The Mindful Lens

Getting Back to Inspiration

2009-12-08T10:47:46-08:00

Great post today over at David duChemin's PixelatedImage:blog. Within the context of switching back to film, he talks about the need for play to keep your creativity fresh and alive. All this talk about Seeing and Vision and the Mind's Eye is all just the first part, the end being the image itself. In between though, the path that gets us there, the thing unique to each of us is our own creative process. If we let that get stale, the whole process can stagnate and wither over time.

Whatever it is you need to do to stay fresh creatively, do it. For duChemin it was slowing the process down and going back to film (which I think is an excellent idea for any number of reasons I won't bother you with here). Figure out what'll tweak your process and give it a try. You can read David's excellent post here.

On another note, if you're not familiar with David's work, I can't recommend him enough. He talks about Vision in a way that goes above and beyond anyone else I've found and far better than I can. Both of his books- Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision and VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography are great reads and should be on your Holiday wish list. An even greater value are his superb ebooks at the insanely low cost of $5ea. You can find those here. If you're on the path to understand your Vision and Creative Mind and want to share it with the world, they're worth every penny.

State of Mind

2009-12-03T14:02:25-08:00

"The state of mind of the photographer while creating is a blank... [but] It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time"

--Minor White

Making Art or Chopping Wood?

2009-12-03T06:15:00-08:00

Brooks Jensen, editor of LensWork Publishing has recently had a great series of podcasts from his current photography trip to Japan and they all warrant a listen. One in particular really gave me pause to think and look at how I shoot. Jensen discusses the idea that when we are in the field with our camera, we are not making art. Art making happens once we get back home during post-production, printing, and seeing how the images fit in a series. When we're in the field shooting, we should think about it as gathering the raw materials to make our art with at a later time, i.e. 'chopping wood'.

The more I thought about this, the more it makes sense. While I still think we should be looking through the lens with a certain amount of pre-visualization towards a finished piece, I believe it's possible that spending too much time with this can be counterproductive. As I keep mentioning, being in the flow and really Seeing your subject is crucial to creating a worthwhile image. If we spend too much time worrying about what we're going to do later, it will take away from being in the now.

Now i'm not saying you should shoot recklessly without forethought. Not much to learn by doing that. Take time to purposefully adjust your aperture and exposure and to change the framing. Look at your subject from different angles. Gather as much raw material as you can so that when it's time to get down to the business of creating art, you've got lots of arrows in your quiver.

On a recent trip to Yellowstone with my Brother, I didn't have time to do a whole lot of pre-visualizing while we were hiking. He's not a photographer and I didn't want to slow things to a crawl as I worked every shot for 10 minutes. I shot rapidly, but with purpose. Because I didn't spend too much time thinking about the end result, I feel that I ended up with a lot more quality images to work with back at home when I could analyze them more objectively.

Looking at the two images below, the top one is the original shot I took of a small geyser. I think if I had thought about it too much, I might have moved on as it initially didn't look too interesting to me. I wasn't able to pre-visualize the bottom image which is what I ended up with after some quick work in Lightroom. By simply shooting purposefully with an open mind, I was able to end up with an image I was happy with, one I might not have otherwise captured.

Spend Some Time With the Masters

2009-12-01T09:50:11-08:00

If you're in a creative rut or maybe just looking to kill some time productively, I suggest looking at some of the photos from the giants of the field. I think we get so wrapped up in our own work at times that it's good to take a step back and look at other work once in a while. And don't just casually flip through a book or a website. Spend some time looking at a photo you like. Give yourself at least 5 minutes with a picture and try to figure out what about it moves you.

Look at the light, the lines, the composition. Really try to See what it is about that image that speaks to you. And don't just look at photos that are similar to the subject matter you like to shoot. If you shoot landscapes, look at portraits, still lifes, etc. and try to bring those ideas back to your own images. How would you shoot differently if you shot that leaf on the forest floor as if it were a person's face in a portrait?

While it would be nice to have shelves full of beautifully printed monographs to look at, one of my favorites sites for this exercise is Photography Now. Here you can view the masters along with contemporary photographers in a beautiful book-like format. Give yourself some time this week to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Godin on Boundaries

2009-11-30T05:15:00-08:00

Getting your photos noticed today is harder than ever. There are more people than ever who have competent enough skills to make 'safe' photos that adhere to the visual rules we've created- the Rule of Thirds, the Golden Mean, 'correct' exposures, tack-sharp focus, etc. All of these are considered at least somewhat important in making an aesthetically pleasing photograph.

Unfortunately, aesthetically pleasing is unlikely to help you stand out from the masses. Playing by the rules can work and you may still get noticed but I tend to think that the reality of that is getting harder to achieve (saying nothing about your own marketing skills). Over at Seth Godin's blog, he posits that playing within the rules is the harder path these days. At least that's my interpretation of it.

"Some artists continually seek to tear down boundaries, to find new powder, new territory, new worlds to explore. They're the ones that hop the fence to get to places no one has ever been."

