Monthly Archives October 2008

From Good to Great?

In PhotoSig.com a person asked how one can go from good to great. Here’s my response:

…the arts/crafts of exposure, composing, and telling a story are not something that one masters and then move on to the next thing. The same applies to the more specifically technical aspects of photography. One is always learning, deepening, exploring, creating.

Taking a great shot, in my estimation, can happen at any time. Sustaining a level of excellence however, and making great work, requires that we exercise ourselves beyond technique and beyond the usual, beyond the limits that mastery of what is present requires. It takes dedication and commitment yes, but also a level of performance and creativity that emerges from mastery of technical aspects and depth of reflection and creative risk. I hasten to add that those considered great, were not great at every moment, or with every attempt. But mastery of the technical, deep reflection, professionalism in effort and disposition, facilitates the development of inspiration and the sustainment of will that is foundational for excellence.

It might very well take a lifetime to master being darn good at one thing. You, and the others who have posted, are right that it takes commitment. But commitment to what? How is that commitment expressed? What form does it take for a particular artistic vision? How might you find what you can be great at (it is unlikely that we will be great at everything)? Who is to judge your work (whose judgment matters, and why and how, so?). I think those are some of the issues that I think are not jut incidental to your question. Unless, of course, you just meant how to get better or improve.

Finally, I think “great” is an accorded status. Not likely something you determine for yourself (unlike Muhammad Ali!. : )

Photography & Equanimity

This is an excerpt from Deborah DeWit Marchant’s Traveling Light: A Photographer’s Journey (Seattle: Impassio Press, 2003), p. 30. It is an epiphany of sorts, a realization that hits all of us every now and then. The emphasis on various sentences is mine:

“…I stood there, listening to the rhythmic pounding of the surf and aching with the inevitable awakening to the knowledge that I could never create something better than the perfection I had just witnessed. I could never capture on film what Nature managed to do effortlessly every day. Trying to snatch or steal these shimmering moments was impossible and pointless. The world’s beauty did not need me to imitate or immortalize it. It was already immortal.

This discovery shed light on the puzzling knowledge that although my photographs were pictures of Something, they never seemed to be pictures of what I saw or experienced as I was taken them. Where was my quivering heart, or that damp, warm wind, or the vastness of that evening sky? These were the physical experiences that welded the pictures to my mind. Apparently, Nature shared these with us but wouldn’t let us take them.

I thought about this and then concluded, with relief, that I was insignificant. Nothing more than a moment in time, just like a sunset or a single wave lapping upon the shore. One minute in the face of Eternity.

The burden was lifted. It wasn’t my job to illuminate the miracles of the world. It had been a youthful presumption. My muscles, taut with the anticipation of having the True Moment revealed to me, relaxed. There was no race. There was no finish line. There was just me, still gripped by a need to record what I saw, but now I relished the equanimity that this identity of nothingness gave me with all living and nonliving things.

I often tell folks that it is relatively easy to take photos of what was there (representational), but that it is significantly harder to take pictures of what you want to convey beyond “I was there.” This is part of what Marchant highlights, recognizing the trap we set for ourselves when we expect to capture and hold those moments. At best we can be conduits for the presencing of that moment (our photographs arrest time but only a part of the experience of the moment). The more mindful our photographic practice, perhaps the more we can bring to others with our images a fuller sense of that moment we witnessed.

If you are interested in a mindful, thoughtful attitude toward photography, this is a good book to read. Try it with a nice cup of tea and some Amaretti cookies.

Recent Published Images

Just a quick note, a stub really, on images that have made it into publications recently. The most recent one is the image of Rachel Coleman that appeared in last Sunday’s edition of The Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon (our local Gannett newspaper — see my previous entry). The other image was in an article on student activism that appeared on the Summer 2008 issue of The Scene, Willamette University’s magazine (Unfortunately, I can’t find the photo credits anywhere on this last one). I don’t send many images out at all, but it was fun to have these two picked up.