Photography is Hard

It seems like such an easy thing to do.  With the wonders of modern technology to make gross technical mistakes almost a thing of the past (not to mention the gizmo you can buy and put on the top of your camera that tells you if your photograph will be “good” or not) and the ability to capture the world before you in ways unheard of even a couple of decades ago, you would think making a good image is easy. It’s not, as I was recently reminded.

I again went to one of my Capture One date folders that I hadn’t yet added where I was on that day to see what was there for me to work on.  Despite the fact it was an unquestionably 5-star location in terms of beauty and awe, I found myself scrolling through my images and becoming increasingly frustrated that they did not live up to my feelings of the place while I was there.  

Yes, there was one landscape image that immediately jumped out, one I used it in a previous blog post.  But I found so many others lacking that it got me to thinking why that would be the case.  After thinking about it for a couple of days I think that the comment I made in the last paragraph provides a good hint - in my mind the photographs don’t do the place justice.  That was the source of my frustrations.   

We often want photographs taken in stellar places to be stellar photographs of those places.  Think Ansel Adams and Yosemite, and the pressures you might feel as a photographer going to Yosemite for the first time, or the fifth.  There’s so much there to work with, but will your images pale in comparison?  The inevitable answer is, “Yes.”  But should you still photograph there?  Again, I think the answer is, “Yes.” The hard part is remembering why one (in this case, read: I) photograph.  That answer will vary from person to person, but for me, it shouldn’t matter where I’m photographing, it’s about seeing.  And that can be done pretty much anywhere, and should be even easier in locations that have amazed other photographers that you admire.  

However, in some respects, doing that becomes more difficult in iconic locations because people, myself included, often compare photographs (my own, or that of others) of familiar places with other familiar images or even their own experiences.  So, in some ways it’s easier to make an interesting photograph at some unknown location than at a place like Zion National Park where the photographs I was looking at were taken.  I, or anyone else, don’t really expect the photograph of an unknown place to be of anything in particular, so when an image is fascinating (think of the unnamed place near Lake Powell), I think it’s easily accepted.  But a photograph of Zion NP, well that’s a different thing.  There’s a lot of baggage that image has to carry, and a lot of competition to compare it to.  It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.  

So even at a place like Zion (or Yosemite), the thing is to try and see things in new ways, even familiar “scenes” that other people know.  Not just to be “different” but to see things in a different way, for yourself.  The key to that is to go there without that sense of expectation you might have because you’re in “that” place.  Some people go to iconic places with particular images they have in mind.  I don’t.  My goal is to go to some place with a clean slate - with nothing in mind (unless I’ve been there before and there is a particular image I want to make for a specific reason . . . but that’s something else).  My goal isn’t to make particular images, it’s to see things anew and to photograph it.  I’ve learned that having an empty mind is better for doing that in nearly all instances.  Having an open mind and being perceptive to what is there is necessary even at the most rudimentary level.  Otherwise, even the littlest of things can throw you off.  It’s overcast (or clear blue skies) when you were hoping for billowy clouds.  The ocean is calm instead of rough and violent on the rocks.  Someone is standing in  the frame of your image. There is a contrail in the sky.  A million and one different things can shatter one’s expectations.  You get the drift. When you have no expectations, everything just is and gifts abound.

I find it better to try to be open to what is there and to discover the photographic opportunities the place and the time and the conditions present.  It’s always offering something.  The question is am I receptive enough to discover it?  Knowing that it can be the littlest of things, or the grandest, that might spark something inside is what drives me when I’m in the right mindset.  Still, it’s hard to do that and to not get caught up in the trappings of a prominent place, no matter how stunningly beautiful it is.  

It’s also hard to make each and every image a good image, nonetheless great, or even interesting.  As Ansel said, a dozen good images a year is a good haul.  And I suspect it’s like that in any creative endeavor.  How many songs does a musician write before they have a hit?  Paintings completed and tossed before one is ready for display (or in Giacometti’s case, paint scraped off a canvas after a day’s work just to start over again)?  Poems written and discarded?  Why should photography be any different?  Sure, our level of competence can improve.  Maybe there are fewer and fewer really shitty images.  But at the same time, hopefully, our standards are improving, so the good ones need to be even better to be considered “good.”  And perhaps it’s that pushing of one’s self that is part of the experience.  Because to make those better images, I have to see more and better, and that’s the point of it all.  To see it, experience it, take joy in it or whatever other emotion presents itself, and then make the photograph.  

And finally, it’s had to convey one’s feelings in an image.  The joy, wonder, awe, or shock of being in a place at a particular time.  To have an image of something, but to have that something convey even more.  That is undoubtedly difficult; very, very hard.

So as I made my way through the day’s photographs at Zion National Park, descending deeper and deeper into that mental mode of “my photographs suck,” I finally came across an image that shook me out of my despondency to remind me just why I photograph and got me to thinking that it might not have been the photographs I’d been passing over that was the problem, but the way I was thinking about them.  It led me to the thinking that is this post.

I stopped and worked on the image, developing it to what it was I was seeing and feeling at the time I was making it.  Accepting it for what it was, something I saw and felt then and there.  And yes, it could have been made anywhere.  Thus, the fact that it was made at Zion National Park has little significance as to whether or not it is a good image.  That’s the way it should be.

It was honestly, the one image from that day that made me want to stop.  That made me feel good about my efforts, not just in that moment, but for that day.  I told myself that under Ansel’s criteria, one image a day that compels you to develop it is really all I can ask for, as difficult as that can be to accept.  But it also got me thinking that I do need to revisit the images I’d just passed over yet again.  Comparing them not to the place, but what it is that led me to make the photograph.  As I’ve recently said, I don’t just take a picture. To crib a line from the Bourne Supremacy, I don’t do random, there’s always a reason for the photograph. Even if it’s purely intuitive.  Perhaps I need to dig into those images deeper to rediscover, to see what it is that made me stop and pullout my gear to make that particular image.  Each particular image.

With any luck (it really shouldn’t be luck, because I have some end-of-the-year time to do it), this is part one of a two-part post as I revisit those images.

And I assure you, there will be far fewer words and far more photographs in part two.