The Online Photographer

"A photographer’s job is to shoot something
no one else would see."

—Marjorie Salvaterra, quoted in the caption of "Marilyn," a portrait in LensCulture's "Making Portraits of People," curated by Andy Adams of FlakPhoto

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Mike

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Mark Jennings: "Yup! I agree with that and add that the photographer should be so besotted as to be convinced that other peoples' love of life is incomplete without that rare find. At least that's my ideal standard for work that goes out (I'm not a pro obviously). But if it excites me so much that I just can't keep it a hidden, then it has a chance at being of general interest. All of the exceptional-for-me images that I have managed have been of subjects that I'm strongly attached to and have spent truly excessive amounts of time with. Feelings, thoughts, eye, inspiration and technique come slowly to me. But getting there is one of the most fun things there is.

"An anecdote I read a long time ago fits in here. A beloved author was asked by a young guy, 'What does it take to be a good writer?' The pro asked in return, 'Do you like sentences?' And after a lecture on the intricacies of meter, Robert Frost was asked if that really was what he thought about while writing his (unique) verse. He came back with, 'I revel in it.' Is it any different for us with line, planes, colors, tones, movement and stuff? That's what I like!"

Manuel: "Yes indeed. An interesting—and quite complementary—piece of popular culture about originality in photography is one featured in Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood.' During a scene that (fittingly) takes place in a darkroom, Mason's Photography teacher asks his pupil: 'What can you bring to photography that others can't?' Every photography enthusiast should ask themselves the same question."

Will: "I like that a lot. (But) In the spirit of the conversations I enjoy here, I offer the exact opposite assertion: 'At least one of a photographer’s jobs is to shoot what everyone can see.' I'm regularly asked to document gatherings / events / etc. because 'you're a photographer.' Without too much exaggeration, I can say that there are usually hundreds of people at these events, and many of them are using a phone-cam or a non-phone-cam to shoot as well. So why ask me? Because I capture the event in a way that allows people to people see what they saw. Without the usual problems that seem to plague so many others' photos. As far as I can tell, that job description covers many types of people who call themselves—and are called—photographers. Salvaterra shoots things I would never see, literally and figuratively, and I love her work for that reason. I also love photographers who can show me exactly what I saw. Not 'in a new way,' or 'truer than true,' but exactly as I saw it."

"The trouble with photography is that it’s been hijacked by the art world. I’m a photographer. I’m very happy with the title. I’m not an artist."

—Don McCullin

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Posted by: Mike
(Thanks to John Denniston)

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Manuel: "I disagree. He's an artist. His photography has solid composition principles and, like W. Eugene Smith, he is able to find beauty in the horrors of this world. Although a photojournalist, Don McCullin embeds an artistic language in his pictures. That, in my admittedly unqualified opinion, is enough to make him an artist.

"The first part of his quotation can be a bit more controversial. Was photography kidnapped by art, or was it adopted by art? I understand what Mr. McCullin means—some photographers, and lots of photojournalists among them, trade content for style much too often—but it's not such a bad thing for photography to be regarded as an art. If there wasn't an artistic element in it (a personal, original view on a given subject), photography would be rather prosaic and deeply uninteresting.

"But then again, Don McCullin was just being hyperbolic when he stated that. He is an artist. And he knows that."

David Elden: "Mr. McCullin appeared at a meet the 'artist' event at the National Gallery of Art here in Ottawa on the occasion of a large retrospective show of his life's work a couple of years back. He walked around the exhibit with a large crowd in attendance, was a mesmerising speaker, and made this same point about not being an artist quite forcefully."

Patrick Dodds: "'The majority of photographers still seek "artistic" effects, imitating other mediums of graphic expression. The result is a hybrid product that does not succeed in giving their work the most valuable characteristic it should have—photographic quality.' —Tina Modotti (via photoquotations.com, an excellent site that inspires and provokes in equal measure). I've certainly been guilty of the above, and still am from time to time."

toto (partial comment): "...There's enough photography to go around for everybody."

Gordon Lewis (partial comment): "In the end, they're all just labels. I am not my label and my label is not me."

"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

—Author Anne Rice, talking about
what she learned from Franz Kafka

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Posted by: Mike

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Henry Rogers: "That works fine for an artist, writer photographer or whatever working on their own. A lot of worthwhile human activity depends on teamwork. The attitude expressed in the quote makes teamwork more difficult. I'm sure we all know people who have, by pursuing that idea to extremes, blighted their own lives, and obstructed the worthwhile efforts of others, by refusing to compromise. It isn't a matter of surrendering integrity to compromise when by doing so the team is enabled to work towards worthwhile results. On its own that quote provides an excuse, not an ideal to work towards."

