Peppers, Toilets, and a Desk Lamp...

awty · Jun 3, 2020

His interest seems mostly on the form, not the function. He could combine human form with objects or separate, but he had the ability to give what ever he was making into a picture its own beauty. Would of made a great pictorialist.
I think you need a really good eye for capturing beauty, there's is beauty everywhere, not sure if its possible to teach someone this, much easier to discuss technique and important stuff like which developer he used.....

To disclose I know nothing about Weston, just going by what his pictures look like to me.

awty · Jun 3, 2020

He's not taking pictures of capsicans, bogs or lights, hes making pictures of beautiful forms. Look for beauty and then make a picture so that beauty is recognized by other people and function is irrelevant.

Mainecoonmaniac · Jun 3, 2020

I think it's important that you shoot with your voice. Find what you're passionate about and photograph it with your view. We all have our mental blocks. This and other sources of inspiration might unblock your creative pores.
https://www.lynda.com/course-tutorials/Creativity-All/774900-2.html

glbeas · Jun 3, 2020

Its not about seeing the objects, pepper toilets or trees. Its about seeing the light and its interactions, the simple objects are just a canvas for the work.

Kino · Jun 3, 2020

glbeas said:
Its not about seeing the objects, pepper toilets or trees. Its about seeing the light and its interactions, the simple objects are just a canvas for the work.

I think that's true of me; I despair over long periods of time of ever finding anything "worth" photographing and then one day, the light strikes something just right and I remember why I take photographs.

I have to keep reminding myself that light is plastic and that I can play with it, reflect it, shatter it, bounce it and block it to change my subject or simply seek out a natural manifestation of how light defines the subject.

Light, it's all about light for me...

awty · Jun 3, 2020

Light is just a tool, like lenses and film and exposures and developers. You need to be able to work theses tools to get the picture. Unless your relying on the sun then you manipulate the light to get what you are trying to do, if you rely on sunlight or other lighting you cant manipulate then so you need to manipulate yourself to get it to work.

Ariston · Jun 3, 2020

ChristopherCoy said:
Ok so on pg 17, when asked "from what motive did you photograph that toilet?", he responded, "it was a direct response to form."

So now I'm wondering what is it about form that he found interesting. And how, when looking at a negative or print, did he SEE form... instead of just a toilet.

I'm with you. It's all drab. A toilet's form is based almost completely on practicality. It has form, but it is not interesting to me, and it is not meant to be interesting. It's a toilet.

Others may like it, which doesn't bother me. Art is entirely subjective.

Photography can often be expressive, but we really are just taking photos of something someone else made. I can take a photo of a sculpture, but there is a vast chasm between the talent of a photographer and the talent of the sculptor. His is the art. Mine is the reproduction, or "interpretation" (whatever that means) of his art.

awty · Jun 3, 2020

Obviously Weston is far better than I and tends to focus more on the form, but the objective is to look and see something beautiful and make others see the same.
Good lighting is always important, but it just something you need to work with.
Heres my picture of plumbing.

one of a chair.

and one of form, used a blue filter here, wonder if western used a blue filter with some of his pictures.

ChristopherCoy · Jun 3, 2020

awty said:
Obviously Weston is far better than I and tends to focus more on the form, but the objective is to look and see something beautiful and make others see the same.
Good lighting is always important, but it just something you need to work with.
Heres my picture of plumbing.

I love all of those. All three of those would be something I would hang on my own walls.

MattKing · Jun 3, 2020

What you need to do Chris is to walk around your world and keep glancing at things with the corner of your eyes.
When something captures your interest in those glances, turn, look at it carefully and then take one or more photographs of it.
Then work those photographs - try to represent in a print that which grabbed your glance.
Don't worry if you have failures, or even partial successes.
It is the glances that matter.

reddesert · Jun 3, 2020

I took the OP's thoughts as not primarily "why would Weston find a pepper or a toilet interesting?" but "how did Weston envision that a pepper or a toilet could become a subject of his interest?" That is, a question of developing vision, not of aesthetic preferences. How do you see that something would be worth photographing, especially if it's not obviously dramatic?

