DARIN HAYTON

Tag: Ridley Creek State Park

  • The Insidious Tyranny …

    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.

  • In Praise of Chaotic

    In Praise of Chaotic

    Minimalism. A dominate subject. High contrast. Rule of thirds. Composition. Complementary colors. Symmetry. Leading lines. Framing. There is a smörgåsbord of rules I can choose from to guide my shooting, to shoehorn my photos into a recognizable and recognized style. But what if I don’t want to. What if I want not just to “break” them but to reject them? Or replace them with a different set of rules/guidelines?

    #181110

    Rules and guidelines are useful for helping me see things. Francis Bacon realized this centuries ago when he worried about the challenges of inductive investigation. Scientific training depends on some modern version of the dictum about the well-prepared mind being able to see. Photography is no different. The well-prepared photographer is able to see, and to photograph. But photography is not science. There’s no sense of progress, and photographers need not always be beholden to a finite set of rules. We can reject them at will. I think we might benefit from rejecting the rules now and then. Prepare our minds to see chaotic. There can be something soothing and comforting about the mess.

    #181124
  • Originality

    Originality

    Often I want to be alone, to avoid the company of others. I am no misanthrope nor do I aspire to be a hermit, but the constant din of daily life does little for me. I much prefer solitude, the restorative companionship of quiet, both in an acoustic and in a psychological sense.

    But it’s hard to be alone. Robert Frost, I think, understood the desire to be alone. Yet he acknowledged the futility of that desire. I too seek, as often as possible, similar opportunities, moments where I can choose the less certain, the less worn option. My initial excitement, however, soon mixes with a sense of melancholy as I come to see that I have not succeeded in avoiding the company of others. There seems always to be traces of predecessors; I can’t help but see evidence that I’m little more than the latest follower. And I know that my passing can’t help but encourage others to follow.

    #210208.1

    That wet afternoon I had hoped to be alone. The cold rain and gloom discouraged others from intruding on my peace. But I wasn’t alone. I saw in the path I followed the evidence of those who had passed before me, some recently had left footprints in the soft dirt others more remotely had helped to beat down the grasses and to shape the path itself. I could almost hear the echoes of their footsteps, whether lightly landing on hard, dry soil, or tramping through the soft, wet mud. I stopped regularly to listen to the water falling onto the leaves and from there dripping onto the grasses. I lingered for a moment.

    Then I turned and set off into the thick. I struggled to make headway. Soon I was drenched from pushing through the undergrowth. Finally, after considerable effort I came to a small clearing at the top of a rise. The dense woods sloped away in front of me, seemingly impenetrable. I looked down and saw a shard of glass, the remnant of an old bottle. Even here I was not alone.

    #210208.2

    Originality is, I think, just another form of seeking to be alone. And it is equally difficult to find. Somebody has been there before me; somebody will come after.