Keith Richards wanted to be in the best blues band in London. He ended up being in the best band in the world!
I want to be the best photographer in Denver with gallery and museum exhibitions of my work, to be an influential teacher and
inspiring speaker on photography, and similarly known around the world!
Set your intention. Make goals. Work to deadlines. And you can do anything!
Everywhere I go, no matter what the event, the scene, the purpose, as soon as anything happens, it can be a marching band or a person opening a gift, everyone pulls out a phone and starts recording.
Everyone.
Why the instant reflex, the need to capture everything?
Everything.
Is it a natural reflex to get it all? Take it all back with us?
Who is ever going to watch those fireworks from last year’s Fourth of July on their phone again? Or that marching band? Or that person opening those socks?
It happens at weddings to the point where people don’t even experience the event without a device–camera or phone–in front of them. And then there’s the mad rush to post their blurry wedding photos before anyone else. Why?
There’s even a trend to post signs at weddings about it being an unplugged wedding ceremony, asking guests to put away their phones and camera and enjoy the event.
My niece was getting married–I would have welcomed the wait to see the hired photographer’s quality work rather than the multitude of bad photos everyone posted in real time. It’s not like there’s no one there hired to photograph it. Why do we do this?
I think it’s a habit, now it’s a reflex. Something happening=Shoot photos, record!
But at what expense? Do we lose anything by not attending the moment in-person fully.
There’s a beautiful movie called Before Sunrise with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, and after they meet and spend a night walking around Vienna together, they wake up the next morning, in love, and have to part.
Watch this scene. He wants to take her photo, but doesn’t take her picture – it happens at the 1:20 minute mark. “I’m going to take your picture, so I never forget you, or all this.”
There’s something to be said for letting the image sear in our mind and heart, the result of fully experiencing it.
Isn’t there?
Or should we schedule some time to get together to watch these videos and see these photos? Because it hasn’t happened once for me, so far.
A short while ago, I published this post:
Since then, I’ve completed three of the books (one person couldn’t get it together) and they’re on their way. In the process, here’s what I learned.
1. People don’t know where their photos are.
2. They don’t know how to find them when they try searching.
3. They feel overwhelmed with too many to choose from to pick 50.
4. The photo quality is variable, from low-resolution to print-resolution.
5. They’re confused with how to save and export photos.
6. Everything about it is difficult.
This all fascinates me. We live in a technologically-advanced age and we think more is more, and we have it better than anyone ever did with so many things, photography included, and yet people can’t find their photos when they need to print them.
We really are in an age where photography is enjoyed for a second on a phone–that’s where they’re made for and consumed–and then dismissed.
You would think things would be easier now, with all the photos we’re taking, that they would automatically be instantly available. But that’s the problem with too much of anything, it just accumulates and confuses–“Where do I find the one I want among this glut of images? Those old hard drives? Laptop computers I used to use?”
Does photography as a book or a print on a wall, is that an idea from a bygone era, like the tintype, cabinet cards and daguerreotypes?
To me, all wedding photos look alike right now. It feels like advertising for the art director.
Whenever I see wedding photos in magazines or people’s posts, it seems like a lot of the same photographs of the decor and flowers and table settings like still life/product shots, like the bride and groom are more interested in the “look” of the wedding (especially with lotsa bokeh) than the emotional connections, the documenting of them and the people and the special moments shared.
Yes, there’s the bride and groom kissing photo, but I mean the difficult photos, the other unplanned moments, the joy and expressions that aren’t scheduled, is anyone documenting them?
Unposed? A little messy? (‘Cause they’re real.)
Or is this the trend, pretty pictures of table settings and invitation cards and dresses on display?
Does anyone care about, you know, real photos, the human stuff? Telling their unique family story?
Has digital photography made wedding photography homogenized? Does anyone else see this?
The greatest record album photo of all time is the Clash’s London Calling cover, and it’s a photo by British photographer Pennie Smith that she didn’t like because it’s a little out of focus, and there’s an overexposed man in the upper right corner of the frame, but it’s perfect because it captures a moment. It’s not technically great, it has a great subject.
Any wedding photographers getting the bass-smashing photos?
Does it not matter if they’re not–it’s just the current culture?
We are at a crossroads, now more than ever. At first it was just digital technology as a new way to capture light and make a picture. We all embraced it because it was no cost, no worry, shoot shoot shoot and delete later, or don’t. (Because let’s face it, we don’t delete, we just get more hard drives or up our iCloud plan.) There, done!
Then we filled computers with images like there was no tomorrow. Thousands of photos downloaded from our digital cameras. DSLRs. Point and shoots. All kinds of cameras shooting more and more megapixels. Win!
More is more. More is good.
Then phones got really good at shooting and sending a pic, and even if the form factor wasn’t very good, and the photo wasn’t as good as a camera, ah well, so what, it was good enough, and it had the added perk that it fit in our pocket and we could be sent now. No need to download to our computers. Score!
Sure, the phone manufacturers charged quite a bit for these, not to mention that computer or laptop upgrade, hard drive purchases and Photoshop software licenses, but we still felt like it was free. Yay!
