David duChemin's Blog

The making of art, and the appreciation of it, is a subjective thing. It is deeply personal, and this is one of its strengths, not a weakness. But there’s a danger in seeing art in such personal, subjective terms, and that hazard is no more clearly seen than in the oft-used word, “like.” As in, “Oh, I really like that painting.” Or, “I don’t like that photograph.” We are all entitled to our opinion, but I think we can do better, especially if we want to become stronger photographers and artists (but also better human beings).

I asked a friend yesterday about a book I’d recommended to him (My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok) and I found myself writing the words, “did you like it?” before self-consciously backing out of that with something along the lines of “not that liking it is remotely the point.” Because it’s not. Whether we “like” art is no real measure of it’s importance, relevance, humanity, or even its beauty. But it is so easy to evaluate, or respond to art merely in terms of whether or not we like it. Our consumption of social media has not helped with this: so overwhelmed by content of all kinds we give our full attention to less and less of it, our responses getting less considered and less nuanced with every Like.

We are conditioning ourselves to Like. And in so-doing we are training ourselves away from deeper thought or engagement.

 

Furthermore, without that critical thought or a willingness to read the art of others with greater time and care, we are missing the opportunity to train our tastes. When we simply like, or don’t like, something, and we move on before considering why we like it, before we engage with it and spend time asking, not whether we like it or not, but what the artist was trying to say, trying to accomplish, we miss a chance to go deeper.

Here’s an example: I used to “dislike” Picasso’s Guernica. It’s one of his most famous paintings. But it’s violent and shocking. It disturbs. It haunts. My liking it is not remotely the point. In fact, it is probably best for my humanity that I not like it in the sense we usually mean that. What’s to like about the horrors of war? But my lack of a like is no measure of the success of the painting. Nevertheless, when I first saw it I had no appreciation for it. And then I took some time with it, I read about it, I considered the context in which it was painted (the bombing of the town of Guernica by the forces of Hitler and Franco during the Spanish Civil War). My appreciation and love for what Picasso was saying though his painting changed and grew. I still don’t like Guernica. It’s deeper. I love it. I fear it. I’m haunted by it. On some level I hate that it needed to be painted.

How we see a photograph or a painting, or how we read a book, has less to do with the art itself, and more to do with us. Anaïs Nin said, “we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” If our tastes, such as they are, are the sole indicators of our response to art, we will never deepen as human beings, nor will we improve as artists. The inherent danger in seeing art merely as personal and subjective is that, unchallenged, our tastes become the arbiters of what is good, and what is bad, before that art has a chance to speak to us, challenge us, and teach us.

Stopping at “I like it” or “I don’t like it” kills the conversation art endeavours to initiate in us.

 

Fortunately tastes can change. In The Soul of the Camera, I argue that one of the most important things for the growing photographer is an openness to, even a pursuit of, things outside the comfort zones of our tastes. I would add to that a willingness to listen to the art of others, and to do that meaningfully I think we need to listen to less of it, in order to give it a greater share of our attention. You don’t have to like it to learn from it, but you do have to engage with it, and listen to it.

If you’d like to read the chapter, A (Changing) Eye for Beauty, you can download it as a PDF here.

 

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We have this astonishing notion as photographers that we just have to go to a cool place, put our cameras in front of cool things, and not screw up the exposure or the focus, in order to get compelling photographs. Deep down, though, I think we all know it’s not true, at least for us. Well, it’s rarely true for anyone, and when it is it’s a coincidence so staggering the university probably shrugs it off as a rounding error.

What is true, is that we need to put in the time, no matter what we’re photographing, and the more time we give to a subject the more we get to know it, anticipate moments, and ride out the time when the light is not in our favour, the lines lead nowhere, and the moments are uninspiring.

Time is one of our raw materials. The more of it we have the more we can make of it. And yes, luck also plays a huge part in photography, but that too is tied to time. If you subscribe to my Contact Sheet, I’ll be sending you an email about luck, and being better prepared for that luck, later this week (and if you’re not, you can subscribe here, and I’ll send you an eBook with my thanks.) In that email I’ll also be sending you a downloadable PDF monograph, Distant Blue, for a more full glimpse of my work from this last trip.

So because time is so important, I’ve just come back from a sixth trip to the Revillagigedo Archipelago, the area divers collectively refer to as Socorro, after the largest of the islands: Isla Socorro. I was there for 2 back-to-back one week dive trips, putting in the time, riding out the days when weather and light and lack of marine life made photography unproductive, and discouraging. I’ll do the same in Tonga this fall, staying for three weeks, and it’s what I do in places like Venice, India, or Kenya. Staying longer and going back as often as resources allow.

If you asked me right now what the secret to better photographs is, I’d tell you there was no secret, but then I’d tell you without hesitating that if there were a secret it would be this: put in the time.

