Photographer vs Photographs

People never look at them the same way we do. It is defying to accept others opinions about our work when we conjure our own impregnability to be either destructive or optimist. So, what do you feel when you look at your own photographs ?

danphoto_

That no matter what my models are doing or looks like. I just love them.
At the same time one remembers so much what happend that day and during the setting that others can not know and that pops up in my mind.

One thing that I have learned a lot is you should always look at the print you are looking as if it was the only photo in the world and never ever one it be possible to create a nother one. By doing so and really look at the photo for several minutes you will probably love every photo you have... (if you don't already do that).

/ Marcus

My perception of the images changes over time.

When shooting and in the very near term after the shot, the context of life that the photo was in, is so fresh that I many times ignore things or add things in my head.

One of my artistic hopes is to be able to reliably frame that context in each shot.

Yes ... you have made me realize something important. I have recently returned from a three month trip through western Canada photographing many of the places that were important to me as I grew up. Now that I am in the darkroom and trying to print these negs, I am frustrated and disappointed at the lack of frequency of "zingers". And yet, even the ones that I will never exhibit, the ones that I know no one else would appreciate, they have real importance and resonance for me. There had better be some validity to this thought. Otherwise I have just wasted an awful lot of time and energy !

I am too young to comment on this with a so depth reasoning as most of you, although I do know that each picture I take has a reason, even when unknown to myself at the moment. I have and still am training myself to be sensible about my feelings and click the button whenever I feel like I should, with no holdings or avoiding tendencies.
Picturing something usually condemn that moment to be kept for yourself alone. It's like stealing something from someone, or actually murdering a person before your eyes - You do not see his body falling nor will you see a blood festival coming out of him, but have you not robbed that privacy his soul had so far ? In my book, photographers are like medium-liaisons, they are between the good and the wrong, life and death. While I can actually be 'killing' one's soul whilst taking a picture I am certainly giving birth to a new one whenever a person change his life course or even his sensations as a reaction to his understanding about my photograph.
Bottom line of this messed up text would be, Yes I do like each and every picture I take. But I always have the feeling I could have done better. Am I the only one feeling like this ?


danphoto_

Timothy said:

Yes ... you have made me realize something important. I have recently returned from a three month trip ... photographing many of the places that were important to me as I grew up. ... trying to print these negs, I am frustrated and disappointed at the lack of frequency of "zingers".

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I've been "kind of" on this same trip for a couple of years now. As my father gets older I have started spending much more time around my childhood home, which is a small rural farm of about 50 acres about 150 miles from my home. One of the tasks I've set for myself is to "document" the farm. It really wasn't that hard for me to come up with a lot of quick images that my brother, who now lives a thousand miles away, related to quickly and positively. But I find that, without an emotional connection to the subject matter, it's hard to find those "zingers" which convey something to a larger audience outside the family.

I know it's probably there, and maybe it's my emotional connection to the subject that gets in the way of my objective assessments of how to shoot the scenes. But after several dozens rolls of trees, barns, and cow feeders I don't seem to have those prize winning "reach out and grab you shots" that I thought would be easier than it's been.

I don't know. Maybe it's just lack of talent on my part, or maybe my childhood really was as totally boring as the pictures seem, but I was a kid and saw the world bigger than it really was. But that's what I'm looking to create; images of those big old wonderful memories.

(Maybe if I buy a new camera the pictures will come in it. Or maybe a different film.)

MB

Maybe you need to stop for one second and differ your sensations from your perspective. I have photographed many things that would only make sense to me, and most of the times they came up as boring pictures which I could stare only once before feeling like a total crap of a photographer. Most of the times I would wish I never have took those pictures, but fact is that I actually did.
I stopped caring about it and started to ignore photography. This happened at the same time I actually started to read alot more about photography (i.e Susan Sontag on Photography, Jean Coudé, etc). Surprisingly things were different when I started photographing again. The way I looked at things, the understanding of a certain place, a certain person, expression. Everything was different from me and I was just starting anew in a whole different concept and standard definition of what would be an interesting subject/moment to photograph.

Since then I started to do better. I have a question though, do you have any unfinished business there ? Because sometimes having a bad relation with someone, parents, friends - It can get in the way.

danphoto_ said:

Maybe you need to stop for one second and differ your sensations from your perspective.

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I found "The Tao of Photography: Seeing Beyond Seeing" by Philippe L. Gross and S.I. Shapiro quite helpful in a lot of respects. I am not "the photographer" (in here) documenting "the world" (out there) as much as I am an organ of the self reflecting universe contemplating itself.

(Yea, yea, I remember the '60s mystically contemplating our naval, but it wasn't necessarily wrong.)

danphoto_ said:

I have a question though, do you have any unfinished business there ? Because sometimes having a bad relation with someone, parents, friends - It can get in the way.

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Of course there is unfinished business. I really don't believe anyone gets as much gray hair as I have without unfinished business. But I don't think it's unfinished business as much as my struggle to see in the past. The Tao flows, but I want that place to stay. So am I fighting the flow? The others who don't connect with the images like my family are in the "now" flow.

In a lot of ways, it's isn't "a farm" because things were grown there. It is a farm because of the interaction of the people farming. Had my grandparents built a factory the same dirt molecules would have been a factory instead. In time, because family farming isn't really economically viable any more, it will become a suburban neighborhood. The play is not a play without the actors; the actors are not actors without a play. They are not separate. The farm requires farmers as much as the farmers require a farm.

So, are the images by the photographer also images of the photographer?

MB

They can be both, but mostly the image is from himself and lives for the living moment that has been captured on it. My theory says that the camera is the photographer, I'm just the button the does click-clack. Just a feature

danphoto_ said:

So, what do you feel when you look at your own photographs ?

danphoto_

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when i look at my own photographs i feel a few things.
if it is a portrait of a place or person, i remember all the things
important and unimportant that connect to the image.
the silent words race through my mind, like a burst of adrenaline.
the story behind the image becomes part of my history.

sometimes i look and i am in disbelief that i had anything to do with it.
i feel total disconnection from the image. it is a strange feeling.

Many times I have looked over the many photographs and slides I have taken over the years. Then it occurs to me that there are only a few that truly stands out of the thousands that are more meaning full or important. I believe photographers are always looking for the one prefect photograph in our lives, then again there are many who have more than just one.

danphoto_ said:

So, what do you feel when you look at your own photographs ?

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Only one of two possibilities for me---either satisfied or unsatisfied. I don't get "deep" with my own work. I like to contemplate the tones of the final work and think if I have met my visualization.