I have lost my photo mojo.
I can talk for hours about probable causes, but I wont. I will just try to get to bottom of my feelings as quickly as possible.
1) Still photography has lost it’s audience.
Short attention spans, the need for immediate gratification and a whole generation of viewers who see little value in a still image, have created a picture eating monster with a bottomless digestive system. It is sad that the very best image you take over a long career will likely garner mere seconds of appreciation to most viewers. Truly powerful and relevant images and bodies of work are still capable of holding a viewers attention, but even their power is measured in days, not years.
Things change and I get that, which is the point of this post I guess, but some change dilutes the importance of important things. Gone are the days of the seminal book, published after years of work and bought/collected/handed around for years after. Book projects these days are an indulgence, and an expensive one at that. The TV and movie industry is going through the same thing at the moment. Huge sums of money, time and mountains of talent resulting in one or two days of binging from the viewer.
2) Video is dominating professional work.
This is something I have seen first hand. If you are intending to be a pro photographer these days, with very few exceptions, you had best get into video or lower your expectations of success. In a business driven by client expectations, video is now the norm. Not every client will use it, or even know what to do with it, but they will go with the hybrid guy over the purist. Why not have both options?
This domination will change the perspective of photographer and viewer. Ironically, I think many of the better videographers and photographers share much in common, but the media they use forces this perspective change. Without the ability to freeze an image, it’s timelessness and every day access wanes.
I have images on my wall that have been there for years and will probably be there for years more. As I pass them each day, they occasionally catch my eye and effect me in some way. The efforts of the greatest film makers are fleeting. My collection of movies is large, but each will be viewed maybe two to three time more before they are forgotten and each scene in it’s entirety only has the power of a single still image in my memory*.
3) It is easy to do, even if it is still as hard (or harder) to do better.
Modern cameras, digital format and mirrorless cameras are making photography as easy as it should be. It has been, and has hidden behind, a veil of technical secrecy for most of it’s life, but now the major challenge facing the budding photographer is not how to, but how to how to find out how to on ever more difficult cameras.
Teaching photography these days is a dual pronged dynamic of teaching photographic technique up from nothing while teaching the application of it by pairing down ever more complicated devices. No wonder phones are so popular.
More users, better cameras, more free time, access and inspiration equals a raising of the base, which rarely raises the peak. This puts more pressure on the elite end to show something that stands out from the crowd, which is good as long as it is appreciated. The industry plays on this need by offering more pixels, accuracy, speed and complication/options in the expectation that your fear of missing out, of being left behind as one of the pack, will stimulate a new purchase. It usually works.
4) Most of the big “firsts” have been done.
Many great photographers of the past had the advantage of technical mastery, less common opportunity and the chance to be first in their selected field. To be first to go somewhere, first to see something, first to master a technical hurdle, first to capture the unlikely was the basis of a good start. Little is left to be done and the kudos for achieving a new first is less satisfying. All the lost tribes, all of the natural events, all of the extreme places and events have been done, often multiple times and in innumerable ways.
In my relatively short photographic life, an image like this has gone from a feat of technical and situational success, to a simple hand held snap shot with minimal processing and even less meaning. The days of Michael Kenna being the one true master of the moody mono image are over.
It seems that to see something new and thought provoking, we need to look to ourselves and delve the shallower but all too abundant depths of social disturbance, decay and conflict. Once, to be a war photographer meant something. We felt one good image could make a difference. Now it is just more news on top of more news, with little reward for personal danger or effort.
*
So what is left (for me). The realisation that photography will now only ever be an exercise in self satisfaction has been sobering. It has always been this way, but now it will only ever be this way. Drowning in oceans of competition, my only refuge is the harbour of the self accepting hobbyist. My audience is family, friends and the odd blog visitor.
This is all fine, as it will likely make me a lot happier and frees me up to do only what I want and how I want it.
Travel well.
*I think that our memories of scenes in movies are generally taken in as single captures. If I think about an emotive scene from a favourite movie, I do not think of the perfection of each frame in the movement of the scene, but the “still frames” my mind has created along with the story line and possibly accompanying music. Many of my favourite images have the same effect, but my comprehension of them is deeper, because I can dwell. This has the added dimension of story creation from a static point. Rathe r than pushing aside multiple blades of grass to see one that best defines a scene in my imagination, a still image is a seed.