The Secret Misery and Bliss of Finding Your Signature Photographic Style

The Secret Misery and Bliss of Finding Your Signature Photographic Style

Following on from my earlier post about Marius Vleth
http://warrenjonesphotographylandscape.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/finding-your-inner-creative-soul-as.html

There is a really interesting article in a similar light written by Lindsay Adler in DIY Photography. Lindsay discusses how to find your own style in 3 succinct areas:

ANALYSE YOUR WORK

FIND THREE WORDS TO DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE

GIVE YOURSELF ASSIGNMENTS TO DEVELOP STYLE

I've made this bold as I want it to stick in my mind.

The article can be found here:

http://www.diyphotography.net/the-secret-misery-and-bliss-of-finding-your-signature-photographic-style/

Fortunately the OCA Photographic pathway allows many assignments and as a personal series I have had encouragement from several tutors to follow up on themes that I've started within assignments.

This passage from Adler particularly stuck a chord with me in how to develop a style and how to build a cohesive style of work:

"I decided that the images I liked best in my portfolio were (1) bold, (2) graphic, (3) fashion photography and often featuring the color red. I kept these three words in mind, and shot once a week for a year in order to develop a portfolio that reflected these words.

I remember when I first looked at my new portfolio and felt, “Wow, these all look like they were taken by the same photographer.”

I realized that all the fears I had were ill-founded. My images weren’t static, or uncreative. They looked like years of work, not all the same shoot. They were a cohesive body of work. When I could finally see this in my portfolio, I felt a huge sigh of relief."

This approach is something I'd like to develop within my own practise. I need to further develop my own ideas but Vleth and Adler have certainly helped me understand how to develop my approach.

Looking at Adler's on her website you can indeed see her own style:

http://lindsayadler.photoshelter.com/

Her series New Work details her choice of the colour red as a distinctive element in her images and a style she refers to in the article above. Her images are often simple, elegant but extremely well lit, some images even containing a Grunge style within them.

As I think about my pwn practice I recognise that syle does not necessarily mean complexity, its something individual and cohesively binding and recognisable as belonging to a single photographer.

Finding Your Inner Creative Soul as a Photographer

Finding Your Inner Creative Soul as a Photographer

I've remained part of the OCA Level group, a closed group, on Facebook as the sharing and interaction with fellow students is amazing and I think the most interactive photography group.

Marius Vleth, a world travelling street photographer writes a really interesting article and what makes this so good is that he relates to the unbounded imagination and creative abilities of a child and how this can be lost as we grow up and take-on responsibilities

http://petapixel.com/2015/09/23/finding-your-inner-creative-soul-as-a-photographer/

Its a very interesting article as Marius shares his struggles with losing his creative soul and how rediscovers it - well I think the reality is that he learnt where to look for it.

This article really resonated with me as it simplified the term "developing your personal which is one of the development opportunities within the OCA Photographic degree.

I've copied an extract of this below:

How about your inner child? Have you just started exploring your creative soul, or is it already where you want it to be? Have you found the right medium, tools and schedule to express your muse? Do you think you could describe your inner creative soul?

The healthiest way to meet your inner creative soul is expressing it in a way that it’s rooted in your personality and lifestyle. If you are a happy, colourful person on the inside, let those colors shine in the world through your art. Maybe you consider yourself a broken soul with a dark past. Even if it makes you sad, embrace your past and express it in ways that fulfil yourself and help others. That way even the dark days will have a dancing child in them.

Is your creative soul strongly tied to your rational mind that loves to keep itself busy with numbers and algorithms? Then let that inner structure and order of yours flow into your photography. It may take a while to reunite your inner child with that grown up, tax-paying citizen, but it works. It’s still there and it wants to break free!"

This extract with some words from a recent email exchange with more tutor, which I will share as part of a future exercise in Landscape Part 1,I believe has reinforced what is an inner personal voice. Its not something that I need to invent or create, its something thats inside of me that I need to rediscover and allow it to help direct my image making or perhaps I should name my image creating.

Slowly I think this understanding is beginning to resonate with me. Its this expression and articulation of my inner self and inner creative is what I need to begin express.

The following image is from Marius Vieth's Flickr site called "The Stranger". I found this image absolutely fascinating. The photographer is outside and has a small window into what is happening inside. Within this window you are enabled a connection with lady who is conversation with the shadowy figure.

