painting with trite

 

totem, originally uploaded by nezua.

i had a conversation recently with a photographer, someone in their 20s about this and that, realized we were grappling with a few ideas that couldn’t be wrapped up tidy, that i wanted to think on a while, that i’ve been thinking on. this person became offended by those who asked what kind of camera was used to take a shot and their point was that these people only do this implying the camera does all the work. and we talked about a few things. one thing i said was that i think its a legitimate question…people want to know about tools. i do. i understood what ticked this person off. or i think so. actually i think it was a few things. but more important to me right now is thinking about the age of film photography passing by.

photography (film photography of course) was my first major in college (”of course” because it was in the late 1980s) and has been a great love of mine for as long as i’ve been shooting crummy pictures and the occasional inspired one. in fact, visual arts is the one area i’ve practiced and trained more than any other area. it never occurs to me to lay claim to a certain amount of expertise because me+photography in my mind are pretty much one thing. i’ve always been into it, it seems. always taken an interest in using cameras around me or getting cameras. had a polaroid, had a 110, have a hi8, have a 35mm SLR…and so on. i’ve had frustrations about the limitations of my equipment for years before i knew it was the equipment that was limiting me in certain areas.

i guess that’s why the conversation was difficult, and i had to think on it a while. it’s nuanced. i don’t disagree that photography is about the eye and the heart. i don’t disagree that it can be insulting if ALL a person wants to say or know about a shot is what camera took it, each time they see a shot. but i don’t see a reason to get worked up about people asking. don’t kid yourself, it makes a difference. again, this isn’t to say that you can’t take lovely shots with a cameraphone, you can if you have an eye. i totally agree.

but it’s just not honest to deny the benefits of your gear. or maybe you only think its so unimportant that you have the gear you do because you took out a loan and were able to get high end stuff right away. didn’t have to make your way through cheap cameras with crummy lenses, don’t have a memory of frustration about each and every limitation, about how you couldn’t translate your inner image into the world because your gear was getting in the way. i’m only guessing. but if you have seen crystallized frustrations melt away when you finally got better gear, then you know full well what benefit that stuff can bring. and i can’t see you denying it as much.

i think they feel uptight because they cannot lay claim to education. so maybe to them they feel that if they give credit to their gear, there’s not much left for them. (they are self-taught, do weddings now, etc.)

now, dig, i don’t think a formal college education is necessary to take beautiful or meaningful photographs! and i think you can learn much on the way, sure. i think you can learn to see the world in tones and shades or if you already do, than to learn more, and learn how to develop a craft for expressing the love of form and luminance or human stories and characters and express that after training yourself by self-teaching. these days with the internet you can get group feedback, informal lessons that never end, tricks of the trade and wisdom that normally you would gain from teachers, those to whom you apprentice or assist, or curriculum.

but i do think certain training and instruction in some areas is bound to do you a lot of good. i’m self taught and schooled, both. in various areas. i know full well the process and rewards and the limitations, too, of both.

i guess the question i was kicking around was “what does it mean to be a photographer these days?” i was wondering what the years of photographic education mean and how much, and what was the value of all the time i’ve spent learning to do analog functions that are now digitally accomplished. i sound like an old man, but i think that will happen sooner and sooner in people’s lives because technology moves at a faster and faster rate. we see more inventions and processes obsoleted now than ever before, i’d bet. i never imagined i’d see a record player obsoleted. or cassettes! or film cameras. wow.

so these questions of mine became enjoined with this other person’s not wanting to focus (i said “focus” heh heheh) on the high-end equipment they had, downplaying its significance in the quality of their work. and having had no education. so they want to deny the importance of equipment (gear i still haven’t matched, even though i am at least 15 years older than them i’m such a poor bastard!) and they want to stand as an example of a photographer who has no formal education. so…it’s not education that gave you any edge, and your gear doesn’t even matter. you are just pure photographic might in the raw.

they remind me of myself, actually. at that age. now that i think of it! an artiste wanting to deny secondary process functioning. no craft, no training, just pure oceanic talent sprung from the core and drawn out by mine own hands.

i’m not here to be some stodgy gatekeeper. i, too, benefit from the added ease that these smart-ass cameras bring. they are amazing. though, honestly, i am glad i am stickering symbols and movements on top of long-practiced, analog, well-founded knowledge. i do feel that foundation is very important. that’s the point of this, mostly. 

cuz i’m not here to judge art too much. i really do feel that if it reaches you it is good art. and if not, then it isn’t. that is to say, i do think the beauty of it is in its subjectivity. but it is ignorant to deny that there are elements of craft to formally study. and it is dishonest to imagine when you are shooting with a 2K lens and a full-format chip size it won’t make a difference!

