Getting Better

If you've been doing photography for a bit, you know that getting better doesn't happen automatically. Like anything worth doing, it takes practice. Getting your shutter count up there is just the beginning. You have to want to get better, which may sound obvious, like don't we all want to get better? Maybe, but what happens when it doesn't come easily, or we just feel stuck? Becoming self-critical in a useful way can be challenging, and perhaps you do photography to balance other things in your life that are not so fun. Definitely nothing wrong with just having fun, but maybe you can expand the fun stuff and improve on your own terms.

Here are a few things I do. Taking lots of photos is good practice, but don't forget the rest of the process. Develop (whatever that means to you), Edit, Share and Look. I try to look at all kinds of work, artworks I like, artworks I don't get, movies, everything. I look at photography, but not just photography, and not just what is happening on social media. I love seeing photography in physical forms: projected film, photo prints, and photobooks. I love books, and so I gravitate to them, to look at and to make. 

It's hard to edit work if you don't know what it's about, and here's a thing that seems crazy, but just because you made a picture doesn't mean that you understand it. This is definitely something I've found to be so: All of the thoughts, feelings, memories that accompany each photo I make aren't actually available to the person viewing it when that person isn't me. What's more, viewers have their own thoughts, feelings, and memories that even I don't know. Wild. 

So to help myself bridge that divide, I print stuff and keep it around me. If you are picturing a hoarder surrounded by stacks of old newspapers right now, I'm sorry. It isn't quite that bad yet. It's great to have stuff on hand, so you see it when you aren't necessarily thinking about it. You live with it, in other words, and in doing so, you move yourself a little closer to seeing it the way someone else might. Seeing a picture in the context of other pictures suggests connections, and for someone who likes to gather images into books, those connections can be catalyzing. I print single photos, and I print little books too. Happily, there are many tools available to make that relatively easy.

Digital forms have their place in this for me, too. Certainly for sharing, but as a further extension of my own self-review, I find it very useful. For example, I've added a new page to this site collecting a number of my photo walks, and in doing so, I've found some commonalities that I had missed. To that end, I'm presenting a less edited (or redacted) group that shows a bit of the exploration that goes on for me instead of making a single, final choice. Doing so gives me this fun little grid of this vine monster:

What a beast.

When all else fails, read a book. I'd love to hear about your own strategies. And if you're looking around this site and thinking, "it ain't working, chief,” you're not alone; I think that often myself. But that's what getting better is all about, right?

Closing the Loop

On work and practice.

I don't make New Year resolutions but the end of year break seems to be as good a time as any to reflect and to think about what I'd like to work on in the coming months. Specifically I've been thinking about how I go about what I do and how I can be more effective in doing it. 

Taking apart the term creative practice I'll consider both halves in order. Looking back at 2015 I find that i have a number of interesting projects going, I have ideas that I'm excited about and I'm curious enough to want to continue the pursuit. I have been shooting as the stack of negatives (and digital files) testifies. So far so good. However I know myself well enough to know that I'm very fond of keeping projects somewhere between 20-80% complete. Not completely vapor but still ripe with potential, still able to keep me happily busy pursuing leads and reaching dead ends free from the final nail and critical assessment that comes with being done. There are a couple of projects that I wish to see in a finished state by this time next year. I can visualize that, so it remains to move them there. Ideas, actions (in the form of taking photographs and recording sounds) words written, the creative half looks healthy enough.

How about the other word, practice? I like the sense of that word that describes what musicians do prior to performance. Few people are so gifted as to be able to perform at a high level without dedicated practice, and beyond that there are positive aspects that come only through repetition. There is a physical fluidity that comes from what's described sometimes as muscle memory, you just know where and how to move without having to think about it. There is confidence that comes from that and from a deepening insight into what the materials are capable of. Therein lies the catch within my own recent process. Insight and knowledge requires seeing the thing through every stage. For me that would mean from shooting or recording, to negative or file, to print or to screen to whatever the finished state should be. Then looping back through the process over and over again. I have plenty of practice in shooting and handling the camera, I earn my living shooting after all, but to get better I need to see finished prints and edited files, and I need to have others see that too. I need to close the loop. That is something I didn't do often enough in 2015. That is what I will endeavor to do this year. We'll see how it goes.