More of his work can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/badabiing/12860054235/in/photostream/

He has a very distinctive style and this type of work resonates with me, very gritty and observational, almost preying or hunting for specific situations with a camera. I find his imagery very simple in composition yet also so complex. Very inspirational and I woiuld like to discover more about Vleth.

I've detailed below a few other images from his Flickr site to remind me of inner creativity from his set of 365:

Strangers on a Train

The Deal

Missing

Part 1 Beauty and the Sublime: Exercise 1.2: Photography in the museum or in the gallery?

Exercise 1.2: Photography in the museum or in the gallery?

For this exercise we are asked to read Rosalind Krauss’s essay:

 ‘Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View’.

and then summarise Krauss’s key points in your learning log (in note form) and add any comments or reflections.

The essay was first published in 1982
 http://dm.postmediumcritique.org/Krauss_PhotographysDiscursiveSpaces.pdf

A quick wiki search and review of Rosalind Krauss describes as"an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography."

I think it important to understand a small element of her to enable me to have a better understanding of her essay which I'm asked to comment on. 

Her wiki link is detailed below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_E._Krauss

Key Notes

• Her comparison of the original and lithograph Ufa Domes, Pyramid Lake, Nevada  image describes how the mystery and texture is lost in the copy. I wonder how much of the original image was created by the deficiencies of the photographic process of the time and to what extent the original reveals the true vision of Timothy O'Sullivan

• The Ufa Domes contrast with flattened landscape "fashion" that changed from 1860 where images may have been preferred where they "voided" perspective. This presentation method may have been deemed more suitable to presentation in an exhibition where the size of the image enabled viewers to feel the image as being part of the exhibition wall and its impact better for it and the image given a "grounding" because of it. This Krauss suggests legitimises the image. Is this legitimacy deemed because it modelled the painting style of that time?

• Krauss describes the contrasting images; the deep perspective of Samuel Bourne's A Road Lined with Poplars, Kashmi, to Auguste Salzmann's Jerusalem, The Temple Wall

• Regardless of the image being viewable, its position remains the same - its on a wall. However the location its viewable in Klauss suggest may signify its inclusion or exclusion as an item of art e.g. gallery display signifies its art

• However in another breath Klaus claims that the term artist should only be applicable if the person producing the art has served some kind of apprenticeship. This then becomes an interesting statement since in my view anyone producing art of any kind should be considered an artist. I think her reference to an apprenticeship, or perhaps degree in photography, working in the photographic industry etc. so that the artist understands the genre and style to which they maybe working in and how their work fits in with the style of others and specific periods of times. Some may call these "isms", others could refer to them as the fashion of the time and fitting into to style or approach that is larger than the artist them self.  My view on this is the question...who starts off a photographic style, an ism, a fashion

• Klauss also describes, not sure if it applies now, but when she wrote the article she was against the desire of some to attempt to classify 19th century photographic images to specific and more commonly understand genres of photography, of historical art and challenges the reasons for doing this. Of course the question is really how did the photographer intend their work to be, was it in isolation, was it in understanding of the genres, was it in the creation of a new one. Like O' Sullivan's work,she questions if this was produced for critique in the art is sometimes produced, or perhaps for scientific analysis

My Reflection

My view of the discussion points made in Klauss's paper could only ever be answered by the artist them self. Today's modern media world easily allows the artists intention to be confirmed, and an ism to which they may try to insert the images in, and to associate their work and understand how it fits in among other artists work and styles. I see no problem in reflective / historical insertion of work into a genre, and really the genre it fits into is either obvious or simply an individual view. 

In terms of Klauss's paper its unnecessarily complicated and she takes a long time to express a simple view and to evidence her views. I enjoyed her explanations of O' Sullivan's Tufa Domes but I did not enjoy reading her argument. This could of course be my lack of understanding and perhaps a requirement myself to undergo a Photographic apprenticeship of some kind but I think communication is an enabler of a message or view to be shared by someone with someone else. If its made exclusive what purpose does it serve? Perhaps its make the author appear exclusive and her understanding beyond that of the average person. The theme of the point is there but I felt its hard to unravel and therefore not meant to be understood by a wide audience. perhaps that in itself was an exclusive"ism" present at the time this paper was written.

