At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.
- Seth Godin
Do you remember what that was like? Do you yearn to create the art that is truly you? On October 23rd, we’re going to give it a go together. It’s a photography workshop to bring the vision back. Come on out and play.
I’ve been talking about doing this workshop for years and I’m really looking forward to it. Here are the details.
The Creative Landscape Photography Workshop October 23 2010, 9am – 5pm
Kellar Mahaney Gallery, Zionsville, IN
Explore your creative vision to make images that are authentically you. We’ll spend part of the day at the Kellar Mahaney Gallery considering artistic values and approaches. And then we’ll be out around the parks of Zionsville with our cameras. We’ll take plenty of pictures and likely a lot of bad ones. Why? Because we’re going to experiment and be stretched. You’ll finish the day with new direction and inspiration.
Kellar Mahaney Gallery
We’ll start out at the Kellar Mahaney Gallery, right on the brick main street of downtown Zionsvile, IN and then venture out from there. Lunch is included. http://www.kellarmahaney.com
I gave talk about creativity at the gallery earlier this year. View the video.
Registration is $95. It’s going to be well worth our time.
I’ve started a new photography project. I’m setting up the images as an allegory for entering the unknown. A friend asked me about how projects begin, so I thought I’d talk through this one as an example.
The idea for this project was sparked by a comment during a critique of my work. The reviewer was looking at a landscape image with a layered composition. The middle layer, containing a tree, was in focus, but the foreground and background were blurred. He said that it made him feel inside the image. A week later, I wondered: If an image can place a viewer inside, then what’s the journey like that gets you inside, and then beyond? How does one enter and become familiar with the unknown? In that moment, the question became intensely intriguing. I can’t tell you why other than it seemed to bring together several threads that had been in my head and in my life. It was an “ah ha!” moment.
I find that new projects tend to start this way, as a tangential thought that grows into an obsession. The critic’s comment wasn’t really related to the new project, but it was enough of a little shove to have me notice a new path.
It took two or three weeks after that before I took a picture. I was hesitant to start, because taking a picture might kill the idea. Having a project idea doesn’t mean I actually have a project. It’s just a hunch that may or may not work out. I was really exited about this particular hunch and I didn’t want to start taking pictures just to find out that I couldn’t pull it off.
I took pictures over two months and edited them down to a printed portfolio. There’s a really wonderful moment after the first few prints when you realize that the project could actually work. In the past month, I’ve been using this portfolio as a proof of concept. I have a feeling that I’ll be shooting for this project for another year or two. But, I’ve got enough to illustrate the concept and I needed some feedback. This is the first time I’ve intently sought this much reaction early on and it’s been very helpful. I’ve had some long, intense conversations over these images. I’m grateful for comments like, “this image really makes me feel…”, and “I really don’t get what you’re trying to do with these two.” I’m getting a better grasp of which methods better fit the concept. Some of it is about editing and sequencing. Some of it is about trying out a different approach.
I’m going to let these conversations ferment for a bit, maybe for another week or two. And then, I should go and take more pictures.
Smelled spring flowers.
Worked on a new photo project about entering the unknown.
Went camping in the Smokey Mountains.
Saw stars in the sky.
Worked 60 and 70 hour weeks, got burnt out.
Sat on my butt and felt like I squandered my time.
Had a yard sale in 40° weather, just after a string of 80° days.
Walked in a creek with my fifteen month old daughter.
Lost sleep by judging a friend too soon.
Witnessed a new friend pull her life together.
Rode my bike to work.
Hugged my sister, whom I haven’t seen in a year.
Saw someone cry from viewing one of my photographs.
I am a lazy photographer. People will view a dramatically lit image of mine and say, “Wow, how long did you have to wait for the light in that one?” I’d respond, “I don’t know. Maybe two minutes.” Even that may be an exaggeration. I pretty much don’t wait for the light. Sorry, all you patient nature photographers. My apologies especially to the wildlife guys. They wait all…day…long.
I didn’t use to be this way. The first year I took up photography as a hobby, I saw more sunrises than the rest of of my life combined. I would scout out a location before and then return in the dark just before dawn. I’d stand there eyes still bleary with sleep. I’d setup my camera and tripod, rub my hands to warm them and wait for the light to be just right.
Waiting for light goes something like: find and frame a subject, anticipate lighting and then wait until that light arrives. But not anymore. Why not? Let’s consider the act of looking and a story of a street musician.
During morning rush hour, an anonymous violinist set up in a Washington DC subway station. He played for 43 minutes as 1097 people passed by. Of those 1097, 7 people stopped for about a minute to listen. The musician was world renowned violinist Joshua Bell, playing on a 3.5 million dollar violin. He played music that only three days earlier was played to a packed theater of $100 seats. You can read the full story here.
Most everyone, 99.4% of the people, walked by without pausing. Joshua Bell is one of the best classical musicians in the world. He was playing some of the finest pieces ever composed. What happened? The people in the subway station were on their way to somewhere else. They were distracted by a predetermined destination. They were waiting for the light and they missed Joshua Bell.
Guess what, there is always something interesting happening. Have you heard of the movie, Microcosmos? It’s a gorgeous documentary showing insect life. Who knew there was so much wonder in grassy bits around me? I rarely think of it. In fact I miss out all the time.
With my typical subject matter, there is so much interesting around me that something nearby already has the “perfect” light, waiting for me to notice. If I’m in a state of mind to appreciate what’s around me, then I just need to look. There’s so much unplanned goodness that I have too much to photograph before I’m in a situation where I feel the need to plan for lighting.
