Category: Musings

The Tyranny of Tools

Despite considerable handwringing, a species of photographer seems insistent on drawing attention to the equipment used to make photographs. I am amused by how many electrons and how much ink is spent saying some version of “gear doesn’t matter” by people who are themselves focused on cameras and lenses. Whether it is a “film photographer” (a term I don’t like but seems to be important to a certain group of people) is explaining yet again that “film slows me down,” while loading film, taking a shot, and winding the crank on the side of some vintage camera, or it is a “large format photographer” setting up the tripod and camera, screwing in the cable release, inserting the film holder, and taking the picture, or it is a person with a digital camera boasting about whatever gear some company has “lent [them] to try out” as they pull it out of their bag, the camera plays a starring role in the performance. The camera, its settings, or the film stock — all that is irrelevant, as many of these photographers will, in other instances, remind us. Rather, it is the image and the message or story or emotion or moment it evokes that matters. The camera, the lens, the film, the processing are all just tools a person uses to produce a photograph.

Photographers are not unique in this obsession with cameras, deflecting our attention from the photograph to the tools used to produce it. People I would describe as “photographer-adjacent” reinforce and encourage the habit. Audiences continue to watch videos that foreground cameras. Exhibitions highlight the equipment used on panels describing shows. Publishers continue to draw attention to the cameras used. Over and over again book blurbs include statements like “photographing with an 8×10-inch Deardorff view camera” and “shooting with a medium format camera” and “everyday moments based on iPhone photographs.” Perhaps there was a time when photographers and the photography-adjacent didn’t draw attention to their tools, but if so those days are past.

Still life #230417

Imagine if we drew attention to the tools we use to accomplish other activities. I use a teaspoon rather than a soup- or tablespoon when I eat soup, one that was manufactured in the 1980s. It slows me down and forces me to appreciate the flavors and textures. Because my teaspoon is constrained by volume, I have to choose where to put it and what to scoop up. Each mouthful costs more, both time and calories, so I am more careful with each spoonful. It takes me longer to finish my bowl of soup. Metal spoons are better than plastic. Their weight causes a reassuring sound when they strike the bottom of the bowl, and if you’re eating outside the metal spoon does a better job weighing down the napkin.

April 23, 2023
Second Hand; Non-Visual

Keith Smith noted: By saying he was going to make a picture of some thing, he ended up making second-hand, non-visual pictures (see “Not vivid, Not exciting.”). I wonder how often I take pictures of something I have imagined (whether or not I’ve said it aloud to others or silently to myself) rather than take pictures visually of things I have never described or imagined. How often do I not “see” something because I was fixated on finding what I hadn’t seen?

The other day I walked by a tree resplendent in fall color, leaves wafting down in the breeze. Under the tree was a lone chair, bathed in warm light reflecting up from the fallen leaves and filtering down through those still on the tree. I imagined that scene, returned with my camera, and took a dozen supremely mediocre pictures of it, from lots of different angles. Nothing.

The other night I wandered out after dark, looking to spend some time alone. Nothing more. As usual, I took my camera with me. I took a handful of pictures, some of which, in hindsight, have become interesting (to me) photographs. In the moment, I had no real sense of the scene being anything. I just took a picture. After the fact, and with some editing, I have ended up with photographs that I quite like, photographs that I had not previously described in words.

Urban #221007.2

After noting the problem of taking pictures of scenes he has already described in words, Smith goes on to say:

I can look at a completed picture and find, ‘Oh, yes, I used tertiary colors here, complementary there, saturated color in this small shape as a solution to counter balance the weight of the heavy form in another part of the composition, et cetera.”

Smith’s observation seems, to me, to describe much of how people discuss composition. It is easy, after the fact, to find the rule of thirds, the golden spiral, golden triangle, balancing elements, leading lines, etc., and to assert that the photographer used them in taking the picture. As if to say: while out in the field, or even in the studio, the photographer viewed the world through some rule-of-thirds overlay, or golden spiral overlay, or whatever. More often, I think, what we mean (and perhaps should state clearly) is something like: Now that the photograph is complete, we can find in it evidence of the rule of thirds, complementary colors, a golden spiral, etc. I do not doubt that we can find evidence of those compositional rules, but I do doubt that those rules were operative when the photographer “took the photo,” i.e., when the photographer was out in the wild and pushed the shutter release button. In other words, insofar as “rules of composition” implies that they were operative in composing the picture, I don’t think they play much of a role. I think they might play a role in editing pictures and producing finished photographs.

The question, then, seems to be: When does a photograph acquire those aspects. In the comfort of the studio or the office? Then the photographer (and perhaps the photographer’s assistants) has the luxury to review all the pictures from a particular trip or day or session or whatever and has selected the pictures considered best (see, e.g., the oft-praised Magnum Contact Sheets book). From that subset of pictures the photographer (and perhaps some assistants) then often crops or edits that image further (see, e.g., Arnold Newman’s portrait of Igor Stravinsky).