That's a hard question, to know how to develop vision; if there were easy answers we'd all be good at it. Clearly, one aspect is practice. No one was born making interesting photos or art. If you look at an extended biography of virtually any artist they either served an apprenticeship, started by making a lot of immature works before developing a mature aesthetic, or both. So one aspect is to try things, and see what begins to work and what doesn't. But you can't force it if you find a subject completely unmoving.

Another possibility is to do exercises. Artists who draw or paint typically do many studies and exercises to develop technique, but they're also learning expression.

I have a good friend from childhood who has some personality similarities and a very similar job, although lives in a very different city, different family situation, different routine. Her Instagram feed (mostly phone photos) is always interesting - and it''s completely different from the photos I take. Hers are mostly minimalist city near-abstractions, seen on a walk, like a doorway, or side of a building, or something on the sidewalk, that are strong because so much is left out. Vs. an issue with my photos, I believe, is that I try to cram too much into the frame. When I look at her photos, I think, "How did she see that?" Probably tens to hundreds of people walked by that view or object on the same day, but I bet only one person saw the photograph.

Vaughn · Jun 3, 2020

Weston destroyed the first 5 or 6 years of his day books. Imagine the soul-searching in those! One cannot expect to see with the same intensity unless one has also put in the time intensely seeing. Like getting old, it is not for the young...they just don't have the experience yet.

Light defines form, so as mentioned by others, seeing the world as light rather than as populated by objects is one way of approaching photography. Thinking of EW and of seeing the world as form (the interaction of object and light), rather than just light. Just thinking of that at the age of 66. Curious...

Anyway -- a photo of my bathroom/darkroom wall. On the left, No Excuse, Costa Rica and on the right Co-ed Bathroom, Marin Headlands, CA. Both 16x20 prints from 4x5 (150mm lens)...my only prints of them from 25+ years ago.

Why did I take a photo of my motel room bathroom in Costa Rica in the early 90's purposefully copying EW to the disgust of my wife? Sorry, I have no excuse. But the motel was at the end of the highway and the entrance to a national park, on the beach, body-surfing waves, and at Christmas time (and $5/night) so maybe I did not need one. The other photo -- who could resist!!

Pieter12 · Jun 3, 2020

You see the photo. How the light hits the object, you pick the angle, the composition. Urinal, sinks maybe?

awty · Jun 4, 2020

ChristopherCoy said:
I love all of those. All three of those would be something I would hang on my own walls.

Oddly enough they are hung on the toilet wall.
I dont know whether I was influenced by Weston's toilet picture "golden circle mine", he obviously did a better job, I dont think I got the framing right, but I think I got the essence of what he was trying to achieve with this shot. Of cause he's a master and Im still a novice.

Edward Weston's 'Golden Circle Mine, Death Valley', 1938

Most shots I do are really bad, best ones are where I see something obvious to me and I work on that. I guess with time you get better at finding the good pictures, but even after three years they are few and far between.

ChristopherCoy · Jun 4, 2020

Vaughn said:
Anyway -- a photo of my bathroom/darkroom wall. On the left, No Excuse, Costa Rica and on the right Co-ed Bathroom, Marin Headlands, CA. Both 16x20 prints from 4x5 (150mm lens)...my only prints of them from 25+ years ago.

Why did I take a photo of my motel room bathroom in Costa Rica in the early 90's purposefully copying EW to the disgust of my wife? Sorry, I have no excuse. But the motel was at the end of the highway and the entrance to a national park, on the beach, body-surfing waves, and at Christmas time (and $5/night) so maybe I did not need one. The other photo -- who could resist!!

The single toilet doesn’t resonate with me, but the urinals sure do. The patterns, the tones from light to shadows, the religion of the shape. They almost look like half heads, like you were giving us a look into the brains of people.

ChristopherCoy · Jun 4, 2020

reddesert said:
.

Another possibility is to do exercises. Artists who draw or paint typically do many studies and exercises to develop technique, but they're also learning expression..

Gees...in reading that, all I can hear is Ms. Liebert, one of my high school art teachers, telling me that the sculpture I was working on was “flat”. It did not bring my eye to all areas, or make me want to turn it around. Or Ms. Courville, my other high school art teacher getting frustrated with me because I would stop just shy of shading that effing circle to make it appear spherical.

