If you've followed my writing, you'll know that I rarely pick up my camera if I don't have a contract attached to the action. Call it the joys and perils of being a commercial photographer. You get paid to do what you love, yet your love morphs into a duty and can lose its allure. This is why I surprised myself on my recent work trip to California.
After a full workday, I decided to take an evening walk and see what exactly these shorelines had the Beach Boys all worked up about. I half-heartedly grabbed my camera, "just in case," on my way out of the door.
Is Beauty a Valid Reason for Capturing an Image?
Was what I found a beautiful scene? Yes. As a painter, it's a miracle of nature how colors can somehow all melt into one another while never getting "muddied." A double rainbow slowly started pushing through the sky.
I clicked furiously, moved by the beauty. But regardless of how glorious the scene was, I found myself looking at the images and thinking with irritation, "These are so boring!" Is something being beautiful a reason to take its picture? I have a distant memory of my painting teacher scoffing as she talked about decorative art. I once almost didn't date someone because as we walked through a gallery of modern art he blurted out, "Well, I wouldn't hang that in my house" — the ultimate sin sentence according to Carla Poindexter. Decorative beauty is not the measuring stick for the validity of art. Is something being pretty a good reason to create a picture? Surrealist rule-breaker Max Ernst once expressed:
Painting is not for me decorative amusement (...) it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.
This brought me to the question as I prepared to capture my next frame of the sunset: "What's the purpose of taking this picture? To show that it was 'pretty'?" The word pretty made me almost gag. Probably a leftover reflex from University lectures.
"No, I'm not making pretty pictures."
It was American critic and writer Susan Sontag who claimed:
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.
Max Ernst and Susan Sontag might have challenged me to delete my first set of images.
I wanted to express the feeling of the moment but with my own language. I turned my shutter speed way down to 1/50. It was too sloppy; blurry—but not blurry enough that it looked intentional. I had to abstract it more. Being the rule breaker that I am, I decided to shake the camera. Up and down. Nope. That's a mess. This series is not called "Beach Seizures". Left to right. Hmm. Now we're talking.
I spent the next 30 minutes playing. Chasing the waves in and out, shaking my camera, breaking all the rules. I picked up a bottle of Malbec on the way home to sip while I tied my vision together in Photoshop. I made my first set of pieces. I felt pleased with them.
As requested, I sent them to my friend, a talented landscape photographer. He rapidly whipped back a brief and not-so-subtle disapproving response, "It looks like you had fun".
That's it.
That's all he wrote.
I wanted to pull him by the ear to one of Poindexter's rants against decorative arts. "Fun?" Now I was mad. I went back the next night to outshoot my previous warm-up. As I stitched my image together, I jotted down an ill-tempered artist rebuttal to his disapproval. I disguised it in flowery phrases. An "accompanying poem for the photograph" sounded more palatable than "My artist statement against your decoratively trained palette." Here is the "piece" [laughs to self] I wrote with the adjoining artwork.
What’s My Point? Pretty Pictures Are Invalid?
No, of course not. (And if I secretly did think that, I surely couldn't write it on Fstoppers.) My point is that if you're an artist, there is something unique that only you can contribute. Nobody comes to a scene with the same curiosities as you, the same life experiences, the same color preferences, and other likes and dislikes. Your mind is completely unique—so what if you ran the image through your unique filter and delivered something that no one else could? Something more than a pretty picture. Something that you interpreted in some way.
My Challenge to You
My challenge to you is to push your art one step further than you have. Lean into something that is unique to you, and inject it into what you shoot. As Stripling said, bring your own intellectual interpretation into the art. Just do something slightly different than you have in the past. Lean into your own creative genius, your own vision, and show us what we have not seen. Then share it in the comments below! I would love to see it!