So where should photography be displayed, the museum or the gallery? Wherever it gets the greatest viewing, either critical or analytical since both of these are subject to interpretation whether informed or uninformed; the gallery perhaps the fashionable, the museum more reflective

How to get your work noticed ?

How to get your work noticed ?

I think this is a question asked by by both amateur and professional photographer perhaps for completely different or similar reasons.What could be the reasons for wanting your work to get noticed? My immediate thoughts are:

• Financial gain: commissions, sales, long term income, career

• Recognition: style, personality, voice that is recognisable within the images produced

• Critical acclaim: images that are different to the norm, pushing the boundaries of the genre, creating new genres, fusion of genres

• Publication: Galleries, social media, websites, high profile competitions

How do my thoughts compare with what the internet may suggest:Expert Photography website suggests the following:

http://expertphotography.com/get-your-photos-noticed/

• Be Good at Photography
• Create Something Unique
• Run a Photography Blog
• Enter Photography Contests
• Get Your Photos Published
• Photography Forums
• Social Networks
• Photo Sharing Networks
• Reddit
• Photography Galleries

It’s interesting that I didn't mention the first and most obvious perhaps. Of course having a watermark on images published on the internet that could potential refer someone to your website can be a method for letting the viewer see more of your work.I read in my introductory course notes for my new module Landscape that Eugène Atget (1857–1927) produced many 1,000's of images detailing street life and architecture of Paris. Unfortunately for Atget he did not perhaps get the recognition he deserved and not fulfilling perhaps his true placement among his 19th century peers.One of the reasons for this appears to be the he did not select and present his best images from what he produced. The result I believe is that his work appeared diluted. I’ve demonstrated a few of Atget's images below for no other reason than to give me a remembral (is that a word from Harry Potter?) of early photography and in particular Atget and his failed recognition, least not the full amount he deserved. In addition it serves to demonstrate what I thik is early documentary work in photography

I'd like to think that, since I first started in photography, and certainly since my starting and current position in relation to my photography degree modules, my work has improved as I continue my learning journey so that means work is changing and will continue to do so.So how can I relate Atget to my own practise and how can this help me get my work noticed? Well I'm clearly not as deserving as Atget in getting recognition or even being deserving of it but I believe I can learn a lesson. If I do manage to get people referenced back to my website and can take advantage of some of the top 10 suggestions above then I should ensure that I only publish the best of my images and I should update these as I believe the quality of my images improves and my voice begins to be displayed in my images.This means I need to start pruning images in my website and keeping it updated with my better images as these get produced.Here is my website, below. Whilst at this point its OK, it needs a more professional approach look with a selective display of my best images, less is more as they say. I will need to do some further research as I suspect consistency in the size and aspect ratio of my images is required.

http://www.warrenjonesphotography.com/

I hope to update and improve my website, let me know what you think when yoiu come across this post, critique will help me improve it

What's creative about a sunset ?

What's creative about a sunset ?

As participant within the Flickr OCA forum Over a Coffee I did participate in some of the conversations but, if I'm honest, I did find some participants somewhat elitist unlike many others and it was not a comfortable place. Perhaps my learning and understanding of photography prevented from understand comments that were made.However I personal see opportunity to educate and help others with their learning an opportunity to lift someone up rather than to remind them of their place. Even the mighty Oak tree was once a simple acorn

One of the Level 3 students mentioned he was feeling flat and having a creative block and so I suggested taking an image of sunset. I was surprised and his return comment:

Where is the creativity in that?

I was surprised and needed to consider this statement over a few weeks. How could taking an image within one of the golden hours not offer the opportunity for creating an image that has meaning and depth.

Of course as one journey's on the discovery and development of one's voice personal meaning and creativeness within an image may result in a different image from what most people might describe a pretty image.

So as I start this landscape course I'll post 2 sunset images that I took last month and then perhaps at the end of my course post another sunset image or 2 and see how they differ. One challenge I'll give myself is how to be creative when taking a sunset image:

Image 1 - Sunset in Zia Mountain

In this image my creativeness considerations were placement of the sun, capture of the hills and mountains in the background and the silhouetting of the trees.


