lessons and new ideas

Lots of things been going on in the last month or so. I finished up the images from the Ironman triathlon project. Well - I finished taking the pictures. I've done the basic editing too, but haven't really looked at them all as a set. Part of the delay has been I've wanted to get a bit of distance from them, but also that I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with them. Initially I was shooting them with the idea that there would be a book, and that may still happen. Then I've been kicking around the idea of a small gallery show or end of season party and show, but that would probably need some sponsorship to pay for several larger prints. I did get one image accepted in the Texas Photo international competition opening next weekend, which is a thrill, but still not really the focus of the project. I'd also been contemplating putting something together for the SlideLuck PotShow coming up here in November.

Things fell in to place a bit more on Thursday night here, when I was at the Gathering of Photographers meetup in Austin. I hadn't been to this group before and had a great time. There were several very accomplished photographers there and I got some interesting ideas. In particular, I spent a while picking Julia Robinson's brain and seeing some of her multimedia slideshows. She was kind enough to put up with all my stupid questions and point me in what seems to be a good direction. I've always really enjoyed the sort of work put out by mediastorm, and the general mixing of still images along with audio. I'm a bit of a 'This American Life' and Ira Glass junkie as well. One thing I've realised in the last couple of years is that I want to try and tell stories with my photography, rather than just being happy with a series of greatest hits or one off images. I think the multimedia format has a lot of potential for that. Not really interested in video yet and there is a lot of power in looking at a still image, with audio that increases or expands upon the information in the image, without going to moving pictures.

Of course, that now means I need to work out how to put all that together. I've taken the pictures, but I didn't record any audio. I have a small Olympus WS-110 digital recorder that I think will be good enough to pick up the audio I need, but I have to go record it. Which now means I'm having to consider doing interviews, recording background sounds and arranging some instrumental backing music. Then I need to learn how to mix all those bits of audio together and sync it up to the images. The prospect of learning all this new stuff has really lit a candle under me - it's exciting! Reminds me of all the book structure and design that I absorbed for the first SoFoBoMo.

This evening, I was at Piercarlo's gallery show CHAN-CHAN. He did it in conjunction with another artist - a painter - Luis Abreux. Combined, they had paintings and photography hanging together. The images were all related to Cuba in various ways, and there was a live band playing music from the region too. It struck me that this was an even more engrossing multimedia presentation of the work. The band really evoked the feel of the area and helped transport you while looking at the images.

On the way home from that show, I ran into a friend of mine who's a great musician. Woode Wood is a fixture on the local running trail, playing his music and working on his videos. Things are picking up for him and he's putting a band together now. We hung out for a while and I was lucky enough to get my first guitar lesson from him. My fingertips are still sore. I was also able to arrange to license some of his music as the backing score for the slideshow - things are falling into place already! Check out his videos and vote for them on YouTube.

everyday ironman

Finished the shooting for the Ironman project at the weekend, with a few post race celebratory tattoo images. Lots of pictures taken. Many great race stories. So many new Ironmen after the race up in Coeur d'Alene last week. A tough day and nearly everyone came through it strong. The others I'm sure will be back to try again some other day. Now I'm left to try and make some sense out of all the pictures. I had an idea for a book of these images. Maybe now it is just a show of some large prints. Hard to tell at the moment.

taking the narrative machete to the democratic jungle

Attended the Alec Soth lecture at the Austin Center of Photography last night. They are doing a fantastic job for such a young organization, getting in great photographers who are giving interesting talks. Alec Soth talked about his ennui with photography as a medium. Starting out quite frustrated and negative about image making. Partly this was in the context of what he called the democratic jungle, riffing on William Eggleston's idea of the democratic forest. That everything is equally important as a subject and everything is up for having pictures taken. No need for much in the way of subject selection or thought - everything is a viable subject. In the same context, he showed the 2-billionth picture that's been photographed and uploaded to flickr - it looked a lot like an Eggleston image. This morning I had a look. They've passed 3 billion images now (some time in 2008 - shown above on the right) Facebook has over 10 billion pictures. Ten billion pictures.

