vision and creativity part 5

[Rob C]

What you saw and reacted to today can be the straightforward conscious reason for where you plan to be and what you plan to look for tomorrow.

You work the idea until you're done with it.

Really?

When I ran my studios I did the opposite as often as I could: I sought out locations and location work. That was simply down to two big creative factors: I liked new places and did not want to find myself back again facing a white Colorama and the same old shape and expression choices that day after day of snapping clothes forces one to accept is the norm. There are only so many faces a woman can pull, only so many pleasing shapes that she can bend herself into and look sane. Locations allow you to exploit the same relatively short range of options and make them seem new because of the dynamic and atmosphere that location will lend. It also inspires both parties to fresh effort in, with luck, new directions too.

If anything, what kept one going was having the shortest residual memory possible.

Rob C

[Isaac]

For example, if the house painter had decided to let it all hang out, and instead of even attempting to do his regular work, had dipped his brush several times into whatever cans of paint were open and, in a fit of fury, splattered the paint over the walls several times, then that would be art. Right?  

Wrong ;-)

Again, splattering the paint over the walls is the result of a fit of fury, not an expression of a fit of fury.

He was just having a fit of fury; he wasn't trying to "give form to a fit of fury" at all.

Does the buyer now claim his money back on the grounds he has been deceived into thinking the photo was a deliberate expression of the photographer's feelings...

The answer will be much the same as the answer to basic questions about "The Ethics of Photo Manipulation" -- it depends whether the photographer misrepresented the photo to the buyer.

'art' according to Isaac's definition?

Susanne K. Langer's aphorism.

[Isaac]

Would a perfect portfolio of these images hung just so in a fancy gallery be art?

The Unmade Bed, Gelatin silver print 1957, Imogen Cunningham

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

[Isaac]

What you saw and reacted to today can be the straightforward conscious reason for where you plan to be and what you plan to look for tomorrow.

You work the idea until you're done with it.

Really?

As you said -- "When you discover you have done something that pleases you, and manage to do so time after time, then I think you have, in essence, discovered your own particular gamut of satisfaction and self-expression."

[hjulenissen]

With reference to your other post about a shot a day keeping the urge at bay: are you describing the work ethic of the hack?

Not sure what you are asking. I was suggesting that becomming "an artist" or even proficient at anything may be more about hard work and discipline than searching for some magic formula/inspiration/... that is suddenly going to do the thing for you.

I did play the piano when younger. Well enough to consider making a career out of it, poor enough to recognize that it would not be a career on my terms. I believe that I learned something relevant to my current photography hobby:
-It is ok to learn from the best. Take classes, digest other peoples techniques, but discard what you dislike. Don't try to copy every aspect of your idols.
-Even the "natural born talents" tends to practice - a lot, even if they do not admit to.

-h

[Rob C]

Really?

As you said -- "When you discover you have done something that pleases you, and manage to do so time after time, then I think you have, in essence, discovered your own particular gamut of satisfaction and self-expression."

That's not in any way saying that you either abandon a genre - which is what I think you were suggesting ("finished with it") - nor is it saying that you then slavishly repeat what went before. It simply implies that you accept/recognize the possibilites and try work within them and do your best to remain fresh. In particular, I mean that you come to terms with your personal limitations because outwith that, there really are no limits: the ones that you believe exist are bound by the limitations of the individual imagination and what drives it. I think I mentioned somewhere here that I watched a rerun of an old tape about the 60s, and though it was mainly about London's photographic and model scene (and the film Blow-Up) even then there was great viariety of style within the tight little world that London fashion photography represented. At one point Celia Hammond (or was it Shrimpton? - I forget) mentions that the group consisted of maybe a dozen people... but the range of work and the different magazine styles that it catered for was vast.

Yes, several of the ‘stars’-to-be had come out of the John French studio experience – he was magical – and so they did share a basic common technical understanding about photography, but other than that, Bailey and Donovan were worlds apart in what they produced. Duffy originally came out of art college where he studied dress design… what they had in common was eye and talent. All different ‘eyes’ but quite obviously heaps of talent. In fact, it was French who did a lot for Bailey when he was still working for him, introducing him to prospective clients, even! If that didn’t show the belief French had in Bailey, then I’d be most surprised. Helping the guy you know is good enough to dethrone you is pretty cool. But he obviously recognized gold when he saw it – talent.