Image 2 - Sunset in Zia Mountain

In this image the placement of the sun is again and and the wait for the sunset, the best time to capture the sun's disc complete as the clouds moved and the wait for colours to change to wait we see here in this image

Do these images tell the viewers much about me? Perhaps not but it will be interesting for me to present something that does within a sunset as I learn and become better informed as part of this module

Part 1 Beauty and the sublime - Exercise 1.1 Preconceptions

Exercise 1.1 Preconceptions

For this first exercise I'm asked to abandon tradition and to pick-up a pencil and draw a rough sketch of a "landscape" picture.

So, here it is:

As you can see drawing is not an area I have strengths in.

I'll answer the questions raised in the exercise:

What shape is the picture?
I've chosen an A4 sheet in landscape mode and used the full space of the picture, However I see from the earlier notes that landscape images are traditionally taken on medium format camera film at 6 x 6cm and larger format camera film at 5 x 4 inches

What sort of terrain is depicted?
I have a flat land in the front with hills / mountains in the back and a large low sun

What's in it? Are their people?
I suppose my sense of humour or sense of adventure shows a maternity hospital being "destroyed" by a bashing ball from a crane whilst a poor heavily pregnant lady walks towards it with her hands and arms held high in distress at what she sees. I've used the lead in lines from the right from the caterpillar tracks toward the crane with the ball and a curved path from the foreground to the hospital doors.

How are the subjects arranged?
I have foreground interest with the person, mid ground building and mountain / hill profiles in the background

How might you describe the "mood" of the image?
There is a slight element of humour in the image as its a drawing but if captured real then its a distressing image with political overtones as we see hospitals being closed in our current time.

I think a tradition of landscape photographer's is to have some foreground interest in an image with a large depth of field and leading lines guide the viewer in the image and help give the image depth. Of course in this image I have neither colour or tones but the low sun suggests one of the golden hours, which are a favourite time for landscape photographers. This in turn results in longer shadows some of which I've drawn in the image.

I may be influenced in landscape imagery through social media sites of images people have taken and on websites of photographers and landscape images in general. In addition some elements I have also used in my own landscape images that I've taken.

A landscape image suggests that "land" might be predominate in this type of image.

Looking at the word landscape in the Wikipedia I found the following within its definition:

There are several definitions of what constitutes a landscape, depending on context. In common usage however, a landscape refers either to all the visible features of an area of land (usually rural), often considered in terms ofaesthetic appeal, or to a pictorial representation of an area of countryside, specifically within the genre of landscape painting. When people deliberately improve the aesthetic appearance of a piece of land—by changing contours and vegetation, etc.—it is said to have been landscaped,^[1] though the result may not constitute a landscape according to some definitions.

The word landscape (landscipe or landscaef) arrived in England—and therefore into the English language—after the fifth century, following the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons; these terms referred to a system of human-made spaces on the land. The term "landscape" emerged around the turn of the sixteenth century to denote a painting whose primary subject matter was natural scenery.^[2] "Land" (a word from Germanic origin) may be taken in its sense of something to which people belong (as in England being the land of the English).^[3] The suffix "‑scape" is equivalent to the more common English suffix "‑ship."^[3] The roots of "‑ship" are etymologically akin to Old English sceppan or scyppan, meaning to shape. The suffix ‑schaft is related to the verb schaffen, so that ‑ship and shape are also etymologically linked. The modern form of the word, with its connotations of scenery, appeared in the late sixteenth century when the term landschap was introduced by Dutch painters who used it to refer to paintings of inland natural or rural scenery. The word "landscape", first recorded in 1598, was borrowed from a Dutch painters' term.^[4] The popular conception of the landscape that is reflected in dictionaries conveys both a particular and a general meaning, the particular referring to an area of the Earth's surface and the general being that which can be seen by an observer. An example of this second usage can be found as early as 1662 in the Book of Common Prayer:

Could we but climb where Moses stood,

And view the landscape over.

(General Hymns, verse 536).^[5]

The original word meant human made spaces on the land. Interestingly Salgado's set of work Genesis included people within landscape and he his desire to capture landscape and people that have remain relatively untouched by modern man.

So I think ;landscape could include land and its interaction with people or rather than the other way around. Interestingly we might also call an image primarily displaying water a landscape image rather than a waterscape.