gdanmitchell
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ben egbert wrote:
I am not competing, in fact I don't care if I ever get a vote. But over saturated, or overbright or unsharp or color cast comments after 30 years in the business either means I am in the wrong business or at least at the wrong level of the business.
Ben, I want to build a bit on something that someone else wrote in another post. I'm going to divide my comments into a sort of caution along with a bit of encouragement.
You post a lot of photographs and a lot of people here enjoy discussing the photographs and the issues that you bring up and, I think, follow your posts and your travels. As you know, I recently commented on a general trend towards you posting more and more interesting photographs, both in terms of the subject matter and how you "see" and then present your vision of these subjects. It is my impression that when you focus on these positive things—the places you visit, creating the best photographs of these places that you can create, growing and developing as a photographer—that you come up with a lot of interesting stuff and share some very interesting places with us. I've been encouraged to see your posts generally starting to follow more of that sort of positive orientation.
That is good stuff. It should encourage you. I mean this as a genuine compliment.
However, sometimes you slip back into that negative pattern of reciting all of the things that are wrong with photography, with your photography, with issues that affect your ability to make photographs, and with the photographs of others. By comparison to the good and increasingly good work you do when you don't concentrate on that stuff, the posts that slip back into that pattern seem self-defeating and may even tend to lock you into a way of thinking that not only strengthens those negative factors but which actually has a negative effect on your photography and suppresses the positive possibilities.
While you are sometimes dwell a bit more than some on these issues in your posts, do understand that you are not alone in this. I think that many, many photographers focus too much on assessing their work in a negative way. (It is fine to try to understand what you can do better, but the focus should be on the "better" more than on "failure.") No one's photography is perfect—I don't even know what it would mean for photography to be "perfect." Everyone looks at his or her own work from time to time and is disappointed or feels that it falls short. Everyone looks at the work of others and wonders why others get credit and they don't. Everyone faces impediments to creating the work that they want to create.
From time to time, it is OK to say a word or two about these things—though perhaps usually better to a few close trusted friends and associates than in more public places. It can be cathartic to unload some of the frustrations, especially if that helps you leave them (to some extent) behind and move on.
But for your own photography I think that it is very important to try to quiet those negative voices. If you don't, your self-doubts only increase, and the negatives start to become more and more the focus of what you do as a photographer. Understand me clearly: I am not suggesting that your photography is unworthy. I am not suggesting that your issues are not real or important to you. I am not saying you should not post your photograph. I am not saying that you owe it to the rest of us to not focus on these things.
I am saying that I believe (based on my own experience and the experience of many other photographers) that as you continue to work on photography, which you clearly have a passion for, and as you continue to share your work and your stories, and as you continue on your individual path as a photographer...
... I think you will be happier and more fulfilled and continue to become a better and better photographer if you can try to keep those negative, self-defeating things out of your posts.
Take care, and keep photographing.
Dan
For others reading this, Ben's "issue" is not at all unique to Ben, as I alluded to in the post. Although you would almost never hear about it, some very, very good and very highly-regarded photographers deal with some of the very same issues—concerns about their vision (literal and aesthetic), confusion about their place relative to photography and other photographers, the periodic loss of inspiration, and much more. There are antidotes, though there are no magic bullets. One approach is to just keep "doing the work," and in process become better and better at the underlying skills, with faith that eventually something powerful can emerge. In fact, this is the approach that many successful artists use—to keep working even when inspiration fails, and to find that this work eventually leads them out of the darkness. Another element is taking steps to feed the positive side of what you do. This is not always easy, but it is always important. It is far too easy to get dragged down into negative distractions, and we all fall victim from time to time. It is part of the work to continually be on watch against this and to look for every opportunity to find ways to see the positive in what we do. :-)
Edited on Apr 30, 2014 at 10:59 AM · View previous versions
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(just got a similar comment from him)