Discovering my gift..

I don't know if it's true or not, but I have been told that I have a gift for photography. I don't see it so much as a gift, but rather a drive. I constantly feel the need to capture something that I see, in a way that will make it interesting. It doesn't always work, so I go out and see if I can do a better job with it. I don't really know if I will ever be completely satisfied with the results that I get.

I guess you could say that I am driven to do it better each time. Sometimes this means by getting better equipment, and sometimes it just means finding a new way to see it. One of the things that the professionals and the critics say consistently is, "see it differently". and what they mean is that if you can get an image of something in a way that hasn't been done before, then you have something interesting. One of the best examples of this would be the Eiffel Tower. How many different ways have you seen pictures of the Eiffel Tower? Daytime, nighttime, holidays, in the rain, in the sun, at sunrise, at sunset, from the top, from a plane, from a helicopter, from the bottom, in the snow..... and so on and so on. In the 100 or so years that the Eiffel Tower has been in existence, it has been SO photographed that it is nearly impossible to come up with a new way to get it. Reflected in a window? Yep. In the background of a cafe shot? You bet! Try as you may, you will not find a unique way to photograph the Eiffel Tower, however, simply finding a way that YOU like can be all it takes. Do you want to see it backlit with the setting sun? Then this will be your picture, perhaps you get the chance to see it when the clouds are so low that they obscure the top, then you have something that perhaps not many people have done. Truthfully, most unique picture opportunities came along by happenstance rather than good planning. The photojournalists who have managed to get those particularly memorable pictures were not the ones who planned the best, they just happened to be in the right place at the right time with their gear ready to go.

Sure they have a great body of work behind them ( or in many cases still to come), but the truly iconic pictures of the ages are just pure luck. The Execution on the streets of Vietnam, the photographer turned a corner and saw the interrogation happening, he lifted his camera just as the commander pulled his pistol and stuck it to the head of the saboteur. Dumb luck, and he has said so more than once. Sports shots? the guys catching the ball in the end zone, the perfect contact punch from ringside? All Luck. Yes, there is skill and practice in the way the camera was set and loaded and held, but you can have a million technically amazing shots in your files, but it is a fluke of timing to get the "perfect" picture.

I have been entering pictures in various contests this past year, and once I enter I then have to keep looking through the other entrants. Every contest seems to have at least a dozen or so pictures of certain iconic places in the world. If it is a nature, or outdoors geared contest, there is always the pictures of The Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, Yellowstone and Yosemite. I will not argue that these aren't awesome amazing pictures. Technically wonderful shots that show beauty and grandeur. They are also Common. Everyone with a camera gets something similar. I am just as guilty of submitting common shots, but I am trying very hard now to study the previous contests and the winner and to see if I can find something unique to submit. A common submission is a rainbow, usually from a rainstorm backed by the gunmetal gray storm clouds that spawned it. There is the occasional waterfall rainbow too, but I think I have found an interesting twist on the theme, I took a picture of a waterfall rainbow as it stretched over gorge wall covered in ice and snow. I don't recall seeing this particular style done before. Now I have done it! There are often various pictures of state and national parks, showing the big attractions, the waterfalls, the geysers, and the lakes, the trees or the wildlife, but what about the historic structures inside the park, in a way that they are rarely captured? Stone picnic tables in winter covered in snow and tree shadows. Something that isn't seen as often. It is built on spectacular colors or a once in a lifetime scene, but rather the way that it is, when nobody is around. People don't get to see this image, because they aren't there to see it. The question though is can I make that image compelling?

To show the tables in the snow is not really enough is it? How about a series of tables set in a tableau that makes them appear as steps on a hill? Covered in snow to resemble mushrooms? In the same place they are every day of the year, but surrounded by virgin snow? Does any of this make the image of something as mundane as picnic tables seem compelling? I hope it does, because it is what made it compelling for me!

In the end it comes down to who is looking at the picture and how it makes them feel. One day it may move them, and the next they may find it to be pedantic and a waste of time. That is the nature of art, what moves one person is nothing to the next, and yet we all keep trying.