It’s funny though; I watched a more recent show about Norman Parkinson, and in it, Celia Hammond, with whom he was apparently obsessed for a while, says that Parks didn’t like the model to think for herself, just to follow his direction. In contrast, in the same film, Jerry Hall tells how Parks loved to let her have her head and contribute idea after idea… now both might be telling it as they saw it: perhaps Parks felt one was a creative model and the other not, but blessed with the right physical features. You play different girls in different ways, as you discover what they are all about, if you use them often enough. That, quite separately from the pictures, is a delicious aspect of model photography that has pretty much zero to do with sex, though of course the opposite could as easily be the case. It all depends on the players, doesn’t it?

You don’t get that buzz from rocks and trees. At least, I never did. And no, that's not a gratuitous swipe at a genre - just the reason why it doesn't do anything much for me, even though it's really all that's left open to me now.

Rob C

[Rob C]

Not sure what you are asking. I was suggesting that becomming "an artist" or even proficient at anything may be more about hard work and discipline than searching for some magic formula/inspiration/... that is suddenly going to do the thing for you.

I did play the piano when younger.

1.  Well enough to consider making a career out of it, poor enough to recognize that it would not be a career on my terms. I believe that I learned something relevant to my current photography hobby:
-It is ok to learn from the best. Take classes, digest other peoples techniques, but discard what you dislike. Don't try to copy every aspect of your idols.
2.  -Even the "natural born talents" tends to practice - a lot, even if they do not admit to.

-h

1.  Shared with Adams, then.

2.  Photographers (pro) do that every day and get paid for doing it. It's called their work. And the reason they get that paid practice is because they usually have the talent that brings them the work on which to practise their art.

The circle is vicious!

Rob C

[Isaac]

That's not in any way saying that you either abandon a genre - which is what I think you were suggesting ("finished with it")...

Not "abandon a genre" but finish an idea that was being worked out within a genre.

[leeonmaui]

"that it would not be a career on my terms" - Hjulenissen

That is pretty profound!

Are you really Santa Claus?

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.  ~Andy Warhol

Near my old house in Lahaina along the beach, a very small stream emerged from hiding beneath the Naupaka bushes and hurried the short distance to the shore and rejoined the great Pacific ocean.
It came to be a location which delighted me, when other locations of delight seems far away and unreachable, I would visit the stream often at various times of the day.
In this small world there was constant change and dissimilar routine. Rough canyons were carved and then smoothed by the waves at high tide, shiny pebbles would be exposed and then hidden, swift water played into shapes creating vertebrae to anchor all manor of anatomies. Natural light worked in silver, pewter, copper, gold as the height of the sun and the clouds dictated. There was joy in the Macro and the wide angle, the vertical and the horizontal.
It was not an obsession or a particularly profound reason that drew me back to the stream, I was happy to feel the sand beneath my feet, or the feel the cool stream water circle around them. In these times there was just the stop of the shutter, the feel of my hand on the camera, the light, the stream, and the movement of the lens that mattered.
One day while I was working at the stream, a very old Hawaiian lady came near and stopped a distance from me. She said to me "I see you here a lot, What are you doing?" I replied; I am taking pictures, I like this spot" She asked me then; "Do you know what that stream is?" I answered something along the lines of no, I did not know. "That is the King's stream" she said, "That stream was the only constant source of water for the entire ancient Hawaiian village of Lahaina, it was because of that stream that the village could even survive, and nobody could do anything in that stream without the King's permission, because to harm it in any way, could endanger to whole village."
He explanation led me to tell her a bit more about what I was doing, why I liked it, and what I thought was interesting about it. She listened to me silently nodding a few times. She then showed me some rocks that she had collected on the beach, which had Olivine embedded in them and explained to me how to remove the gem from the lava without destroying the gem. We then said goodbyes, and I moved to get back to shooting and she moved away, she stopped again and looked at me then she said; "Well I hope you find your gems, I don't think the king would mind either"

[Ray]

Wrong ;-)

Again, splattering the paint over the walls is the result of a fit of fury, not an expression of a fit of fury.

He was just having a fit of fury; he wasn't trying to "give form to a fit of fury" at all.

Oh! I see! To give form to a fit of fury requires that one be calm and collected. Splattered paint delivered in fury is not an expression of fury. Only carefully positioned splatters, applied with equanimity and dexterity, could be considered as an expression of fury. Now all is clear. 