ALL of those initial lessons in art class some 26 years ago just came flooding back into my mind. Now I understand what they were trying to teach me.

Jim Jones · Jun 4, 2020

Christopher, try putting a close-up lens on your camera lens so it won't focus on distant objects. This restricts you to close-ups, which may be an entirely new world for you to explore.

Vaughn · Jun 4, 2020

ChristopherCoy said:
The single toilet doesn’t resonate with me, but the urinals sure do. The patterns, the tones from light to shadows, the religion of the shape. They almost look like half heads, like you were giving us a look into the brains of people.

Besides my bathroom, this is the first appearance of the single toilet since its creation...I like laughing at my own joke...and I wasn't even a dad yet!. The other has that tasty window light -- I have thought the composition a little tight (a 135mm would have been nice to have instead of just the 150mm I had), but I enjoyed making the image and print.

John Koehrer · Jun 4, 2020

Most everybody's got a toilet pic at least in a box somewhere. There's one stuck in with others in a closet arpund here.
Old fashioned urinal about 4.5ft high seen from a hallway in an older building.
Any way, You're likely overthinking what you think you want. Weston saw form and if you let go the critical thinking of what
something is and consider how many of his photos actually resemble each other just in flowing lines/shapes.
Look at the nudes, peppers, dunes and you can see the flow.

There're all sorts of shapes & shadows, contrast between old & new clean & dirty. wander around, take a bunch
make contacts & be surprised.
I think it was Dada that practiced form follows function. a Picture of a bedpan from the side goes back to Westons toilet.
Check some surreal pics, maybe they'll grow on you. Think fungus!

Pieter12 · Jun 4, 2020

John Koehrer said:
Most everybody's got a toilet pic at least in a box somewhere. There's one stuck in with others in a closet arpund here.
Old fashioned urinal about 4.5ft high seen from a hallway in an older building.
Any way, You're likely overthinking what you think you want. Weston saw form and if you let go the critical thinking of what
something is and consider how many of his photos actually resemble each other just in flowing lines/shapes.
Look at the nudes, peppers, dunes and you can see the flow.

There're all sorts of shapes & shadows, contrast between old & new clean & dirty. wander around, take a bunch
make contacts & be surprised.
I think it was Dada that practiced form follows function. a Picture of a bedpan from the side goes back to Westons toilet.
Check some surreal pics, maybe they'll grow on you. Think fungus!

Ahh, I forgot about that one.

MattKing · Jun 5, 2020

I was walking by a construction site today. They are building a multi-story office building, and they had one of those huge, multi-story construction cranes on the top. At the exact moment I was there, they were using it to lower a portable construction toilet from the top of the building, with the door swinging wide as it came down, the interior revealed for all to see.
I thought of this thread!
My cel phone (flip phone) camera isn't worth using, otherwise I would have grabbed a shot and shared it.

ChristopherCoy · Jun 5, 2020

I put the 105mm Macro on my F100 this morning and walked around the family farm, since we're spending the weekend here enjoying the quiet. Turns out the farm can be a great place for textures, patterns, and "form". I use the word "form" loosely because I'm not sure if that's what I'm photographing or not. And old iron tractor wheel supplied a zig-zag shape, with the shadow cast onto the corrugated tin barn. The plow supplied repeating patters of spiral springs lit from light to dark by the sunrise. And the backhoe bucket was covered in dew and reflected the sky on the curved side. It sort of made a vertical swoosh shape that was fat at the top and got slender as it just barely touched the ground. Oh and two bald cypress seeds still hanging on the tree, and illuminated by the light reflecting off the fish pond looked a lot like male anatomy. It'll be interesting to see what these negatives develop into.

jtk · Jun 9, 2020

ChristopherCoy said:
Fair warning, same subject, different day.

Weston photographed toilets, peppers, and a desk lamp, and found joy in it. But I wonder how?

I tell myself nearly daily, "just shoot. Just trip the shutter, on something, anything, but just shoot." And I can't bring myself to do it. I mean, how many photos of a palm leaf, boat dock, or fire hydrant does one need? Why clutter up my negative files, or waste a frame with a photo that will never be printed because I have no interest in printing it?