 

It’s not really a secret. But it might just as well be, for all the people that say they know this to be true but then go out and buy a “better” camera or a “sharper” lens instead of spending the money on freeing up the time to do deeper work on a personal project, or extend their trip to Istanbul, or wherever, by a week or so. A huge chunk of money is spent on the transportation to a place, doesn’t it make sense to spend as much time there as possible? That new “money lens” won’t do a damn bit of good on a trip so short you’ve only got time to grab some snapshots and postcards before turning around and coming home.

Better photographs? I’ll put my money on the photographer with the beat-up 5-year old camera and lens who’s able to stay in a place for a month, over the day-tripper with the newest and shiniest.

 

But here’s the thing. When you’re putting in the time it doesn’t always feel productive. It doesn’t feel like you’re gaining anything. In fact it’s often accompanied by all the usual angst and frustration, the boredom, the doubts, the wondering why you’re there to begin with. It’s only in hindsight, when you can look back and see that were it not for the time you spent, patiently waiting, watching, trying different approaches, making sketch images by the hundreds, and returning to a place over and over in different light, different weather, whatever the context is in which you photograph, you’d never have come up with the final work you did. So don’t get discouraged. It’s a process and you’ve got to trust that process. Many of us don’t put in the time simply because we get bored or don’t see immediate results. Don’t give in to that.

Try this: double your time. If you were going to spend an hour on a portrait session, spend two. If you were going to work on a personal project for a couple months, give it four. Your next seven-day trip, cut corners and find a way to stay for fourteen. Then keep your eyes open, and your camera in hand. The time will be well spent, I promise.

 

Wow, that escalated quickly. Sorry, I meant to allude to my sermon about putting in the time, not inflict it on you.But it’s a needed sermon for us all so, so I’m leaving it here.

Ok, the short version: I went back to Socorro this last month (April) for the sixth time, because you can’t meaningfully photograph things without putting the time in. Happily the time I’ve spent there is paying off and I love the body of work I’m creating. So here are some of the very early edits; some of them are here, others will go into a short monograph that I’ll be emailing to with my Contact Sheet later this week and you can subscribe here.

This was an amazing trip, full of long periods fighting with the muse, floating in 10-30m of endless blue water, wondering if I’d see anything at all, between the rarer times when I was in the presence of giant mantas, or dolphins and forgetting the rest of the world even existed. On one dive I spent 40 minutes with a single manta, completely alone in the middle of the Pacific, dancing and diving and barrel-rolling together. It was transcendent. A forty-minute moment of grace that neither my photographs nor all their thousand words could convey. Nevertheless I tried. But for those magical forty minutes you need to put in hours and hours of waiting, looking, and seeing nothing but blue.

I’m still in Los Cabos now, and will be home  home in Victoria tomorrow evening, and then I’m home for almost 4 months. Thanks for being on this journey with me.

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Three weeks in Varanasi felt like a long time. Even the people that lived there kept shaking their heads in disbelief when I told them I was staying for 21 days. “Three weeks!” they’d exclaim, “In Varanasi? Why?” But they smiled when they did so and I think they were pleased that I was sticking around, if only to prolong their chances to sell me a scarf, some beads, or a boat ride. Varanasi is a lot to take in. It’s noisy and chaotic, the touts are aggressive, and if you spend your time exclusively along the river, as I did, you’re flanked by two cremations sites that never stop sending the ashes of the elders and the prematurely dead, into the wind, and soon thereafter into my lungs. My respiratory system was grateful when we got back to Delhi and if you’ve ever been to Delhi, that’s saying something.

One of the oldest living cities in the world, Varanasi sits under centuries upon centuries of character disguised as inches patina, dust, and grime. It’s a lot. But it’s glorious.

Despite the chaos, and the physical toll this trip took, including an unexpected bout with a kidney stone that I can tell you was not one of my favourite things ever, it’s a magical place and magical places have never given up their treasures lightly. Day in and out I walked along the river looking for those rare moments of grace that occur at the place where light, line, and moment intersect. I used to go looking for the spirit of a place but I’m not sure it exists anymore. If it does, it’s more like learning to see the place with my own spirit, finding my own vision. I’m no longer encumbered by the need to sum up the place, as though my few photographs could say all that needs to be said. Instead I’m just looking for little vignettes, little moments that together create a through-line that hint at my experience there.

It’s really good to be home. We travel for so many reasons but sometimes I think I travel in part to re-calibrate my gratitude and appreciation for home. I’ve now got some solid time to do some diving, pursue some important projects with the kind of depth that can only be done with larger chunks of time, and take some time for my body and soul. This is the first time in years that I haven’t been actively writing a book or doing workshops and I love the freedom that brings, if only to give me the energy to do both again in a year or two. My next projects include a coffee table book of my images from east Africa, called Pilgrims & Nomads, and the pursuit of my underwater work, and a new course about travel photography that I’m hoping to launch in the late summer or early fall, called The Traveling Lens.