And we became video producers at concerts, shooting and posting whole songs to whole shows so our friends could hear Elton sing, too. Because we can. And look where we are. Too bad for the people behind us–we’re working here. Impressive!
More is more. More is good.
And then we got computers to compute. Computational photography, we can make everything work, and everything perfect. We can fake blur the background in ‘portrait’ mode, no need for a real photographer. It’s not like they do anything more than our phones–good thing Avedon isn’t working today, that chump would be out of a job. Loser!
We can even fake videos and make it look like people saying things they never said. We have technology. We win again!
It used to be the news was a good source if information, but then we got the internet and things got a bit cloudy, lines were blurred. News outlets and not-so-trustworthy news outlets We have fake truths, alternative facts. No one knows what to believe anymore. Sucks!
So, this crossroads we’re at. Which way do we go, now? Keep heading down the same road we’ve been on since we stopped shooting film and making actual photographs? You know, those paper representations of the pictures on our phones.
The ones of grandma and grandpa that don’t need a computer to enjoy? The ones that are authentic, storytelling. That aren’t digitally altered and perfected, but just… Real!
We used to have fewer pics and we enjoyed them more. Now we have more and, oh no…
More isn’t more. More isn’t better.
We have become inundated with images that they don’t even matter. They don’t matter! Who cares? It’s not like we look at them for more than a half-second anyway. Instagram double tap–scroll, scroll, scroll, double tap, scroll, scroll. That’s what photography is now. Lame!
Phones are note-takers, and notes don’t need to be saved. Photographs used to be historical family documents, not anymore. Now, it’s where we ate, where we parked, what we drank and never see them again. Sucks!
Professionals don’t make our portraits anymore. We shoot everything ourselves, even for our businesses, since we’ve adopted a mentality that good enough is good enough. Even if it’s not, it is. Because it doesn’t cost us anything. Cheap!
What will it take to hire a pro to photograph our family? Maybe they do have something to offer that we can’t do ourselves. But the lure of free is so strong. Why pay for anything? We can put that money into more cloud storage and new phones. Score!
We’re standing at the crossroads. Which way we go will very seriously impact what photography is, what value it holds and purpose it serves. It may be the biggest challenge in its history, what it will be for. Decisions!
I know which way I’m headed–I’m photographing my family and friends on film, printing their photographs and living with them on the shelves of my home. Call me old school, I know where my photographs are and I get to see them for more than a swipe-second. Dinorsaur!
Maybe, but maybe it’s the digital photos that that will go extinct. Gone!
I was talking with another photographer recently and he brought up that he misses hanging out at camera shops.
I knew exactly what he meant. In the days of film, that was the place to meet, to see gear, talk and hang out with other photographers.
There was still a little bit at risk when making a photograph. And skill needed. It could be that the photos wouldn’t turn out, the exposure was off. Or the subject moved. We talked about techniques. We talked about photographic subjects. We talked photography.
I worked at The Camera Shop Inc. in the Oxford Valley Mall as a teenager, upstairs by Bamberger’s, if I recall correctly. It was such a good job, and we got to meet all the local photographers and shutterbugs who’d come in.
That’s all gone, in this age of digital phone snaps. There’s no more photography, with all the skills and tricks, there’s just the phone.
Snap, swipe, never look at it again.
When they added electronics, the big box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City took over the camera sales, and put the small camera shops out of business. Not all, but many. And many of the shops lived on film processing profits, and digital photography knocked that out, too.
This is Central Camera in Chicago, a favorite place of Vivian Maier, if you know her story. If not, look her up. You’re in for a treat. She’d hang out there.
Back when we hung out as photographers.
I was reading quotes from famous artists, and one of them said something to the effect: “When I go to the canvas with a preconceived idea, those are usually not as good as the ones where I go with no idea what I will paint, and just paint.”
Effectively, going to the sandbox to play. Because creativity is play. Creative activity. The ability to make something out of nothing.
I’ve been taking that to heart and using it for a photography project. The idea is I have a model, I have outfits, and I have a camera, but I don’t have a subject in mind to shoot. I can create anything I want. And so far, what I’ve created isn’t at all what I would have thought to create. It’s in the creation that they came to be.
I’m working on the photographs for a book project, so won’t post any here, but there is certainly a way to work, as this old photojournalist has to break his thought process and just get in the sand. And play.
And play.
Sometimes the first photo doesn’t seem so inspired. Shoot it anyway. It may lead to another photo. And that one may be the inspired one. The inspiration may come when you stop thinking, stop looking for it.
It’s crazy magical that way, the way it works, the way it manifests.
There’s something to it, when the muse is allowed to play. Pick up the camera, look through the viewfinder, and shoot something you’ve never shot before.
Create a scene. Play with light and your subject. See what you come up with.
I’m using a vintage Mamiya C330S twin-lens reflex medium format film camera, just to add to the process, on a tripod, carefully framing and exposing the negative.
Oh, let the muse play!