(on another tip, just sayin’. when you compose for the key and expose for the key almost always…i don’t want to hear too much about “painting with light.” don’t rip off art school phrases to pretty up pure conventional standards! panting with light means the light and shadow and form push ahead into the fore of priority. not that you are capturing light and smearing it around a screen without the camera figuring into it!)

and then i feel bad for being such a foto snob. ugh. how ugly. and how typical. sonova….just like the eighth floor of TSOA. i swore i’d never! but…hell. we were the ninth floor. ninth and tenth, actually. motion picture and video. in a way i felt that the eight floor (still fotography) had to be snobby because what does still photography have on those who shoot motion picture? not much, really. cinematographers can shoot good photography, but it doesn’t convert the other way as easily. there is a whole extra body of knowledge and experience required.

and some of it is being protective of what i’ve invested, of course. some is wanting to maintain the worth of the ways in which i learned. some is reactionary. but as i said, i do fear the art being lost behind a button. and this is something i’ve written on for years. it’s not new, and this concern was with me before DSLRs became quite the consumer item they are now.

The Robotics of Unlearning, November 9, 2005

I CAN’T HELP BUT WONDER what it removes from the learning process of a child, when all things mechanical and analog are reduced to boxes that only hum and light up. I thought about this the other day, when I dropped a Talking Heads album down on one of my turntables.

I grew up with albums, with turntables, with tape decks, with analog clocks, with dial phones, with acoustic guitars, with typewriters. Hell, I’ve even pushed a manual mower, back when I was in third grade or thereabouts. The kind of mower that twirls blades based on how hard you push it! I guess that was back in 1977 or so. And now? In 2005? Now, we have mp3s, palm pilots, synced digital calenders, iPods, digital clocks that update themselves to daylight savings (and back), music that is made mostly on computers, phones that have speed-dialing/photo-caller ID/bluetooth/voice-calling, that save all your numbers so you never even have to know them, and wireless keyboards that don’t even make Click-Clack sounds! And I never thought I would see myself as part of a world that is slipping away, but there it is.

I watch these mechanical, very physical, analog devices gradually fade into the past, and I do so with a bit of trepidation. I hope it is not just nostalgia and a need to justify my own experience that informs this emotion. I truly wonder what children will not learn, when they do not see the physical processes taking place in so many of these tools. It very much worries me that we humans are becoming more and more removed from the striking of a match, the winding of a clock, the moving of a pen, the turning of a wheel.

For doesn’t it teach us many things to set down a needle on a spinning record; to start the song in a certain place, or to watch the platter speed up or wind down? Doesn’t it teach us something when the record skips, and so a grownup tapes a penny to the arm of the record player? What secondary things are we learning when we type, and watch the slim metal letter swing up on its hidden arm and punch the ribbon firmly into the paper, leaving its mark? What physics of understanding are being built when we look at the clock, seeing the space between the big hand and the 12, knowing we only have to wait for that tiny arc to close up before we are allowed outside to play? What minute pieces of the process are we equating with our own self and bodies and with cause and effect, when we exert force in a particular way, and see the effects upon our world?

Or put in another way, what are children not learning when they push a button and get results? What pieces of understanding are not falling into place? What shape of understanding takes place in a mind that rarely has to follow a line of motion from beginning to end, but instead only reduces all mechanical action to an abstract flurry of invisible 1s and 0s?

and

You and I still have the metaphors in our mind. We put in a CD, and somewhere in our mind, we think of a record. Maybe we don’t know we think of the record, but the analogy is there for us. We see that CD spinning in our mind’s eye. We see a digital clock, and we understand the conversion. We are, in part, translators simply because we learned the first language, and are a part of the exchange needed to bridge our world to the second. But our children will not have these analogies. They may not even understand the need to memorize any of the phone numbers programmed into their cell phones. They may never look at an analog clock, depending on where they live, and how. They will be able to speak about IPs, ISPs, codecs, plugins, cookies, corrupted files, packet-sniffing, hacking, DOS attacks, and digital data transfer, but will they know what to do when the digital control center for their entire house, car, bill schedule, and career goes on the fritz?

so there’s a few things in there. sure, the typical feelings of mortality, fear of change, etc. but mostly i fear so many arts being lost. it seems to be a pattern. the loss of ritual and art. what does it leave us? autofocus. autoexposure. wedding photographers who think they are ansel adams and talk about painting with light! it’s no good. it’s disastrous.

no, i’m being cruel. there’s no need for that. i take it all back! please just help me get a loan, too! i want a full format chip! i want sweet, sweet lensy image stabilization, tooooOOooOoO! i kid. i don’t need a loan. and if i wanted to be knee deep in wedding jobs, i could be. and in fact, i am shooting a wedding later this month. but that’s video.

i guess it’s time to take on the Old Man mantle a little more each day. damn whippersnappers with no regard for paying dues! ohhhh they just wanna lie in the fotoshopped sun all day and let other people carry their f-stops! lazy, coddled, digital ne’er do wells! fah! double fah! double fah on the subwoofer cuz i ain’t THAT old