Thanks for being there. I love knowing there’s someone on the other end of these postcards that likes to see the world from a different perspective. The next work I show you will be from the next trip back to the Revillagigedo Archipelago, 300 miles off the coast of Mexico where I’ll be for 3 weeks in April. Sharks, mantas, dolphins, and whatever mystery the ocean is willing to show me. In the mean time, here are a few of my images from my time along the Ganges River in Varanasi.

A couple of months ago I got a question from a guy named Sean on my FB page and a bunch of people chimed in with “yeah, what Sean said” so here’s Sean’s question and my best shot at a response. Remember this is just the way I do things and we all do things for different reasons with different skill sets. Still my response might be helpful to some. Here’s what Sean asked:

What are your thoughts on being demanding/critical of your own work while also picking the images you love best? I assume the ones that move you personally are what you want to share with others. Sometimes I have a competent image (exposure, focus, composition “rules”, etc.) that I don’t love but others do, and sometimes the images I’m most excited about fall flat when others view them. How do you employ your emotions when editing to help find moving images without being blinded by personal preference?

If you’d rather watch this, you can see it on YouTube here.

More of an audio person? Get your Mp3 file here.

So, Sean, there’s a short answer to this and a long answer. The short answer is: I don’t. On some level I am always blinded by personal preference, though I prefer to think of it as being guided by those preferences and tastes, but ultimately it comes down to this: if I made a photograph I don’t love and others go nuts over it, it’s of no value to me. None. I can not imagine what good it would do any artist in the world to have work out there towards which we are indifferent, or worse, that is also acclaimed by others. That’s a prison. So when I edit, and I edit all my projects several times because we all have bad days, we all have blind spots, I edit based on my personal preference, not trying to avoid them. End of story.

Alright, it’s not really the end of the story, and this is the longer answer: I’ve been photographing for over 30 years now and with that comes a certain level of maturity and growth, at least where my tastes are concerned (I still act like a child and make fart noises the rest of the time.)  Those 30 years studying my craft and the work of other photographers have helped me understand why I love what I love, and those tastes have changed or evolved over the years. It is so important that artists and craftsmen possess the humility to learn and grow, to explore their blind spots, and to be open – even to pursue – the changing and maturation of their tastes. It’s important to get the feedback of others – often – and to be open to alternate perspectives. Not to convince you that one image is better than another, but to educate, to train your tastes, to open you to new possibilities.

Ultimately your tastes are tied to your vision; they’re part of what makes your work a reflection of you. So your tastes, or preferences, are important and at least for the way I choose to practice my craft, they are one of the most important parts of how I edit my work. Part of being an artist is making choices and owning them. That’s part of the risk that we all embrace. To not embrace that risk is to play it safe and hedge our bets and that only leads to homogeny and mediocrity.

However, not everyone is great at knowing what they love and what they don’t. For me it’s a very binary process, I either love it or I don’t. For others they love it all. And for others still, they hate it all. If you’re one of those you’re probably paralyzed when it comes to choosing your images and it might help you tremendously to find someone to help you. Find another photographer to look through your work and pick the images they love, but ask them to explain WHY. Why do they love this one over that one? What within the image makes them respond the way they do? And if they just shrug and say, I dunno, I just like it, it’s time to find someone else to help you with this.

Tastes and preferences can be trained and knowing why people react to one image and not another can be helpful. And on those occasions when they choose an image and you think, “wait, what? How can you choose that one and not the other one?” You’ve just uncovered your own preference. It was there all along but it was waiting for you to recognize it and have the courage to say something. I wonder how often when we say, “I don’t know which one to choose, or which one is better?”  when what we really mean is “I don’t know which one others are going to think is better.” Sometimes you just have to go with your gut, but you also have to be willing to let other voices train that instinct along the way.

Two more things. For some of us we have no constraints when we edit. Our editing sessions are an exercise in “find all the images that don’t suck” and that’s a terrible way to edit. It’s basically pulling out the crap until you get to the stuff that’s just perfectly mediocre, instead of really focusing on the best work. Who needs 200 images from your afternoon out? Wouldn’t it be easier if you just looked for your best 12? Your best 3? Wouldn’t that force you to be more ruthless? If there’s one skill you need in editing it’s ruthlessness. The more willing you are to accept the images that merely “do not suck” the more the standard of your work goes down. So pick a number. 2. 6. 12. 24. Then find the absolute best 2. or 6. 12. or 24. Edit them down until it hurts a little. Editing should hurt a little. That’s when you know you’re getting to the best stuff and shuffling off the sketch images.

Finally, I think might be helpful to understand that editing your work doesn’t need to be instant. It shouldn’t be instant. It’s guided by a lot of things, not the least of which is “what other criteria are important in making this selection?” One image chosen to work on its own is not the same image you might choose to be part of a series. Or a magazine cover. Or a monograph of 100 images that explore a particular theme. Take your time on selections.

