I just get a lot of satisfaction out of it. I am sure there is a metaphysical aspect to it, capturing light and all that, but I just like capturing those interesting little moments in time that I know will never be the same any time else.
Having a photography show has been a long time goal. COVID furnished the time, isolation and extra money to make the prints. But after recently returning to the part of the country in the U.S. where I grew up, that desire disappeared into thin air.
Just happy to be back where I belong and fit in? That's a guess though, it's hopeless trying to figure out where inspiration comes from, or why it leaves.
It got me wondering why others here make photographs?
Because I can't draw or paint.
I do for many of the same reasons already stated. I like the process (of film). I like to document things. And since I do draw and paint, I like to get images that I might use as reference for another piece of work.
I can get more philosophical and cerebral if I include my drawings and paintings and answer "Why do I make pictures in any medium?" It's because I have to. I have thoughts and images that rattle around in my mind, sometimes for years, and in order to deal with them I have to create the image. Sometimes it is done in photography, sometimes in drawing. As I have written elsewhere, on occasion I'll make the photograph and mess it for some time in the darkroom and never really get to the level of satisfaction I want. (Barthes "punctum.") I'll go out and reshoot it and go back into the darkroom, still not satisfied. It ends up getting filed in the "Unfinished Ideas" drawer. Many of these end up becoming drawings or paintings that I am quite satisfied with.
I read somewhere that the painter starts with a blank canvas and only adds the best that makes up the picture. A photographer has to start with a completed and complex canvas and subtract the things to make it better, often a much harder task.I find that if I try to reshoot or recreate a photo, it often lacks something. Probably the spontaneous, subconscious urge that drove me to take it in the first place. Unless, of course there is an obvious error or oversight when shooting or processing the original.
Everyone can draw and paint.
I read somewhere that the painter starts with a blank canvas and only adds the best that makes up the picture. A photographer has to start with a completed and complex canvas and subtract the things to make it better, often a much harder task.
I take photos because I am terrible at cave painting.
The security guards at Carlsbad Caverns told me so.
...well?
Everyone can draw and paint.
Amen!
Everyone can draw and paint, but we're brainwashed to think that we're not good enough and we don't have the right to make lines unless we're able to produce a masterpiece.! Grab a pencil and doodle, if it makes you happy. Grab a brush and use color, if you feel like it. If you have the desire to draw and paint, do it. That impulse is valid and meaningful.
In my most recent drawings I’ve been doing stippling with ink, building images a dot at a time. It’s sort of like how a screened half tone image is built. The one on my drawing table right now, that I’m almost done with, has, I am guessing, over a million dots on it so far and I’ve easily got over 60 hours into it.
Would love to see it when it's done.
I think it’s about done. Here it is with my 8x10 reference photo. I will now let it percolate for a few days and possibly tweak it a bit if I decide that it needs some.
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Sometimes I see something that rings a bell and sometimes I take the steps necessary for a photo. It's not a photo until I've printed it.
3) the other very valuable mode of presentation is to optically project it.
When I had some work critiqued by Michael Kenna, he asked, "Why do you photograph?" Without much thought I quickly said, "Because I have to." We left it at that. He did not seem to know how to answer that and I was in a bit of a shock from what I had said. It was a new interesting bit of truth.
Three decades or so later, the answer is the same, a little bit more understood, perhaps, a little more refined, perhaps, but still can be classified as one of those wonderful mysteries of life. But it involves a desire to see/understand more intently/intensly, a desire to share what I have learned/experienced, and some desire to educate, since I have been involved with photography mixed with education since I began to photograph in the late 70s. And of course there is the Ego. Wherever ego I go.
I do not know if I should admire or pity those who KNOW why they do things. Is it a gift or an illusion? Probably just the way they are and the more power to them. I like the exploration...finding the answers is secondary.
I do not know if I should admire or pity those who KNOW why they do things. Is it a gift or an illusion? Probably just the way they are and the more power to them. I like the exploration...finding the answers is secondary.
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