The loss of momentum

Momentum has a huge part to play in our development as photographers. Pausing when you are in the middle of a creative flow can derail you and set you back.

I was made acutely aware of this yesterday when I attempted to ‘resume’ editing some work I had begun editing two years ago.

Let me explain. Two years ago edited I the set of images you see below. They were shot in Lençois Maranhenses national park in Brazil around May 2019. I felt the edits below were, and still are pretty good. Over the past two years I have always considered I got the edits about right for this collection. So I wondered this past week whether there were more unedited images in my films that I could add to this collection, if I resumed work on them.

I didn’t find much. Just one image (see above). And even then, it wasn’t so obvious. This process made me aware of several things:

1) When we are editing, we are often in a particular ‘creative flow’. Edit the images a week or two later and they will be different yet again, because the results have as much to do with how we are feeling and what we are ‘into’ during the the moment of creation.

In other words: editing is a performance.

It is one of the main reasons why I like to set a block of time aside to edit work in the same ‘session’. My head is going to be in the same place as I edit a collection of work, and I often find myself reliving the experience of the shoot.

So again: editing is a performance. Each performer / actor or musician knows that each time they play or act the same songs / scenes, they do them differently. And depending on their biorhythms, things vary.

2) I’d lost momentum. The ‘roll’ I was on when I created the nine or so images above had passed. Trying to get back ‘into that frame of mind’ was going to be hard. Almost impossible.

It took me a few false starts over a whole day before I was able to edit the top image to be anything close to an empathetic version of the original set. That is because it took me time to ‘adjust to the sensibilities of the original idea’, rather than it bend to suit me.

I have often thought of editing as a performance. Indeed, everything I do as a photographer has a ‘time’, is dependent on how I am that day. And trying to reproduce something later on to order seldom works.

Rather than think of this as a problem, I personally find it quite liberating. Because of the instability of how things might turn out, you have to learn to let go. You have to accept that some days are better than others, and this is quite a freeing idea. It removes the need for ‘perfection’. And allows room for give and take. For accepting things are they way they are, and is a strong reminder that creativity has an ebb just as much as it has a flow to it.

The presumption of acquiring photographic style

I often hear photographers say ‘I don’t know if I have a style’. For many years I wasn’t aware of even having one myself, and mostly I never thought about gaining one either.

Similarly to the photographer that only goes out to shoot once in a while, a weekend or two and a couple of weeks a year, aiming to be better just won’t happen. You don’t become a better photographer by not photographing, or only photographing a little a year. So stumbling on some nice shots once in a while is probably as best as you’re going to get. And if you keep applying the same level of practice to your photography, that is where your ability will stay.

However, you can also spend many hours, days, weeks, years working on your photography and never improve either. Because spending time alone on something does not make someone better at something. There has to be something else at play here in order to improve, and that thing is called ‘self-enquiry’.

Self-enquiry is the art of seeing and understanding what one is doing, and of learning from oneself. It only happens when we’re able to reflect and consider what we’re doing. Applying several thousand hours a year on your photography taking pictures without any aim to consider and reflect upon what you are doing will mean you learn very little, if anything at all.

Then there is the subject of what style actually is. I think there are two kinds of ‘style’:

1) a recognised format or look to your pictures that is accepted as a known ‘style’. It is something others do and if you do it too, you become part of that tribe of photographers. Your work looks like other people’s work but at least you have a style.

2) a unique style. That’s the thing we all wish to gain. To be able to look like no one else except ourselves. To find that when we create work, others recognise it as ours, without even having to ask. To do something that others do not do. To follow our own path.

Point one is much easier to do, while point two is almost impossible to achieve by hard work alone. I would say that point two is probably in the hands of the gods: the result of hard work and innate talent. Fortunate if you have that talent, but also fortunate in that you had the aptitude and mind-set to work hard at uncovering that unique style that you didn’t know you had. I believe there are loads of talented photographers out there that would have an emerging unique style, if only they put the effort in to uncovering it.

I have often believed that someone with half the talent but who worked twice as hard as someone who is twice as talented but does very little work, will be more successful. Talent is a magic ingredient we all want, but without the effort put it, talent will be squandered. Someone with less talent but the determination and drive will go much further.

When you meet someone who has a unique talent, and they are very very successful, you tend to find there is a very strong work ethic driving them forward. From my times with Michael Kenna, he very much fits into that category. An artist who defined a genre but also someone who is very dedicated and driven.

For most of us, just achieving point 1) above is the holy grail. Something that mere mortals can aspire to. Very little after all is original. Originality is the territory reserved for point 2) photographers.

So how do we find out if we have a style such as the one described in point 1? Do we just wake up one morning and realise we have a style? Or do we have to work through a set of problems in order to get there? Is it simply all about putting the hours in?

