Unique or ... un-skilled?

(This image has NOTHING to do with this post, I just like it; it's of friend and colleague Cherie Renae in Kauai, posted here 'cause it's purty to look at! And please note: she's very skilled!)

It's sad, but I suppose it has ever been and always will be the case ...

I viewed a number of websites today, of supposedly "hot" photographers recommended by various and sundry on-line sources. Like most dedicated amateurs and my professional peers, I love looking at other photographer's works. It often inspires me, it calls me to learn, to stretch, to grow, and to become more than I am now. And there are many fine and talented artists in my chosen medium and profession. Yet in these specific photographers I viewed today, I was very, very disappointed.

The text for all these sites explained in various words and phrases that they aren't "stuffy" and don't require their subjects to be stiffly posed while someone adjusts lights and drops and props forever in a dark room somewhere (like ... other ... photographers). These photographers say they, unlike ... other photographers ... present "real" people and "real" moments in"real" places. And that they can do it anywhere, unlike other photographers.

It's a bit of an over-the-top condemnation of so many of my peers, but I always want to see what a photographer can do with that camera before judging their skills and abilities. There's the old line, it ain't braggin' if you can do it. And some can!

In the picture galleries these photographers showed I could not detect any consistant knowledge of light and it's effect on the photographic image past the concept of getting enough quantity of light into the camera for a basic "exposure". Um, Houston, we have a problem here ...

The camera only captures the color and quantities of light that enters and is focused by the lens. Cameras do not have a "substance detector" circuit or chip. In reality, light IS the image! Those "real" ... things ... out there, that we point our cameras at, do NOT exist to the camera! To it, there is only ... light. To a camera, there is no reality, no substance, no solidity ... only light. The understanding of this basic fact is the FIRST step to understanding the craft of the photographic image. And a constant stumbling block for those of us who always think we have this mastered!

The majority of the images shown in these sites were of people who were "flat", almost like poorly-drawn cartoon characters, with no dimension, no depth, no substance. Sometimes the expressions were animated, sometimes there was movement shown, but often, even the expressions were as flat as the cartoon characters they inhabited. The eyes were quite commonly dark-shadowed holes in the faces of the subjects, especially in the little ones whose eyes should show us the wonder of the world around us. One face of an image would be so bright there was little if any detail left in the skin, yet another person's face was shadowed so darkly I couldn't see the expression.

And I still clearly saw people uncomfortable to be in front of a camera. For all the photographers' expressed intention at letting their subjects be "natural", they still had their fair share of subjects for whom this was clearly NOT natural.

In the midst of these galleries were a very precious few images with beauty and grace, with subjects that were properly placed with regard to each other and the light falling upon the scene. Some few images that I enjoyed seeing and in which all the people have substance and depth, the photographic illusion of reality. But these few beautiful images are clearly and only simple accidents of nature for the photographers whose sites I visited today, and not the display of an artist's craft.

But this to me, is worse: they all chose to denigrate those photographers who have the knowledge and skill to do the rest of the job. The majority of the jobs, tasks, and skills of being a people-photographer, in fact. The numerous parts of the job these photographers are either unaware of or (perhaps) unwilling to learn.

And I was left with this most amazing impression: these photographers are PROUD of this!

Occasionally ignorance is bliss. Most of the time it's just ignorance. The combination of pride and and ignorance is most often just ... sad.

Capturing "real" moments is a necessary part of the professional's craft, but only one of several necessary parts! No matter how you try and spin it, ANY moment captured as part of a photographic session is a created moment. A skilled and experienced professional not only can help the subjects to create those moments any time and any place, but also knows how to light and sculpt that moment for the camera so that your eye is captured by the resultant image and will enjoy studying that image for many years to come. Any time, any place.

Are there boring techno-geek photographers out there? Yes, of course ... just like there are un-skilled picture snappers who are proud of their ignorance. And as we are always simply humans, no more nor no less, we will always have them among us.

But walking and working among us are those whose images make me cry, laugh, and sing at the same time ... and whose craft and spirit drive me to be better than what I am now. To serve my clients and my fellow humans with every bit of wisdom, craft, and shred of humanity I may possess. And to challenge my self and my peers to become what we CAN become, both for our own best develpment and for the service we will then provide to our clients.

Learning and growing is always hard work and often humbling. We stumble continually into our own inadequacies and are forced to learn and to grow to show that we ARE the stuff of stars and not just a lump of useless clay. We aren't just a lump of clay, we can be ... and can become ... worthy of those who show the way. And worthy of those who need the images of their loved ones that we can provide.

And along that way, the path of LIFE, are those moments of shining brilliance that make LIFE worth the living and the sweat and the terrors and the tears. Settling for less in our selves is unworthy and demeaning. Let's get on with it!

It's all work, it's all play

My copy of Robert Frost's book of poetry, "The Road Not Taken", has a worn and tattered dust-jacket. It bears the honorable scars of many years of use, the transportation dings through several moves, and the over-eagerness of my children's young hands. And yet, as many times as I've read through it, I never feel I've read through it nearly enough.

