Teri Cundall over at Proville put on a Lomography Workshop recently. We were given a 35mm fisheye camera (with a flash even!) and a Diana toy camera, and some film, heard some pointers, looked at some examples, and were sent off to mess around. It was a lot of fun. So very far from my usual way of working. I haven't shot on the street in a couple years. I haven't even shot off tripod much in the last couple years.
Play vs Work
I've mentioned play vs work before, and talked about easy vs hard as well. In the few non-booked hours I've had recently I've been working on this photo.
These are roughs, as I'm not yet done.
It's not really where I want it yet. For example, I like the highlight situation on the left, and I sort of like it on the right, but I wanted to see what it looked like with more symmetry.
And so. Now with more symmetry. And yet, it's still not where I want it to be. But it's annoying because my worktime on this picture is so fractured.
When it gets frustrating like this, the voice that often gets loudest starts going "You can't get stumped like this on a job you have to be able to perform you won't be able to step away everything will be depending on you you can't choke like this".
And that's somewhat true. But there are some significant differences. I won't be alone, and it won't all be depending on me. And I will also be different, and I know this from my own experience. That little voice is always trying to protect me in this way, but it's very short-sighted and way too skeptical.
Thankfully, another voice says "What you need is a piece of plex that's two feet longer than this, and two short C-stands to rig it in an arc above the subject." And I realize that the next opportunity I have to get to Tap, I'll get that piece of plex and finish this photo.
After Picasso
I shot these this week, on both film and digital. These are from the digital captures.
The 4x5 transparencies look amazing, like little jewels. But what a pain-in-the-ass. I've haven't shot film much, only dabbled really, and this is the first time I've shot 4x5. It is: expensive, time-consuming, stressful. No wonder everyone is a photographer, post-digital.
I shot this one on film as well as digital to answer this little gremlin in my head. When I shoot stuff, this little gremlin always whispers "This'd look better on film.", so I put it to the test. I borrowed a view camera, Hunter donated some 4x5 film, I picked up some Fuji instant film, and got to work.
Digital went first, so I could noodle around without burning $3.50 a sheet for the Fujiroids. Once I got the digital, I switched to film. So aggravating, double-checking and triple-checking everything (focus, composition, shutter, f-stop, swings and tilts, strobes, dust, pulse-rate, biorhythms, etc), but the image on the ground glass is a little bit magical. And the polaroid, too.
And then the dropoff at the lab - and the nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something, for the rest of the day. But then, picking up the film and looking at the slides, little gems, and then the loupe, the startling detail and clarity...The gremlin is right.
Metamorphosis
I have for as long as I have remembered, experienced the creative urge. I have spent most of my life ignoring, squashing, or running from the same. Yet I have also consistently dabbled in one form or creative expression or another: cartooning, writing, sculpting, painting, metalwork, interior design, urban planning. It's just that whenever my efforts in that form threatened to move from easy execution to difficult, I stopped. Photography has stuck, or rather, I've devoted myself to it, drawn the line in the sand. So now, when it goes from easy to difficult, I don't stop, I just slow to a crawl.
My self-promotion machine is getting built, it's just really slowly. I assembled my portfolio images in May, and the physical book will likely be done in January. I initiated a logo redesign in March and it was finished in August. I did a magazine review to find targets about three months ago and have not revisited it. Yet.
Technically-speaking, the last year has seen a lot of improvement. A friend of mine told me I've spent the last year 'setting up still life problems and solving them'. I have really tightened up my techniques, and as well I have improved my gear.
Talking last night with my lovely and smart girlfriend, I was saying that it feels like I've moved further away from the conceptual side of things, which is what I truly love, in favor of the technical side, for which my love is a little fleeting. She said maybe what I really want to be is an art director, and it really touched something in me, stopped something.
But I don't want to change forms again. I lose too much each time I do. And after thinking about it, it seems that really good art directors are a little bit photographers, and really good photographers are a little bit art directors. Each needs to be able to communicate, anticipate, support, reach a common ground.
So I think I'll just keep on.
Gear Weenies
I moved house recently, and apparently that messed me up more than I thought. My camera's weighed a ton. BUT I did get something going last week. My new 'studio' is about 25% larger than my old 'studio' (each of these being a room in my apartment), which is great. There's less of the playing-Twister-on-the-monkey-bars feeling in the new space. It makes things easier.
My new setup also features a new camera/computer combination, which let's me shoot tethered, AND sometimes results, when I'm looking at the captures, in a sharp intake in breath. The new camera and lens are so much sharper, more detailed, and richer in colors than that old outmoded lame excuse for a camera I was using.
That reminds me. I was talking with Hunter Freeman, one of the photographers I work for, about ten months ago. I mentioned that I was unhappy with my camera but that I couldn't afford the new one. He said that it usually wasn't about the equipment as about the operator. That let the air out of my acqusition baloon. I spent the next six months trying to extract every bit of performance out of that old machine, trying to work within its limitations, and trying to get it to do what I wanted it to do.
There's a strong current of gearweenieness in photography, and I'm not immune to it. I love me some new shiny. But Hunter was right, and I made some good photos with that old camera. People make compelling, interesting pictures with low-grade crappy equipment, and people make flat, sterile pictures with top-of-the-line equipment.
I would love to have a 10,000 square foot space with 50 foot ceilings, stocked with all the latest goodies, and I hope to someday. But struggling with a camera that's truly suboptimal has taught me to rely more on me and the creative process, and less on the gear I'm using. Plus I've banished, for now, the I-can't-shoot-because-my-equipment-sucks mentality.
With that in mind, and my new camera in hand, here's to less excuses and more photos.