If you get to the point when you need to choose 12 and you’ve got 20, print them out, pin them on the wall and live with them a couple days. Give it time. Live with them. If you’re hitting the same note twice with two images put a red X through one of them. See which ones have staying power and which ones don’t. We live and work in this weird time when it feels like we need to go from shooting to editing to posted on Instagram to liked to forgotten in, like, 60 minutes. We get the dopamine hit and then go looking for the next one. How much stronger would our work and our editing and post-production be if we were more thoughtful, looked for only the best work, and were willing to trust our tastes and our guts. Isn’t that what we want? Images that we love with our guts? Images we have a visceral non-apologetic reaction to? Images we look at and think, I fucking love this? Because if we’re ever going to have a chance at others feeling the same thing in a meaningful way, it’s got to begin there.

Anyways, that’s how I do it and it’s not for everyone. We all do things differently, and with time you’ll find your own way as I did mine, but I think being more ruthless, taking your time, and trusting your instincts while also allowing those instincts to grow, mature, and change, is important. And if you can, find someone to work with on this, help each other through the blind spots. I recently took some current work to see friends that are both talented national geographic photographers and asked them to do an edit, putting my work into two piles – the stuff that moved them and the stuff that was just ok. I came out of that time together with excellent feedback. Some of the images they chose confirmed my suspicions or my tastes, some of the comments gave me new insights and ideas, and occasionally they tossed an image I still love and my own internal reaction helped me become aware of my preferences and prejudices. Just because they don’t love it doesn’t mean it’s not a great image and again asking WHY is really clarifying.

Editing, like making the photographs in the first place, is a personal, and deeply human activity. Don’t expect it to be easy, clean, or to come with any simple answers to which everyone agrees. Have the courage to make your selections, to hone your ability to choose based on a gut reaction, and to be open to feedback from others. And have the courage to be wrong.

PS – You still have a few more days to enroll in my new course, Master Your Craft. If you want to make stronger images you need to feel more comfortable with your tools and for that you need focus and depth.  The distractions and shortcuts aren’t working. Until the end of February 20 (next Tuesday) my new MentorClass course, Master Your Craft is open for enrollment but then it’s gone for another year. Don’t miss this chance to take your craft further!

This is the new, updated version of the Vision Collective course that over 8000 people took last year. Join them in experiencing greater creativity, less frustration, and more joy as you get on the path towards mastery. Find out more, and enroll risk-free here.

 

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Of all the goofy things I’ve said or written, the one that seems to come back to me most often is the idea that you can’t win at art anymore than you can win at yoga. I think art, or yoga, and competition, are fundamentally opposing philosophies. So, it shouldn’t surprise you that I tend to roll my eyes melodramatically at the whole competition culture within photography. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad or without its uses. Should you compete in photography? Is it worth the time, money, and emotional trauma? Let’s talk about it.

More of an audio person? Download the Mp3 file here.

If you’d rather watch this, you can see it on YouTube here.

While I hold a very dim view of so much of the idea of competition, can the whole thing just be written off? I don’t think so. Every year I enter some of my work in consideration for some very specific awards for some very specific reasons, so it would be extraordinarily hypocritical of me to to discourage you from doing the same. Like so much in life, there’s room for nuance here and it all comes down to the question “Why?”

Why do you want to compete? What do you want to get out of it? Competition is like a tool – it does some things well, some things not so well, and some things it just wasn’t designed for and if you try to use it for that thing it’ll just fuck the whole thing up.

So before we talk about why, let me give you my own wildly subjective thoughts about competition and why I think it is generally incompatible with the world of art but might be helpful to your craft.

Art is many things but if you’re asking me then the one thing it MUST be is deeply personal. It must contain something of the artist. Art is a thing we do to express or explore something deeply personal and HOW we do that is equally personal. Art is distinguished from craft in exactly this way: craft can be measured, evaluated, subjected to rules. Art can’t. And if we evaluate the Picassos, the Monets, the Turners, the Warhols, or the Rothkos, on defined criteria of how art should or should not be done, we’d have collectively given the blue ribbon to something safer, something we understood. Art is anything but safe, and mediocrity wins more awards than what is exceptional and harder to grasp.

Furthermore, and you know I’m getting serious when I toss out a furthermore, if art is such an individual pursuit, the idea that we can compete against others means there is some kind of standard against which that pursuit can be measured, some kind of point of reference. And there is no such standard. So judgement has to be made in one of two ways: the first is the creation of a standard. Is the photograph sharp? Is it well exposed? Etc. These are matters of craft. The second is purely subjective. Does the judge respond to it in one way or another, does the work conform to that judge’s ideas about what is innovative, expressive, hackneyed, or otherwise? These are matters of art, specifically how one person, or a group of people, respond to that art.