As he tried to lighten the dark mood, he proposed that he thinks the narrative machete is the way out of this democratic jungle. That using photography to tell stories and create sequences of images is the only way forward, to do anything interesting. There was a section of 'understanding comics' shown to support this and then off to the portraiture. I'd looked through a lot of his portraits again, before going along to the talk. I'd been struck by how just slightly out of the normal each of the subjects were, often in their placement or relationship with the camera. He described much of his portrait process as really trying not to connect with the subject. Working with a large format camera, hiding under the fabric, not talking much. Waiting until the subject disconnects and withdraws into their own thoughts, before taking the pictures. He described trying to not take a picture of the person, but of the space between the person and the camera. That does a good job of describing what I'd felt was slightly odd about all the portraits. The disconnect with the subject, viewer and photographer, that repeats in his portraits.

He also delved into various parts of his published work, describing the process he follows to find images (something of a freeform word association with a slightly odd twist) and how those themes repeat throughout his work. It was interesting to hear how he uses overarching, obvious themes to help explain the work, even when often his own personal motivation is something quite different. This seems to come from early shows that he had a hard time explaining. So something like 'sleeping by the Mississippi' is superficially about that river, but mostly he's trying to explore other concepts - that are quite visible in the images. Similarly with Niagara. All in all, a fascinating and insightful chat about photography. Inspired me to try harder and depressed me about the whole state of photography in equal measure.

I think the ACP is doing a great job. Mary Ellen Mark talked about how great things were in the past and complained about how things are, how frustrated she is now - towards the end of a career. Alec Soth was much more interesting. He's at the middle and currently at the height of his career, 1 year after being accepted at Magnum as a full member. He just talked about how things are, exposing all the troubling flaws in this easy access visual art and describing his way forward. Next up, in September, Elliott Erwitt.

on the edge

April Siegfried's SoFoBoMo book, On the Edge , starts out with some dramatic design and bold typography. The strong edge placement sets the tone for some very well thought-out layout. The images don't disappoint either, making me smile, feel sad or amused in new ways on each page. She has brought a good eye for colour and light and applied it to a very simple concept - edges. The turns that this simple concept takes are delightful, finding new twists on the idea through the book, enough to keep things interesting. This serves as a great example that projects don't have to have lofty goals or broad remits. The project idea is just the thing that motivates you to go and take the pictures. It doesn't have to be addressing world peace or famine. I think sometimes we get caught up in needing to find something worthy, when the theme really isn't that important at all, as long as it gets you moving.

infinite monkeys

So how could you lay out a digital book in different ways to a physical book? What's different about a digital book than a physical book and how could you take advantage of that to present your images? Perhaps it is a series of photos, each image with a picture frame in it, with the next picture in the frame. Click. Zoom. Click. Zoom. Further down the rabbit hole. Maybe just a left to right flow that seamlessly wraps back to the start, a virtual zoetrope of photography that tells a circular story. Life, death, birth. Maybe just the flow of a book, without the arbitrary imposition of page boundaries, that force the images on facing pages to relate to each other more than those over the page in either direction. A physical book as that 2:2:2:2 rhythm that is hard to get away from - not so in a digital book. The default might well be to switch to a 1:1:1:1 beat in a digital book, showing each image in isolation, full screen, but the flow can be very different.
Really a digital book represents a potentially infinite canvas to lay the images out upon. The screen can be a page, but it can also be a window. What happens if you open that window? Or if you break it? You could even just publish beyond a standard screen resolution, provide the highest resolution images possible and let the viewer decide how to experience your images. Zoom in. Zoom out, see details, take it all in.
Audio is a beguiling option, but perhaps it breaks the flow too much — causes an interruption that breaks the slow media aspect of absorbing all the senses that a photograph communications, through the eyes alone. Don't try to lay out your SoFoBoMo as a book, that is then poorly displayed on a screen. Instead, consider using the PDF to lay the images out optimally for an on screen display. Break the two page, odd, even print metaphor. Flow the images backwards. Use a diagonal arrangement. Up and down. Reverse direction along the way. Take a sharp right turn at an appropriate point in the story. Diagonals. Zig Zag across the canvas. Wavy lines. Choose what suits your images, let the form follow the function or the flow.
Physical books are great too — they have presence, weight, gravitas that a PDF can't reach. But it is so much simpler to get a PDF in front of a huge number of people around the world, quickly. The resolution is much higher on a page than a typical screen (5 or 6x as much) but that resolution is fixed — on a screen the resolution can be dynamic. Zooming is a feature, that can be used. Books have a huge bandwidth, but the latency is pretty bad. Digital books are the opposite. The physical size of the page is a hard limit with a particular book format. Not so for a PDF. Same way the flow is much more dictated by a real book. There is a lot of potential to design a PDF for SoFoBoMo that is a first class representation of your work, rather than just a stop-gap or a shadow of the real printed book you are going to make. It might be a horrible design decision, but then exploring new ideas is part of what SoFoBoMo is all about.

