The relationship between an artist’s work and attire should function in the manner of a dialectic, in which the discrepancy between the personal appearance of the artist and the appearance of her work is resolved into a higher conceptual unity. An artist’s attire should open her work to a wider range of interpretive possibilities.
One year ago, I started collecting screen captures of Google Street Views from a range of Street View blogs and through my own hunting. This essay illustrates how my Street View collections reflect the excitement of exploring this new, virtual world. The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording, and even the vastness of the project. At the same time, I acknowledge that this way of photographing creates a cultural text like any other, a structured and structuring space whose codes and meaning the artist and the curator of the images can assist in constructing or deciphering.
When you’re getting direction from a client, manager, art director, etc., it is easy to fall into the mode of just following instructions. You get so caught up in getting it right that you forget to keep thinking about the problem. In an effort to please, you take feedback as solutions instead of suggestions.
In a blog post, Seattle photog John Keatley walks through his process of working with natural light as his inspiration. First, study the natural light. Then design your key to mimic it. Then fix all of the tonal issues that keep your camera from seeing a scene the way you eye does.
A few weeks ago a friend sent me this link to the work of Francisco Infante-Arana & Nonna Gorunova. It stayed with me and now I keep going back to it. Made over thirty years ago, it seems so contemporary and fresh.
Overcoming writer’s block:
“A solution that’s worked for us: Record the conversation where you get it out right. When you speak an idea, it engages a different part of your brain than when you write it. You often say it clearer when you’re just riffing aloud. And you get to more gut-level stuff too. You bypass that “should I say this?” filter. You get it straight from your gut/brain instead of your fingers.”
from 37signals
art created from passion and not from greed is art that will more powerfully resonate with people, and is therefore more commercially viable, so even on a pragmatic level passion pays. I don’t want to look at the work created by a photographer who creates only what I want to see or pay for. I want to look at the work of an artist who cares enough to create something that comes from deep within.
So-called professionals are strangely guilty of letting this slide. There are times, when things get busy, that it feels like a luxury we don’t have time for. I’d encourage you to look at it the way you’d look at a chef who’s too busy cooking that he doesn’t take time to refill the pantry and fridge. At some point you’re going to be completely out of resources and scraping the bottom of the barrel for creative assets is not giving our clients – our ourselves – our best. It’s the best way to begin a downward spiral. It’s create and share without the sustain. What are you doing regularly to re-fill your creative stocks? Are you out shooting with your Holga? Sketching? Going to the opera or ballet, teaching your children how to create photographs? Reading a book on creativity? If Chase’s paradigm is right, that to succeed as creatives in a circle of create – share – sustain, then it is refilling our creative stocks and nurturing our inner lives that keeps this whole thing moving, it’s part of the effort to sustain, and without it we stagnate and produce work that we’ve already done.
When I look at the work of successful photographers, particularly my peers or those younger than me, I try to understand – What is it that has made them successful in a relatively short amount of time? What are the strong points of their work? Can I learn anything from them? If they are producing the same kind of work as I am, but are much closer to where I want to be, (creatively or financially) I want to know why. It’s surprised me how much I have learned through these comparisons.