So while what I really want to say is “to hell with competition” and I’ll probably do that impetuously at the end of this rant anyways, it would be impetuous. Because those two means of evaluation can be valuable. The first relates more to craft and if competing in early days, while you’re still a beginner, helps push you to learn your craft and be more relentless about the pursuit of technical excellence, then go for it. But make sure you’re putting that work into competitions that base their judgements on those merits. The second relates more to art and if you can get the eyes of experienced judges you respect then you might be able to get some sense of how your work is experienced by those more experienced, respected photographers, and that too can be really valuable.

If you want to compete because you want to learn, to push yourself, or to get feedback from respected masters you might not otherwise get feedback from, then competition is a great tool. It can also be a great tool for exposing your work to a wider audience. What it can NOT do is tell you whether you, or your work, are better than others, and it can’t tell you if your work is even an authentic reflection of who you are. In fact, that’s one of the dangers of competition: if you create work merely to please the judges are you really creating work that’s important to you, that’s about exploration of things that are deep-down most important to you, and expressing that in ways that are unique to you? The artist creates first to satisfy her own muse and no one else, and competition can drown that most important voice.

So why do I, personally, enter my work into a small handful of competitions each year? I do it because if I know I’m submitting a series of 10 images to a specific competition then I’ve got a specific deliverable and a deadline; two things I don’t often have as I do less and less client work. It forces me to be more thoughtful, less ad hoc, and to shoot and edit my work more seriously. I do it because while I know the decisions of the judges don’t validate my art, it gives me a sense of where I’m at, and keeps me from getting lazy or listening to the voices that tell me I’m better than I am. I love my fans but it’s critics that keep me honest. And on the occasions when I win something, there’s a chance at exposure I might not have otherwise have, or a chance to connect to new photographers and new ideas. But competition doesn’t inflate me or deflate me and it’s never about bragging rights. I get my joy from creating and sharing my work, and from learning how to make it better, not from a trophy with dubious meaning.

How do I decide which competitions to enter?

 I look at the terms. Too many small competitions are just a grab for your rights and I won’t support that.
 I look at who’s judging the competition. If I know and respect those people and feel they have something to teach me, I’ll consider it.
I look at the potential exposure. If the resulting exposure to new audiences is strong, I’ll consider it. What I never ask myself is what will I win? If the prize is what clinches it for you, you might as well just buy lottery tickets and save yourself the grief.

Whatever you decide, hold this stuff lightly. A big win doesn’t necessarily mean much in terms of how good your art is. A big loss, should you choose to see it that way, also doesn’t necessarily mean much. And that’s where I still tend to come back around to eyeing competition with suspicion. It only means so much. If it helps you – really helps you – in some way, go for it. But the world is full of “award-winning photographers” who are camped out on awards they won 10 years ago, happy to know that once upon a time they were the “best” at something, and they’ve never moved on from the rut their ego won’t let them escape by taking risks and doing new work. And the world is equally full of astonishing photographers creating incredible work that will never win a trophy or a blue ribbon. The lack of those accolades don’t diminish the excellence, innovation, or humanity of their work.

So compete or don’t compete as you choose. At the end of the day it’s not the competitions that are the problem. If we choose to have our work considered for those awards it’s what we DO with the wins and the losses that counts. It’s how we react to them. Some responses will move us forward in healthy ways, some will do great damage, one way or the other to our egos, and some reactions will have the effect of an anchor, making sure we never move from this safe place, this moment in time when we “won” and that rut we get in will be as good as a grave creatively if we don’t cut the anchor line and move forward.

Let me say one final thing, because I’m trying to be really fair and balanced about this so I’ve hedged my bets a little in this rant. The job of the artist is to tend to his, or her, art. That’s where our eyes and our minds and our hearts must be. And comparing ourselves to others, which is fundamentally what competition is about, is a dangerous opportunity to look over our shoulders at what others are doing, and the moment we get out the measuring stick to see if we measure up, is the moment many of us will begin to doubt the voices that were once so clear. And if those comparisons nudge you even one step in a direction that is not authentic to you, that doesn’t give you joy, or that brings you back to the mediocrity you worked so hard to escape; if they dampen your spirit and steal your joy, then I’m begging you, forget the competitions and do your work. Tend to your art. Do what gives you joy and makes your work better. That’s all that matters.

 

If you got my Contact Sheet on January 23, you’ve already read this, but if you didn’t, read on!

Painter Robert Henri (1865–1929) admonished his students to “Paint the spirit of the bird in flight, not its feathers.” His words have echoed with me since I heard them, joining photographer David Alan Harvey’s plea: “Don’t shoot what it looks like, shoot what it feels like.”

There’s a place in photography for the merely illustrative to show the world what a thing, person, or place looks like. At one point that was the primary role of the photographer: to go into the world where others might never go, and to report back with “what it looks like.” Or, similarly, to make portraits and create a likeness. But in 100 years, we’ve come to the point where nearly every corner of this world has been photographed, and at a minimum, most every person documented annually throughout their lives, if not selfie’d to the point of absurdity. There is less and less call for us to show anyone what anything looks like. We already know. Few of us really need more illustration, although the camera still does that very well.