[Isaac]

I see that you've exhausted your argument and all that remains is sarcasm.

Intent is so central to our ordinary understanding of people's behavior that we write it into Law -- "with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it".

You might as well voice mock surprise that the player who's back the soccer ball bounced-off into the opponents goal is only congratulated for their dumb luck.

[Rob C]

I see that you've exhausted your argument and all that remains is sarcasm.

Intent is so central to our ordinary understanding of people's behavior that we write it into Law -- "with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it".

You might as well voice mock surprise that the player who's back the soccer ball bounced-off into the opponents goal is only congratulated for their dumb luck.

Nonsense, it's the tattoos wot done it. Everybody knows that.

Rob C

[HSway]

Wrong ;-)

Again, splattering the paint over the walls is the result of a fit of fury, not an expression of a fit of fury.

He was just having a fit of fury; he wasn't trying to "give form to a fit of fury" at all.

Oh! I see! To give form to a fit of fury requires that one be calm and collected. Splattered paint delivered in fury is not an expression of fury. Only carefully positioned splatters, applied with equanimity and dexterity, could be considered as an expression of fury. Now all is clear.  

When a chimp smudges paint over a paper that’s not how the human normally perceives and recognises art. Although paintings of this and similar character often hung in communal areas of buildings and they may often seem pretty pictures they won’t strike you in that way. Which is what art does, and has many ways of doing it and significances for a particular individual about it.

Art has something that goes beyond the physical form. I said something, so yes, it's a magic. Recognition of that is universal, archetypal and it runs through some very deep and basic layer of human intelligence and can have infinite number of shades and forms, yet is always recognisable and definite. Something similar to infinite number of individual minds but the unique and undoubted distinction of Love. That 'something' we drew with a piece of soil picked from under our bare feet on the rock above our head and carry it with us since.

So if a fury is to be involved in a meaningful way, it has to be that kind.

[leeonmaui]

Aloha,

Originally I opened this post as a counter point about creativity/ and creating that I thought was valid.
It was in no way an attempt to belittle the authors photographic work, which some chose to do.

Nor was it an attempt to prompt a discussion about "what is art" which I can see from all the posts is what this has degenerated into, which seems to follow a pattern on this forum as well as many others.
I guys asks about "which lens people like in Canons wide primes" and soon after a few posters are spiting back and forth about Canon verses Nikon or whatever.

I then used a story to attempt to bring everybody around to a more positive discussion about creating and
how something came to be. (and I know the image was not that great, that's why I never published anything from the series into prints)

Ok so lets try this; using some discipline, why doesn't everyone that has posted a tit for tat rant about art, post something positive about how they create or what matters to them when they create, post something along with an image you've done, come on try inspiring your fellow photographer as opposed to grinding axes.

At any rate, Aloha,

Lee
Honolulu, HI

[Rob C]

Aloha,

Originally I opened this post as a counter point about creativity/ and creating that I thought was valid.
It was in no way an attempt to belittle the authors photographic work, which some chose to do.

Nor was it an attempt to prompt a discussion about "what is art" which I can see from all the posts is what this has degenerated into, which seems to follow a pattern on this forum as well as many others.
I guys asks about "which lens people like in Canons wide primes" and soon after a few posters are spiting back and forth about Canon verses Nikon or whatever.

I then used a story to attempt to bring everybody around to a more positive discussion about creating and
how something came to be. (and I know the image was not that great, that's why I never published anything from the series into prints)

Ok so lets try this; using some discipline, why doesn't everyone that has posted a tit for tat rant about art, post something positive about how they create or what matters to them when they create, post something along with an image you've done, come on try inspiring your fellow photographer as opposed to grinding axes.

At any rate, Aloha,

Lee
Honolulu, HI

Lee,

What you complain about is inevitable. Why? Because you look for something that can’t be done if only because in reality, it doesn’t work as you’d like it to work.

Creativity is a subconscious factor in the making of any work. You don’t sit down with that sheet of paper and draw two columns, one headed Do and the other Don’t Do.

I my opinion, anyone who tells you otherwise is ether a fraud or is himself anything but creative.