cut off an ear

Just finished listening to Jeff Curto's latest podcast on project discovery and planning. I have a lot of sympathy for the approach described, but I don't think it works too well, at least not for me. I have a long academic background and an engineering bent, so I'm very used to the sorts of techniques that Jeff describes. But I've tried them when it comes to being creative and coming up with photographic projects and always find myself going nowhere. For years I tried variations of this approach, making lists, planning audiences, working out what it was all about. I'd get to the end of that process and find I didn't have anywhere to go, nothing interesting to shoot or do.

In some ways, I think these processes try to model or force something that is really an emergent property. Things happen, ideas occur, making lists or drawing audience charts isn't likely to lead you to something original or entertaining, I think it'll just lead you somewhere you've been before. Something you've seen before. I think the reality is both a lot harder and much simpler. Ideas come about all the time - the trick is to be open and paying attention to them. Write them down. Capture things that you can't help but be interested in. Don't worry about an audience. In fact, that seems like the quickest way to kill it - worrying about who wants to see it, before you even know what it looks like. Create the pictures you can't help but make. Shoot the subjects that just won't get out of your head, whether you think anyone else in the world wants to see it or not. Find a passion and follow it. That one thing that you just can't get out of your head. The most painful question to read or hear asked of an artist is 'where do your ideas come from?' The answer is almost always the same - they have no clue and they come from everywhere, all the time. I think if you have ideas, you have ideas. I've talked to people about this - some people have them all the time, others almost never. Really I think that some people are tuned in to pay attention to the ideas they do have, while others don't pay attention or don't consider them worth thinking about, or classifying as an 'idea'. Or maybe it really is a totally different way of thinking that some people have and some don't. But if you have an idea, you'll know it. You won't be able to ignore it. You'll have to photograph it.

O. Rufus Lovett had that drive, when he kept going back to Weeping Mary in Texas. My friend Karen had it when she moved from New York to a small country town for months to find out what makes it tick. You just have to find that thing that keeps tickling at the back of your head saying 'take my picture' then follow that voice. Audience be damned. If it is good enough, people will want to see it. Not because you made it for them, but because you made it for you. Passion/ obsession combined with voice or vision is what you need to find. I'm not sure that it comes on demand.

Paul will no doubt find this funny, given that he described my approach in much the same terms that I'm pointing out problems I have with Jeff's method. I suspect I'm somewhere between the two. Paul likes to see the projects that have already happened, in his previous work - the truly emergent approach. Billie describes something similar when she references David Bayles &Ted Orland's book Art & Fear and learning from the work itself. I still try to have some structure - in fact I've got most time for the idea of a mission statement for a project. But really I think it should be a mission question - what's the driving question that you are trying to explore or answer. A statement seems too final - too preconceived. The pictures already planned and storyboarded. A question, like Tharp's spine, is the thing that you can keep coming back to, to guide the project along. Maybe it isn't even visible at all in the final images - it doesn't have to hit people over the head immediately. But the question or the spine helps keep you on track. A mission statement again seems to be too defining in the direction that will be followed, the pictures that will be taken, too much pre-planning, pre-visualising, not enough response to what's in front of you.

