If you hear a voice within you say, “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
—Vincent van Gogh
Most of us can look at the artistic work of others and decide whether or not we like a particular piece. Why then, when we view an image of our own, are we frequently fraught with ambivalent feelings? I do not understand why we tend to be our own worst critics. Certainly there are enough people in the world who will find fault with anything that we do. We must learn not to assist them.
But why pursue anything creative if we are doomed to torture ourselves about what we did and approach being creative as if there is some cosmic scorekeeper that decides if we are ahead or behind? The truth is that nobody but you is keeping score. We spend too much time concerning ourselves with the notion that for our creative work to be valid, that others have to like it.
All artists hear a call to express themselves creatively, but too often, that voice fades with time and is replaced by one that says, “You can’t do that” or “If it was such a brilliant idea, someone else would have thought of it first.” The quickest way to silence that voice is to do exactly the thing that you think you cannot.
Hardening of the categories causes art disease.
—W. Eugene Smith
If you want to take more interesting pictures, stand in front of more interesting stuff.
—Joe McNally
The way you live your life is not determined by what happens to you, but by how you react to what happens. You are not defined by what life brings to you, but rather by the attitude you bring to life. If you have a positive attitude, you trigger a chain reaction of positive events and positive outcomes that will be seen in your images, for they are a reflection of how you live your life.
Every image you create is an expression of the artistic inspiration that moves you. You express your creative voice by developing the ability to show this without screaming for the attention of others. It means getting out of your own way and, in the moments when your creative spirit is moved, trusting that what comes from those moments will be good. Your goal should be to trust what you feel and constantly strive toward personal excellence and elegant performance. When your effectiveness becomes effortless, your images will move the viewer solely by the power that caused you to be moved.
Because you are reading this book, I assume that most of you have chosen photography to express how you feel to the outside world. However, regardless of the path you have chosen, it is you who drives the art form bus, not the other way around. Techniques exist to help you express yourself. If there is a battle between voice and technique, voice should always win. Emotionally full and technically imperfect trumps technically perfect and emotionally vacant every time.
I believe that there is no drug as addictive or as alluring as being successful creatively. To make a living from the fruits of one’s imagination is truly a blessed way to live. But herein lies the rub. With practice, and perhaps success, we find our groove. But grooves frequently become ruts, and ruts can become trenches, and trenches can become graves in which our creativity becomes buried.
So how do you become more creative and create diverse, emotionally moving images? If you want to have more creative work, find creative moments in your everyday life. If you want to have more emotionally captivating work, let your everyday life captivate you emotionally. If you want your work to be more diverse and interesting, lead a more diverse and interesting life. In simpler terms, your work is only as good as the inspiration that you find in the life you lead.
I would say to any artist: “Don’t be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.”
—Edward Weston
A discussion about photography should be about why we are moved to create the images we do, and how to best practice the things that will help our voices be heard in the clearest, truest way. A discussion about technique that excludes one about why particular techniques are chosen is like trying to have an aesthetic conversation about a repair manual. All creativity comes from a wellspring within us, and the more frequently and diversely we exercise our creative muscles, the stronger and clearer our emotional voice becomes. Feeling that you will never do something well is no reason not do it. Let that something become your new best friend, because it is from doing, that things never before seen are born.
For me, great photographic lessons were learned from shooting both portraits and landscapes. What I learned is to shoot my landscapes like portraits and my portraits like landscapes. When I photograph a flower, am I not taking the flower’s portrait? When I photograph a person, is it not the objective, with one frame, to lay bare the essence of that person in that instant? My most successful portraits and landscapes are the ones in which those things happen.
What makes images even more successful is bringing life experiences and a knowledge base of techniques to the table. This allows you to create an image that reflects what you felt when you were taken by the moment.
