nickjohnson
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 p.275 #5 · Mustang Air to Air: The Sequel | |
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Dear Nick,
Fascinating questions you pose, but first, let's dispel any doubt about you creative gift. You possess both the gift to create beautiful, thought provoking imagery as well as the gift of appreciation for great images. Your questions immediately made me think of how frustrated I used to get as I wandered the banks of The Mighty Mississippi between classes (occasionally during them with my Minolta SRT 101 and a 50/1.2 lens. I just knew that there were images all around me that I wasn't seeing and it drove me nuts. That frustration may well have been part of the reason I wasn't seeing them, as well as some other factors like having one lens, no formal training, and the somewhat underwhelming landscape around Quincy Illinois. That being said, I had a burning desire to acquire the "style" and individual "vision" the magazines all spoke of, tough, but not impossible to do with a body and a lens. During my high school and college years I always had a camera in my hands, beginning with my older brother's discarded Kodak Instamatic. Soon I realized that an upgrade was essential if I was going to have a prayer of emulating the imagery I was pouring over in Nat Geo, LIFE, and other iconic publications. Still in High school and without a driver's license I would ride my Schwinn downtown to the local camera store and water into the display cases filled with, at the time, unreachable imaging equipment. Names like Leica, Rolliflex, and Nikon stared back at me, taunted me in fact. I was sure that if I just had one of those cameras "I could be a contender......" Much like my position in cinema one rah last four years, I didn't even know what I didn't know, and I was deeply entrenched in the "gear makes the photographer" mindset. Well, I'm not easily diverted from my goals now and that hasn't changed over the years, so I mowed lawns until I was blue in the face, sold some prized possessions, begged, borrowed and, well borrowed some more, until the day I rode my bike downtown and peeled off for a Miranda Sensorex..............(cue the heavenly music and corpuscular rays)............ I peddled home as fast as I could and began to learn that camera. The Miranda read light from an eraser sized sensor on the front of the camera just to one side of the lens, state of the art man! One body, one lens, this was a syndrome that would haunt me for a few years because I had many more lawns to mow just to pay the vig on my new gear, muchless get even up. So, my creative vision was frozen in a 55mm viewpoint, but I didn't let that dampen my spirit and I learned my camera. I didn't really realize it at the time but as I poured over images that caught my eye, I began to store the elements that grabbed me in those photographs in the back of my mind and subsequently began to recognize those elements in daily life. Things like shadow and light, shallow depth of field, compression, motion blur, selective focus all became part of my subconscious eye. During those early years I had not the first clue how to go about reproducing those elements, and really knew so little that I didn't know that some of them couldn't be achieved with a 55mm/2.8 optic , man I tried though. The more I studied photographs, Steichen, Steiglitz, Ansel, and the staff shooters at LIFE and LOOK, the more my subconscious mind began to figure out a little of what it might take to move toward incorporating some of the elements that attracted me to others work, and make them my own.
I've never been strong at math (but I gleaned enough that I can put together a mean invoice), so the kind of engineering analytical skills that guys like Steve Zimmerman possess weren't there to help me decipher some of the things that needed deciphering. Trial and error and more trial and error was the path I had to take and somehow, in the back of my mind, an understanding and a style began to evolve. I was well on my way to knowing what I wanted to produce, but lacking in the areas of knowledge and financial where with all to get there anytime soon. Truth is, and I think this applies to many of us, if Nikon had dropped out of the sky with every cool tool they made and handed it all to me, it would have overwhelmed me and I might have given up in frustration. I found that style is developed, for me anyway, by discerning what you love about images (clearly and individual slant on everything one sees) and then. storing that in your mental library. There is something in these wondrous minds that God has blessed us with that then takes that information, those preferences and works to catalog them, understand them, and miraculously, ever so gradually help us understand how to capture those elements that bring about the emotion we had when we first recognized them in someone else's work. I suppose an analytical number crunching sort would have the ability to think through , "Oh, crop sensor, 2.8/200 mm optic, late afternoon 2.8 @ 200mm @ whatever shouter ]speed/iso" and as you Brits say, "Bob's your uncle!" Me, it took lots of film and lots of afternoons to figure out that I couldn't get it with a 55mm/2.8, which launched me on the quest to figure out why. A thousand of those journeys, maybe 10,000 of them Brought me to my style today and equally importantly, the ability to visualize what I want in a perfect photographic world, knowing the tools and conditions that will help me get as close to that sight picture as humanly possible. A serious knowledgeable hobbyist has a distinct advantage at this point because he or she can wait for this conditions, a shooting pro has to look at the desires of their client, the conditions at hand, the time constraints, and instantly formulate a course of action that will satisfy the vision in their head, the client's vision, and bend all the other variables to the degree possible, to accomplish those goals. The working pro lives in a much different world than the serious hobbyist and the unpressured artist. Many creatives cannot, or will not live in that environment and I sure understand that, but for the person who choose photography as a livelihood, the skills and attitude I just delineated is essential. That's why the failure rate is so high in professional photography, it's one thing to conjure up and produce stirring imagery when you have all the time in the world, quite another to be able to do it with a gun to your head and a foot in your back.
