Feeding My Passion

These are more technical tips, similar to using your camera’s mic to record the spelling of someone’s name and their title, whatever. I’ve always got a notepad and pen on me for ideas already, so covered, but mostly the pad is to write down names of people I’ll be coming back to later, what they do, events that would be good to photograph, friends of contacts and subjects that I should talk to, that sort of thing. As for keeping all of these notes organized, well, hmmm…I’m not so into that, but  I keep my pads after I fill them up, and I do go through them to give myself new subjects to photograph, especially during the 30-day assignments. In fact I could take better notes in that regard considering how whimsical and experimental I’m allowed to be with the daily photo. So ok, I’ll do that.

I have been jotting some notes down on my larger notebook about ideas for the essay while I was reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and after I talked to you about possibly doing my essay on a visual companion to the book, photographing what people ate. The real difficulty for me isn’t what to photograph so much as how to gain access, and there’s nothing to take notes about with that, it’s all in here [tapping my chest]. That’s not to say there aren’t techniques to write down, ideas on how to tie the photos together stylistically, thematically. Once I look at some of the photo essays you’ve shown the class to help them, I’m sure I’ll ruminate on them and write down some thoughts.

I’m not 16 anymore, and my mind was hardly a steel trap when I was 16 anyway, so I know that if I have a flash of inspiration, a line of poetry comes to me when one of my senses is triggered, and I don’t write it down immediately, then I’ll forget it, and I’ll be quite frustrated with myself. Not that I write down everything as it comes to me, but it’s very comforting to think of something interesting, remember that I will forget it if I don’t write it down, fail to write it down, and then, of course, quickly forget it. Good times.

One of the reasons I’m having so much more fun with photography than I did [mumbles 11] years ago is that I’m genuinely interested in who people are and what they do. I’ve always had difficulty approaching people to photograph them, and have been full of fear, but at my best, that dissolves, and it’s replaced by a comfort and joy in our common humanity. That sounds a little, uh, gooey, but it’s true, call it an openness, enthusiasm, whatever, but it’s honest and it works. I can’t sit at this computer and do my job without people, a lot of people, letting me into their lives, and I can’t know everything there is to know about everything I photograph, so I ask. If I don’t, I risk not telling a good story with my photos, just getting a pretty photo. But people are generally happy to explain what they do with people who they can tell are interested in what they do. Tough to fake though, they can tell that too, and believe me, I’ve tried.

Obviously you (my professor) and this class is my writing group. I remember much more, uh, vigorous discussions in the first couple of photoj classes (I’m sure Bill Kuykendall sensed my lack of commitment and frequently ate my lunch.). I do think it’s important to put your photos in front of other photographers or even (or especially) non photographers, so they can tell you if what you’re feeling is what they’re seeing, or whether you’re completely off track. Being able to bounce ideas off each other is good.

That I’m even able to do this class, this one in particular, is a testament to the existence and utility (at least for me) of the internet. Blogs, forums, email, Flickr (and all of its brethren), Skype – all of these are potentially great tools for photographers to share what they’ve been working on and get feedback from their mentors and peers.

I’ve been inspired by my classmates, and I’d enjoy seeing their work sharing my photos with them after I graduate. The School of Journalism as given a sense of community, not just credit hours, a lab, and a diploma. Now we are part of a group, a family of sorts, if we want to be, that can encourage and help guide us to do better work, or just to keep going out and trying to see and tell stories well, one picture at a time.

So who should you choose to edit your work besides the publication’s editor? This is a more intimate relationship than simply looking at your pictures, listening to your struggles, and encouraging you, it’s more than camaraderie or fellowship. You need someone who will be honest with you about what works and especially about what doesn’t.

While we want to feel good about our hard work, what we should really want, as photojournalists, is to bear witness for other people, to show them what they can’t see or sometimes don’t want to see. You want to communicate with your viewer, but if your edit, or all of your photographs are so personal or require incredible amounts of explanation for anyone to glean any information or feeling from them or your subject, then you may have to try a different approach, a different edit, or use different techniques.

I think I was much more sensitive about my work when I didn’t care about it much, when just being done with the assignment already was more important than it being good. I actually fell pretty confident about my eye for single images. But longer-term, multiple-picture projects were, and still are, a challenge for me. I used to have no confidence in myself, was timid with my subjects, and wanted to be done with the project. So I took criticism poorly, didn’t listen well, and got angry and resentful at the critic and also at myself and my subjects.

I’m by no means a good visual story-teller now, but I know now that if my explanation for any photograph or a picture story is tortured, or I require a superhuman, mind-reading effort from my viewers to connect the visual dots, then I need to think about the story some more.

Lamott’s advice about writing letters when you’re stuck is kind of like or 30-day assignments – doodles, sketches, journal entries, just something to get the juices flowing, to find subjects, techniques, and ideas that you might want to explore later. I am going to write a list of gifts that making pictures everyday bestows upon the photographer in my last post 30-day post.

If you feel as though you’re just taking some “snaps” (ala Elliot Erwitt) for fun, for friends, for family, maybe you can start moving the stuck energy. You might just end up with something visually interesting, maybe even deep. Part of it is your unburdening your intellect, becoming more instinctual, letting your natural humanity and intuition make some of the more important decisions as you make pictures.

Lamott’s suggestion for truly difficult creative constipation is very Buddhist: Accept the difficult reality, no matter how painful it is, and then it might start to dissolve when you can touch those feelings instead of being repulsed and terrified by them. Bring some lightness to the process, take a picture a day, something little just for yourself, maybe your toes, your cat, dirty dishes, wood grain, to help you find a way back, picture by picture. As yoga guy Baron Baptiste says, “Fake it until you make it.”

Whether you get your pics published or not, whether you get awards for them or not, is less important tha following through on the story and with your subjects. I mention this when I wrote about part 1, that photography isn’t writing, and unless you’r4e going to o a picture story about yourself, you’re inintrusion into your subject’s life or lives. Be up to finishing the story, be up to telling that particular story, no matter how big or small. That’s why you work on smaller assignments so you can build your skills and get ready for bigger, weightier subjects that deserve all the skills an sensitivity, all the listening an storytelling you’re capable of. So go back to making a picture a day, play, refresh, renew. It will come back, you have to trust the process and yourself. You have to let go of the results (cleverness, publication, accolades, awards, whatever) and just do the work.

For me, outside of photography, the closest parallel between photography I can think of is yoga practice. For me, getting on the mat and getting started is like the space shuttle first taking off – it takes a huge effort to overcome gravity, overcoming that lack of inertia takes the most effort. But about 15 minutes into my practice that reistance issolves like a fog when the sun creeps in. Where does that resistance go? No idea. By the end of my practice, whether it’s 20 minutes or 1 1/2 hours, I’m always very grateful I’ve done it and wonder why I didn’t do it earlier.

Bliss!

I keep coming back to Ashtanga Yoga founder Sri K Pattabi Jois’ quote, “Do your practice and all is coming.” If you’re in yoga for a hot body or to be able to put your feet behind your head or sit in lotus or do the splits, the first problem I see is that the pressure to achieve those things will make practice less enjoyable. Second, how much is enough? What level of mastery will satisfy you, let alone make you happy?