"Making a picture that's technically what you want is where
photography begins, not where it ends."

—Mike J.

(People seem to like this quote from the other day, but I think I prefer this wording.)

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Paul Emberger: "I tell a variation of that truism to my students. And interestingly, I met Ralph Gibson yesterday: he was giving a lecture at the college where I currently teach. He told the crowd nearly the exact same thing. He spoke about how he came out of the Navy as a photojournalist with really good technical skill (I believe his wording may have been perfect or great skills) but that he hadn't yet really learned how to see. He also remarked about his time assisting Margaret Bourke-White. He said she had a phenomenal eye, but her skills were lacking. I recommend going to hear him talk if you ever have the chance."

“Might I vote for a new camera category: the Interchangeable Software Camera. The ISC. From a fair bit of experience with an iPhone (and a few decades with SLRs) I've come to the conclusion that camera makers have seriously underrated the value of interchangeable software. Apps give you all sorts of creative possibilities. Apps are fun. Given the choice of spending $1,000 on a new lens that might improve your pictures or spending $15 on five new apps that you can go out and play with tomorrow, I think lots of photographers are figuring out where the fun is.

”

Jim Richardson

Our friend Jim Richardson, a Kansan, has photographed more than 30 stories for National Geographic magazine and is a Contributing Editor of NG's sister publication Traveler magazine.

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“Don’t try to be an artist. Find the thing within you that needs to be expressed. You might find it is art.”

—Duane Michals

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Mike
(Thanks to Dave)

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Kenneth Tanaka: "Good quote! I met Duane Michals about 10 years ago. He impressed me as a very lovely, very animated, and very opinionated fellow. I can easily envision him saying this to someone. Of course there is one catch to this directive: what if you discover you've nothing to express?"

Mike replies: There must be worse fates than not being an artist.  :-)

I'd be grateful for any help finding an actual quote—I think he said it on a number of occasions—but speaking of photographers' sartorial styles, the late David Vestal of venerated memory once said, and unfortunately I'm paraphrasing,

"I put on my camera in the morning and take it off at night, just like my shirt."

Incidentally, David had two Leica M2's that he shot with for many years, both of which seemed to go wonky on him at the same time. So, not caring a whit for camera-status, he got himself a pair of budget Olympus SLRs and proceeded to use those. But within a decade both of those had gone south on him and couldn't be cost-efficiently repaired. At that time, several of us—I don't know if I was the only one—convinced him that he should just get his old M2's repaired. He did, and they worked for him for the remainder of his life. I believe they were auctioned on eBay after his demise.

I was sorely tempted to acquire one as a photohistorical relic, but David would never have approved of that kind of sentimentality. (I once owned Jack Lemmon's Leica M6—sold it to Arthur Elkon—and I once had a chance to buy Lee Friedlander's Focotar. But I'm not a real collector, even of wonderful relics.)

Mike

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"A photograph should be more interesting than the subject and transcend its obviousness."

—Jeffrey Ladd
[Quoted on Conscientious, found by Stan Banos]

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Len Salem: "For some time now I've had typed out and stuck on my wall this quote by Gary Winogrand '…A photograph must be more interesting than the thing photographed.' (I've seen this quote elsewhere in various slightly different wordings so maybe he repeated himself, variously.)"

Mike replies: The great example of this that I can think of off the top of my head is Edward Weston, who made art out of a ceramic toilet ("Excusado") and a bell pepper ("Pepper No. 30") as well as a great many other mundane subjects. Doing an image search of "Edward Weston" is almost an object lesson in photographs that are more interesting than the thing photographed.

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"There are two types of people in the world.
1. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete information."

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(G.K. Froehlich, quoting his daughter)

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darr: "An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says, 'You're all idiots,' and pours two beers."

"Nobody expects my brother-in-law to make money from fishing. Nobody expects my neighbor to make money from golf. Nobody expects the guy down the street to make money from picking guitar. So how come so many people think it's strange that I don't care about making money from photography?"

—Gato

©2014 by Gato, all rights reserved

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McD: "Rest assured, your expectations will be met."

Gato: "WOW—I finally got my 15 minutes. Thanks, Mike."

