NL,
Very quickly my kit is becom...
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Camera Bags – They Are Always Too Small
The Joy Of Photography – Limiting Your Options
Take it from somebody that has been shooting images for 40 years. I have had my prolific years and my lean years. I am saying that in an overall photographic sense – not just a commercial sense. I have taken breaks that have lasted from 6 months to 3 years. When I say break I mean a total break, no camera, no images – none. I have self assessed as most of us do in all endeavors. I have searched my soul to figure out why I make pictures. I have gone from one end of the photographic universe to the other and back again in terms of formats, medium, and far more importantly, subject matter. Here are a couple of really simple things that I have found to be true – for everyone – at least to a degree.
My photographic work and my enjoyment of the endeavor in all ways fares better when my options are limited either through choices I make or the circumstance I happen to find myself in. I am not kidding. Take a look at this for a second – my work AND my joy – better. This is coming from someone that values freedom over and above everything- well at least on par with truth. That may seem contradictory at first glance but it is actually quite congruent.
Imagine for a moment that you could photograph just about anything you want – really. Anything at all – all of us can. Now imagine you had whatever resources you needed to do that – equipment, funds, access, materials, budget. Also imagine that you had the skills that to make it all look anyway you wanted it to. The skills of every single solitary link in the chain that leads to the final image. No obstacles. None whatsoever. Everyday you wake up and you ask yourself what am I going to photograph today? What equipment, materials, techniques, lighting, post processing treatment, location, background, paper, printer, large format, medium, lens, and all of those choices were yours to make with no limitations on availability or skill to maximize their use. Would you make good work? I doubt it.
The funny thing is that when you first fall in love with photography and your options are severely limited all of the above seems like photographic utopia. There is a quest to remove those obstacles and there should be or none of us would make very good images because of the severe limitations from far too many perspectives. So you do need to achieve some degree of competence. It is a worthwhile quest. Now here is the tricky part. At some point your options become so broad that every image becomes a massive decision making process that seriously compromises the subject for the sake of the process. This is why I do not shoot commercial work any longer. The subjects became meaningless to me – like some stupid parlor trick. And for my next trick…watch me pull the rabbit out of my hat…. wwwoooooo.
Fantastically boring and worse completely meaningless. If you want to make better images and have way more fun doing it limit your options early. This takes a lot of discipline and even more guts. The more skill you acquire the more guts it takes. Trust me on this. Your images will thank you – trust me on this as well. Really take a hard look that the images you like the best – yours and other peoples. Take a look at the images that survive a decade or more and suffer the slings and arrows of time, context, taste, fashion, fad. I can say with 99.9% confidence that they were made under severe limits – probably more limited that what you access to right this second. The photographers that make them generally limit themselves one way or another to very specific subject matter that interests them – to materials and medium, ruthlessly eliminating anything that gets in the way of their connection with the subject. Try it sometime for yourself. Give yourself NO choices photographically make a decision in less than one minute on ONE subject, ONE lens, ONE treatment (black and white/color/print size/final output, all of it in less than one minute), this is really hard to do in the digital age. Shoot with whatever equipment you can carry – without a camera bag, just in your hands.
Just do it.
RB
I completely agree. A long time ago I read (I forget where) a writng instructor giving advice to a student with writer’s block. It was something like this: “Go downtown, pick a building, then describe it. Start with the brick in the upper lefthand corner.” Too many choices often = paralysis, or bad decsions.
Fully agree – nice, thought provoking post – tks
Rob/Antwerpen
Why do you think that a lot of guys that shoot for a living go ga-ga over oatmeal box pinhole/plastic lens/fixed focus/fixed exposure/iPhone – etc etc cameras?
RB
Ps.
Yet another reason I still love/shoot film – you pick one and you are done. Well not done but you have just limited yourself in a myriad of ways vs shooting a 40 megapixel 16bit back. That limitation both consciously and more importantly, subconsciously informs and guides you in making images no mater what you point your camera at.
For instance if I load up a slow speed/medium speed black and white film it frees me in ways you could not imagine – it also influences not what I shoot per se but how I go about shooting it – like a night or low light scene with things/people that are moving – I shoot it optimizing for that limitation – things are going to be blurry that are moving – so make them even blurrier the FASTEST I can shoot is 1/15 so let’s try it at 1/2. Way way way different than if you had 14 other options. You just have to get yourself out of the mindset of NOT shooting it because the “better’ option is at home, or in your bag, or in the camera shop, or at B+H….
RB
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I took my longest break right out of art school- a four year hiatus. Sold off my 4×5 and all my gear but my F3, and even that got very little use. I wrote in my senior thesis, “I make pictures even when I’m not taking pictures.” And shortly thereafter I realized I needed to gather much more life experience before I could be honest with my “work”. Even the whole notion of picture making became abstract- I removed it as an option. I removed almost everything as an option, found a little apartment in Madison, WI and lived as a visitor in the hippie community for four years. In that time I held 13 different jobs, including driving a taxi, teaching art and math to delinquent teens, tuning djembes, and finally stuck with building houses for a few years, during which time it was clear to me where I wanted to begin again with photography. I still had only my F3 and two lenses. The theme here was trying to create a blank surface for myself- not with the coercive intent of making “art” or “work”, but rather for the sake of honesty and authenticity.
After that time, I didn’t know whether it was proper to consider myself a photographer, or an artist, or what. I soon lost any desire for those titles, which made it impossible for me to do any commercial work seriously (see also: need for authenticity). For six years I fed myself by working as a handyman in Chicago, getting jobs off Craigslist, and did maybe 10% commercial photography work in for architecture and building firms, as well as a bit for the RV industry in Indiana. All bullshit work just to keep my fingers and eye working together. I’d never consider any of it part of my portfolio. I also did a bit of documentary work for local performance and installation artists and sculptors. It was good to hang with artists, but was similar to my time with the hippies in Wisconsin- just visiting.
It wasn’t until 2004 that I seriously began shooting again. I have to admit that the advent of digital got me going because it fit my circumstances. I was scanning negatives and later bought into Canon’s digital lineup. It fit because I could amass images randomly and look back on them at some point in the future (ala Garry Winogrand- I always thought of him and hoped I would get to it before I died). This process allowed me the freedom to shoot without the interference of intention. I looked back every so often and grabbed a bunch of images for review, and only then would I assign any meaning to it. And that meaning changed fluidly and regularly.
Getting back to the point, I was only able to stay focused because of my limitations. I was limited the whole time by my surroundings and financial situation. I couldn’t afford more than one camera and didn’t have the space for equipment. I was a drummer with one drum. And I credit my relative poverty with giving me some really nice images over those years.
Three years ago I moved to Switzerland where I now have a wonderful wife and two children. Out of necessity, because in Switzerland you can only work with a diploma (talk about limiting your options), I began working solely as a photographer- 12 years after getting out of school- and took my first assisting job. You know what? It’s great. I work for a guy who doesn’t care about his work too much but does a great job giving clients what they want. He’s the exact opposite of me. And I set his lights, give him suggestions (often I’m better at composition and lighting than him), he takes them or not, and at the end of the day I go home and I don’t have to deal with the commercial crap. I make good money and I can do my own work on the side. I’m focusing more than ever on looking at my huge body of work and putting it together in different ways to shape it as I see it.
In this case, being backed into a corner with few options, while incredible difficult at times, has made me the most honest and authentic I’ve ever been.
I still don’t know- am I a photographer?
Sorry for the outpouring.
what is yo MySpace page?
I guess that’s spam? I don’t have a MySpace page.