I went to a talk by Ed Ruscha this evening. The most useful and inspiring comment was when he was asked what advice he'd give for how to be an artist, and he responded with a Max Ernst quote, along the lines of 'cut off an ear'. I think that maybe neatly sums up the whole thing. Creativity happens. Ideas happen. Art happens. It maybe isn't found in questions and charts and graphs and planning. It isn't that easy and it isn't that hard. It just is. You can look back at what worked and try to codify it, but that doesn't mean you can repeat the same steps again and end up with a similar result.

What do you think about this? Where do your projects come from?

photo project planning

You can't just dance or paint or write or sculpt. Those are just verbs. You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however minuscule, is what turns the verb into a noun - paint into a painting, sculpt into a sculpture, write into writing, dance into a dance.

- Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

Jeff Curto just posted the second part of his Camera Position series on project planning. The first in the series really just sets the stage for what he plans to talk about. This second installment is more interesting and starts to talk about what kinds of projects you might want to work on. He provides some pointers on the ways to excavate project ideas that will be useful to photographers in general and also for SoFoBoMo in particular. Doug Stockdale is running a workshop with a similar goal in Long Beach in April. If you are interested and can't go, maybe you could let Doug know in the comments over there and he might provide a podcast.

advice for the first time biamer

Trying to think through the things that worked well for me when doing SoFoBoMo and the things that I struggled with or would do differently if I was doing it again. Paul Lester has already provided some of his thoughts on this topic, too.

• Project selection

Don't over think this bit. It doesn't have to be the most overarching, complex project theme. In fact, the simplest idea is often the best to work with. Great ideas come from putting two small ideas together in an interesting way, so don't worry about it being too deep and meaningful. The real key is to make it something that is accessible to you. Maybe you'll shoot your entire project in a day, in which case, accessibility isn't too challenging, if you happen to be near the subject or theme. But if you want to return to it for a few times over the month, don't pick something that is far away or difficult for you to get to. It just adds one more barrier to getting it done. The best subjects and projects are those close to home that you are familiar with and have access to. Don't pick the American Southwest as your theme if you live in England and won't be there during the SoFoBoMo month. Some of the best books I saw last year had the simplest themes, for example, the numbers 1 to 35 in 'I can count' by ndalum78. A treasure hunt, a witty book, all in one simple and elegant project - all from a very simple idea.

At the same time you aren't over thinking the project selection, it is worth giving it some thought. Pick something you want to do or that interests you. You will be looking at the pictures a lot, so find something that fires your imagination and has enough depth for you to shoot 35 pictures of.

• Book design

I'm not a graphic designer. I'm not a book designer. You don't have to be. I do have quite a few photographic books at home. I looked at them, with an eye to how they were laid out. Take some time to study the books you have available to you. Go to your library and look for some more. Instead of looking at the pictures too closely, pay attention to the structure and flow of the book design. Notice how almost all books you look at have two title pages, one very plain and readable, the other more stylised? After a bit of time spent looking at the structure you'll get a feel for the patterns you'll want to replicate in your book. It is also worth reading some introductory books on graphic design and typography. You don't need to be an expert but it helps to have some appreciation of what is going on.

If you plan on doing a layout of your own, find a book with the sort of structure and design you want and copy it. Make it your own, borrow hints from it, rather than going all out to design it yourself.

• Software

There is plenty of software that will let you lay out the pages. I used Adobe InDesign to lay out my pages, which has a big learning curve. There are easier options. The key is to spend a bit of time before the SoFoBoMo period getting all the kinks worked out. Make a sample book just to work out how to get from the start to the end PDF or printed book. It'll help you a lot to do this without the deadline pressure. I made a small book with Blurb the month before SoFoBoMo that really helped me understand how I wanted things to look. Use pictures you have already, or go shoot some in an afternoon. It will help.