Taking Smith’s comment seriously, I wonder how many pictures turn out to be dull, second-hand photographs because they merely reflect the rules of composition, and how many pictures made without any attention to the rules of composition turn out to be great photographs.

I’m not interested in the issue of “breaking” the rules of composition (I’m not interested in the rules of composition at all and all discussions of learning them to break them seem to me to be stale.). Instead, I wonder how relying on any rule, guiding principle, pre-described scene, goal, plan, expectation, affects my photography. I am motivated by Smith’s subsequent comments:

We must learn to see: nature, space, color; to see photographically, to see with our third eye, to read visual material; it is a constant struggle. We must find various ways of learning. One of many is concentration. We must daily practice observation — we are in the business of seeing. Seeing demands research, discipline, training and courage. It takes energy to be visually perceptive rather than to follow simulated vision.

October 22, 2022
Two Years

I returned to a place I’ve visited before — remnants of an old corral quite literally just off the beaten path. While not particularly remote, it does require driving down a bumpy, dusty road and hiking an hour or so across a shadeless cross-country route. The time and physical exertion required would, I thought, limit the traffic, and the general “take only photographs and leave only footprints” attitude shared, I had hoped, by hikers and campers would limit damage.

Landscape #200513

In two years, however, the beaten path has spread to include the old corral. For most people, there’s little reason to linger by this corral. It is not their destination and not really on the way. Yet clearly lots of people do wander over to it. So many that the vegetation no longer grows as it used to. And in addition to any photographs visitors have taken, somebody also seems to have taken one of the old corral posts.

Landscape #220513

I stood in roughly the same spot when I took these photos, exactly two years apart. Whatever else photographs do, they can make visible the passage of time and our deleterious effects on ourselves and the world around us.

June 17, 2022
Mnemosyne

My day had started early, before dawn. I drove miles down rough dirt roads to a trailhead. I hoisted my pack onto my back and cinched the straps. Without any real trail to follow, I headed off across the open country generally in a cardinal direction. A couple hours later, after setting up camp, I started exploring. It was a hot and stagnant afternoon. The sun blazed in a pale blue sky. I slowed a bit when the canyon narrowed and the sheer walls offered some shade. How do I track my progress: Hours? Miles? Steps? Salt caked on my brow?

Landscape #220512

None of that effort matters. The time, the distance, the effort, and the sweat are all irrelevant for the photograph. Yet for me, and only for me, they are part of the story. Some photographs are linked to the experiences surrounding them, both those experiences that preceded the photograph and those that followed it. Looking now at such photographs, I recall those experiences, the feeling of being there, the thoughts and ideas that moved me to take a particular picture. Not the effort expended to take them, but the intentionality in making them, that’s what matters. Photographs are waypoints, places I have paused. Together, they offer to chart my life. I take photographs to fill the pages of my atlas of living, each an opportunity to remember.

June 10, 2022
An Unoriginal Photo

Just as I am rarely alone, despite how far I might venture into the wilderness, I rarely take an original photograph. Sometimes, my photographs are obviously unoriginal (perhaps not entirely cliché but certainly not obscure).

Landscape #220511.1

I don’t care if some of my photography looks familiar because other people have been there before me and taken similar photos. In subtle and often overlooked ways, my photo captures a fleeting and irreproducible moment and reflects my particular framing of the scene, just as most previous and subsequent photos will capture fleeting moments and reflect some other photographer’s approach to the scene. And I will always take photos that don’t look so familiar, that reflect my personal eye for something. Such photos tend to work better in collections or as part of a series (see, for example, 52/4).

May 27, 2022
A Path Well Traveled

I’ve been this way before. I know where this path leads. But as with each visit, something is different this time. The path is both familiar and foreign, reshaped each season by the forces of nature and the other people who have come this way. While I have found solitude for the moment, the footprints in the gravel remind me that I am far from alone. These remote spaces are haunted by the countless people who have passed through them before, leaving traces of their passing. Petroglyphs, moqui steps, and ruins of structures in alcoves high up on cliff faces — people have been wandering these places for centuries. Far from remote, these canyons and plateaus were home.

Landscape #220512.1

The remnants of our occupation and exploitation are easy to find. Some ancient. Some quite recent. Most now inscrutable — what does “6R” mean and why was it important to carve “6R” into the rock, I wonder.

Landscape #220513.1

I have been this way before, following behind untold numbers of other people. Although empty each time I pass, the path is well traveled. But this time, something is different. Next time, too, something will be different. Heraclitus’ comments are as applicable to sand and stone as they are to rivers.