The problem with applying this line of thinking in photography is that getting "to places no one has ever been" is certainly difficult if not impossible. What I think you can do though is to beak some of the rules we've been taught. Overexpose, underexpose, put your subject at the edge of the frame. Create visual tension in ways you normally wouldn't. You may not create something totally new but if it's good, I bet it has a better chance of standing out from the aesthetically safe masses.

"Going with the flow is a euphemism for failing."

Concept vs Reality

2009-11-18T10:18:34-08:00

"Without seeing things as they are, it is hard to create art. Our perceptions are obscured and our mind is not fresh, so making art becomes a troubled, futile process by which we're trying to create something based on concept."

-- Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Slowing Down to See

2009-11-17T05:00:00-08:00

"I am almost always in a rush, even when I'm sitting down doing nothing. I'm often thinking of what lays ahead, a dozen different thoughts fighting for some elbow room inside the little space within my skull. Meditation helps a great deal in quieting the noise and providing me the breathing room to focus, but nothing really does it for me as when I go out with my camera and begin to photograph."

-Ibarionex Perello

I saw this opening paragraph today in a great post on Perello's blog. Our lives are so hectic these days that I think it can be a challenge for us to step out of that mindset. Like him, I find that meditation does help to stop the chatter for a while, or at least dial it back a bit. But the only time I can truly say that I'm completely in the 'now' with a quiet mind is when I'm out taking pictures, especially when I'm by myself in nature.

To be able to experience a quiet mind like that to me is one of the greatest gifts photography can give to the person behind the lens. It may take a while once we get out there to get away from our habituated mind. But after a time it's almost like the lens itself falls away and we interact with our subjects in a way that most people don't get to experience.

In order for this to happen though, we can't rush from spot to spot looking for the next good picture. Slow down. Stop. Look. Use your other senses to perceive your surroundings. See the interplay of light and shadow. Try to see not just what initially caught your eye but instead what the real essence of your subject might be. In doing so I think you'll find that your mind will quiet down and you have a much better chance of capturing a meaningful photograph. And even if you don't, slowing down and 'seeing' has it's own benefits beyond any picture.

Which one are you? Who cares

2009-11-13T04:30:00-08:00

For those of us that don't make a living from our photography, I think we suffer and mentally limit ourselves by saying or thinking we're "amateur" photographers. Why be constrained by the thinking that goes along with such a label. Why feel the need to labels ourselves such at all? David duChemin has a great post today over at his pixelatedimage:blog about this very idea.

What really matters?

"That you’re learning to see the world in a way that’s unique to you, and you’re taking the time, with what talent you’ve been given, and what hard-earned skills you possess, to show the world that vision in clearer and clearer ways."

duChemin truly believes, as do I, that photography is simply about expressing and sharing your vision of the world with anyone that's interested. Heck, even if you don't share it, does it really make it any less valid? Whether anyone sees it, whether we get paid to click the shutter or not, we're still working on that vision, expressing it. That should matter more than anything else.

And if we're expressing our vision of the world through our photography, does it matter how we label ourselves? In quantum physics, it's understood that we can change the nature of an object simply by observing it. If we have the idea that the thing we are observing is a particle, it can behave like a particle. If we are observing the very same thing and think it is a wave, it can behave like a wave. The same object can behave as both a particle and a wave.

With this in mind, don't be an amateur, don't be a professional, just be a photographer and work at mastering your vision.

He Couldn't Be More Right

2009-06-10T10:04:40-07:00

Found today on David DuChemin's pixelatedimage:blog...

"Whatever the next step for you is, take it boldly. These are not times for the timid;

there's no reward in tiptoeing through life only to make it safely to death"

The Gift of Unemployment

2009-06-09T19:13:02-07:00

No one wants to be without a job. Unfortunately, in these times, a job is no longer the given right it once seemed to be. If you are out of work, finding a job is a job unto itself as some of my friends and some of you will attest. But if you are one of those 14.5 million out of work, why not take advantage of the gift you've been given. Something you have that those of us with jobs may not- time.

Godin had another great post today that I found incredibly inspiring. The idea of this post was that if you are a recent college grad having trouble finding work, stop and think about all the things you could be learning about and building for yourself while you are out of work- start and run an online community, self-publish a book, write a newsletter or blog about an industry you care about, etc. You get the idea. You can find his post in it's entirety here.

This got me thinking. If I was out of work, what would I want to work on to help create some positive momentum towards living a photographic life. Plenty of things, but off the top of my head here are a few that any of us could do if we had more time:

Devote more time to blogging or journaling
Develop your portfolio
Create a new website
Figure out how to better use social networking for self-promotion
Join and participate in more online photographic communities
Seek out a mentor
Challenge yourself to complete a 100 Strangers project
Get your work shown in a public space
Put together a book of your work through Blurb, My Publisher, etc.
Teach photography to kids
Go back to shooting film to mix things up
Shoot, shoot, shoot

I can think of plenty more but you get the point. As Seth said, treat your list like a job. Get up every morning and put a lot of effort into it. If you're out of work and would like to pursue photography as a career, now might be the perfect time to find out what lies down that path. If you do have a job but you're not real happy with it, maybe a leave of absence makes sense. How much could you accomplish if you had 6-8 weeks to work on your list. I don't know, but this struck me in such a way that I'm real tempted to find out...