My current favorite pictures

As some of you will undoubtedly remember from a few weeks ago, I have a new camera, and I am loving life playing with it! There is just no stopping the ideas flowing through my brain and the endless possibilities that keep popping up before my eyes. I want to try new things and shoot in different ways. and to show my vision of the world. I feel almost like a veil has been pulled from my creative eyes. I am seeing the world once again in a way that makes me glad to greet each new sunrise. I wait for inspiration to strike, and it seems that I never have to wait very long. Today it was a sunset. Yesterday it was a barn fire!
I am always looking to learn something new, and to refine my own picture style. I am steadily getting my comfort level back with the higher-end camera. I have been using the point and shoots for so long that I have to get my steady hand back for the longer lenses, and to see how to capture the images that I want so that they convey the stories that I am trying to illustrate. Each time I break out the camera I learn a little something that I didn't know before. I find new ways of doing things and especially seeing things. I want to show things in a perspective that maybe nobody else has tried. Although today with all of the amateur photographers out there with high-end, pro gear taking great pictures and trying to be the next Ansel Adams, it's all likely been tried. The odds are that what I do will be noticed by my small group of friends and family on facebook, and perhaps a few friends of friends steered by the linked pictures, and not much more than that.
What I would like to be able to do is to sell my pictures and make enough money to travel and take more pictures. I love to take them and to show them and to have someone tell me that they like them. My firemen friends like the stuff I do for them, at their functions, and after I get a few under my belt and get my technique figured out, I will be much better at the fire scenes too. I have been taking pictures of musicians for years, but this is the first time that I have had the gear to get a good ambient light picture of the guys on stage and not needed flash to keep the fingers from blurring.
The one thing that I don't want to be is the guy with the shingle in front of his house who gets the call for the school pictures. Senior pictures! I like doing portraits of people that mean something to me, I want to show them to the world the way that I see them., I want to be able to capture that little bit of attitude and recklessness that I see in these people. I can only really do that with people that I know. My niece is one of those people. I will give you, that she is so photogenic that it is nearly impossible to get a bad picture of her, but it is still a skill to do it without being boring about it. Catching her being goofy, without being obvious about it, and keeping her in a playful mood makes it really easy to get great shots of her. So what kind of photographer do I want to be? Well, I guess that I want to be the one that people call after an event and ask me if I was there taking pictures, because they are looking for something different, or better than what they have from everyone else. They will know that I will have the background pictures, the pictures capturing real emotion and real action, not some staged, gimmicky, "aww" shot. Not the treacly kiddie shots that most parents take with their cell phone cameras, but the picture of the guys doing the work, the grimace of pain and strain, the dust and the dirt of the events. The stuff that shows how the work gets done, and why people were there.
But then again there are always some really cool "aww" pictures too. They aren't all throw-aways. Sometimes you have to be sneaky to get the really cool pictures. I have been called paparazzi on more than one occasion! It helps that I generally know my subjects and they get accustomed to the fact that I have a camera and they never know when I may be shooting. They forget that the glass is looking for a subject to see, and when they are their most comfortable is the best time for shooting. But there are those who are ever vigilant, lest they be caught being natural, and for those subjects it becomes a challenge to get a great shot. Sometimes you can position yourself in the right place and lie in wait for the right time to present itself, or you just become ubiquitous with the camera and sooner or later you get a great shot of that elusive subject. What ever way works is fine by me, I'm not too picky about the how, I'm much more interested in the "how did it come out?" The bonus of digital is that you can take 200 pictures, be happy with 100 of them, ecstatic about 10 of them and toss the rest and be out nothing but time and experience. A person can learn.

Life is about learning, and photography is about capturing, so a photographers life is learning the art of the capture, I guess.

On baking and learning...

I have long been a decent cook, and generally somewhat adventurous. I try a recipe and see what I like about and what I don't and then I start making changes, sometimes I make small changes and sometimes I change the recipe so much that it barely resembles the original, but it gives me a place to start and a result to work with. I'm confident enough in my abilities to know that when I venture off the path I can get what I am looking for eventually.

