Does It Come In A Can?

When food comes packaged in a can, you can pretty much assume a few things about it.  It was produced in a standard way, with standard hygiene and health codes.  It won't taste great, but it will taste good enough--and the same--each time.  It's much easier to prepare, and costs a lot less than going to a restaurant for some bespoke food.

Does your photography aim to be like this, or like something else?  Something more like the quirky tacqaria down the street, or that new restaurant with a chef with such crazy ideas you don't even understand how he's talking about food?

Because no matter how you think of your photography inside that crazy head of yours, clients with money to spend will be judging you and your work with the same ruthless criteria and process they judge any other product they buy to help their business make more money.

So one problem is, if they're expecting the equivalent of photos in a can, and you deliver ostrich in curry sauce topped with ice cream because you had a dream about it last night, there's going to be trouble.  They're running a business, not a home for troubled photographers.

But hey, at least you'll make a lasting impression with that one, and provide the art director with a great story to tell.  And redemption might be possible.  Your bridge isn't burned with that, it's just a little unsafe at the moment.  The two of you might be able to meet in the middle not too far down the road.

The much, much larger risk is, promising the remarkable, and delivering boring.  The soup in a can.  There's no story to tell there, other than a tale of woe about wasted time and having to re-do it.    Any kind of redemption will be very far off, and very unlikely.  Once you're boring, you are boring.

So it's a fine line sometimes.  We need to take risks suitable for the job and the client.  I think it's good to push ourselves to deliver one unexpected flavor for the first meal.  Just one to start with for a new client--they can be picky eaters.  But that's all it takes to avoid being soup in a can, and to gain the trust necessary to add more flavors next time, and more the next, until they're lined up outside demanding your kind of crazy.

Fiction vs. Non-Fiction?

Fiction and non-fiction supposedly operate in two different realms.  Non-fiction is for for education, and fiction for entertainment.  But who put that line there in the first place, and who says we always need it now?

Greeks reading The Odyssey knew it wasn't factually true, but also knew it had important truths.  Truths that were much greater than, say, a non-fiction piece on how to plant tomatoes.  By the time of the Enlightenment science though, things had to be one or the other--facts don't lie, and the truth is what matters.

But that was then.   By now we know that on one level (and maybe more than one), fiction and non-fiction do the same thing.   They both evoke emotions from viewers, emotions from deep within, formed hours, days, years or maybe even eons ago.   Both need that emotion to cause any action.

It can be as simple as shoes, or as serious as children suffering from malaria (or as nefarious as propaganda). I'm not judging the subject matter here, just looking at the mental process.

Say Nike has a new shoe out.  It's lighter, more comfortable, more durable, and is now on sale--with free shipping.   A well-lit product shot proves it looks good, too.  All of these are facts, and they all sound pretty good.  Maybe you'll think about getting a pair.

But Nike also has a new ad campaign out for the shoes.  A fit, tan woman with mud on her face leaps over a rock as the sun sets deep along a trail overlooking the city below.  That's fiction, but it could become fact if you buy those shoes, right?  Well, maybe, maybe not.  It wouldn't if you don't trail run and have no intention of ever doing so.  But it might if you're heading out for a run after work after thinking about a run all day.  The facts alone provide the "what," but emotions provide the "why."

Or take the Maleria example.   A multi-tabbed spreadsheet complete with pivot tables will provide more than enough facts to understand the global problem.  But will it provide enough emotion to propell you into taking action?

No.  But a photograph might.  And the easy example is one of a child in a dim, shabby, dusty hospital bed.  But a picture of a clean, healthy newborn sleeping on its mother's shoulder might do the same thing.  Even if it's a posed commercial shot.  Over on the spreadsheet, the newborn photo has nothing to do with Maleria in Africa.  But in your mind, it might everything to do with it.

Those are extreme examples, and lots of subtlety lies in-between.   Just don't make the mistake of thinking it's one or the other. 

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Home may be where the heart is, but it's also where the heartbreak is.  Which is why sometime it can be hard to photograph the places you know so well.  All those memories--however good or bad or something in-between--can get in the way of actually seeing things right in front of you.

But head off to a place far away that you've never been to before, and there are no memories--just pure, 100% new (as long as you haven't spent too much time looking at other people's images of the place).  It's a visual ecstasy unlike any other.  A place so vacant of recognizable things, your brain will thirst for things to see and remember just to orient itself.   You barely even have to try.

However...learning to put the past aside at home, while more work and less euphoric, has its benefits, too.  You can dig deeper, beyond the surface to things that take awhile to see.  You're better able to come up with new, interesting and original ways of seeing those things.   The colorful clothes and turbans and saris are ultimately as superficial as a business suit; it's what's underneath that really and always matters.

So yes, you don't need to travel 10,000 away to take good, interesting and meaningful pictures.  But you might need to do so every now and then in order to realize that.

TMI

Too much information.  Like with conversations, art can have it, too.  And often does.

 A fundamental principal of all art forms is, the things you leave out matter as much, if not more, than what you put in.   Movies keep audiences wondering about things not on the screen.  In music, it's all about the spaces between notes that matter most.  And in comic books, events that take place between the frames provide the real interest.  All this leaving out of things lets our imagination do the filling in and to run with it.