“Don’t shoot what it looks like, shoot what it feels like.”

~ David Alan Harvey

 

What we need, and have always needed, is interpretation and inspiration. We don’t need to know what it looks like (whatever it is), but what it might mean—what it might feel like. More than ever, we need images that speak to a deeper part of our humanity than the thirst for details. We need, and hunger for, for context, insight, hope, and the kind of visual poetry that stirs our hearts, sparks our imaginations, churns our stomachs, or light a fire in us.

This is one reason the ongoing hunt for more megapixels or sharper lenses is so profoundly irrelevant. We’ve got the best tools we’ve ever had and photographers just can’t stop flocking to sites like PetaPixel and DPReview to argue about edge-to-edge sharpness and how many angels you can fit on a single pixel. I wonder how much more they need before the realization sets in that the human heart doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about the things they so passionately debate. I used to wish people had more passion, but that’s not the problem at all; there’s passion aplenty out there. It just hasn’t found the courage to stand on a hill worth defending, so it thrashes around in the mud pretending to matter, pretending to accomplish something. Passion needs an outlet.

“Paint the spirit of the bird in flight, not its feathers.”

~ Robert Henri

 

We don’t need better tools and we don’t need more passion. We need direction and something to say with the tools and the passion. If you want to photograph “what it feels like,” you have to experience that feeling. And the more deeply you experience it, the more you can put that into the photographs you make. It’s hard to do this at the beginning. How do you experience something deeply while also giving 100% of your attention to the buttons and dials and the histogram and the depth of field? OMG, by the time you’re done you’d be happy just to have the damn thing in focus, right?

At the beginning it’s hard enough to shoot what it looks like. What it feels like? Hell, it feels like frustration, that’s what it feels like, duChemin!

I get it.

This is why it’s so important to master your craft. Not to geek out and become a so-called techy or a pixel-peeper, but to get so comfortable with those buttons, dials, technical choices, and thought processes that you can concentrate on feeling. On the right strongest moment, the aperture and shutter and composition that best communicates that feeling. On knowing what you have to say and interpreting that with the tools in your hands. We become more free with the creative work when we can pay less attention to the technical because we are everyday getting closer to mastering those tools.

When I say mastery I don’t mean it in some elite way, just that you control the tools and not the other way around. I mean it in the sense that you’re not freaking out all the time about highlights or what your f/stop should be because you’ve made those choices a million times before and your focus can be on other things.

“An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.”

~ Robert Henri

 

We photograph how something feels by feeling that thing ourselves, which in turn gives us something to say. The camera and all the elements of our craft are merely the means by which we say those things. And since our craft and our vision are inseparable from each other, if you want to be better able to express your vision, you need to get more comfortable with the tools that do that. That means focusing your efforts and getting on the path toward mastery: the more you master your tools and get comfortable with them, the more you’ll be to use those tools creatively, playfully, and powerfully.

This morning I’ve posted a video called Three Obstacles to Mastering Your Craft. It’s the first of three videos on the topic and an eventual introduction to a new chance for you to walk the path toward mastery with me. For now, I just want you to start thinking about this: while it’s all well and good to want to “shoot what it feels like,” the way you do that is more practical and requires you to be so familiar with your tools and technique that they become what Robert Henri calls translucent. Forgotten, even. He was referring to painting, but it’s the same thing.

Watch Three Obstacles to Mastering Your Craft now.

The path to mastery isn’t a secret thing and it’s not unattainable. It takes time and focus and I hope the next couple weeks will help you get there faster and more intentionally. Watch this week’s video and I’ll email you when the next one is posted. The sooner you get on the path toward mastery instead of just messing around with your gear, the sooner you can “shoot what it feels like.”

PS. If you do get the Contact Sheet, just follow the link in today’s email and you won’t have to enter your email address again. I’ll let you know automatically when the next one is up! If you don’t get the Contact Sheet, I’ll ask for your email before you watch the video so I can send you those notifications, but you can always unsubscribe, no strings attached, no weird guilt-trips.

 

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I left home just over 25 days ago now and am so thoroughly relaxed I think I’m ruined for life back in “the real world” when I return in a few days. I woke this morning to the sounds of birds and frogs and a troop of baboons loudly expressing their displeasure at a nearby leopard. Not a bad way to begin the day.

Here are a few images from the last couple weeks – I’ve shot about 9000 frames and have barely had a moment to ingest them, and back them up, let alone look at them, but a couple jumped out at me this morning so I thought I’d share some of the magic with you. This is my favourite part of what I do: not the photography, really, but seeing the wonder on the faces of clients and friends as they encounter this place and these fantastic beasts for the first time. Seeing a big cat stare into your soul, or feeling the ground shake when a couple hundred Cape Buffalo stampede at sunset (while you’re lying on your belly photographing them) just never gets old.

