How to be a photographer
After fifty years, you'd think I'd know what I'm doing
I might know what I’m doing by instinct, but not why.
Thus, I’m once again studying like mad, with what might be diagnosed as an obsessive consumption of photography books, YouTube tutorials and a Santa Fe Workshop online class which is kicking my butt. (Run on sentences can’t be helped at times.)
Seems I’m attracted to more abstract minimalism which is understandable, but at this point limiting. This chipping away at an image was inspired by my relatively short but intense career in advertising and print media. Here’s how it goes as an art director. You get a lot of information about the client and the product. Then you start subtracting, by process of elimination until what remains is the most essential aspect, the core message that is supposed to communicate powerfully to the consumer. It’s like sculpting in clay where you take away until you find the sculpture hidden within.
Learning
I’m running around my house, my town, my mall. It feels like when I used to do a lot of jungle murals (past tense) and every plant I saw had to be examined for exploitation.
I grew up in my house and moved back when my marriage blew and mom died. All of a sudden I’m seeing things I’ve never noticed. It’s a treasure hunt. The way the rising sun hits the west wall, and later, a low mid-day sun hits it again only differently. Stairs I’ve used a million times become abstractions through the lens.
I walk by my car in the afternoon, the sun bouncing off a building. Abstraction.
But here’s the hard part. Minimalism and abstraction are my comfort zones. Too comfortable, and now this photo workshop drives me into an entirely new territory, which is what I’m paying for, of course. It’s a steep learning curve. Just like when I went to grad school at 57, or took over a restaurant (which is a whole other scary level, BTW).
Like everyone else before the early 2000s, I shot film, a workhorse, a Minolta SRT 202 and shot either negs or slides, processing commercially. My earliest digital, 2005
Documentation v artistic: add technology
I shot for research, to document my own work process, or travel. My photography goal was not artistic, except for travel.
By 2011, I was freelancing as an Op-Ed contributor to the Sacramento Bee: “California Sketches.” Documentation was still the goal. A quick eye, but more recording than artistic. You get what you see, no interpretation required. That’s what the drawing is for.
OK, of course I took opportunities to be more artistic.
Now: advances in AI in my photo file means I can revisit any shot and adjust any file
What works best, color or black & white? I can try each and pick.
Artistic & technology
Now: I’m taking my first photography workshop. The concept is based on both the experience of the professional shooter from LA and the famous photographer’s “bible,” The Photographer’s Eye.
It’s a simple concept and like a lot of simple things, quite complex. I have to loosen and stretch my brain, read everything three times, look at examples, and finally face the challenges of extremely complex technologies that reside within the camera and in the editing programs.
The process is no longer as simple as point and shoot, documenting what I see.
Now, what I see is a small percentage of what the camera sees or is capable of interpreting. It can make complex decisions for me and does, even when I put it in manual mode. Now, there’s me making decisions and there’s the camera, expressing a life of its own. Intimidating possibilities.
I love getting your comments. I hope you’ll support my work with either a free subscription, or even better, a modest paid subscription – equal to a cup of coffee a day. This work is about how to survive as a creative, but really it’s about how to survive and adapt, period. Keep learning. That’s how.