Author: The Photographer Clay

Photography today is the greatest ever because it is everywhere. Think about it. Everyone with a cellphone has a camera. Not including all the people with cameras. Digital cameras have put the power of photography in the hands of everyday ordinary people just like Kodak’s Brownie box cameras but today we get instant gratification and don’t have to wait for the developed film and prints to come back. While the quality may be questionable of some of the photographs taken today photography is everywhere every day. It has been estimated that there are 1.8 billion photographs taken every day. 1.8 billion. Two hundred and eight thousand (208,000) are uploaded to Facebook every minute.

My point with all this is that we are seeing a great photographic revolution right before our eyes and so much creativity from cellphone photographers and cellphone photo editing apps. Those of us who use dedicated cameras and software needs to keep up with the creativity. Let’s create some fantastic art in the coming week and share it with the world. Let’s do this thing!

I started a bit of a conversation on social media yesterday about how many photographers are too obsessed with the wrong things. It appears for the last few years many photographers are obsessed with how sharp a lens focuses and/or the out-of-focus area, I shudder to use the term bokeh. Shouldn’t we be more obsessed with composition and subject?

I see many many photographs every day. The photographs I see range from being taken by beginners to professionals. The photographs I see every day range from macro to landscape, from nature to portraits of people. It often pains me when I see a beautiful portrait of a person and the first comment I see goes something like, “this is absolutely stunning bokeh!”. For the love of Ansel Adams! This is a stunning portrait of a beautiful person and the first thing you notice is the out-of-focus area! All the dead masters are turning over in their graves!

The same goes for the sharpness of a lens. Yes, sharp focus is important. Yes, some lenses have better resolution than others, but super sharp and high resolution are not always best in my opinion. Photograph a female model and during the retouching process to remove blemishes and stray hairs and then you notice all the fine facial hairs, every skin pore, every slight blemish. While it may be a true representation of the person it is not how our eyes and minds see them.

Let’s get back to where we are more concerned about composition and subject rather than the blurry area and how super sharp a lens represents every minor detail of everything in the world.

I started with another topic in mind today but as I poured my morning coffee I noticed a change in my Twitter feed. (By the way, if you don’t follow me on Twitter you can find me at @SwatzellClay.) The change was I now had started to get followers that were not just fake accounts. I was now being followed by Sharky James from the PetaPixel Photography Podcast. Suddenly, I thought there is a way to break the cycle. The current cycle I need to break, and I suspect some of you may need to as well, is to get my cameras out and get some photography done. I find myself far too caught in the cycle of coming home, sitting in front of the television and just doing nothing or if I go into my camera and computer room I sit and dawdle about never really accomplishing anything.

I’m not sure how I got followed by Sharky James but something must have stood out to catch his attention. What I do know is how I’m going to start to break the cycle of dawdling about with my photography. I have three camera bodies, not counting the collection of antique cameras. I am going to dedicate one of them to a carry about camera, like I used to do. I’ll also dedicate a 50mm lens as my carry about lens. I’m sure some of you may only have a single camera and don’t want to dedicate it to carry about daily but consider it. You could also consider buying an older camera body and an inexpensive lens to dedicate. It’s worth a try if you’re stuck in the cycle of not getting as much photography done as you would like. I know we can use our cellphone cameras, which have become better and more fully-featured but sometimes it just doesn’t feel like photography.

Try carrying a camera about to break that cycle of not getting your photography back on track.

The rules of photography don’t matter! There I said what I said! Artistic vision matters. Audience engagement matters. There are volumes of books and articles talking about the rules of composition, rules of exposure, rules of sharpness, rules of white balance. While these may be important to understand I find it mundane once you grasp a rudimentary understanding. To me, the worst part is this is what we teach! We don’t teach or teach as much as we should, challenge the rules, innovate, create YOUR vision and YOUR rule.

One mistake I made in my younger days is not studying art. Where I grew up I believe influenced the reason for not studying art. It wasn’t considered manly. Fast-forward to today and I enjoy studying art, music, philosophy. While art and music have their versions of the rules look at the number of rule-breakers. Philosophers have spent time questioning the rules in an attempt to understand the reasoning. There are those who would argue that the rules are based on how to best make the subject or overall image or project stand out but then aren’t we just one of the crowd?

Use your artistic vision to fulfill your creative desire and to hell with the rules.

Shape and form. This is an interesting topic and one I see covered far too infrequently in the photography circles I apparently frequent. We see shapes and form all around us but how often are shapes and forms really the subject of a photograph? It could be that when shapes and form are the subjects the art is often more abstract causing us to think too hard or find it difficult to relate to the art. How many of us have visited an art gallery and seen the abstract art pieces and just scratched our heads because “we just don’t get it” or “what is the artist trying to convey”.

Shape and form are all around us in man-made objects and in nature. Maybe, just maybe I need to start paying more attention to shape and form.

Believe in yourself and others. Believe you can become the artist you dream about and believe others can help you and can achieve their goals with your help. It is like the adage, it takes a community. As an artist, you need to believe you can do it and you need people who view your art. Helping other artists along their journey will, in my opinion, help you along your artistic travels. How do you ask? Great question!

