Photographer's block

Bruce Osgood · Feb 24, 2004

FrankB said:
I'm struggling with this a bit myself at the moment./quote]

I'm following in your footsteps, except I'm in a city. I remembered something Les McLean wrote earlier. To paraphrase: Load a roll of film, walk 25 paces and shoot what is there. Move another 25 and shoot again. Keep this up till you have shot the whole roll. Process and print as usual. Look at what you've got, consider how it might be "better". This brings about a discipline that a shot must be found at 25 paces, regardless of what's there.

Now, we have a dog that I walk a few times a day and one thing I've noticed here in Brooklyn is that the our manhole covers come from India, China and NY State. They are labeled "Made In China". Some are distinct in appearance and many others conform to a standard pattern. So my mini-project is going to be photographing as many different manhole covers as I can find.... probably be able to keep it to one roll of film.

PBrooks · Feb 25, 2004

Mark, I tried that aproach of walking around with out a camera and have kicked myself everytime. Four times in a row ran smack into Julia Stiles and no camera, Probably lucky for her I didn't have one, but come to think about it I had a hard time even saying hi when our eyes met.
I shoot everything LF but when confronted with a block of any kind grab the 35 and burn rolls then look at the contacts and find out what I'm framing. You frame things ssubconciouslyor maybe your head just gets out of the way!

Ed Sukach · Feb 25, 2004

PBrooks said:
... Four times in a row ran smack into Julia Stiles ...

My immediate response was to grab MY camera and head for my car. Julia Stiles --- I've been trying to figure out why she is so attractive and appealing.
What is that -- essence-- that makes her so...?

Anyway, as I sat behind the wheel ... anticipating a situation where Julia might be accessible for chance encounters .... I realized that I had no idea where you might be. In your profile, your location is given as "Parson, MFA". Where the heck is Parson, MFA?

PBrooks · Feb 25, 2004

Ed, I'm in Manhatten and live in the upper west side, she attends Columbia although I have seen her couple of times around 72nd and then farther north and then once on 13th. Oh, and it's Parsons School of Design, MFA program located on 13th and 5th Ave. I joined and read this forum to keep my sanity. It was getting to the point of fighting an uphill battle doing LF and developing in pyro by dip-n-dunk, and printing on WT fiber paper. Now its getting easier as I am now processing in a daylight tank and have many people stopping by to inquire just what pyro is or why they can't produce such depth digitally. I am originally from Rural Louisiana

PBrooks · Feb 25, 2004

Ed, sorry but I think it is her eye's!!!!

Ed Sukach · Feb 25, 2004

PBrooks said:
.. I joined and read this forum to keep my sanity....

You did? You DID!?!? That "Parsons" must be something, if this place looks "good" in comparison.

Then again, what more flattering compliment than, "I think you are whacko!" can be given to an artist?

Ed Sukach · Feb 28, 2004

Reading this in my favorite `bathroom book', "The Artist's Way - A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity", by Julia Cameron - Saint Julia, to me:

Perfectionism:

Tillie Olsen correctly calls it the "knife of the perfectionist attitude in art." You may call it something else. Getting it right, you may call it. or fixing it before I go any further. You may call it having standards. What you should be calling it is perfectionism.

Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with having standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to move ahead. It is a loop - an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole.
Instead of creating freely and allowing errors to reveal themselves as insights, we often get mired in getting the details right. We correct our originality into a uniformity that lacks passion and spontaneity. "Do not fear mistakes," Miles Davis told us. "There are none."

The perfectionist fixes one line of a poem over and over - until no lines are right. The perfectionist redraws the chin line of a portrait until the paper tears. The perfectionist wries so many versions of scene one that she never gets to the rest of the play. The perfectionist
writes, paints, creates with one eye on the audience. Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly grading the results.

The perfectionist has married the logic side of the brain. The critic reigns supreme in the perfectionist's creative household. A brilliant, descriptive prose passage is critiqued with a white-gloved approach.: "Mmm. What about this comma? Is this how you spell ..?"
For the perfectionist, there are no first drafts, rough sketches, warm-up exercises. Every draft is meant to be final, perfect, set in stone.

Midway through a project, the perfectionist decides to read it all over, outline it, see where it's going. And where is it going? Nowhere, very fast.

The perfectionist is never satisfied. The perfectionist never says, this is pretty good. I think I'll just keep going.
To the perfectionist there is always room for improvement. THe perfectionist calls this humility. In reality, it is egotism. It is pride that makes us want to write a perfect script, paint a perfect painting, perform a perfect audition monologue.
Perfection is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again
No, We should not.

A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places," said Paul Gardner. A book is never finished. But at some time you stop writing it and go on to the next thing. A film is never cut perfectly, but at a certain point, you let go and call it done. That is a normal part of creativity - letting go. We always do the best we can by the light we have to see by."

- "The Artist's Way". pages 119 - 120.

So buy the book already. My fingers are tired, and I'm wearing out my keyboard.

This should provide food for thought and discussion for a while.

Cheryl Jacobs · Feb 28, 2004

Hey, Ed, the next time you're going to type an entire post about me, you might let me know in advance!

