I tried to explain the difference between placing your own judgments on a subject versus making an informed observation. The first time I came across this notion was in an anthropology class as an undergraduate. The professor warned that we all bring a specific perspective, a set of prejudices, beliefs, likes, dislikes, etc. to every experience. If we apply our bias to something that falls outside of our realm, then the view is not honest, it’s more a reflection of what we think than it is a reflection of the subject.

Imagine how important it is to honestly render impressions in anthropology. The same can be true in making pictures. Both approaches - expressing your feelings in how you photograph a subject or expressing the essence of a subject without your layer of bias - are valid in different settings. (I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an opinion about stuff that you’re photographing.)

A simplistic way of explaining is to make a picture of something that is red. The picture you would make from the perspective of “I hate red!” as opposed to the one you would make from the perspective of “This is really red!” would be a lot different. 

In a more journalistic setting, you’d keep most of your opinion out of your pictures; in a more artistic venture, the you is what’s most important.

That doesn’t mean that the you should be absent from journalistic photography. The more informed your impression, your understanding, your rendering of a scene the more likely you are to connect with its essence. And that is the goal, either way.

I am working on a post about how to produce a body of work, starting from the point of idea. But it's a complex topic that I'm trying to simplify and make a usable document. 

Mark Twain said something like: "I'd have written you a shorter letter but I didn't have time."

So it goes with trying to make the complex simple and the simple complex.

One of these days I'll update the work section of the site with the work of photographers I've been working with the past few months. That'll take a couple days.

I hope you had a happy 4th and your summer is sailing along. 

Stay tuned, please.

Mike

In case not, how about making a picture today that says something about what it means to be in America, today?

It's such a strange time, with two wars, an oil spill, an economic crisis, change, change and change. But certain things must hold true even in these times, while others evolve or disappear altogether.

Hang on to some fleeting thing with a picture.

What the heck.

So here are some thoughts:

A photographic style is an outward expression, a reflection, of the essence of the person who made the photographs.

Styles fall into one of four types: innate, copied, applied or neutral. Neutral is really a variation of innate but it has no uniqueness. I’ll explain more. Regardless of which type, they still reflect the person who made the picture. And it’s not as if this neat and tidy categorization fits everyone. It’s more of a sliding scale, a zone system that taps the range of personalities that we are.

Let’s talk about innate and neutral first. Innate style is simply the way a person grows into making pictures  after getting through the technical stuff and shucking the learned stuff. The more complex, dimensional, unique, interesting, funny, distinctive, compassionate or whatever a person is, the more that person’s photographs will be complex, dimensional, interesting, distinctive ...  

Neutral style is that which isn’t distinctive. Photographs made by someone with a neutral style simply reflect the subject being photographed without a distinctive photographer’s voice. There’s nothing that distinguishes the photographs, no quality that elevates the subject matter beyond what it is. In these settings, the quality of the image depends entirely on the quality of the subject. If the subject isn’t interesting, the photographs won’t be. These photographers tend to be the ones who say there was no photograph to be made in a given setting because there was nothing happening. Which is ridiculous, of course. Most of the amazing photographs made are not of inherently interesting subject matter; it was the photographer’s seeing, his or her expression of self through the images that makes the photograph compelling, regardless of the subject matter.

Some people never grow beyond a neutral style because they have nothing within themselves to invest their photographs with, beyond simple representation. Other people who are making neutral photos are still on the path to realizing their style. They can be stuck in the technical layer of how the camera works or get caught up in the gear layer of photography or have a teacher who forces rules on them or otherwise inhibits their voice. Others just never figured out how to push themselves beyond their present way of making pictures and never had someone in their photographic lives who could move them beyond the present.

Another way of saying this is that some people are unique and therefore make interesting pictures. Other people are not so unique and make less interesting pictures. Others still may be capable of uniqueness but haven’t been awakened.

Copied style is self evident, sort of. You see a photographer’s work you admire. It has a specific quality that you try to copy. You’ll never succeed at making pictures like someone else makes them. But you may well learn from trying to be like someone so it’s not an inherently bad thing. A local radio host on our amazing jazz station was talking yesterday about how early on Dizzy Gillespie tried to copy Roy Eldridge’s style, saying, “Man, if I could play like him, I could really get to my own style.” The same can be true for a photographer. The general principal is that when you step outside of what you’re doing now, you grow. But of course.

Applied style is when, usually early on in the learning process, you notice general tendencies - tilted horizons, no detail in blacks, saturated colors, desaturated colors, a photoshop filter, etc. - and you think there must be value in applying some of those qualities to your photographs. It’s a variation of copying someone’s style but is even more shallow. Some people continue to apply these layers of stuff to their photographs beyond the early learning stage. You can tell when someone’s photographs are only techniques applied to a setting by removing technique. What’s left after applied technique is removed is usually a neutral style. But not always.

So how do you achieve your own style? Make pictures, get feedback, be critical of yourself, know what you want to say about what you’re photographing, continually elevate what you set out to say, read books about subjects you know nothing about, look at art and ask why it is good, look at photographs you’ve never seen, have a personal project in the works at all times, make pictures of friends and relatives, make pictures of things you own, make pictures of something you hate and of something you love, make pictures of yourself that tell you what kind of person you are, make a picture today that you didn’t make yesterday, return to pictures you’ve made and make them again but better, say three different things about one small setting, photograph five cliche’d subjects in a way that isn’t a cliché, ask three friends to make a telling picture of you, use one lens to photograph everything for a week, light everything you photograph for a week, make at least one picture of what you photograph from two feet away and another 20 feet away, put nothing important in the middle of the frame for a week ...