One of many favorites is the poem "Two tramps in mud time". There are many joys to be found in this piece of nine verses of eight lines each ... typically "Frostian" with it's pithy observations on people and life. It also ends with one of my favorite quotes of all time:

"But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes."

I capture more words these days (in my professional work) than I capture images, and in those words I need to convey knowledge, insight, and the joy of life and learning. In many ways the writing is not so different from what I do when I work with a camera. But through all my labors, either written with the keyboard or in the images I create, I try to keep Frost's object in living first and foremost.

rNeil

A mentor's joy ...

I teach and mentor others in photography, both professionals and devoted amateurs. I love doing it. But there are those moments when it becomes more, when it really becomes a special honor and a privilege. I had the occasion to write a note to a young student today, and thought I'd post it here also.

It starts out written to both the mother and her daughter. The mother has a tremendous voice, an instrument of rare power, beauty, emotion, and altitude. It is a very finely trained voice, quite capable of performing in the non-miked world of the opera stage. She's also quite a pianist, and plays for ballet and dance rehearsals ... which boggles my mind as you often do that while reading orchestral scores ... and the twenty lines of music are in different cleffs and keys ... and she sight-reads them at times! I sing and play several instruments, but this is so beyond me!

The daughter is a dancer and a photographer besides her high-school studies, and she currently lists those activities as her two passions. I've had the joy of reviewing her work this week, and will be doing more over time on the MyPhotoMentor.com website. And so, here is my email to the young lady and her mother:

To the both of you:

Part of my job 'round here is to be encouraging to about anyone. Thankfully, so far everyone here has enough internal eye to be well worth working with anyway. And when, eventually, we get some that don't have such a fine natural eye, I'll still be delighted to help them find their way in choosing and using their best subject matter.

Your daughter is NOT like anybody else, however! Talking directly to the young lady now, you can see better than many pros. You don't have the experience yet to discern the best angles all the time, and your subject placement is occasionally static. You don't even know yet how to trust your inner senses. A good share of the time you won't even hear your best inner senses through all the other gobbledegook going on in your brain. You are just starting, and these impediments are unavoidable for your skill and experience level.

Experience DOES matter, and diligence to your craft. Your ma knows this ever so well in her music, and I know has worked with you on this too. It doesn't make any difference how wonderful you are with a brush, if you don't know how to mix to get the precise shade and sheen of paints you need, you aren't going to make your painting a masterpiece. If you don't have your individual ballet elements drilled to perfection, your dance will not be what it could and therefore SHOULD be.

But some people see and hear things and feel things that others just can't ... not in the same way. It's the native sense of a blues guitarist who just holds his notes that tiniest titch out of rhythm as he slides around the pitch ... that is more interesting than any other "merely" talented guitarist. It is the interesting ideosyncracies of one finely-trained voice that make it more interesting than another, more "perfect" voice.

You can't train for those things ... you train for skills and capability, but the difference between the merely tremendously skilled and the artist is both subtle and vast. And intrinsic to the particular human.

Miriam had that ... difference ... about her, when I started her out in the studio all those years ago. I could see it lurking in the background of her images. She wanted shortcuts and I gave back general instructions here, detailed demands there. Ticked her off royal as I wouldn't give her the shortcuts that she wanted. But it was what she needed to develop the confidence and awareness of her own eye, not just to learn "the proper way to shoot X".

When Cherie's daughter was graduating from college, Miriam went to South Carolina with her for the graduation. Strolling through the streets of Charleston, Cherie couldn't believe Miriam wasn't snapping away at the beautiful and unique homes and flora they passed. Miriam gave her the camera, and Cherie came back with a couple images from the first moments she'd ever held a professional camera that many of my technically wonderful professional peers will never match.

I really ticked her off too, after she returned, when we went out shooting together. She wanted me to tell her where to point the camera for a good shot ... and I blankly refused. Cherie knew I'd done it often for students and friends, and thought me quite mean for withholding my advice. But I will NEVER do that to someone who has such a strong native eye of their own. I would NEVER interfere with such a personal element of their own talent.

And I would NEVER tell you where to point that camera! I'm not saying you should be a professional anymore than I could tell someone they "should" be an opera singer ... but you can't help but be an artist when you work with a camera. It's just there, inside you, waiting to spill out. You need practice, you need guidance, you need failures, you need skills. At times, you just need to be ignored so you will go off and do your own thing. And through it all, you need the encouragement from without and determination from within to become what you can be.

And I am thrilled beyond belief to get a chance to play a role in your development!

Eureka!

Sometimes a great notion ... doesn't come, and yet as a professional artist we need to create whether "Eureka!" strikes or not. I've also found that waiting for "Eureka!" to come pretty much guarantees that it will never come. At least, not often enough to be worth waiting for. Certainly not often enough to pay the bills!