This week and weekend I have been playing baker, making my first ever tries at zucchini bread. Is it good, is it bad? It's hard to judge, but I think I have been doing quite well, working with the recipes that I was given to start with. One a cranberry-walnut concoction, another lemon-pecan, and one blueberry. Each one good in it's own way and quite enjoyable, but none of them quite what I had in mind. In my mind I remember a spice flavored bread, dark colored and a semi-smooth texture. When you bite into it you can taste the spices like cloves and allspice and ginger. Cinnamon is a given, but finding just the right recipe has been pretty futile. So I designed one from what I have found. I'm still tinkering, but I know I'm on the right track. Now it's a matter of refinement.

So I'm learning! I love learning, I like to know new things and to have new experiences. Many people put high stock in learning, but only in specific kinds of learning, what some refer to as, "book learning". Book learning is something specific, that you are taught by a proscribed method for a limited amount of time and here in America you have to pay for anything beyond public school. You can take a test and see what you have learned, and gauge your understanding by telling your teacher about the process. I love book learning, but I have found that book learning will only get a person so far, because books are limited to the experience of the author(s). Far too many of these authors lack the actual experiences that they write about, but rather use the anecdotal experiences of people that they interview, relying on imperfect memories and glazed over truths. Some of the experiences are documented in written accounts such as diaries and journals, and ever increasingly in pictures or video. But we all know that with the advancement of the recording industry there is corresponding advancement in editing and thus, how do you trust these documents? There is also the limitations of the teachers experience. Perhaps they have failed at the field that they are teaching, thus leading to the old adage, " Those who can't do, teach." Cynicism prevails and we find that truly the best teacher in life is none but experience.

Experience comes in many ways, sometimes by design, and sometimes by accident. We often don't even realize that we are learning something new as we go through our day. It isn't always something big, not a revelation such as understanding the theory of relativity, but perhaps you learn that if you stir your coffee with a ball point pen you get ink in your coffee. Or you learn that you need to use the brakes on your car harder to keep the brakes properly polished, or less hard to keep them from glazing. Hopefully we survive the bigger lessons, like don't drive to fast in the rain lest you hydroplane and lose control. But the point is that one of the best teachers is simple experience. Experience is something that we can apply to our daily lives. We know how hard to squeeze the toothpaste, not because we learned a formula in a book, but because we squirted toothpaste all over our hands when we were young. We know not to grab the handle of the frying pan without a pot holder because we got burned when we were young, or perhaps because we tried it as we were learning to cook. Employers come in 2 varieties, those who look for experience, and those who don't.

Those who hope for new employees with no experience want it this way because they are hoping to teach them their own set of bad habits for whatever job it is they are being hired to do. Often times this is for what could be considered a semi-skilled position, meaning you need to have certain basic skills to start with, but not so much skill that you could teach the job to your boss. Basically this is how manufacturers especially, keep employee costs down, because they don't have to pay a wage commensurate to the job they wish done. They can teach a literate dope off the street how to push a button and make a few measurements, and call them a machine operator, when it reality they should have a Machinist doing the job who can work mostly on his own and make the necessary adjustments based on his level of experience.

Then there are the higher-end employers who value experience and are willing to pay for it. The thing that immediately comes to mind is security firms, this is why they often hire retired police and military, because they have the experience required to keep the assets they are assigned to safe. But aside from this there are literally thousands of fields of endeavor that benefit from experienced employees, from finance and politics, to machine shops and auto mechanics. Experience show us the little things that we can't learn from a book. It teaches us by letting us make mistakes, and if we are smart, we don't make the same mistake twice.

Cooking is something that benefits from experience. If you make a mistake, you adjust and try again. Sometimes you can eat your mistakes, sometimes you can't. You've wasted time, food and money, and you just might go hungry. If you know what your mistake was you can avoid making it again, you use your experience to affect your future, and as you add to your experience you become better, as the old saying goes, practice makes perfect.