A photograph captures a moment in time. It would seem to follow that a photographer would want to create images that depict a special moment, where the viewer can savor the nuances of that slice of time. Photojournalists are inspired by the “decisive moments” captured by Henri Cariter-Bresson. Landscape photographers retell the story of Ansel Adams capturing quickly passing light for his most popular image, Moonrise, Hernandes. Think of the artist waiting for just the right expression in a face, or seeking that magic sunrise hour on the side of a mountain.
There’s a problem with this approach. The camera may be capturing a fleeting arrangement of light, but I don’t want to draw your attention to a specific moment. I want the story. I want your mind to fill in what happened the days, months or years that could have led up to the image. And, when your eyes turn away I want you to know that the story continues.
We know this already, don’t we? For the climax to be effective, we need the context of what happened before and how events may resolve after. Well, what if I don’t want my photograph to even show the climax? What if I just want to give you a sense of the journey?
Step into the journey. The moments will come. I don’t need to show a special moment to you, because they’re there all along.
I was overwhelmed, stressed out and losing motivation. But, there were things to get done. If I could just stay on task the world might not fall apart. I needed to prepare for an art show the coming weekend, there was still bookkeeping to do from the previous show and an approaching deadline for a freelance job. Not enough hours. The house was getting messier too. The lawn, overgrown. Piles of paper around my desk. I was running out of clean clothes. And, it was getting harder to like people, because all people do is generate more stuff to do.
Over breakfast, I mentioned my mood to a friend. Exasperated, I sighed, “Maybe I should take a walk in the woods.” “Yes”, David replied. He looked me deep in the eyes, the way you look at someone when you’re giving serious advice. “You should do that.”
Back at home, I recounted the breakfast conversation to my wife, Hannah. “Yeah, you should take that walk in the woods.” I nodded in agreement and promptly went to my office. I answered a few emails and fired up the accounting software. Sure, it would be nice to take a walk, but I was already behind on my work. It would be irresponsible to fall behind any further.
A few hours later, Hannah came by. “What are you still doing here?” I blathered some excuses. Feeling defeated, I hopped into the car and drove towards my favorite park. It was painful to leave.
I parked the car, all along feeling sorry for myself. I walked into the woods, down a ravine and found a log by the river. And there I sat, on the log. I became still and watched the water flow by. About an hour passed.
It was just what I needed. Was it the meditation, the change of environment, or the peaceful quality of the woods? I don’t know. But I did know that things were going to be okay. Not only that, but I was grateful.
And then I picked up my camera and took a few pictures. I hadn’t taken a picture in weeks. I came home, lightened. On my camera was Root Swirl, the picture above.
I live in the city and I love it. However, something about living this way is not quite right.
I grew up in the suburbs. The backyard of my family’s house came up to a woods where we neighborhood kids spent a lot of time getting lost. We made hideouts, buried treasure and went on long explorations. If we explored really, really far we would get to the other side of the woods and arrive at a street corner with an ice cream shop. To my 9 year old eyes, those woods were practically endless.
That was my initial taste of wildness. Those years were followed by TV, Nintendo, classrooms without windows, cars, shopping malls, air conditioning and cubicles. The wildness went from the expected to the other. You may be familiar with “the other”. It is that which is different from your daily experience. We tend to fear the other and make up excuses. Dangerous, unknown. You could get kidnapped, or eaten by a bear. The other is uncomfortable. Humidity and bugs. Excuses or not, I want it. For my sanity, I probably need it.
Henry David Thoreau wrote:
We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things by mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
“In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World”, is a photography book by Eliot Porter published in 1962. The title was taken from a passage by Thoreau. The book is a masterpiece of color nature photography. It is a statement about the lure of wild places and a celebration of the beautiful in what we mistake as common. And here we are, decades after Thoreau and Porter.
And here am I, living a life after wildness – after Porter’s book and after a time when the wild was a regular part of society. At the same time, I am after wildness – after, as in “in pursuit or quest of”. There is a struggle between my contemporary, city life and my need of the wild. This has been gnawing at me for the past few years and I suppose will be for some time. Looking at my recent photographic projects, the pursuit of the wild was there waiting for me to realize that I have been searching all along.
This need for wildness in my life is now strong enough that it requires a name. At the same time, this blog needs more focus (photography pun, hah). Blog, I christen thee, “Searching After Wildness”. May we all learn something worth living for.
I lost the ability to take pictures. Sure, I could still operate a camera, but something was off. I would be looking through the viewfinder, but there was no connection to the subject. I didn’t feel in tune with what I was photographing. Puzzled, I put the camera down and rubbed my head, nursing a dull headache. That headache was now on day three. Or, was it four or five? Maybe I was feeling stressed. That would explain the headaches and a lack of connectivity.
Two days later, I picked up the camera again. The headache was still there. I pointed the camera at the bulletin board in my office and tried to compose and focus. Something wasn’t right. No matter how I tried to focus the lens, the subject still felt disconnected. It just wouldn’t come into focus. Those words rolled around in my mind: wouldn’t come into focus. Into focus…..
Ah. I twiddled the diopter adjustment on the viewfinder, and guess what? I could see again. But, I never needed the diopter adjustment before. I ran into the restroom, and swapped my left contact lens with my right. And, the world become clear. For the past week, I had been wearing my contact lenses in the wrong eyes! That also explains the headaches. I felt like a doofus. But I didn’t mind one bit. With one minute of effort, I overcame both the headaches and my distance from the camera.
Interesting though, that it took a whole week to notice. Even though I couldn’t achieve a focused image in the camera’s viewfinder, I still didn’t guess that my eyes were off. I just assumed I had some kind of mental block. How subjective it must be to see something. How much needs to come together for me to take a specific picture? How much is going on physically and mentally that I’m not aware of? How much of these out-of-awareness criteria is holding me back from becoming a better photographer? How much of it enables me to be the photographer I already am?