Adobe InDesign

Adobe Photoshop

Scribus

Some people used PowerPoint. Microsoft Word. Microsoft Works. Most anything you can use to put images and text together and then print from, can be used to create a PDF book. If you have a Mac, the PDF printing is already built in. Most Adobe products on either platform will generate a PDF. If you have a Windows machine, there are several free PDF printer drivers you can install - then all you have to do is print to them and your PDF will be created. e.g., Foxit PDF Creator or pdf995

You probably don't need to go and buy new software to create a SoFoBoMo PDF. If you want to go to a finished book, things get a bit different. Shutterfly and Blurb both provide layout software for creating books. However, this software doesn't typically let you produce a PDF, without heavy watermarks or branding, so isn't ideal for a SoFoBoMo submission. I did my book in layout software and generated full page JPEGs for each page. I then used the Blurb software to put each of those pages as 'full bleed' (print to the edges) images. So I had the same layout without really using the Blurb layout software, other than to assemble the pre-designed pages.

indexhibit

I've been wanting to re-vamp my website for quite a while now, over at mcgregorphoto.com. A while ago, I cobbled together some html that did a reasonable job of showing the pictures I put up. It was automated slightly, to pick up new pictures as I added them, but somehow I never did. This morning I read about Indexhibit and thought I'd take a look. I've tried various Content Management Systems (CMS) in the past, for web hosting. Including the often recommended Gallery Photo Management System. However, they've always been too feature-rich, and hence complex, or just not quite what I was looking for. I wanted something fairly simple, clean and easy to maintain. That includes being able to add new pictures easily. I wanted to be able to organise the images in terms of projects or folios of work. I use flickr for my stream of consciousness images - all the stuff I shoot ends up on flickr. Family images, holiday snaps, more planned stuff, everything. However, flickr is really not good at all for showing sets of finished work. The long-teased flickrfolio might do that, but I got fed up waiting. I managed to resist my natural urge to start with Indexhibit and then spend the next few weeks researching other options, just in case there is something better out there. Instead, for a change, I decided just to try it out and see how it works.

I was very pleasantly surprised how easy Indexhibit was to install. It took me about 10 minutes to get it up and running on my 1and1 hosted site. That includes setting up a MySQL database backend and configuring the Indexhibit install. I haven't done much with it yet, but you can preview the new look. I'll no doubt be playing around with the format and content over the next few weeks but I am impressed by the ease of use and the look and feel so far. At this point I'm really not interested in doing web design, I want to be able to host the images in a clean and simple way. Indexhibit does that very well.

zoe & bios

One notion that stood out for me in The Creative Habit was a section describing her frustration with trying to create narrative works of dance. Twyla Tharp is known for her abstract, conceptional dance pieces. At one point she tried to create works that had more of a sense of story and flow to them and found that she really struggled to create in that style. While reading Carl Kerenyi's Dionysos she was introduced to the Greek concepts of zoe, which deals with the whole world (it is a root of the word zoology) and bios, which deals with individual narrative stories (a root of biography). She came to the conclusion that she works well in the more abstract, global zoe style but really didn't have a knack for dealing with the bios. Emily Shur appears to express a similar concern, that everyone tells her that she should be working on photographic projects as the way to grow, but her mind just doesn't work that way. She'd much rather explore the whole world and find the pieces that interest her, rather than settle in to focus on a bios narrative photo-essay. She seems to be finding gallery representation or acceptance difficult as a result because everyone wants to see projects presented in the bios mode of creation, while her approach is looking at the whole zoe.

I've noticed this myself if you look at artworks in a coffee store - those typically aren't the result of an Art world selection process and often display an ecclectic, disconnected mix of images, photographs or paintings. Often the greatest hits of the particular artist selected to display images (or who asked the cafe owner first). It is unusual to see any cohesive story or message in those images, other than the common creator of the work. Art gallery shows are almost always in the bios mode of a cohesive body of work on a particular theme or topic. Still often the same creator for all the images, but a much more heavily edited and selected body of work.