I’ve known a lot of creative people in my time and not one has ever told me that he has a ‘system’ of work. They just damned well do it! Speaking personally from experience, the worst thing I could ever have to deal with, work-wise, was the presence of an art director and, worse, of a client at a shoot. If the art director had been any good then he wouldn’t have needed me because my kind of photography is basically so damned simple that he could easily have done it himself after a few sessions with various snappers. As for clients, they are nothing better than a distraction when you least need one.

And that’s why responses meander off the tight track you’d have then adhere to – either you get no response at all to an impossible question or you get one that skirts around it and displeases you somewhat because of it.

I’ve got a website overflowing with pictures, professionally taken ones and others simply results of my random wanderings with a camera or cellphone. There isn’t one where I could sit down and describe some organized, spiritual and self-consciously artistically engineered process that got me to the click. Not that, and be telling you the truth. Of course, if you wanted me to, I could certainly write you an interesting pack of fibs about any one. Pictures just get made. It’s up to what happens between the snapper, the model and the background at the time. I keep telling everyone: it’s so bloody simple! And there lies the key: you can or you can’t, and if you can you can’t understand why folks should think there’s a problem. It’s the same with any talent – why expect it to be available to all by formula? I play music all day long and can’t sing a note. That depresses me, but doesn’t stop the bathroom ringing when I shower; it becomes my magical echo chamber and the genesis of my next hit record!

Rob C

[Eric Kellerman]

I’ve got a website overflowing with pictures, professionally taken ones and others simply results of my random wanderings with a camera or cellphone. There isn’t one where I could sit down and describe some organized, spiritual and self-consciously artistically engineered process that got me to the click. Not that, and be telling you the truth. Of course, if you wanted me to, I could certainly write you an interesting pack of fibs about any one. Pictures just get made. It’s up to what happens between the snapper, the model and the background at the time. I keep telling everyone: it’s so bloody simple! And there lies the key: you can or you can’t, and if you can you can’t understand why folks should think there’s a problem.

Perfectly put, Rob. Exactly how I feel about the process of making photographs of people. I would add that I also try not to use the word 'model', because I feel it can diminish the contribution of the person being photographed.

I always look for that frisson that results from the perfect coming together of intention and accident; it's why I don't record my studio settings. Serendipity is my little luxury.

[Ray]

For me, the taking of any shot is akin to taking detailed notes of what one saw and found interesting, from whatever perspective one thought appropriate or interesting.

The art is in the process of applying the Photoshop techniques, and/or printing techniques according to one's skills, to such detailed notes (Raw files), in order to create (or as Isaac would say, 'give form to') the emotional experience that motivated one to take the shot in the first instance.

[Kirk Gittings]

Ray the emotional experience can also be in the original "capture". Take clouds for instance. They oftentimes (for me) are a kind of emotional "score" which gives the image its emotional tone and sets the "mood".

[leeonmaui]

Aloha,

Ah, what photographer, or anyone for that matter doesn't love clouds, that is such a great way to start to connect with a photograph...

Ah, what photographer hasn't cursed them as well!
Asking them; please get the f*%k out of the way!

Yes bringing that "score" to the camera is the trick, when I'm working now I don't think (or I try not to) about what I see, I think only about  how to compress that "score" into the camera, so that when the print is done it can all come flooding out again. I like to think only about what the camera can "see" and use that to get as much of what I feel.

"You have to have an idea about what you are going to do, but it should only be a vague idea." - Pablo Picasso
 

[Kirk Gittings]

Aloha,

Ah, what photographer, or anyone for that matter doesn't love clouds, that is such a great way to start to connect with a photograph...

Ah, what photographer hasn't cursed them as well!
Asking them; please get the f*%k out of the way!

Yes bringing that "score" to the camera is the trick, when I'm working now I don't think (or I try not to) about what I see, I think only about  how to compress that "score" into the camera, so that when the print is done it can all come flooding out again. I like to think only about what the camera can "see" and use that to get as much of what I feel.

"You have to have an idea about what you are going to do, but it should only be a vague idea." - Pablo Picasso
 

I'm not a painter so I don't know how they work.......there is a long tradition in photography of "pre-visualization" where you look at a scene and based on your mastery of the medium you can see through the process to a possible final print. I do that including many possible variations. But nothing is locked in. Doing that helps me to create a negative or file that is optimized for my vision and helps remove the guess work that IMHE results more often in disappointments than success.