The Fog
Suffering from a little creative fog at the moment.
My volunteer work has shifted to more mundane projects to finalise the end of the financial year, something I accept. The paper is hammering me with the reality I do not find the work (it’s shape, not the subject matter) at all satisfying and there is nothing else happening on any other front.
The reality is, the paper does nothing for my soul. The images are generally staged, limited and no matter how many you shoot, nothing much is used. Beware striking gold, it will mostly be stowed in the vault and forgotten (or used in a blog post). To be fair, sport is an exception, but has its own issues with captioning*, so I hope my reduced hours, leaning heavily towards the action laden weekends, will suit better.
The odd happy snap resonates, like a lone tree on an open plane. Need a forest, a big one.
The only shining light is revisiting the work of the past, Japan in particular. I believe you are only as good as your next image, but my huge catalogue of the past needs to be given its due.
Having to face the reality that I will likely be happier doing something else for a living and taking photos for myself only, these mean much as they are closer to the norm. The creative freedom of shooting for yourself is actually not a luxury when dealing with artistic endeavours, it is a must.
If I was assigned the task of taking this image two things would happen. I would shift thinking, possibly blocking the natural flow of getting it taken naturally, but secondly, I would probably be confused on assigning, because from an editorial perspective, how would you describe it?
The reality is, artistic photographers work hard and often for little reward, because they do not work to a defined, limited formula. That is the point and the problem.
To be financially successful, without selling out what they believe, artistic photographers need to be ahead of the game. They need to establish themselves, often oblivious to other influences, continue to change and evolve and offer only their perspective on their terms, not adopt those of others.
They need to make an audience on their terms, not pander to one purely for commercial considerations or the desire to be accepted. You need to accept the artist, not the other way around.
When an image makes sense to you, you often have no time to decide if it will resonate with others.
I do not delude myself into thinking that I am an artist, preferring to think of myself as a craftsman in the true sense. I am taking something un-original and trying to do it as well as I can, as often as I can, in preference to doing it well enough to be just suitably functional.
I refuse to be limited to thinking like a tradesman, doing what is instructed without any of the freedom of thinking I need to do better.
Is that art or just an illusion of the process?
I guess it does not matter really, because it is what I do.
*If asked to come back with 200 useful files of a sports match, I would not be daunted. If that becomes 10 with accurate captions, my shooting changes. I shoot less because for every action shot, I need to take several for identification and if that is unlikely, I simply do not bother. An un-captioned image is a useless image to the paper and I accept that. I just do not like it. Never thought I would say that. This actually happenned on the weekend. I covered a football match with only 50 images (no bursts), plenty for a page of images, but ended up taking 350+ to get numbers as well. Football is the best of them because at this level, the players have numbers front and back, but add in a lack of numbers, team lists and even educated watchers and it becomes a guessing game.