I first went to Lalibela, Ethiopia, in January, 2006, arriving with some hundred-thousand pilgrims to a scene straight out of a biblical movie. Over ten years later, and having just finished my fourth time photographing this Christmas pilgrimage, the magic hasn’t waned a bit. Crowded with people in white robes, these ancient rock-hewn churches are a swirl of motion and humanity, every corner filled with pilgrims reading scriptures, lepers begging for alms, and colourful priests and deacons doling out blessings for a coin. There are drums and dancing, candle-lit services, long dark tunnels, heady incense, and so much mystery. It’s an overwhelming place and a visual wonder. Each time I’ve returned I’ve thought it was my last trip but this place seems to have gotten under my skin and keeps calling me back.

If you’re a Contact Sheet subscriber you’ll be getting an email from me any moment with a longer first glimpse of my photographs from this trip. But here are a few of my favourites for now. If you’re not a Contact Sheet subscriber you can get my PILGRIM Monograph and subscribe at the same time here. I send my Contact Sheet out a couple times a month when I have something to say, or new work to show. By subscribing you let me send you articles about the art and craft of photography, new opportunities to learn, and first glimpses of my new work, most often in a beautiful PDF you can download to enjoy offline.

I’m in Nairobi now, waiting for the first of two safaris to begin and gorging on mangoes. In a couple more days I’ll be back on the Maasai Mara with great people, beautiful light, and some of the most majestic creatures on the planet. I’ll be in touch the moment I’m back with another postcard or two. I hope you’re having a great start to 2018. In the meantime, enjoy these photographs from Lalibela.

As we roll into 2018 with our usual expectations that this year is going to be different, or better, or the year we take things to the next level or dial things up to 11, or whatever,  there will be no shortage of voices – many of them in your own brain – that are going to try to hold you back, in your photography, your business, your creative life. I have appointed myself to remind you that these voices are scared little chicken-shit voices and they aren’t the only ones out there. In fact, if any of us are going to accomplish the things we’re so optimistically planning and dreaming and making resolutions about, we’re going to need this reminder and the encouragement to dream a little bigger. And to do a little bigger.

If you’d rather watch this on YouTube, it’s Episode 77 of Vision Is Better and you can watch it here.

More of an audio person? You can download or listen to the Mp3 file here:

Click here to download the Mp3

When I was a teenager I went to Disney’s Epcot Center and there was this ride that still haunts me. Not because it was scary, in fact it was almost hypnotically boring. But there was this narrated voice that kept telling me that if I could dream it I really could do it and for whatever reason I have memories of hearing this voice over and over. I can dream a lot of things that I will never be able to accomplish, so don’t look to me for overly positive affirmations that you can do whatever you set your mind to. We all have our limitations. True, actual, honest to god limitations. You can’t just achieve anything you desire this year as though you were your own genii granting your own wishes. Life doesn’t work like that.

But: life also doesn’t work when we simply accept those limitations and roll over and wait for mediocrity to steam-roll us into boredom and the flattening of our dreams. So because there are going to be enough negative voices and circumstances in your life this year, reminding you that life is hard and dreams are not easily won, let me remind you that the voices telling you you can’t do this or that because it’s not realistic, don’t have the full story.

No one really knows what realistic is.

Johanna Basford is credited with creating the adult colouring book craze and is now worth millions and millions of dollars.

Adult. Colouring. Books.

I’m not ridiculing them, just saying no one saw it coming. I’m guessing she had plenty of people in her life looking at her a little funny when she started floating that idea past them for feedback. So the next time you wonder if you can make a living doing dog portraits with a 4×5 film camera, and you start thinking it’s not “realistic” remember that “realistic” is a very fuzzy concept that is more clearly defined by the reality of our actions than anything else.

Remember that at some ludicrous point in time someone thought “Sharknado” was a good idea. And not just once! 2017 saw Sharknado 5, Global Swarming, come into the world.

In 1975 a guy named Gary Dahl joked with his friends that he was going to sell pet rocks and he became a millionaire selling rocks in a box.

Pet. Rocks. And you think you can’t pull off your next creative project or your next business move because it’s a little risky? A little too, outside the box? If its not Sharknado or a pet rock, you’re not even close.

Yes, Pet Rocks and Sharknado and Adult Colour Books are outliers. They’re the extreme, I know that. But unless your idea is even less “realistic” than those, don’t you think you may as well err on the side of optimism and perseverance instead of just giving up now?  Don’t you owe it a shot?

When I coach photographers, whether it’s about creative or business matters, I hear this one thing over and over again, and while it gets expressed in different ways, it’s basically this: If I could do what I wanted to, it would be ___________________, but…and then they list the reasons that they’re giving up before they even try, before they have anything more than their fear and their suspicions to go on.