I don’t think so.

I think that you just have to keep making photos. But when you do create new work, consider if things are changing. Consider how much further you have changed from your work from a year ago. For me, changes aren’t obvious in weekly steps, but more in yearly steps. And when I zoom out to a decade the changes in my work become extremely obvious. Zoom in too much, and you won’t see the progress.

So just keep doing what you do, but develop a 3rd-person point of view about your work. Learn to be able to step outside what you do and look in as an observer would. Reflect about the work and try to leave your ego outside of the room. Try to learn from your own progress and study your work.

Studying one’s work is the only way I know of to recognise if a style is beginning to emerge.

We have no right to presume we will acquire a photographic style. That one day we will discover we have reached this magic target. We simply have no right to assume anything. We have to enquire, and we have to learn as much as we can about ourselves. The only way that will happen is by photographing often, and most importantly, through a lot of self-enquiry.

Uncovering the story in my work

Working on an image by image basis is what most of us do. Indeed, I think any other way is hardly ever considered. We tend to think of images as stories in their own right, and collections of our work tend to be location based : 20 images from Iceland, 34 images from China, etc, etc.

I’ve been more interested in the sum of the parts of a collection of work, than in individual images for a while now. I think I can find more about who I am as a photographer, when I put sets of images together.

I find several benefits of working on portfolios, or collections:

1. By placing the images side by side, I find that the edits of one image inform another.

2. Some images push others further on in their development. I realise that some images are under-produced and need further work to bring them up to the same level as others.

3. I see my style of photography become more evident through this process.

Point 3 is the most important for me.

Most workshop participants who are wondering if they have a style often say something along the lines of ‘I don’t know if I have a style’. I know I have a style in my work, because I have found portfolio development instrumental into forcing me to see where the relationships and themes are in what I do.

There is an underlying story to our work. It’s sitting there in plain sight of us, but it just needs us to look at our work in a different way. Rather than working on images on an image by image basis, I’d recommend trying to find collections that sit together well. They tend to inform me about where my recurring themes are, what I tend to do a lot of, and how I use tone and form. Portfolios are teachers. It just takes us a little effort to put together work in such a way where it flows. We can learn so much about who we are as creative artists, and where our strengths and weaknesses are.

Uncovering the story of my work has been hugely instrumental in pushing my own development forward. Few of us enquire, reflect upon our work in a collective way. We tend to look at images one at a time, and to me, this is like looking at single words at a time. By putting the work together we form paragraphs and by collecting portfolios we put chapters together. This form of assemblage, after some time, begins to write a story of who we are and what we’re trying to say with our photographs.

Nuggets

We’re only here for a short while. And we all want to spend our time wisely. So the question we should all ask ourselves is this:

Q. do we cover as many places as we can, or do we focus our efforts on a few places and try to get to know them as best as we can?

This essentially boils down to these two options:

1. Spread ourselves thinly and visit as many different locations as we can, and hope that the work we create during our brief time there will have depth to it.

2. Concentrate ourselves to a few locations and focus on trying to build up a portfolio of work over a number of years of these places. The sacrifice is that you see a lot less of the world than you would if you chose option 1.

If there is an answer to this, then it’s maybe a bit of both options above. And something else: your drive. Although we may try to be logical and objective about what we should do, the truth is, we should respond to where we want to go from an emotional level. If you feel a pull to go back to a certain place again and again, then you should entertain it. Don’t thrown out a location simply because you’ve been only once. Repeat visits will give depth to your work and help you gain an understanding of a place that isn’t possible in one visit.

It really depends what kind of photographer you are. If self-development isn’t that important to you and you just enjoy being there and visiting / touring the world, then I think repeat visits aren’t of much interest for you. But if you are, like me, someone who wants to try to create work that is beyond the obvious, that is less derivative, then you have to find a few places that you can concentrate on and use as ongoing-projects.

I have learned so much from repeating places. I have also seen these places define my style. That’s something that I think is often overlooked: the kinds of landscapes you choose to photograph contribute to your style. Similarly, if you are going to certain kinds of landscapes, you should, after a while, see relationships between them. Common themes or aspects to them that will help you find out who you are as a photographer.

I’m not so interested in capturing ‘nuggets’ of work. Having 2 nice photos from one place, and 30 average shots doesn’t work for me. I’ve learned that it’s very hard to create outstanding work of a landscape in one shoot, one visit. A ten day trip to a location out of an entire lifetime is but a fleeting view of a place. Not a problem if you just enjoyed your time there and didn’t have any aspirations to create great work, but if you do, then you have to make that location a feature of your photographic-life and keep returning. It’s the only way to delve deeper, and to build up a strong set of images. That’s what I do.