Perhaps some people are just wired to look at the whole rather than pull out individual stories and follow them. That's just how their creative DNA is. Projects and themes just might not be right for them as a means to creating great photographs and they could embrace that, rather than always feeling jealous or frustrated.

project progression

Starting projects seems to be easy. Ideas are dime a dozen, always popping up, ready to pursued. But I find the starting bit easy. It is the follow-through that often saps my will. Even if the pictures are good it can become a struggle to keep turning up, time and again. I know from experience that each time I do, I'll see something new or exciting and get carried away. I'll find that productive, flowing place where the good pictures come from. But showing up can be such a battle. All the fears and doubts come rushing out. The idea is stupid. Nobody wants to see it. Who will care about the pictures? I'll be bothering people who have better things to do. It has been done better before. Over and again these voices in the head turn on the doubt and ridicule. Best solution is to just ignore them and get on with it. Just keep turning up and see what happens. Judge the results and the process when you've got the images in hand, not before. The job is to take the pictures not second guess the results before even turning up.

five stages of development

Several years ago, I exchanged emails with Clarke Evans from the Texas Photographic Society, on the topic of projects, getting better and general ways forward with picture taking. One of the discussions centered around the five stages of development of a photographer, as Clarke saw them. He has kindly allowed me to share some of those comments here.

Stage 1: Just got a camera and is happy to be taking pictures and getting anything that works. Doesn't really care what other people think about the photographs, just taking them for the fun of it. Shooting birthday parties, Christmas and snap shots of the family.

Stage 2: Decides to learn a little more and starts paying attention to the camera. Learns about lenses, f/stops and shutter speeds and the like. Begins to take control of the camera settings and gets some better results. Might even read the camera manual. Starts maybe entering competitions or joins a camera club.

Stage 3: Begins paying more attention to subject matter - lighting becomes important. Composition, posing of subjects. Still photographs a wide variety of subjects but the images have improved.

Stage 4: Mixes all of the first three stages and becomes a decent photographer. Can make a pretty good photograph under most situations. Knows and understands lighting, composition and how to use the camera. At this stage, the photographer is competent with a camera and making photographs. Some go on to become professional photographers, others continue as amateurs and take good pictures purely for the love of it.

Stage 5: Photographer hits upon something they want to say. It just happens. They decide to pursue a project and whole heartedly dive into it. In stage 5, the photographer has gone full circle back to Stage 1 and again doesn't care what others think of the images. They are photographing something they want to explore for their own personal reasons. A good example of this is O. Rufus Lovett's book from UT Press, Weeping Mary. Rufus went back to Weeping Mary every weekend and bought gas from one gas station and eventually asked if he could take the owner's picture. Over time he started photographing all of the 200 residents of the town. Eventually that fascination with this one subject became a book. Another example would be Ansel Adams and his persistent photographing of Yosemite.

There's nothing wrong with being at any of these stages, one isn't better than the other, just different points in the development of a point of view. Probably we are also all going back and forth between some of the middle stages at different points in time - there is always plenty to learn. I feel I've been somewhere between 3 and 4 for a while now, never quite hitting on something that really can hold my attention long enough to be something I really wanted to express.

Ted Byrne made a great comment on this post, that I think is attempting to say something similar. Too many choices and too many distractions cause us to flit around between subjects and struggle to settle in on a topic and really explore it to an interesting depth, beyond the superficial surface. I know I'm often guilty of that, jumping between subject matter and new styles, lenses or whatever catches my eye. There is certainly nothing wrong with that if it gives you enjoyment and makes good pictures, but it isn't likely to ever really amount to much. I often see that in coffee shop photography exhibits, lots of good images, with nothing at all connecting them to each other, apart from them being taken by the same person. Usually if you go to an actual gallery show, you see something quite different - a much narrower selection of subject, a common theme or message, connecting all the images to each other. Not such a catholic selection of subjects or styles on display. More concept album, less greatest hits.