So, you have trod the long path of trial and error and you are beginning to realize what equipment and conditions might be necessary to create some of those images that are beginning to form in your mind. The next bucket odf ice water in this journey is figuring out that your dream image is within your grasp................if you just had a camera that shot 15 fps, or wasn't a crop sensor, worse yet, try have the camera body, you just lack the $12,000 600/f4L optic that would get you where you have dreamed of being since you clicked your first shutter. I'm not sure which is more frustrating, "seeing" but not knowing how to get there, or "seeing and knowing" but also knowing the gear needed is out of reach. Believe me, I have spent copious amount soft time in both those spheres, but you know what, there's not a morning that goes by that as I open dream case after dream case, I don't look up in thanks for the blessing. Make no mistake, it's the journey that creates that sprint in you, had Canon pulled up 40 years ago an unloaded the truck, a lot of this may never have happened and I darn sure wouldn't have the same appreciation for it all.
I firmly believe that once you have developed the skills to visualize your style in most every situation you find yourself continually honing the skills that allow you to achieve what you dream. There is a short answer to one of your questions, folks either have the talent to visualize, or they do not. If one has it then, depending upon motivation and tenacity, it can be polished and developed to an amazing degree, but if it's not there in the first place, well it's like someone walking me through an algebraic equation while my eyes roll back in my head.
There it is, in 100,000 words + or - I hope folks chime in on their experience with this because your questions are excellent! ...Show more →
Dear Jim,
Many, many thanks for taking the time to write such a comprehensive and considered set of answers to my questions. Your efforts are deeply appreciated.
Your narrative is fascinating, and strangely unsurprising. Clearly, the package is unique to you, but I find none of the parts in any way surprising. But oh man, a Minolta 50/1.2 – that is a LOT of grass cutting!
I now have a very good overview of your vision development. I’m with you all the way …. well OK, I’m still on the river bank – you, not so much! But truth be told – I don’t deserve any better. I’ve not dedicated my life – working and otherwise – to photography, in the way you have. Regardless of talent, artistic ability, or whatever, one has to put the work in. Talent cannot flourish in a vacuum, one has to feed it with time and effort. My path has been one that rejoices in horrible technicality. Thus, my life’s work is not singular – for example, photography – but has many parts. It culminated in building Windows Terminal Server Installations for Veterinary Practices. That all ended in 2009 and since then photography has provided a suitable substitute for work. As we both know, frustration is now in plentiful supply, and to be fair some satisfaction has been enjoyed.
I’ve now realised that the vision thing is only one of the things I need to work on. Another that I’ve made little progress on is the …... humm …. detached view thingy. By which I mean..... We have a vision of something cool, we plan the viewpoint, time of day, light conditions, and so on. But there is more than our own emotional investment. We have the temperature (and maybe restrictive clothing), smell, how we feel about life at that point, and so on – all bundled up in there somewhere. All of that is unique to the photographer. Some time later, we expect a miracle to happen (well, I do). Our audience, who only have a two dimensional representation to go on, are somehow expected to share our delight! It’s a bit of an ask! So I now need to work on figuring out what might engage people with a detached view rather than engage just me, the photographer. It may take a while.
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