Re: I'm looking for inspiration!

i'll keep this short;
i will immediately disagree with a couple of things people have
said--not to be "difficult" but (hopefully) to challenge some
commonsense notions of "creativity" with alternative considerations that
are, well, creative

first of all, David:
> (I don’t really have anything to ‘express’)
in *parentheses* nonetheless! I would disagree--everyone has something
to express, yet many are stymied by a certain peculiar notion of what
"expression" or "expressiveness" may mean. You later say you want to
work with 10"x4" --that's a pretty particular format (panorama/landscape
rather than vertical, i assume). How can you rope that in to your
expressiveness? WHY do you want to work with it? (I personally love to
work with squares, and when i work with 35mm, i tend to compose for
something to print more like 4x5", shortening up the 35mm frame). In
there you are bound to find something you want to express.

next Mark Nelson:
> I think the most successful way of identifying a theme is to sit and
think.
This, to me, is a matter of semantics. "Thinking" can occur without
sitting, in my humble opinion, but with camera in hand, or with
chemistry on paper, trying things, experimenting. Rather than sitting
and thinking, I believe producing "a body of work" is an iterative
process. Determining what you want to photograph, trying to think it
through while photographing, then seeing what you get when you print.
Then going back to what you /wanted/ to photograph, asking yourself
whether you actually did that, and then photographing some more. Then
printing some more, editing, selecting, reshooting, reprinting...
FINALLY, of course, you have to give it up and walk away from it. But
hopefully not before you've come away with something you can be happy with.

Finally, i believe in something called "negative pedagogy". Applied to
this conversation, it amounts to photographing and printing exactly the
opposite of that which you want to photograph--or those persons, things,
situations, events that you would *never dream* of photographing.
With nudes, for example, you might photograph everything but nudity:
barriers to the skin like clothes, screens, windows, doors, etc. Just
*how* you conceive whatever your idea of "opposite" is in terms of what
you want to photograph will help you pinpoint what is at the heart of
what you really want to produce... and hopefully why.

take a look at my website if you like:
http://eq-photo.com/portfolio/
I'd be happy to talk to you (or anyone else) about any of the work there
in these terms (or, really, in any terms!)

and PS. thanks for opening this thread; i think that discussion like
this is very valuable on this list, and should occupy more of it's threads.

best,
kris

Nash Computer Technology wrote:
> Hello all
>
> This may be slightly off-topic, but hopefully people won’t mind too much…
>
> It’s been a couple of years since I last did any serious photography – I’ve been so busy with my ‘real’ job I just
> haven’t had any opportunity. My experience has mainly been in small (5x4” and 10x4”) platinum prints. I’d
> produced a number of prints, of various subject matters – portraits, churches, still life, flowers, landscapes –
> you get the picture: a mix of everything! I’d just been taking and printing for my own enjoyment and
> experimenting with different subjects as they came along. At that time I wasn’t even too sure how the quality
> of my prints compared with any others (I’d never seen a platinum print apart from my own!)
>
> I then went to an event where you could show your portfolio to a number of picture buyers and art gallery
> representatives, and the feedback I received was that my photographic and printing skills were fine, but that
> an art gallery or agent would require me to produce a body of work on ‘A Theme’.
>
> I came away encouraged, but for the next while I almost went crazy trying to think of a suitable subject matter.
> Then other work got in the way. However, I’m now at a stage where I’ll be able to pick up the photography
> again, and immediately have ‘tripped up’ on how to build a cohesive set of ten to fifteen prints.
>
> I know that everyone will be different, but I wondered how other people go about this. I feel that perhaps I’m
> not a ‘real artist’ (I don’t really have anything to ‘express’). I consider certain subjects, such as flowers, then
> immediately worry that they’ve been done to death, both by the original ‘masters’ and by modern ‘fine art’
> photographers. Then again, perhaps the abundance of these simple compositions is due to their popularity
> and because they sell. That being the case, maybe there’ll be a market for anything I produce, even if it’s not
> radically different from other photographers’ work. It’s also easy to fall into the trap of thinking that one
> ‘needs’ additional or alternative equipment to do a subject justice, or to treat it in a different way – you know;
> additional lighting, a greater selection of lenses, etc. However, I know that’s not true. For example, although
> I have a 10x8”, the smaller prints personally please me more, despite having heard people say, “you could
> have blown it up really big”, and I feel I'd like to work within the 10x4" format at this time - that's one positive
> decision!
>
> Thanks for listening. Maybe I haven’t expressed myself very well, but I feel I need to have a few suggestions
> and techniques thrown at me before I can move on and happily start producing work again.
>
> David
>
>
Received on Sun Aug 14 08:56:11 2005