The way forward isn't really that hard. Pick a project, any project. Commit to it, even for a weekend and try to make 10 great pictures. Not one, not two, but push that little bit further and explore the subject. The project could be a birthday party. It could be your favourite hobby. Or a building you find fascinating. It doesn't need to be a grand theme. It could just be your lunch. Find something that matters to you and make the pictures of it that try to express why you care about it. Go back a few times, expend some effort to go beyond that obvious first view. I spent a couple of years visiting one garden here in Austin, 2 or 3 times a month for 2 years. I think after the first 6 months I'd actually managed to work my way through all of the cliches and other people's ideas that crowded my head and actually start making my own pictures. It can take me a while to get to something fresh. Or you could be finished with the project in a day. The point is to find something to say.

running into next year

Just got told today by my physiotherapist that I can start trying to run again this coming weekend. Recovery from the ankle surgery I had back in September has been slow but uneventful. I've seen incremental improvements each week, with some diligent doing of the prescribed exercises. Over the last couple of weeks I was able to finish hour long spin classes, without much of any pain (first time in about 18 months) and now I'm apparently cleared to start hurting myself again on a running track. About time too! In general my picture taking and enthusiasm for photography has tracked my recovery - more time to think, more time in the gym, more inspiration for photographs. Also generally being able to get around more easily helps, even being able to walk briskly ahead of people on the beach last week let me get photographs I wouldn't have been able to 3 months ago.

It has lined up well with the start of the triathlon season for Amanda, who is getting ready for her next Ironman race. Training for that starts this week as well. I think I'm finally going to be able to do the series of images I've had in mind for about two years now, tracking the training of several everyday Ironman athletes from start to finish. I'm looking to be healthy enough to keep up this time around, without any injuries at the moment. Things are shaping up well for 2009.

salgado's workers & priour's chairs

Was lucky enough to catch the latest show at the Austin Museum of Art today. In the past I've always been slightly disappointed in the exhibitions I've seen there. Never quite reaching their potential. Thought provoking and stimulating, but always missing something. Today was easily the best pair of exhibitions I've seen in that space.

Damian Priour makes chairs. Small chairs, constructed from limestone and glass. Hundreds of chairs. He had the idea of sending one of those chairs to 100 of his favourite Texan artists, that agreed to return to him a chair that they themself had made, that would fit in the 8"x8"x8" box he had originally sent their chair in. The exhibition shows the myriad of responses he got back. Constructed from a wide range of materials and in a variety of styles, the results are exciting and surprising. Photographs, paintings folded and packed into the box. Snow, globe chairs, repurposed Tecate cans. Dollar bills and gold painted toy soldiers. Works in intricate detail from wood, neon chairs, a great array of different styles and approaches, within such a narrow set of constraints. That's the key for me in this - the end results were interesting themselves, but the concept was fascinating. A good example of how such a narrow constraint can let the imagination and creativity soar. I also really was inspired by the collaborative aspect of the project. Rather than working alone he involved many other people and the results from each are so much greater when combined than if they were considered individually.

This was paired by an exhibition of Sebastiao Salgado's Workers series of documentary photographs. Calling these images documentary is almost unfair. They were a lyrical and dazzling array of beautiful photographs, of some of the harshest conditions I've seen people working in, in the present day. Photographing for 7 years around the world, these images show fishermen and pig slaughterers, ship breakers in Bangladesh, Gold miners in Brazil, oil workers in Kuwait. The photography is great, the images harrowing and the spirit of the people really shines through the conditions they are found in. I was moved and inspired in equal measure. The power of still photography to show these situations and hopefully even effect change is unmatched.

Also really enjoyable was the audio tour, which for a once presented the artists talking about their own work and process, rather than being interpreted or explained by a curator. I much prefer hearing about it in their own words and learning about the struggles they faced or what they feel the work represents.

