Brilliant images tend to leave you with that odd mix of inspiration and humility we know as awe. At once, you see photography’s potential and your own limitations. But what’s remarkable is that whatever the reaction, it so frequently comes down to the same one thing. Whether it’s an unexpected moment, unorthodox exposure, a novel composition, or light like you’ve never seen before, more times than not, it’s not that you couldn’t have taken the shot. It’s that you wouldn’t have.
This is photography’s great challenge: How do you shoot something you wouldn’t think to take?
It’s curious that in a world so focused on the how-to, it’s really the why that gets the attention. Because great photography, though possessed of surprise, is built on clarity of intention. It’s as if you stepped into another person’s head and borrowed their eyeballs. But how do you find that with your own?
While it may be daunting – there are as many ways as there are people – the initial footsteps are often deceptively simple. Here are three ways to get on the path to confounding your enemies and amazing your friends.
1. FIND AN OBSESSION
The great thing about obsessions is they tend to be unique unto themselves. It’s the nature of the beast. While the motives may be similar, the results vary dramatically. Obsessions are things of peculiar extremes that almost always take you into uncharted territory. But the beauty is that just about everyone has something they can obsess over. Better yet, that something need not be much, because it’s not the object of your obsession, so much as the lengths to which a person is driven that defines the work. The more extreme you get, the more revealing the work becomes.
On Kawara has painted text on a solid background every day since January 4, 1966, giving him a place at the MOMA. Imogen Cunningham is famous for his flowers. And taking a picture of the same tree every day has landed Mark Hirsch multiple features. People love obsessions, because they so clearly show a passion and explore a point of interest.
When you boil it all down, it’s a pretty simple process. Find something you like. Stick with it. The rest will take care of itself, and much the way a photograph’s meaning changes to a person over time, an activity that you doggedly chase will grow with you, too.
2. ASK YOURSELF “SO WHAT?”
It doesn’t get easier than that, does it? But not many of us do. It’s just one of those painful questions people don’t like. But the human mind has infinite capacity for justification, and you can know outsiders are not going to care what our justifications are, so ask yourself mercilessly. Chase down each image you take with this one question, and you will force yourself to take a perspective.
And don’t ask just once. If you have a good answer after asking yourself once, you probably didn’t try hard enough. Every good image should be able to withstand multiple levels of skepticism. In the face of “So what?” answers like “Because of the composition,” or “Because of it’s good timing,” fall by the wayside. And forget about answers like “It’s cool.” These are not human reasons. Every picture is based on some technique. But it’s always a technique that serves a human objective.
Think of “So what?” as a purifying force that burns through technique in a crucible of inquisition, leaving you with pure substance. If all you have at the end of it are a scant few crumbly ashes, you’ll know you didn’t push hard enough.
3. LOOK TO THE PAST
No, knowing the history of photography is not necessary to produce great photographs. But it sure will improve your odds. And why the hell would anyone not want to? The world has, oh, I don’t know, what? 4 billion photographers, now? Most of them know little of the past. As in, that’s a free ride down the road to distinction. Know your stuff and you cut the market by 90%. And how many good people really say “Well, I learned all of the history, and it was useless.”
Maybe it’s true that the past is absorbed in the work of the present, but the present is one big mash-up of the past for a reason, and it’s probably no coincidence that when you read about the greats, it’s not uncommon to hear about their encyclopedic knowledge. Plus, how do you even decipher a mash-up without knowing the core ingredients? It’s like a chef trying to make a new tomato sauce by mixing a bunch of store-bought jars of the red stuff.
The past is the easiest way to dissect the present. Plus it’s an easy place to get simple, time-tested ideas to riff on for your own mash-ups. Even if nothing is ever original, combinations of things most certainly are. The past is how you build a repository of ideas and thought to mix, mince, blend, and mash together. Not to mention understanding the fundamentals gives you exactly the type of understanding that can withstand the onslaught of doubters who will be thinking “So what?”
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