Believing in yourself is obvious. It gives you the confidence to create your art. Believing in others and helping them allows you to grow both as a person and gives you a feeling of meaning and satisfaction. It also builds the concept of belonging to a community where you are supported and valued. In this community we help each other, we don’t take more than we give. I’ve found this through running social media groups, photography meets, photography club interactions, and mentoring. Believing in others and help can often be as simple as sharing photographs of your work or participating in discussions. I run two groups on Facebook, one for models & photographers with over 2,000 members and one for just photographers with just over 200 members. In both groups around 1/2 are active on average during the past six months. Engagement on a smaller basis runs about 15-25%. Lots of creativity results from that 15-25% so just imagine if that number was increased.

Get involved. Believe in yourself. Share your thoughts, questions, support. It will not only help you but helps the community of artists of which you are a part.

Do we really see? I mean most of us see things, we have eyes and we can see the world around us but do we REALLY see the world around us, or do we just look? I work around children every day in my non-photography job and children see things that many adults I am around on a daily basis miss. This is very true amongst many of the younger children. They often see things like texture, shape, form. They see tiny objects and fine details. Is it that the world and things are still fairly new to them and we grow to where we just accept the world around us?

The reason I ask this question is that often when I walk around in the forest along a hiking trail with my camera I get asked the question, “anything good?”. The people asking have apparently missed all the little things or sometimes the big things like light, pattern, form but do we sometimes do the same thing? I think we do. So many times, we grab our gear and head out for the big photo outing and we wander aimlessly, often coming home with what turns out to be a few crappy snapshots. What did we miss? Did we fail to actually see the world? Are we trying too hard to get that spectacular shot that is often as evasive as Big Foot, or in the case of the State of Missouri, MoMo? Learning to see photographically is a difficult thing to explain and often difficult to teach unless you are walking with your student.

Think about it today. Are you really seeing or are you wandering on autopilot?

If only I had more time, more money, started sooner, thought about it, could go back. I don’t know about you but I catch myself thinking or saying something that starts with something similar more than I should. I do this in many aspects of life, including my photography.

Many times, I am not able to change or do over but with photography, I can often go back and either retake the images or edit them. Sometimes, the chance to “get it right” is gone never to come again. The once in a lifetime opportunity to catch a fleeting moment of time or a once in a lifetime trip. So how do we get to make sure we don’t have an If only I had thought about those times? Build your skillset! Learn to utilize your equipment! Include all your options including how to best utilize your cellphone camera. There may be times when it wasn’t possible to have your best gear available but that doesn’t mean you have to miss the chance.

I always caution people that the practice makes perfect isn’t necessarily true. Practice makes permanent, perfect practice makes perfect. Practice good photography habits, learn how to use your gear to its fullest, and then push it further. Go build your skillset. We may never achieve perfection but if we work towards perfection we may achieve excellence and avoid the “If only I had” moment.

Who is your G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time)? Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Joseph Nicephore Niecpe? None of the above or someone less famous? Have you ever thought about it? While I sit and write this I’m not sure about who I would name as my choice of greatest of all time. It is a question I’ve pondered time and again but I haven’t ever really decided. While I’m familiar with the works of many of the famous dead photographers and some that are still around I guess I haven’t really compared them to one another. I’m not really sure I need to compare them to each other or that I would be able to compare them to each other. Then maybe the G.O.A.T. has yet to be recognized.

The reason this comes up to my mind is I am not sure we should limit our thinking, our mind, or our creativity. I’ve seen so many photographers in the past totally dismiss HDR (high dynamic range) photographs, soft focus, or any number of other things just because they decided it wasn’t real photography or not “tack sharp”. Some of this work is bad but some of it is fantastic. Just like a recent poll in a social media group asking if a cellphone camera was a “real camera”. A vast majority of photographers argued a cellphone camera wasn’t a “real camera”. Maybe it was a way for them to justify their spending their money on fancy camera gear or maybe they just hadn’t opened their minds to consider it a possibility.

My whole point with this is that as artists shouldn’t keep our minds open to new concepts, new techniques, new processes, and the possibility that there may not be one greatest photographer of all time but a possibility that there are many greatest of all time.

I suspect most of us are guilty. It could be something like deciding to start an exercise program, or eating better. One day you wake up and say something like, “I don’t really feel like going to the gym today, I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m tired and just want to take it easy.” or “Ah, I’ll only eat a few chips, I’ll eat better tomorrow”. I know I’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt, well maybe several t-shirts.

That is where I am with my current state of photography. I’ve set myself a schedule for my blog but yet I haven’t with my photography. I often, far too often, find myself saying, “I’m going to do something today and get the cameras out” but find myself plopped in front of the television watching mindless shows or browsing social media on the computer, or worse yet my smartphone. It seems I got into this bad habit only in the past couple of years, seemingly at the outbreak of COVID-19. I spent a lot of time inside, away from others. Some would argue that I let fear overtake my life and to some extent that may be true. Fear of being sick (I hate being sick) and fear that I could cause someone else to become sick or worse die. While it’s true I could set something up inside, away from others (for now), and do photography just like avoiding the gym or that bag of chips it became easier to just not do it.

My goal for today is to set up a schedule and start back on the path of going to the photography “gym” and the photography “healthy food” section. I suspect there may be some others who, like me, have slipped into the bad habit. Let’s get going! Time to get photographically healthy.