FrankB · Feb 28, 2004

PBrooks - I think the French call it "joi de vivre" (which I've probably mispellled!). I've no idea what they call it in Manhatten!

Ed - Brilliantly stated, and I will be looking out for the book.

I'm doubly afflicted in this regard 'cos, as well as the natural perfectionist tendency, one of my work hats is ISO 9001 auditor! I do try hard not to nitpick on other people's stuff but look to see what works well-enough and which "improvements" really do add value to the process...

...but for my own stuff I really can quibble to Olympic standards!

Cheryl - ROTFL! I'm glad to know it's not just me!

blansky · Feb 28, 2004

In human beings, the imperfections are what makes them perfect.

Perfection is boring.

If life were perfect, it wouldn't be worth living.

Hey, I got a million of 'em...

MIchael MCBlane

Ed Sukach · Feb 28, 2004

blansky said:
In human beings, the imperfections are what makes them perfect. Perfection is boring. /quote]

To look at the end results of an unrelenting, unbalanced, obsessive quest for perfection one only needs to consider the plastic surgery of Michael Jackson - or Joan Rivers.

Yeeehh!!

And, for "imperfections", in that the classic facial proportions are out of whack... Sofia Loren, Julia Roberts (mouth about two sizes too large), and Marilyn Monroe.

bjorke · Feb 28, 2004

Defining "perfection" and comparing it to human "beauty" is simply to see only part of the general beauty equation. "Perfect" usually (for humans) leads to "average" -- the scientific term is "koinophilia" -- an attraction to the mean. This is a successful evolutionary tactic, since most members of a species tend to fit a particular ecological niche, the members that most hit the average tend to be those best-suited to exploit the ecological niche and thus are the most likely to be successful as mates (and as offspring, hence the predilection for koinophilia even when viewing small children -- they are most-likely to survive and continue the gene pool).

An aspect to koinophilia is preference for symettry. Symettric faces and bodies are more than just attractive -- they are actually more successful sexually.

For we jaded TV-watching modern humans, koinophila isn't enough -- it supplies us with average "correct" appearance, but at the expense of losing expressiveness, character, and clear identity. "Perfect" beauty seems to have been fading in the west since the Gibson Girl. Beauty in the modern media world seems to have gently split into two camps -- the camp of clear personality (particularly for, say, actresses) and the camp of neotenous hyper-sexuality (models who are only 16, 17, 18 -- and whose figures and facial features are proportioned like those of a 12 year old) (or Victoria's Secret models, whose bodies may look 21 but whose faces still look 12).

--

All that said, what does this have to do with Photographer's Block? "Perfectionism" as previsously described sounds like the opposite problem -- too much effort without output.

Ed Sukach · Feb 28, 2004

bjorke said:
Defining "perfection" and comparing it to human "beauty" is simply to see only part of the general beauty equation.
All that said, what does this have to do with Photographer's Block? "Perfectionism" as previsously described sounds like the opposite problem -- too much effort without output.

There is an "equation"???

That articular message in itself has nothing - or very little - to do with "Photographer's" or any other artistic block. It was merely a sleep-deprived observation - side observation - of the fallacy of trying to be "perfect" and a weak attempt to correlate some bizarre results.

The "key" in that original posting was that we tend to move in the wrong direction when we place all of our attention on the "ultimately perfect" work. When we offer critiques, I think it is a good idea to examine just what we are trying to do ... promote and MANDATE "Perfection" as described? - While at the same time having an undeniably negative effect on two of the most important attributes of that which we call `art' -? By trying to "correct our" - and others' "originality into a uniformity that lacks passion and spontaneity."

"But .. it's for their own good!" I disagree. The mere fact that someone works "harder" - endures more distress from beating themselves into the ground, trying to force themselves to perfection (a.k.a. "suffers") - is a far inferior approach to working more intelligently - or perhaps a better description would be working more harmoniously, more "in rhythm" with our inner visions and being.

OK - that was my opinion. Next?

FrankB · Feb 28, 2004

Ed Sukach said:
There is an "equation"???

Yup.

Beauty x Brains x Availability = a constant

Dammit.

Emile de Leon · Feb 28, 2004

Perfection is ok....but it is just the beginning......

Aggie · Feb 29, 2004

Beauty x Brains x Availability
___________________________ = diminishing
constant
Gravity x Time

modafoto · Aug 23, 2005

Les McLean said:
His thinking inspired me to think of the following assignment to photographers attending a workshop that I do called Seeing and Using Light. On the first day I give each student 1 roll of film and ask them to use only one fixed focal length lens, go for a walk and make a photograph every 25 steps. They can walk in any direction and they can photograph in any direction each time they stop. This assignment is always met with some scepticism but after it is completed the students generally tell me how it has helped them look and see photographs. You might like to try it.

I did something like this out of my own idea to strip down my equipment to focus more on the subject. I went out with a Tri-X loaded SLR and a 50 mm prime lens. Although I didn't force myself to shoot every xx feet I really used my imagination.

Photographer's block

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