The suspense writer Tom Clancy has said he starts every day writing for work on his newest project. His tactic to avoid writers block is simply to start by editing the writing he's already done on the project, and by the time he's done some of that, his characters are tapping at his shoulder and wanting to get back to work with him.

Alan Held, a good friend and major operatic bass/baritone, says he doesn't warm up before a performance so much to "warm up" as we would get ready for say, sports, as to find where the various parts and registers of the voice are at that moment, and massage them into a seamless "whole". Parts or registers of the voice may feel like they are in a place different from the day before, but where they are now is the place he will need to be "in" to start the performance. They also may move as the performance progresses, and so, he must constantly and fluidly adjust what he does with the voice as it feels at that moment. If parts of the voice get out of place during a performance, the beauty and majesty of the voice goes away.

Both examples are, in their own ways, simply variants imposed by our respective media on what we as artists do to keep creating on demand. And that really is the difference between the professional and the amateur in anything ... the professional must create on demand, while the amateur can wait for "Eureka!" to come from somewhere out there.

As a photographic artist, I must somehow start when the session is ready to go, and then, as it progresses, adjust what I'm doing according to how I and my subjects respond to each other and the circumstances we've chosen to work within. No matter how hard we plan, I have to be open to winging it on a moment's whim, and also be ready to guide things back into the pre-arranged plan. And there aren't any guides or rules for making these kinds of decisions. It is always a choice of the moment.

A test all professional artists must constantly pass is how wisely we choose our course during the moment of creation, whether guided by "Eureka!" or not. It becomes a test of confidence, of the willingness to simply ... trust. Whether with voice or words or camera or oil, we have to trust in something that cannot be seen at the time, and can only be measured in value after we have let it fly. Life being what it is, the value of our work is ultimately set by others, quite often not even by the people who have contracted with us to perform our services.

The life of the professional artist is ultimately and always a work of faith. A willingness to live by intangibles, and to embrace uncertainty as a daily companion. I can't say as I'd recommend it to anyone, and yet, it is all I know how to ... be. The great operatic tenor Pavarotti once said that to be a professional artist, he needed to say to the world "I am a Tenor, you must listen to me!".

Well said, Luciano, well said.

We artists must find "Eureka!" somewhere in here, even if we don't know where we'll find here when we start. It's just what we do. It's how we live.

Coming soon ...

I've got a session planned for the near future that just drives my juices. They are a couple fellow artists, working in different media than I, he a musician and she a ... hmmmm ... renaissance artist. Yes, that's it ... and think of the British pronunciation, "re| 'na| sunce" spoken in a soft, sibilant voice.

They are fun, serious, quirky, supportive, observant, experienced, and near totally child-like in their wonder of the world and the people around them. I'll be spending a day with them, doing a day-in-the-life project of a day at home in their house in the hills overlooking the Willamette Valley. Their home is filled with interesting items that tell such stories in and of themselves, and the instruments ... so many beautiful and one-of-a-kind guitars, harp-guitars, and stringed devices that I (mentally!) drool over the prospects of this shoot.

The vistas from their windows, and the quality of light that comes in through them in the early spring, well ... this is what I live for in the artistic sense of my life.

Practicality has had a hand here ... their house has been undergoing some remodeling, and was supposed to be finished a bit ago. So, when the workmen leave, we're on. Soon.

I treasure the opportunity of making the images that I will make there. We will have a great time, and together will participate in the intriguing process that results in the beautiful art that I have been given the skills and interest to create.

Someday Soon!

The Wonder of it all ...

I'm 30+ years into my professional artist career, and yet, the wonder of creating my own works and viewing the works of my peers is as strong as ever. I love the new tools I and my photographic peers have to create images of wonder and grace. I had such a thrill judging the Professional Photographers of Oregon print competition at their annual convention in Portland, Oregon last month I can't begin to describe it. The other judges of the panel were a joy: widely varied in taste and experience, very informed about professional imagery, tools, techniques, and styles, gently eloquent of their views, and willing and eager to learn from each other. What a joy!

After the judging, and for the next couple days of the convention, I got to talk "shop" with the makers of the images we'd judged, and there were some WONDERFUL images there to see! I was able to spend time in the salon simply absorbing the beauty, grace, and variety of the works displayed. And I was able to mentor some younger members of the association, always a joy and a privilege. A professional life is one of constant flux, constant immersion, constant absorption.

We sometimes don't notice the efforts of fellow artists, with our own heads bowed to grind out our daily efforts. But with the voice lessons I've been taking, for the last year, I've become even more impressed with the abilities to master their medium that classical concert and opera singers display. It looks so easy ... and in some way, it is. AFTER 20 years of training, practice, and self-driven exploration of one's own abilities and false pre-conceptions.

It wouldn't be any different for a concert oboeist or cellist, or a painter in oils. Years and years of effort, love, impatience, frustrations, and mistakes produce the graceful agility displayed by a master of any medium.

I love what I do ... and I love teaching it too. I give thanks for the life I've had, as I believe I appreciate the wonder of it all more than ever!