italy. I don’t know that I’ve accomplished what I wanted, but I’ve found clues. These three photographs feel the way I feel about the countryside I grew up in, at least on certain days. And to me, the ability to express those things is increasingly important.I’ve said often that photography is a way of pointing, of saying “Look at that!” It’s also a way to to say, “I feel ___________about that,” in the hopes that others might see it, and feel it that way too.

______________________

Tuesday is June 28, and we’ll be releasing A DEEPER FRAME, my first eBook in over 6 months. Everytime we release an eBook, we offer discounts for a few days. Well this time the discounts are, um, well, deeper, I guess. Join us here tomorrow for that announcement.

At the end of the month, Craft & Vision is releasing the first eBook I’ve written in over 6 months and I’m really excited about it. When I wrote the last one I said it would be the last eBook I wrote about vision for some time, and that the next books would be about expression of that vision. The first topic I wanted to tackle is depth because I think it’s a good way to begin the discussion about how people read and experience our photographs. The book is called A DEEPER FRAME, and we’re planning some killer discounts to go along with the release. In the meantime, here’s a short excerpt explaining why depth matters.

Why Deeper?

The entire discussion of depth is necessary because the medium of photography turns a world of three dimensions into two. With that conversion comes what I’ve elsewhere called the flattening. The flattening forces all elements in a three dimensional scene to flatten against each other. In the case of longer lenses this effect is exaggerated even more. It’s neither good nor bad, but recognizing it is important. Why this matters is that we do not experience the world in two dimensions to begin with, so if we aim to create photographs that create within the reader a deeper, fuller, longer experience , it falls to us to recreate that depth. Your scene may feel deep, and your experience at the time might seem impossibly immersive, but you can not escape the effects of the flattening and it is only through your own decisions that you can retain, or reintroduce that depth.

It is all about the reader’s experience of the photograph itself, and about your ability to express yourself more fully. While it seems obvious that it is impossible, without actual 3-Dimensional technology which is rapidly coming, to add a third dimension to a flat image; it is in fact possible to create the perception or illusion of depth.

Deeper images pull us in visually, they give as not only square footage but cubic space – room to move about and explore with our eyes. That room to explore invites the photographer to create photographs with more complexity to them, and the reader to linger longer. It is about experience. The more a photograph recreates the illusion of reality as we experience it, the deeper the potential experience, the longer the memory of the image, the greater the possible impact on their hearts and minds. Deeper photographs give us a means to create more engaging one-frame visual stories.

That’s the Why, and it’s not complicated. Better photographs create better experiences, and depth can get you there. Now let’s look at seven ways to get to deeper frames.

A Deeper Frame will be release on June 28th at CraftAndVision.com. It’ll be announced here first and we’ll be throwing in some deeper discounts than usual.

Sitting in a quiet restaurant in Taos, New Mexico. We’ve got one more day before we need to be in Albuquerqe. Some of you have expressed anything from wonder to shock to consternation at how fast I’m travelling. It won’t always be this way. Sadly in order to do this trip at all I needed to front-load some of the travel and that means less time in some places that deserve much more time to explore, like Taos for example. We’ll eat, we’ll breeze through. Anyways…

One of the constraints of this trip is the incredibly limited time I’ve got at locations that deserve much, much more time. One of those places is Utah’s Monument Valley, nestled in Navajo country on the border of Arizona. Like so many places in the Americas the location itself is iconic, seen in so many films you feel you know the place by sight even if you’re not sure you can name it. The downside of such little time in one place is simply the lack of time to go deep, to really see and experience, but I’m not convinced the solution to that is to simply put your tripod in the same holes as others and resort to the postcard shot from the so-called viewpoint or lookout that inevitably sprout up around these places, most often within a couple feet of the parking lot.

A couple nights ago I had one evening to photograph in Monument Valley. So I focused not on my options but my constraints. I knew I wanted to shoot well into twilight hours, and I knew I wanted to photograph one of the more iconic spires. I also knew I wanted to use my 24mm tilt-shift and get well beyond the throngs I suspected would show up if the sun cooperated, which was looking iffy. So I wandered out into the desert on the marked trail and eventually ended up only a few meters from the trail, but a good kilometer away from the viewpoint, which as it turns out gathered quite a crowd of tripods and expensive gear and people making the exact same photograph. I found a great tree after doing iPhone test-shots with a couple others, and hunkered down for close to three hours. I took a chance. I might have wandered and found nothing at all and gone back to the truck without even the postcard shot the others got. But more and more that postcard shot doesn’t feel worth taking to me, so it’s no real loss. It’s the same reason I didn’t go to Antelope slots canyon. I’ve seen some gorgeous light there in hundreds of beautiful photographs, but I’m not sure I’m going to bring anything new to the table.

This trip is teaching me a great deal, not the least of which is the revelation of what it is I really want to be photographing. It’s giving me the freedom to leave the rest to others.

I had a funny moment in Death Valley; we were alone on the Racetrack playa and I was sitting down at my tripod after working for an hour or two to find and frame one photograph for which I was still awaiting the light, when one of the only other people within miles walks up to me, put his camera literally over my shoulder and fires off a frame. He chuckled and said his best shot of the day might just be the one I was taking. No sh*t it was, with an approach like that. But rather than make me angry it made me laugh and reminded me of the difference in approaches. For some people it’s enough to buy the gear and put their tripod in the holes of Ansel Adams, for others it’s a process that involves discovery, risk, and great reward. These days I’m happy with one single photograph from my time out in the field, if that; I’m learning I’m happier with that one hard-earned frame than I am with 20 mediocre photographs I rushed to get.

The latest addition to the Craft & Vision library is  Andrew Gibson’s The Evocative Image. Subtitled A Photographer’s Guide to Capturing Mood, Andrew’s latest is a great primer on introducing an intentional mood to a photograph. Where our hope for a photograph is to communicate more than just information, but to create impact and an emotional response, an understanding of some of the tools to create mood is essential.

Andrew discusses interpretation, golden hour, blue hour, low light, wide apertures, long lenses, and other technical considerations that have an aesthetic effect on the mood of the photograph. Like most C&V titles it’s far from comprehensive but was written to inspire and inform enough that you get out there with your camera and do the one thing that will really allow you to internalize and make these ideas your own – experiment and play.

In addition to a solid text and Andrew’s usual calibre of photographs, this is our first ebook to come out of the hands of our newest layout artist, Luke Taylor, and it looks fantastic!

If you’ve been wondering how to add more emotion and impact to your images, this is a great place to begin. As always, we offer discounts on the release of the latest eBooks, as a thank you to regular readers, and a chance for new readers to add more than one title to their library. If you buy The Evocative Image before March 1, 2011 using coupon code EVOCATIVE4 you can have it for $4 instead of $5. If you buy 5 titles using coupon code EVOCATIVE20 before March 1, 2011 you can have them for 20% off.