Do you have a compositional bias?

[paulraphael]

Questions about your own biases and habits are important. I've often discovered mine only because someone else pointed them out.

...

This got me thinking about other ways of seeing and making a picture work. Especially, other ways of dealing with space. It set me off on my next explorations.

This taught me to pay extra close attention to other people's observations. They have the advantage of not being distracted by your biases and intentions. And it also taught me to try to play that role myself. To take a big step back from my work, clear my mind, and try to see what's really going on (and what isn't going on).

Self-diagnosis has brought me to a bit of a "Popeye" moment: I realize that I yam what I yam. I've never had the slightest interest in adopting someone else's style, which means I keep doing my thing. This could be viewed as being in a decades-long rut, but I'd rather take it as a sign that my challenge is to do my thing better.

Doing your thing better still implies doing something different.

I'm talking about evolving my own style, not adopting someone else's.

I like to feel that I'm discovering things through photography—things about the world, about how to look, about how to put a picture together. A few times I've gotten to a point where I wasn't doing that anymore; I was just acting on old habits. Repeating last month's or last year's discovery. This starts to feel unsatisfying, and I lose motivation.

In this interview with Steven Shore and Alec Soth, Shore talks a bit about it. He mentions meeting Ansel Adams at party in NYC in the 70s. Adams had a formidable head start with the cocktails by the time Shore arrived, and got a bit maudlin and confessional. He said, “I had a creative hot streak in the ’40s, and since then, I’ve been pot-boiling.” Shore realized he didn't want to look back on his own life like that.

There's still a question of whether to keep evolving the same basic ideas (like Weston or Walker Evans) or to periodically reinvent yourself completely (like Stieglitz or Shore). That's probably a matter of temperament.

 

[Bob Janes]

As time passes, I'm noticing that I'm cropping tighter and tighter and leaving less and less space around the edges. This is not something I have done deliberately, it just happened over time. It's quite noticeable when reviewing finished images. I do it all the time now.

What about you, what quirks have you noticed creeping into your composing?

With film in an SLR, I got used to keeping things quite tight in the viewfinder - however with digitl and esp with mirrorless, I found I was often feeling it was a little too close - I guess because with film I was tending to get a little more on the film than I was seeing in the viewfinder, but less so with digital.

With rangefinder cameras I'm even more of a wuss.

Nice compositions btw...

 

[Rob de Loe]

Doing your thing better still implies doing something different.

"Better" is not the best word for what I mean. What I'm trying to say is making the work I value the most with greater clarity, fewer distractions, more intensity.... It's a "less is more" situation.

What are the essential characteristics of what I value in my own photography, and how can I express them more clearly in new ways?

I'm talking about evolving my own style, not adopting someone else's.

Totally. I didn't mean to imply adopting someone else's style was your goal. I do see people trying to do that all the time, especially as people are starting out and trying to figure out their own style.

I like to feel that I'm discovering things through photography—things about the world, about how to look, about how to put a picture together. A few times I've gotten to a point where I wasn't doing that anymore; I was just acting on old habits. Repeating last month's or last year's discovery. This starts to feel unsatisfying, and I lose motivation.

Yes! In my case, it's looking through the viewfinder and realizing, "I have done this before", and then walking away.

In this interview withSteven Shore andAlec Soth, Shore talks a bit about it. He mentions meeting Ansel Adams at party in NYC in the 70s. Adams had a formidable head start with the cocktails by the time Shore arrived, and got a bit maudlin and confessional. He said, “I had a creative hot streak in the ’40s, and since then, I’ve been pot-boiling.” Shore realized he didn't want to look back on his own life like that.

I think this haunts anyone engaged in a creative activity, and not just artistic creation. I don't think it's inevitable, but I do think it's depressingly commonplace.

There's still a question of whether to keep evolving the same basic ideas (like Weston or Walker Evans) or to periodically reinvent yourself completely (like Stieglitz or Shore). That's probably a matter of temperament.

I think temperament is a big part of it. But it's not necessarily black and white. People are complicated.

In terms of my academic research program, I completely reinvented myself. At the end of 2019, I "resigned" thirty years of work in one area and started over completely in a new one. This wasn't an evolution. It was a complete break with the past. Almost nobody does this in my trade; it's considered career suicide.

At the same time, when I look at my photography from three decades ago, it's obvious to me that I'm still trying to do now what I was trying to do then. The switch from black and white to colour is a kind of reinvention, but not really because the essential ideas that motivated me then motivate me now, regardless of subject matter or presentation.

Lots to think about here... Thanks.

 

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

No, I can't say as I have one.

What I do have is a framing type. 4x5. This goes all the way back to my beginning in the early 1970s. 8x10" photo paper was the largest I could afford, still being in school. So that meant snipping some off the ends of the 135 format film. This carried over to the 645 format. And then to digital.

I am still at it, although my most printed size now is 16x20".

Stan