I would like to tell you a story. I love to cook and, even though I know it is unlikely that I will ever be as great a cook as one of the great chefs that I know, I keep trying to learn more about cooking creatively. I had the honor of spending a week in the kitchen of John Fraser, the chef at Restaurant Dovetail in New York City. By mid-week, I had finally graduated to “preparing ingredient,” specifically the task of chopping carrots into the equivalent of pixel-sized cubes. About halfway through my second bunch of carrots, Chef Fraser walked by and told me that my efforts were not acceptable. My first thought was, “But they are just carrots.” Apparently, my face belied that thought, and Chef Fraser said, “I see you don’t understand.” Again, I must admit that I was still thinking, “But they are just carrots.” What I said was, “No, I do not.”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s talk about something I know you understand. These carrots are not visually acceptable. You need to be cutting cubes and you have cut rectangles and diamonds. The visual composition I want to create is squares in a circle. So compositionally what you have done does not work.” I did get that! “But the bigger issue is that because they are irregularly shaped and different sizes, they will cook differently. Some parts of the carrot will be over-cooked and some will be under-cooked. My goal is to create a dish that is so visually appealing that you almost don’t want to eat it because of how pretty it looks, and when you do, you will find that it tastes even better than it looks. By not cutting the carrots uniformly, you have disrupted the pleasure of the person eating this dish. Everything matters. Everything dovetails into everything else. It’s why the restaurant is named Dovetail.” That was one of the most important lessons I have ever learned. Everything matters, and everything dovetails into everything else.
A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?
—Ernst Haas
Photography should not be about taking photographs; it should be about being taken by them. It should be about allowing yourself to be consumed so completely that the decisive moment pulls you through the lens and the image is captured along the way. When creating an image, you must be totally engaged, all creative cylinders firing at once and as one. This is often referred to, in Japanese Zen Buddhism, as being in a state of Shibumi: the act of thoughtful thoughtless thought, or doing the right thing in the moment without consciously thinking about doing the right thing. It is a state of grace. It is in this state of grace that photography becomes not merely about looking, but about seeing, because to just look is simply a visual experience. Seeing is a creative process.
So how does one make the leap from looking to seeing and from taking, to being taken by one’s pictures? You must take satisfaction from practicing at mastering every aspect of an image’s creation, because being taken by an image occurs in a wonderful but fleeting moment. In order to find the path to being taken emotionally (and thus take the viewer of your image to the same place), care and attention must be paid to every step in the process. Nothing about the journey is insignificant. Everything matters, and everything dovetails into everything else.
One does not plan and try to make circumstances fit those plans. One tries to make plans fit the circumstances.
—Gen. George S. Patton
Life does not move at 1/125 of a second. It moves with great deliberation and within the blink of an eye, and it does both at the same time. It moves at the speed of life. And when we put camera to eye to capture some moment, we strive to capture an image of a moment that matters. The digital revolution has made it simple to take pictures, but creating meaningful photographs is still a difficult, creative process.
It is a shame that many of us are being taught how to take photographs to Photoshop them. Photoshop is not a verb. It is a noun. Photoshop is not the end, it is the means to the end, and that end is a great image. Making a great image, one that expresses even a glimmer of what you felt in the moment of capture, requires great care and patience. All decisions about what the image should be are best made at the moment of capture, but creating a great photograph is a slow dance.
Become a better photographer, not merely a better Photoshop jockey. Better yet, become an extraordinarily creative photographer! Photoshop is a tool for you to use, nothing more. If there is nothing of you in an image, then the image is nothing but pixels on a screen; ink on paper. All you will create are forgettable photographs.
If I think, everything is lost.
—Paul Cézanne
By the end of this book, I will have shown you multiple post-processing techniques, and technique is important—very important. But nurturing and expressing your voice, even if your technique is not the best, is even more important.
Most creative artists become good technicians; however, not all good technicians become creative artists. If all you do is follow the steps I give you, there is no certainty that you will end up with a perfect black-and-white image. As you work on an image, if you do not feel the same emotion that you felt when the image took you and do not let that guide your hand, it will never be perfect. Let the passion that you felt at the moment of capture be held like an expectant breath within your images, and they will move your viewer in the same way that you were moved.
Don’t let the fear of striking out ever get in your way.
—Babe Ruth
Be careful of the artist who boasts of 35 years of experience. Such a person may have one year of creativity experienced 35 times. To me, a true artist practices by acting, by putting truth into his or her creations so that they have an elegant simplicity. Great art is created when the artist discovers that being an artist is about understanding themselves and expressing that. Knowing more about techniques helps that expression happen.
So why should you know every black-and-white conversion technique known to man and how to use all of them? Because the more you know about how to bring forth your vision, the clearer your voice will be heard. So what if you swing and miss? If you do not swing at all, you will never have the chance to knock it out of the ballpark.
The underlying goal is a simple one: to make a print of a picture that moves you, just like it moved you the first time you saw it. The joy of creation is in knowing that your photograph moves others.
The bigger and fuller you experience life, the bigger and fuller your creative expressions of life will be. It is on that note that you should begin all your creative symphonies. It is on that note that you should begin every breath you take.