The current exhibition runs until February 9th, 2009. Good value for $5!

where do ideas come from II

Instructive podcast from Brooks Jensen on the need for single images. He talks about how project ideas tend to come from those single images. This has been something I've been rolling around in my head so it is timely to hear these thoughts from Brooks. (an interesting synchronicity right there and this is something I'll come back to in later posts)

So rather than trying to conceive project ideas in a vacuum or as an intellectual exercise, go shoot, shoot, shoot. Make those single images and follow the interest. At the same time, pay careful attention to any common themes or ideas that tickle your imagination. Then persue those threads of images and work hard to create related work. Turn the singular good images that spark your imagination into projects. Find the inspiration from the images you already make. This might be a more fruitful approach.

where do your ideas come from?

I seem to over-think project ideas. Kill them before I even get around to starting them. Least that's my current theory about my lack of progress. I see in my mind's eye that the results wont be interesting enough, even before I start taking the pictures. I need to find a way to quiet those nagging doubts in my head that don't let me start. Well, I start, often enough, but the follow-through isn't there. Shorter projects work well because there isn't so much time for the dislike of the results to set in. I never feel the ideas are interesting enough, or worthwhile, or that anyone will care to look at them.

I've been journaling each morning for the last week, trying to find a way forward. That worked well in the past - I think I'm at the whining self-pitying phase at the moment. It'll pass.

sofobomo, motivation, rambling, angst

I've felt a bit lost in my photography recently. Surgery and recovery have no doubt not helped, but I don't feel that I'm making the progress in the directions I'd like to move. Problem is I'm not sure what those directions are. Often it seems easier to define what I want to do by looking at the negative spaces. I can more easily describe the areas of photography that I'm not interested in doing, than clearly point towards what I do want to do.

The one thing I do know, is I _do_ want to do. The enthusiasm is there. The itch is back with a vengeance. Reading about photography, looking at photography, thinking about it. All there, just not so much of the doing for now.

Someone recently asked when was the last good picture I'd taken and looking back over the year, it is clearly the SoFoBoMo images that I turn to as my favourites. But that was back in March and April. Have I really not done anything satisfying since then? There have been a few shoots that I enjoyed - the red nose portraits, the creative lighting class, but mostly I feel like I've been cooling my heels and not heading in the direction I want to go (wherever that might be).

So I feel lost in a maze of twisty passages, all alike. Clear ideas of where I don't want to go but no ideas for where I do want to go. Anyone have a map? I think the differentiating thing about SoFoBoMo was that it was a cohesive body of work. The project helped the images hang together, at least in my mind, making them more interesting. The closest similar shots are the red nose portraits. Funny each in isolation, but stronger together due to the common element.

I have several project ideas floating around, but I seem to be unable or unwilling to commit the time required to find out if they are any good. Not sure why - typical artistic fear? Or maybe I just haven't got a well enough defined idea of what they should be. I feel like I'm waiting for something to land in my lap, rather than pushing forward towards... something... that I don't really know what it is.

My brief foray into sketching has brought me to some interesting blogs and websites that I wouldn't have looked at before. A couple of articles worth reading on finding inspiration or generating ideas, for example.

Next step would be finding the courage of my convictions and shooting something for more than a day or two. Maybe I need something like SoFoBoMo to push me onwards. Anyone ready for round two?

through their eyes

Paul's post reminded me of one of the things I've really enjoyed on the few workshops I've been on. You go out with a group of variously talented photographers and set up in typically beautiful locations. The place is pregnant with great photographic opportunities and everyone shoots their heart out. Later that week, everyone shares their best images or favourite images, or favourite, best images. Typically there are a few that make you think 'where were they?' How could those images have been made in the place that I was, with those other people.

It always inspires me, seeing how others see locations that I've been in, particularly at the same time. There's always more pictures to be made in any given place than you could ever hope to take. Seeing through someone else's eyes is a great way to find out what you might be missing. I'm thinking of getting a group of people together to try to explore this - explicitly no copying, just seeing what we can find.

days with my father

Days with my father by Philip Toledano

nosey

Continuing on the occasional red nose portrait theme. Chris had his lights set up for another portrait project so I borrowed his pattern. Thanks to everyone who let me shoot them looking silly.