May 25, 2022
Making time
How to find time every day for photography, in seven easy steps:
1. Open Calendar app.
2. Create 1-hour meeting: “Take pictures”.
3. Set up reminder for 15 minutes before meeting.
4. Set event to repeat each workday for entire month.
5. Don’t schedule anything else for those times.
  (if I must schedule something for that time, immediately reschedule “Take pictures” meeting)
6. When reminder sounds, stop whatever I’m doing & find camera.
7. Head out with camera & take pictures for an hour.
As far as I can tell, all those pseudo-aphorisms about inspiration and art boil down to the same thing: Make the time. So that’s what I do. I make the time.
April 22, 2022
Photographic Legacy

John D’Arcy was a wealthy landowner who built this castle ca. 1818, just outside the town he founded. He and his family lived in it for about twenty years. After he died, his son inherited the castle and lived there until the family went bankrupt about a decade later. New owners. Renovations. Yet more new owners. Yet more renovations. Finally, decline and ruin. Now, 200 years later, only the shell still stands looking out over the land and the bay.

Urban #220329.1

The original construction was mediocre, lots of rubble and junk, rough-hewn stone stacked up into walls that were then covered with plaster. Remnants of decoration, also made from cement or plaster, cling to the walls, as does the ivy. Inside little remains besides dirt floors and piles of fallen stone. Trees and plants grow where floors used to be, and graffiti cover many walls.

Urban #220329.2

The ruin also stands as a reminder that not long after we go our carefully assembled collection of photographs and photographic equipment will fall into disuse and disrepair. How many photographs and slides lie in boxes in closets, attics, storage units? How many cameras, both expensive and cheap that took hundreds of precious photos, mold in basements? Families no longer gather around to watch slide shows from last summer’s family vacation. Few people pull albums from shelves to thumb through the pages of photographs.

Urban #220329.3

With recent moves to digital photography and the near refusal to print images, how much easier will it be for the next generation to discard our photographs and cameras? Hard drives full of images will fail before too long, 4 to 5 years for mechanical drives. Cameras will break. They’ll be recycled or thrown away at e-waste events. We think we have this impressive collections, but like D’Arcy’s castle they are little more than a pretty façade.

April 14, 2022
On Ceilings and Archives

“Digital Asset Management” is not my strong suit. I don’t consistently “tag” photos. My organizational scheme reflects more my experiences in making the photograph than the subject of any given photo — I tend to group images taken at a time and place. Consequently, I end up with digital piles of images in directories that resemble the boxes full of photographs forgotten in closets and attics, often with some now cryptic label on the top like “Vacation, ’68”. Yes, I am thwarting technology and ignoring the “solutions” built into the tools I use.

Abstract #180624.1

Using some stand-alone “DAM” application or the features built into the other tools I use would make finding images quick and painless. I could sort images by tags. I could see at a glance trends in the pictures I take (or at least trends in how I tag those pictures). I could assemble collections of images that spanned years. If I developed a robust and capacious tagging practice, I could find connections between images that I might not initially have expected. I could “harness the power” of my computer to make my work more efficient and discover things I wouldn’t otherwise see.

Abstract #180624.2

Similar arguments are made regularly about the importance for libraries and archives to transform their record keeping from paper to digital. The assumption, often an unexpressed marketing goal really, seems to be that targeted identification and retrieval is somehow an unalloyed good and certainly better than the more cumbersome practices that require people to move through the archives.

But I enjoy moving through the archive. I enjoy browsing the real and digital shelves, pulling a box off one just to see what’s inside. The thrill of stumbling across something I didn’t know or didn’t remember existed. It’s like finding that box of photographs, “Vacation ’68”, on the top shelf of the closet. You weren’t looking for it, but you put aside your previous task to leaf through the photos, trying to figure out who these people were and where, and trying to recover or invent the stories surrounding these photos.

Sure, even if I developed a robust tagging and retrieval system, I could continue to browse the shelves and digital boxes and stumble across things. But I wouldn’t. I would become lazy and soon would completely forget how to browse, forget the joys of serendipity and the pleasure of getting lost. Easy will always win, in the end. And every time easy wins, I lose something important.

Abstract #180627

Yes, I will lose track of countless images. That’s ok. I don’t need to keep precise track of all of my images. For me there’s a value in thumbing back through and finding photos I had forgotten, and recalling the larger story that goes with them. Sometimes it takes only a single image to recall an entire trip or season. My archive, insofar as I have one, is meant to be explored. It is the source not of images but of recollections and stories and imagination.

March 22, 2022
On Easy Photography

Get up before dawn and drive for hours. Camp somewhere or sleep in your vehicle at a trailhead. Get up before dawn again. Hike miles lugging all your equipment, ideally through inclement weather. Burn thousands of calories. Find an amazing scene few others will ever see. Set up tripod and point camera. Wait, sometimes for hours. Take a photo. Pack up equipment. Hike back to car. Drive home.

Landscape #190820

Despite all the effort and the beautiful photographs that effort often produces, in the end it’s a pretty easy way to take pictures.

February 24, 2022