The fourth photo in my Daily Photography Project.
Author: Darin
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Daily Photo Project: Still Life 1
I admire the people who have the fortitude to commit to a “daily 365 photography challenge.” I am not one of them. I might be able to complete the Michael Beirut “100 Day Project” if I chose a very clearly defined project, e.g., take a photograph of my left hand every day for 100 days (and assuming I didn’t get bored of it). But maybe a month. I think I can sustain a daily project for a month (actually, just four weeks). So that’s what I’m committing to do:
Take one photograph a day each day for a month, organized by the theme “Still Life.” Each photograph posted here.
I chose still life as the type of photography because I want to improve my skills using flash. I tell myself I can produce 28 photographs (in addition to any other photos I might take). And I tell myself this will be a good exercise in developing my photographic skills. I tell myself this will be long enough to be useful without being so long as to be a burden. But I tell myself lots of things that turn out not to be true.
In any event, here is the first photograph:
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Quiet Simplicity
Or minimalism by another name, a name that for me better captures the value of an uncluttered photograph. Minimalist is descriptive and too often a goal in itself. But what if we try to describe the effects of such photographs, thinking more about the viewing experience and less about the composition? What is it about such photographs that I find appealing? The reduced color palette, the sparse visual field, the soothing nature of the scene. I took this photograph, so I can’t help but recall the day I wandered through the dunes, alone. No wind disturbed the silence. I recall all this when I see this photo.
#181018 But even if I hadn’t been there to experience the scene, when I look at this photograph I feel a sense of calm. I assume it is quiet and peaceful, and I don’t want to disturb that quiet. Rather than describe this photo as minimalist, I prefer quiet because that’s what the photograph encourages in me.
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Minimalism or Not
I know I am supposed to like and to produce minimalist photographs. Dominant, singular subjects against a diffuse and often homogenous background are striking. Particularly if black and white. There is no denying that the photographs of Michael Kenna, e.g., or Hiroshi Sugimoto’s still life and abstract work, some of Fan Ho’s street photography, again e.g., are striking. As are some of the portraits of Arnold Newman. Color photography too offers lovely examples, not infrequently the iconic lone tree on a hill (or versions of the radically expensive Rhein II). Long exposures of piers extending out into water, or the pylons that used to support some pier or other structure jutting out from the water in both black and white, and in color, make compelling and convenient subjects for minimalist photographs.
The lure of minimalist photographs is real. They offer a chance to pause and to think. There’s a type of quiet calmness to them. They encourage a sort of meditative reflection. The simplicity (minimalism) is a nice alternative to the frenetic and noisy world. But they risk being mechanical. They rely not on the interplay of different visual elements so much as the prominence of a single visual feature. The key is finding a way to isolate a subject. Sometimes this is easy; sometimes difficult.
#181016 Photographs with more in them, more visual elements encourage a different way of composing and of viewing. Even when there’s a dominate subject, the busyness around that subject, thinking about what portions of the foreground to include, what part of the background to obscure with the main subject, ask me to think differently about composition. And the resulting photograph, while still offering a bit of quiet contemplation, prompts me to think more about the setting, the scene, and the context.
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The Insidious Tyranny …
I want a new camera. Or is it a new lens? I want something to kickstart my photography out of its late winter creative slump. Ya. I think I would prefer a new lens, a new 50mm f/1.4. But first I need to do some research to be sure I get the best lens possible for me. Off to the internet to read reviews, to watch unboxing videos, hands-on reviews, long-term reviews, to compare sharpness, transmission, vignetting, distortion, chromatic aberration, weight, weather sealing, to listen to other photographers explain why they think this lens or that lens is the best (or the worst). And then the pleasure of watching sample images appear and disappear on my screen, examples of the miracles each lens can work. I can’t go wrong. Any of them will be better than my current lens.
#181110.1 I know. I’m not supposed to fixate on my equipment. I need only the tools that enable me to realize my vision, to make the photographs I need to make. Clearly good tools help make good photographs. But how, exactly? What strange alchemy occurs, transforming my base creativity into precious photographs, when I affix a new lens onto my camera? What if a new lens, a new camera, a new tripod, a new filter, a new [whatever] actually has the opposite effect?
In large and small ways, explicit and implicit, concern for equipment permeates so much of the conversation about photography. The sounds gear makes, or a simulacrum of that sound, has become de rigueur for videos, as have clips of people loading film or attaching a camera to a tripod. We can’t look at a photo without wondering what film stock was used. People talking ostensibly about photographs and making photographs sit surrounded by cameras, usually lurking on shelves in the background or proudly sitting on the table in the foreground. For me, all of that emphasis on gear distracts. It unhelpfully deflects attention from the joy of photography, which is, again for me, making photographs. That is why, I suspect any new bit of kit will in the end dull my creative vision. That new gadget distracts me from doing what I need to do in order to realize that vision: from making photographs.
#181027 No. I don’t need or even want a new lens, let alone a camera, or any other fancy bit of new, or retro, gear. Those won’t help me realize my creative vision. Only going out and making lots and lots and lots of photographs will.
In the chain that leads from vision to photograph, I am already the weakest link. Fortunately, I cost the least to improve.
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Postcard Archive: March 2021
With the new month comes a new postcard. February was a proper winter month, new snow almost every week. Stark and cold are excellent descriptors for the past month. Let me know if you want a copy.
#210221 How long, I wondered, until the noise and chaos of the game disrupt the silence? Not long enough.
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Walk out to Winter
Snow still covers the ground, lays piled by the sides of roads, and blocks the sidewalks. Ice covers the pond. This morning the world is still monochrome. But not for long.
#210227.1 Fog rises from the melting snow, growing thicker as the morning warms. At first the world seemed to be a circle of visibility moving along with me as I walked, no more than a few hundred yards across. But soon even that contracted. Shapes fading into existence as I approached gained faint color and texture only at the last minute, when I could nearly touch them. They lost both color and texture as they receded behind me before quickly dissolving into the whiteness.
#210227.2 A world shrouded in fog is a magical place, full of surprises and unknowns. You can neither see nor hear clearly — the fog seems to dampen noise as much as it obscures sight. The noises that do penetrate unsettle and unnerve because they seem to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Every now and then, a tree with the remnants of last year’s leaves clinging to its branches emerged from the fog, water dripping from its leaves glowing golden brown against the milky scene.
#210227.3 Mornings like this happen rarely around here, once or twice a year. I feel sorry for all the people who missed this one, but am glad they didn’t invade my enjoyment of it.
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Benches
Benches are so much more than merely a place to sit. Arranged around campus they seem like sentinels watching over a particular vista or guarding a quiet corner. Should you happen across one, it invites you to pause and maybe even to linger. Alone or with a friend, passionate conversation or silent observation, it matters little. Benches don’t care.
#210223a Their insistence on reflection and contemplation put them at odds with a world that celebrates busyness. Now, more than ever, we should perhaps take them up on their offer to loiter and to dawdle. We would all benefit by spending some time doing nothing. We don’t need some app on our ever-present “smart phone” to tell us when and for how long to focus. We need not regularize and formalize downtime. Just go find a bench. There are plenty out there waiting for you.
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