And they’re really legitimate-sounding reasons. Except they’ve never tried. They really don’t know. They’re guessing. Because they’re afraid. We’re all afraid. Afraid of failure. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid of change. Afraid of the effort, the ridicule. Did we think this would be easy? Is it that we’re all looking for that one idea in the world that’s going to change everything but takes no effort? Cost us nothing?  “Well, I want to do something really cool, but until I know it’s a sure thing…”

Art comes with no guarantees.

Who says you can’t make portraits of people or their dogs with a large format camera, and perhaps make a living doing that? Why not? Have you tried? Have you even tested the waters?

Who says you can’t make a living as a travel photographer who only uses a Polaroid camera? I read an article about a photographer who’s working for major publications with old point and shoot digital cameras most of us wouldn’t think twice about throwing in the recycle bin, and another about journalists using only iPhone cameras. Why not?

Why can’t you be the photographer shooting $20,000 weddings or shooting cover art for Wired magazine with a Fisher Price camera? If I could make a living as a juggler making a couple thousand dollars a show, then you probably haven’t yet scratched the surface on what’s possible.

In fact when other voices might tell you your plans aren’t realistic, that you’re reaching too far – and that’s the fear speaking – there’s a better a chance than not that you’re not reaching far enough, not dreaming big enough.

Let me wrap this up by harnessing a metaphor that may or may not work. It works for me. They say people that fall down and sustain the least amount of injury are the ones who go limp, who just roll with it. When I did Judo as a kid we spent hours and hours learning to fall, to roll with it, and the more comfortable we got with falling the less we feared it, eventually throwing each other around like rag dolls. But in other areas of life we don’t learn to fall, we go rigid at the thought of hitting the ground, especially as we get older and have more to lose,  we fear the harm of falling, and so we never shake the fear. What if the best thing you can do this year is to get less freaked out at the thought of failure? In fact, what if we assumed failure, what if we knew it was coming and welcomed it as part of our process, the part where we learned to make things better, whether that’s art or business? Someone recently flipped this on its head for me and told me “failure isn’t an option for me, it’s a necessity.” 

What if we knew our first efforts at some new thing would be ugly failures? What if we relied on those to help us make the better versions?

Writers do this all the time with their shitty first drafts. The purpose of the first draft is not to write a great story. It’s to get writing. To get the bones down, see where it’s strong and where it’s weak. Then you write another draft. And another.

Look, I have no idea what you’re planning for this year. But if it’s going to be great, and you live in the same world I do, there’s a good chance it’ll be crap when you start. But if you fear the crap you’ll never even get that far. Lean into it. Relax. Loosen up. Assume failure, don’t fear it. And then? Dream big. No one else is going to do it for you. And yeah, you might aim for the stars and fall a little bit short but you’re still going to go so much farther than the guy who’s too scared to look up.

There are things enough to fear in this life, things with real teeth, so while you can: do the things you’re excited to do, whether or not you have any guarantee of success. Go all in on it, and don’t worry about getting knocked down, of bruising your pride or screwing it up the first try. Count on the failures, don’t fear them – they’re your best shot.

Have a wonderful holiday, however you celebrate it. On New Year’s Eve I’ll be flying back to Ethiopia and I’ll be in east Africa for a month. I’ll see you when I get back. Until then, remember gear is good, vision is better, and if adult colouring books can make someone rich then, my friends, we’re living in crazy times when anything is possible.

 

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I’m often asked for recommendations about photography books. Not, mind you, books about photography, but books of photographs. Here are my current favourites. They of course represent my own tastes and lean heavily toward black and white documentary photographs, but you can learn from all photography, and I think black and white images are simpler, allowing us (often) to get to the heart of them more quickly.

So here in no particular order are the books that are currently on my own shelves that I turn to over and over again, and that I would (and do) recommend to my friends and students. The links below are Amazon affiliate links. Any of these would be a good choice as a gift for the photographer in your life (you, for example) and will last much longer, and have much more impact on your photography, than any of the needless plastic stuff out there. The best money I ever spend is on books. No idea which one to pick, just choose one – they’re all amazing.

Ernst Haas, Color Correction

Elliott Erwitt, Personal Best

Elliott Erwitt, Home Around the World

Saul Leiter, Early Color

Saul Leiter, Early Black and White

Josef Koudelka, Nationality Doubtful

Josef Koudelka, Gypsies

Josef Koudelka – Exiles

Helen Levitt

Raghu Rai’s India

Magnum Contact Sheets

Sebastiao Salgado – Workers

Sebastiao Salgado – Genesis

These three I don’t yet own but they’re the next 3 on my wish list:

Constantine Manos – American Colour I can’t wait to get my hands on this one.

Alex Webb, The Suffering of Light Not sure why I don’t have this one yet.

Saul Leiter, In My Room, This should be released in late February, 2018.

Do you have a favourite photography book (a book of photographs as opposed to books about photography)? I’d love to hear about it! Have you spent time with any of the books above and second my recommendation? I’d love to hear about that too.

 

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