I pass the same three blocks twice a day on my way to work, and on my way back home, and that's about it. Living half of a mile from work has it's advantages, but it's also got its disadvantages. I absolutely do not want to do portraiture, whether in street form, or studio, but the sad fact is that I rarely find things in nature that are interesting. Again, how many photos of a palm leaf can you make before it becomes monotonous?

So what is it that made Weston look at his toilet and want to get out his camera? Because I'm either not seeing something, or I haven't found something other than people to interest me. And better yet, what is it that people saw in the photograph of a toilet that made this piece of work one of the better known pieces?

Am I just lacking photographic passion, or am I not looking for subject matter in the correct manner?

Back to reading.... Volume II, pg 13.

I don't think Weston was "looking for subject matter. "

The fact that we can name the subjects of his photos has little to do with what the man was doing.

I think he was exploring a way of making images...was motivated by light and with struggles to master the technology as well as (only incidentally IMO) how to cover his living expenses. He was driven by his art, which wasn't just a matter of "photography." The people he hung with were poets, dancers, revolutionaries, lovers, and patrons. He didn't waste time with people who weren't.

The first photo book I ever purchased was his second daybook. EW was the second significant photographer (other than my mother) whose work I took seriously. When I saw Weston's original prints I bought the book and wanted to live that life...which I pretty much have done for the following fifty years.

My only photo teacher was Conrad Forbes, one of Minor White's direct students. Conrad's teaching walked us through various assignments, which were to be printed same day (late into the night). The next day we's share our prints and simply share personal responses (not judgments). After a week we mostly realized that we could make evocative photographs without being concerned with subjects. Most of us started out with relatively good B&W darkroom skills (that was and remains of course easy).

Helge · Jun 15, 2020

A photographer is never more than all the other stuff around him, other than the photography.
You have to be not only a whole person as a photographer.
To be a great and interesting one, you have to have a rich inner life and furnishing, to chose interesting compositions and subjects.
Having and cultivating a general interest in images is one often taken vector. That is paintings, drawings, sculpture, the general history of art etc.
Of course there are many roads to the top of the mountain, but over them all shines the same moon.
Watch this short film on EW if you haven't:

Daniela · Jun 15, 2020

ChristopherCoy said:
Fair warning, same subject, different day.

Weston photographed toilets, peppers, and a desk lamp, and found joy in it. But I wonder how?

I tell myself nearly daily, "just shoot. Just trip the shutter, on something, anything, but just shoot." And I can't bring myself to do it. I mean, how many photos of a palm leaf, boat dock, or fire hydrant does one need? Why clutter up my negative files, or waste a frame with a photo that will never be printed because I have no interest in printing it?

I pass the same three blocks twice a day on my way to work, and on my way back home, and that's about it. Living half of a mile from work has it's advantages, but it's also got its disadvantages. I absolutely do not want to do portraiture, whether in street form, or studio, but the sad fact is that I rarely find things in nature that are interesting. Again, how many photos of a palm leaf can you make before it becomes monotonous?

So what is it that made Weston look at his toilet and want to get out his camera? Because I'm either not seeing something, or I haven't found something other than people to interest me. And better yet, what is it that people saw in the photograph of a toilet that made this piece of work one of the better known pieces?

Am I just lacking photographic passion, or am I not looking for subject matter in the correct manner?

Great topic, OP. I can't imagine any photographer who hasn't at some point dealt with this frustration. I think only Weston could answer some of your questions, but as for what's stalling your shooting practice, you could go about exploring this in two ways: a reflection exercise and/or an active/experimental exercise.
-The reflection exercise ("think first, do later") would include exploring basic questions, such as:
Why do you photograph?
Why did you start taking pictures in the first place?
Of all the pictures you have taken, which three are your favorite ones? Why? What did those capture that makes you feel satisfied/happy with them?
And finally, how can all of those thoughts inform what you're going to shoot next?
I think that if you have a clear idea of what makes photography important/pleasurable to you, you may find the answers you are looking for.
-The active/experimental exercise would be a "do first, think later" approach. Here, you just find something experimental to do, like a new technique you want to try or trying to reproduce a photograph you love, etc. This process can also give you insight and maybe even serve to spark new ideas about where to go next.
Hope this helps! This is how I try to manage my own process.

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