Really good piece. Love the images, though is it just me who’s thinking ‘how do I shake my camera left to right while capturing the picture’ - it sounds like such an unnatural movement (but one which I’m immediately curious to try). Most of all, this was an interesting piece for someone – me – who’s trying to find the secret to good and compelling landscape photography. Virtually all of my stuff is based around people, and sometimes animals – I photograph musicians, media events, unit stills, and so on, where, whatever the other challenges, it’s usually fairly clear what the subject, and the focal point of the picture is. Trying to find that in a landscape, (without putting my dog in the middle of it) has been a real challenge, but one that I’m starting to enjoy. This is making me think about other approaches, and creating new challenges for myself, so thank you.
Shaking might be a little misleading. It's simply the movement of a camera during a long exposure that blurs the picture. If you move the camera horizontally during the exposure, the lines blur in the same path as the horizon, or in Michelle's images, the ocean and beach. If you're shooting a picture of trees, most photographers will move the camera up and down following the same lines as the trees. But it's an up and down movement, or side to side, that creates the painterly effect... not forward and backward as you might think of as in shaking the camera.
It only takes a little camera movement to create this type of picture. And it's typically a smooth movement. It's not like shaking the camera all over the place. In fact it only takes a shutter speed of half second or less. I usually put the shutter on a few seconds delayed timer and start moving the camera during that delay. If you wait to click the shutter and then move the camera, you're typically too late. That's like trying to get a shot of lightning after you first see it.
It's hard to predict exactly what the photo will look like. The longer the shutter stays open, say four seconds or so, the more lines and changes in paths you'll get. Simpler minimalist images are generally made from shorter exposures. That too, depends on how rapidly you're moving the camera. Obviously you still have to match the shutter speed with aperture... shooting in daylight is hard to get to a four second exposure without blowing out highlights. Finally, composition is still relevant, because a long exposure will create streaks of bright lines where there are highlights in your scene. It's a lot like abstraction where the casual observer might think it's just a mess of lines... but there is an intended design behind the image. Shooting this style of photography helps you think about lines and shapes because that's the basis of the picture you're making.
Robert Machin Some I panned and shot. Others I shoot. I drew it out as an explanation. I tried up and down but I felt that it looked like I was having a seizure. Left to right felt like it created almost brush stroke like components which I re-assembled to create the image. The line on the right are the city lights.
Awe. Thank you for the pat on the back at the end. I, like you, feel not naturally drawn to landscapes. They're a struggle for me. I was a teacher years and years ago, so if you were in my class I would say pick 3 concepts. Framing, monochromatic studies and a unique perspective... like if you were an ant. And try shooting with each of those concepts being focused on. See what you come up with. I would love to see it too if you want to come back and share!
It's almost like you're painting with a camera. Spectacular!
Thank you @andrew B that means so much to me. I laughed a bit when I got back to my air B&B. My concentration in College was painting. I thought "how in the world did I take one day to shoot whatever I wanted, and I somehow ended up painting?"
Excellent article and observaions. Made me re-think a lot. Thank you so very much.
Michelle Van Tyne wrote
"I wanted to express the feeling of the moment but with my own language. I turned my shutter speed way down to 1/50. It was too sloppy; blurry—but not blurry enough that it looked intentional. I had to abstract it more. Being the rule breaker that I am, I decided to shake the camera. Up and down. Nope. That's a mess. This series is not called "Beach Seizures". Left to right. Hmm. Now we're talking."
I love that in the paragraph in which you declare yourself a rule breaker, you have 4 sentences that have neither a subject or a verb. Faulkner much?!
Do you think those sentences have no verbs? "Express. Turned. Looked. Had (the verb to have). Decided. Talking. "
Michelle,
Of course those sentences have verbs! But those are not the sentences I was referring to. I was specifically referring to these four sentences:
"Up and down."
"Nope."
"Left to right."
"Hmmm."
And what I said was a compliment to you because I think it is creative to break the rules by using some sentences that are not "complete". Faulkner was a master of this and his writings have inspired me to use words to express feelings and ideas and not to focus so much on the so-called rules that are often over-emphasized.
Your composite I would certainly consider full of artistic vision! Just wonderful. I tend towards taking the typical pleasing landscapes, so your message of pushing yourself and your vision is much appreciated. I love your accompanying poem as well!