Plenty has been written about all this, and I probably haven't read all that much of it.  But I've experienced enough of other people's art to know how important it is.   We all bring our own experiences and emotion to art, and all of that has to be allowed the freedom to participate.  Include too much information, too many notes, to much detail, and there's not much left for the viewer's brain to do but get bored.

And photography is particularly susceptible to TMI, because it was developed partly for the very purpose of recording details accurately.   Throw in obsession about lens sharpness, color accuracy and all that, and we have a whole culture partly devoted to TMI.  Intentionally out of focus images, motion blur, blown highlight or crushed shadows all seem part of a fringe subculture at times.

But thankfully I think all of that is changing, and as more people become more exposed to technically "incorrect" photos, the more they will thrive.

Composition plays a part, too.  Not the rule of thirds, but things like a subject looking "off screen."  A viewer of the photo will wonder what the person is looking at, and even fill in a little story of his or her own.  The unseen object of the subject's affection transforms into the object of the viewer's affection. 

Or take a dog running down the street alone.  Where is the owner?  What is the dog running from or too?

There is no "right" answer, because there is no "one" answer.  There are only viewers, who may or may not provide their own input.  When they do, it's pure magic.

Maybe TMI could also, if we're lucky, stand for "too much imagining."

Horses For Courses

Back in my studio art days, I spent hundreds of hours drawing and painting the nude figure.  And at some point during that invaluable training, I realized there must be a very small market for paintings of the nude that are at all representational.  Not many people want a nude person on their wall, no matter how well done.  Sure, they’d make an exception for a Michelangelo, but that’s about it.

A similar type of psychology rules photography, too, I think.  Not just nudes, but many types of photography and many different uses.  Unlike paintings, not all photography is destined for people’s walls in the first place, and it occurred to me that certain types of photography are more appropriate for certain types of uses.

A gruesome photograph of war might earn widespread admiration and international prizes, but that doesn't mean most people would want to hang a print of it over their sofa.  Or display it as a screensavers, or…many other things.   They might, however, like a book full of such images for the coffee table in front of the sofa.   The wall space might be reserved for pictures of Venice Canals or flowers or…anything but people, essentially.

A person’s home is private and intimate at least part of the time, and in general I think people don’t want photos of strangers on the wall, unless maybe they’re abstracted somehow. 

So if you’re in the business of selling your photography in tangible media, it’s probably worth knowing not only who your audience is, but also how your audience likes to consume your work.  They might love and pay for a book of your photos, but not offer anything for a large print.  Or vice versa.   And for their company’s lobby, they might like something different yet again.  And a restaurant or other retail space might be the perfect place for that picture of a Sadhu that everyone loves, but no one wants a print of.

It’s a matter of horses for courses, as they say.

Reinterpreted for Now

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Bands and their critics have detailed ways to describe musical styles.  R&B with tinges of soul.  Hard rock with just a hint of speed metal mixed with acid rock.  It can get as intricate as wine tasting pretty quickly. 

Why don’t photographers and their audiences discuss photographic works of art with a similar level of detail, born out of passion for the history of the art?  Looking at the vast variety of photography styles, it would certainly seem possible.  But instead, we're more likely to get accusations of copying and fraud when talking about influences.  Photography critics—internet ones at least—jump at the chance to snidely point out that so-and-so did that twenty years ago, and should maybe sue for copyright infringement.  No praise for homages and reinterpretations here.

But at least the critics know and can name some contemporary photographers.  Most people can probably cite only one or two photographers they like, and that’s because they’ve been taught somewhere along the line that they should.

Everyone today sees as many images as they hear musical notes, so less exposure can’t be the reason for the difference.

Maybe it’s because photography is seen either in a commercial context or in an ultra casual one, rendering both rather superficial?

Or maybe it’s that music digs deeper into the soul, and fires a part of the brain that simply remembers it more.  Mothers don’t’ show babies pictures to lull them to sleep, they sing to them.  And as art patrons quietly take in a new photography exhibit on a Saturday night, people pack bars and coliseums to go crazy listening to their favorite bands play live.

So maybe music just has more and deeper passion.  But that’s no reason not to try to bring the same energy to photography.  And part of that involves making and reinterpreting it for today, not yesterday.  By jamming and riffing and seeing what happens.

Walking Around

The best way to see new things and people and styles is to walk.  A lot and as much as possible.  Even walking down a familiar block from the other direction will reveal totally different ways of seeing something so familiar.

Some types of photographers--street and travel photographers come to mind-- obviously have to walk a lot. When I'm out on the street for the whole day, I figure I do about ten miles in a day.   I rarely have a schedule unless I want to return someplace to catch certain light, and have only a starting point and end point for transportation.  The rest is improv.

But a lot of walking is just as important when, say, scouting for an editorial shoot.  Most themes have been done by now. The graffiti walls, the old buildings, the minimalist quads (and of course the beach).  But that doesn't mean these types of places are totally played out.  Walking around every inch of a location, new angles and lighting and composition might come to you. 

And the nuances are crucial, because everyone has to dig a little deeper now with their ideas.  There's no such thing a "brick wall" or a "graffiti wall" anymore.  There are old brick walls, painted brick walls, art graffiti walls, gang graffiti walls, and on and on.

What's the best location to go with your idea?  You'll only find it by walking around.