Rob,
Here are some of the things that strike me about all of your recent photos:
They are all so spontaneous: "I saw this, and I felt like capturing it. And I don't give a hoot whether anybody else likes it or is willing to pay money for it. It's just for me."
And yet, your eye is so good that they capture moments of magic, without ever seeming forced.
Many are downright whimsical. I'm thinking of your "Blue Patch" in the Abstracts thread, which made me chuckle the instant I saw it.
Hmmm. Maybe through your recent photos you are actually "teaching creativity," at least to those who are receptive. One lesson might be "Don't let your mind get in the way of your photography!"
Cheers,
Eric
Hi Eric,
Thank you for the kind comments; thing is, it was pretty much ever so with me: I wasn't really into the long, considered look at anything - in fact, I used to get scared of freezing up, which was one reason I detested the few times an art director or client wanted to be present. By the time they put in their 200% I was lost, feeling absolutely nothing beyond just the ability to press the button for them.
I remember my one muse saying to me in the car one day, after driving about an hour or so looking for something to stir me as a location: "you always wait until the last moment, Rob, don't you?" And so yeah, it's the same thing with my rather ersatz version of street: if I see it I grab it before it goes away, as well it might. In the end, even after a lifetime with something, even someone, you end up alone. Images are the most transient entities of all.
Perhaps that's a reason why I don't believe in the teaching of matters of the soul - art, I suppose, for want of a more appropriate word. It keeps coming back to this: you see it or you do not; you can look all day long and if you can't, you won't. And even when you can you often don't. Like Sarah Moon and others have said: it's a present from somewhere; you don't make it, the photograph, it comes to you. You are just a medium.
Believe me, I've had days when I've gone out with the camera, determined to catch something - anything - and I don't take a single shot. How can that be, if I'm supposed to be in control of it? I suppose the thing about it, wearing the professional hat, is that at the very worst, you have pure technique to take you through and over so that you can deliver. Also, wearing that hat, there is
purpose. (I won't quote Terrance Donovan again!) Purpose makes up for a multitude of emotional failures, or even nothing worse than just low-wattage days.
But hey, for me it's always better than just looking at the wall, even if it has some of my own stuff hangin' on for dear life up there!
;-)
Rob
P.S.
Was going to say: Garry Winogrand mightn't have gone nuts at all at the end, with his supposedly thousands of undeveloped cassettes: maybe you come to realize that it's the shooting that's the deal, getting that gift given to you. You
know how it's going to look after some time; even with PS making that ever more a matter of chance, the spur of the processing moment direction you decide to take. And know you can alter at any time. Aaah, virginal Kodachrome!