I could go on and on. The short version is this: Continually challenge your self.

This is my dad. This was one of the last times I saw him at his home, in 2005. There are layers to this picture that mean things - the screened porch where he loved to sit and watch birds, the grills that he'd burn through making Nebraska steaks, the yard he spent so much time tending and the proximity to the country. Bye Dad, hi Dad.

Our fathers deserve our best, whether they did a good job of raising us or not. Mine did a good job, I think. And I miss him, a lot.

This isn't really an assignment. It's a suggestion to make a picture of your dad, if you can, to remember him as he is this year, this moment. Say something with the picture about how you feel about the man.

Embrace him and the moment with a picture. 

If you can't make a picture of him, how about making one of yourself or of something that connects the two of you or something that you care about and can share with him?

Telling him you love him wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Just a thought. This is not sponsored by Hallmark.

She asked me to put forth the concept this week. See if you can guess.

She just graduated from Columbia University’s journalism graduate program so what a great opportunity. It was only eight months ago that she started to seriously make still photographs after working the broadcast realm through most of her schooling.

The day before talking to Diána I worked with a photographer who has been working at a newspaper for many years. The contrast in the two was not so great as you might think. Each is striving to approach his and her work anew. Advising them how to do that varied in some ways but not in others.

And Seth Gitner called to interview me for a column he writes for News Photographer, the National Press Photographers Association monthly magazine. He’ll be writing about how to edit your work for the web. Stay tuned for that piece. Seth joined the faculty at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications this school year after.

I even got to edit some great work by Lisa Wiltse, who has been working on a long term project from Bolivia. It was like being there. She sees color and light and compositions organically. What  a treat.

That and scouring real estate listings and going on home tours has made the week more than full. That notwithstanding, I sure do miss being at Lookbetween. It’s really too bad our transporter is broken. The gizmo makes being in two places at once almost possible.

I'm helping Mel with her coverage so got to see a much wider edit, which tugged at just about every heart string. She's a talented story teller and that Kiwi accent probably fits right in with Cajun. 

Go Mel.

Norm Shafer is a freelance photographer in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. I first met him in the early 90’s when I was working at National Geographic and he was at the Fredericksburg, Virginia paper. So it was good to catch up through this post.

The two pictures he sends are from an ongoing project about new wave farmers in Virginia. (It’s ironic that new wave farmers are largely returning to old ways of connecting with and fostering the land, with a new twist. This is a subject I’ve become interested in here in Oregon so there’s another connection, at least for me.)

Both photos © Norm Shafer

Norm says: “Here's my dilemma. Both photographs are taken as the subject is walking the birds over to the killing cones, where they are stunned and then have their throats cut.’

“I like Davis Creek B (laughing photo) for the connection it allows the reader to make to Elizabeth as a person and for the joy on her face. It's clearly a photograph of a person who loves what they do.’ 

“But I think that Davis Creek A shows  the reverence that she feels for the birds better. She spoke to me about how she feels strongly about raising them in the most humane way possible and to kill them as painlessly as possible. She believes they are making a sacrifice for us. I love the way she is holding the bird close to her to calm it as she takes it to it's demise.’

“The more reverent one has a problem for me in that the comb of the bird is not as pronounced and isn't as quick a read as the laughing one. Plus I really love the joy on her face.’

“I'm so confused. Most likely the photo will be used fairly large, either on the cover or large inside, so the quick read may not be as big an issue.”

This is a great example of pictures that convey a quality rather than simply showing what is going on. And thinking of these pictures in terms of the quality they represent instead of the verb layer, or their caption, is the better way to determine which one runs.

It’s also clear that Norm is connected to the subject. He has spent time learning about what matters to her and so can make informed decisions about how to make pictures that convey a set of qualities to make photographs that go beyond presenting a grocery list of things she does or processes that she goes through.

Given what Norm says about the connection to what she is doing, and the fact that the chicken is about to die, I’d say the first photo is the one to run, as long as there is at least one other photo that conveys her passion. If not, it would be possible to run the smiling photo and not deal with the killing layer in the caption.

These decisions are based on the belief that the pictures are equal in quality of execution.

Once you have narrowed photos to an equally strong group in terms of the making of the pictures, it becomes more a process of deciding which quality the photographs represent in choosing between them.

As an aside, these two photos could work for a cover, the second one in particular. Although as covers they’re a bit tight. When editing for magazines I encourage photographers to think about the cover format when they’re in situations that lend to that type of presentation. The same is true in settings that lend themselves to opening spreads.

So in the case of a cover, allowing for type placement generally means shooting a little looser than you would. And when you’re making a picture that deserves to be a full spread wide, be very aware of what you put in the middle of the frame.

The more you can tailor your image making to the needs of the publication or whatever venue you’re making pictures for, the better.

I'm stepping up to the plate to help with picture editing and Deb Pang Davis will chime in with art direction for print and web. Brad Horn, audio producer, and David Wright, master printer, are also on the team.

Luceo photographers are David Walter Banks, Kendrick Brinson, Matt Eich, Kevin German, Daryl Peveto and Matt Slaby.

This is exciting.

Deb and I were supposed to travel to Virginia for Lookbetween this week but we're mired in selling our house and buying another so we can't leave Oregon right now. While there we were going to celebrate the new partnership with Luceo since all of them will be at the festival. Drat.