Steve Jacob: "Good quote. My dad was a fanatical golfer with a scratch handicap throughout most of his youth. He was once asked why he never turned pro, and his response was also interesting: 'Now I play when I want to, compete with myself and make a lot of friends. If I have a bad round, only I am disappointed. To be a pro, I would have to play when I didn't want to, compete with my friends and create a lot of rivals. If I had a bad day, my sponsors, my family and all those depending on me would be disappointed. I would have to be crazy!' I feel much the same way about photography."

Dennis Fallon (partial comment): "I will say, though, that photographers have company. Woodworkers are often expected to make some side money with their hobby."

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"Micro 4/3 is better than 35mm used to be."

—Crabby Umbo

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ADDENDUM by Crabby Umbo: "...I should qualify that statement! It's still tough to get 'film look' in all digital, but I have to say that in terms of sharpness and 'blow-up-ability,' modern digital is better, and Micro 4/3 is easily the 'new' 35mm for photojournalists and those who always used the smaller formats, especially for ease of carry.

"I'm always amazed at how unsharp a lot of my 35mm stuff was in the olden days, and how most sharpness for small formats on a print was really the effect of the sharp grain rather than actual sharpness of the format. When the chromogenic B&W films first came out, I was amazed at how my small format stuff was not looking sharp, because there was no grain to be sharp on a print and give the effect of sharpness. Okay then...."

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robert: "These things are hard to compare. Full-frame is so much better than analog 35mm and had some designs on medium format, yet—if I make a 24" print from full-frame digital and medium format scanned film, I very much prefer the medium format film. If I make a 24" print from scanned 35mm film and an optical print from same, the optical falls apart.

"Traditional enlarging had limits that scanning doesn't with regard to holding the film flat in the enlarger. With scanning, that is solved. So you don't get those negs popping out of focus like you used to, and you can retain contest in a large print in a way what was hard optically. There is something about a large full-frame digital print that is thin to me; the colors are purer but less differentiated, and everything is sharp in a way that is unnatural to me. Regardless of sharpening. Scanned medium format is in many cases less sharp but has a depth that full-frame digital cannot match, and once you go above 11x17, is clearly better to my eyes. In reproduction, and online, and for colour accuracy, yes, full-frame digital. But it falls apart faster than you think."

Henry Richardson: "I have just finished the scanning of 10,000+ 35mm slides and negatives (color and B&W) that I have been doing little by little since the late 1990s. In the last 3–4 months I got really on it and scanned more than 6,700. If we are talking about scanned 35mm then I, in most cases, would say that even a tiny sensor digicam can do better. Not in all ways and not in all cases, but generally. Going analog the whole way, well, I will let others decide. I made rather detailed posts about this scanning experience in my last two blog entries (1/8 and 12/31) that I think some people will find interesting."

Dave in NM: "I've got a brick of Tri-X in freezer. Another one of these exchanges and I swear; I'm gonna be forced to load it up and shoot someone."

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"Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."

—Gloria Vanderbilt, quoted by her son Anderson Cooper on Late Night with David Letterman, Nov. 19th, 2013

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Everyone's life is a struggle when seen from the inside, is what she's saying, I think. So we might as well be kind to one another, out of sympathy and acknowledgement of each person's struggles with his or her own difficulties.

A nice thought.

Mike

UPDATE: Quote Investigator notes that this is often attributed to Plato and sometimes Philo of Alexandria, i.e., to "generic ancient sage." But the quote probably traces back to Scottish author Ian MacLaren, who said "Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle"—"pitiful" used in the anachronistic sense of "compassionate, merciful, tender," and (ahem) "man" in the sense of "person."

"Ian MacLaren" was the pen name of Rev. John Watson, who, in 1903, writing under his own name, said, "This man beside us also has a hard fight with an unfavouring world, with strong temptations, with doubts and fears, with wounds of the past which have skinned over, but which smart when they are touched. It is a fact, however surprising. And when this occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly with him, to bid him be of good cheer, to let him understand that we are also fighting a battle; we are bound not to irritate him, nor press hardly upon him nor help his lower self."

(Thanks to Ade for this.)

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Geoff Wittig: "That is so painfully true. As a family doctor, on a daily basis I am astonished by the strength and fortitude of average folks, and by the surprising number of your friends and neighbors who are contending, with quiet dignity, with genuine tragedies in their lives. You just never know when a kind word will make all the difference in someone's week. Or when a casual dismissal or insensitive slight will heap insult on top of injury."