“A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.”
–George Bernard Shaw
Photographers are a profligate, wasteful bunch. Maybe not those 4×5 guys, where it takes so much effort to decide to take one picture, but I’m a 35mm guy. I don’t understand large format; it’s a different animal entirely. For me the singular unit is the roll, not the frame. I learned my craft in the era of roll-it-yourself film in reusable cassettes. I found my voice by photographing over, and over, and over again, until I figured it out, in a manner that made it affordable.
I have structured my entire creative process around this unique feature of the photographic process. I shoot in order to find out what it is that is compelling to me. The actual act of operating a camera is how I access the state of consciousness from which my photographs emerge. The more complex the environment I am working in, the more that I can depend on my unconscious mind to find the coherent, complete image.
An aside: In the digital realm, the last barriers to restraint when shooting are pretty much history. Unless you give into temptation, and watch the LCD screen. Seeing your pictures while you’re shooting them is a sure way to interrupt and defeat the process of deepening a connection with the moment. The editing brain is a different one than the shooting brain. It defeats the point to mix them up.
When I’m shooting I don’t know where in the process I’ve “got it”. But I do know when I’m done. Somewhere in there, while I was in that altered state of consciousness, I can sense that it happened. Where precisely, I don’t know. I have to figure that out later.
That “later” process doesn’t get enough attention. Somehow you have to decide which egg you’re going to allow to hatch. It requires a degree of removal from the act of conception, to witness and judge the work for the formal qualities that exist only in the image, and not in your memory of the moment. Henry Wessel, a photo hero of mine, takes it to an extreme unmanageable for most of us. He waits a year to review his work before deciding what to print.
Back in the darkroom days, I’d scan my contact sheets to see which images had some promise, and I’d make work prints. I’d post the prints in the kitchen on a big bulletin board for a few days. It’s one thing to study and consider the work—it’s another to see them in your peripheral vision without knowing you’re looking at them. I’d gradually weed out the prints that were starting to bore me, until there were one or two survivors. These were what I would work on deeper, in the darkroom, to see what potential they held.
I’m still working on the best way to bring this editing process into the digital age. For most of my output my only encounter with the image is on a computer screen. It is not a friendly environment for either a considered, or an unconscious judgement process. Sometimes I’ll go through the effort of making work prints, just like the old days, but it’s harder. It feels removed from something intrinsic to the digital process, and I haven’t found the analogous replacement for the editing mode. I’ll report again in six months and tell you what I’ve figured out.
Doug,
Even if I do not know anything about photography you did strike a chord with me when you mention two things…
“The editing brain is a different one than the shooting brain. It defeats the point to mix them up.”
I think you should copyright that ;-). Yes, you are right on about clicking through the digital LCD screen thus defeating the whole purpose of ‘engagement’ that is crucial to bring out the art from the picture… I am going to remember that one…
The second is your philosophy of reviewing work long after they have been shot… I sort of engage in this when I paint. I usually paint from photographs and I have collection of ‘potential’ images that I hope to paint one day. If I find an image or a photo today, I tend to store it and look at it about a month of two later to see how best the image fits into my paint ‘set’. I have noticed that images of faces that I am excited about on acquiring lose their allure and meaning when I look back to the same a couple of months down the line (and vice versa of course – things that did not get me excited but I still stored away acquire new meanings and stories for me when I ‘find’ them down the line)…
Great post.
Doug,
I’m going to challenge your generalization about 35mm digital photographers. My picture-taking style is very different from yours. To me, immersion-in-the-moment is definitely important, but it mostly takes place without a camera intervening between me and the subject. When I’ve identified a potential subject and given at least some consideration to what I care about in it, then I engage it through the camera. This entails further looking as I examine compositions, but I’m not clicking away through that process. Typically, I will not take more than 3-5 views of a given subject.
Everyone works differently, of course, but I suspect that some photographers with less-developed eyes than yours would do better to be more thoughtful at capture time. No matter how many frames are shot, the fraction of interesting ones can be vanishingly small.
Doug,
I have a somewhat similar process in painting — so I have an enormous collection of bad paintings that sometimes I can scrap in order to re-use the support. It’s harder, of course, in painting, in that it takes longer to produce one.
But I focused on your problem with digital photos. I wonder if you couldn’t do the quick and dirty Microsoft Picture Manager sort of work prints. With a decent paper, you can churn out quite a few that are of course inadequate but able to be assessed in your usual manner, at least in some terms — composition, line, forms, rhythms, etc. Then after living with the quick-and-dirty work prints, you can narrow the field further and do the more complex real work in Photoshop or whatever.
In any case, the world seems to divide itself on just these grounds: abundance and then cull out the very best, or careful slow ordering of process and tools and elements before proceeding. I find both kinds of advice in painting books, although if you are working in an atelier with lots of apprentices and grand historical scenes featuring a cast of thousands, I suspect that preliminary work is rather essential.
Steve,
You’re right to challenge my generalization, and I didn’t mean to say it was intrinsic to the format. I am speaking about my own process.
There is a deep and rich tradition to your method, and I would never say to abandon it. But I am usually pushing myself to another level. If I find myself thinking about the shot, composing it and putting this piece there that there, then I’ve missed it. Even in landscape work. I’m trying to get something in me to respond that is deeper and smarter than the piece of me that thinks it knows what the picture is.
My background as a commercial shooter has affected my process as well. I remember, early in my assisting career, working for Bob Peterson, who had shot for Life Magazine. I was astounded at how casually he would go through 20-30 rolls of film in a day. The results were brilliant. Then there’s the cautionary example of Garry Winogrand who died with, what, 2000 rolls of film undeveloped?
I have occasionally printed 36 “contacts” 2×3 inches on a sheet of 13×19 paper and stuck it on the wall. Thing is, it’s almost too nice to scribble on.
I usually make 5-10 A4 workprints on an HP Laserjet on ordinary laser paper and stick them on the wall, then throw them away one by one. Time – maybe 5 minutes max to make them. I don’t mind losing colour and fine details – I think it helps concentrate on composition and people’s expressions.
I am one of those photographers who never crops. This makes sense to me from reading your post.
I crop photos taken through a microscope because of space considerations when publishing the image.
But I have not cropped my other photos except where I was encouraged to do so on an A&P post (beaver activity).