Ah, January!

First Snow, Chicago, 2012

By Ken Tanaka

Here we are in the traditional month for self-assessment and the concomitant vows for change and improvement. Photography is such a natural subject for this ritual. So I thought I'd devote my first monthly TOP column to a few self-assessment topics and some potentially inertia-disruptive ideas. If you're comfortable with your photography or simply have no interest in contemplating changing what you're doing then please just carry on, with my best regards, and look for my February column.

For everyone else, here are a few thoughts and suggestions that might prompt you to turn a new page with your camera this year. And, yes, each of these questions and subjects is drawn principally from my own ongoing self-audits and practices.

How do you feel?
This may seem an odd question but the answer is fundamental to realizing how you can best pursue photography. How is your health? How's your weight, your energy, your mobility, and most importantly your eyesight? Are you unrealistically pursuing a style of photography that's become too physically demanding for you? I don't mean just arduous treks with heavy kits but also long hours on your feet in a studio or darkroom.

More than ever, photography offers virtually everyone with eyesight the opportunity to participate. Indeed, today's small, light, powerful cameras enable you to achieve spectacular success even with rather restrictive physical limitations. You no longer have to carry heavy camera kits to get good technical-quality imagery. So if you've not already done so, now's a good time to evaluate if your equipment, subjects, and style are really good choices for your age and physical condition as well as for your goals.

Are you dead-ended?
Have you been hammering the same type of nail with the same type of hammer and producing the same results for years? Thwack, thwack, thwack. If that's what you enjoy, or it's what you have to do vocationally, more power to you. Otherwise, it's probably time to change your tune. Peter MacGill, of the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, knew Harry Callahan quite well and recalls him saying that when he hit a dead end he either changed the subject or changed the camera. Not a bad strategy.

Are you really paying attention to your own work?
Many golfers spend great amounts of time (and money) analyzing their swings in search of performance-sapping flaws. Digital photography and powerful image management tools such as Lightroom and Aperture enable you to do the same, and better, for your photography. Do you realize that you can easily run a query in Lightroom that asks a complex question such as, "How many 3-star (or higher) images did I take last year with my _______ camera and 24mm lens?" Try doing that with your slide and negative collection! More importantly, you can also very quickly assemble "collections" of your images based on such technical (EXIF) queries, on keyword searches, or just by simply placing images into a collection.

This type of facility is not only a tremendous image management system, it's also an incredibly powerful "golf swing" analyzer that was only a dream 10+ years ago. It can, for example, certainly help you determine if you've reached "dead ends." Are you using such a tool to its fullest advantage to study your own work? If you're only using Lightroom or Aperture as Raw converters and print-pushers you're badly short-changing yourself.

'Painting' your pictures
Photography, at least as practiced casually, is largely an exercise in exclusion. Your frame crops the world. Conversely, painting and drawing are all about inclusion and rendering. Figurative painters must decide not only what to include on the canvas but also how to organize and tonally "light" those elements. That level of visual sensitivity, once acquired, tends to really pay off in photography. It's long been my observation that nearly anyone with good training in painting and drawing will almost immediately surpass the camera work of even a relative photo veteran without such training. It just imparts a keener eye for organizing elements in space.

So if you've not had the benefit of any formal art instruction consider getting some. Don't be discouraged if you suck at drawing or painting. You probably will. If it was easy Pope Julius II would have hired a relative to paint the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. You're not trying to train your hands at this point but, rather, your eyes and brain. I can almost guarantee that $1 invested here will be vastly more beneficial than the same $1 spent on new gear.

What are you lookin' at?
Speaking of the broader art arena, do you spend all of your lookin’ time staring at photos? If so consider devoting more attention to other art media. You may not immediately see how studying, for example, Mannerist or Baroque paintings could improve your photography, but many can actually be very powerful lessons on gesture, proportion, disclosure, and spacial hierarchy, particularly if you mainly photograph people. Similarly if you want to photograph the wind you'll want to study Winslow Homer, who solved the visual problem of painting it. If you want to see the work of a real modern day (20th century) Renaissance artist you’ll want to spend time with Charles Sheeler. He’s among my favorite American modernists because he worked both on canvas/paper and on film, often solving complex visual problems on parallel media.

Get your camera money's worth
The dogma of using only camera-Raw image files was well-founded in the days when in-camera processing produced horror shows and anything shot higher than ISO 200 looked like pointillism.

But those days are gone. Many billions of yen have been invested over the past few camera generations to super-charge the image processors in even rather humble cameras. Indeed, a substantial slice of the R&D budgets for new cameras is earmarked for refining and improving the in-camera processors. And these investments have delivered some truly striking results with nearly sci-fi class image capture automation aids and processing sophistication. To completely ignore these facilities on today's cameras is to discard a big portion of their intrinsic value. Yes, there are times when a Raw file is a must-have. But the plain, blasphemous truth is that most of your images might be better, and more practically handled by your camera's own processor, at least as a starting point. It probably knows much more about what needs fixin' than you do. Wasn't it Ctein who recently remarked here that nobody cares how much time you spent on an image? He is right.

•     •     •

I hope that at least one of these ideas helps to nudge you toward at least a slightly richer photography experience in 2012.

Ken

Ken Tanaka's monthly column on TOP appears in the middle of each month.

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Further Resources
A little more information and inspiration for your cogitation:

Henry Wessel Interviews
Henry Wessel is among my favorite photographers. He's not quite as well known or as dealer-hyped as many of his contemporaries from the 1970s. But his eye is at least as keen as anyone's and he's quite a lively articulator of his work. I've never had the chance to meet him but I feel I know him through many brief interviews such as these 2007 clips produced for his SFMoMA retrospective. He's an inspirational "Frank Buck" with a camera.

KQED Spark Interview

SFMoMA Interview: Photography and the Mind

SFMoMA Interview: Photographing from the Road

Slinkachu
You want "different"? Here 'tis. Slinkachu is a British photographic artist whose specialty is creating and photographing miniature installation sets in cities throughout Europe. Very different, very clever stuff requiring both conceptual vision and good camera craftsmanship. 

Big Bad City (book)

The Economist: More Intelligent Life (2009 [?] interview)

Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard (Phillips Collection) I suggested trying to envision and construct your photographs in a more painterly process. This book, the catalog for a current exhibition, presents the parallel concept: late 19th century painters who embraced and integrated the new medium of photography into their work as painters. Fascinating stuff.

The exhibition opens at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., Feb 4–May 6, 2012.

Charles Sheeler: Across Media This is an excellent catalog from a seminal 2006/2007 exhibition of Sheeler’s work and a perfect single-resource to become familiar with Sheeler.

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by G. Con Gomez: "Great article. I just checked out Charles Sheeler and Winslow Homer and was again reminded how little I know about the world in general. So many intellects, so much art and knowledge, so much that can make my world better and I am saddened because I will never know it all. Maybe that's a good thing, though—I can always find something that will make my heart beat a little faster. Articles like yours apropos to passion, self discovery and knowledge will always be appreciated."

Featured Comment by Doug Reilly: "Ken, I really appreciate your paragraph on in-camera processing. That's one of the parameters I judge and choose cameras on. I want to be able to get a good JPEG out of the camera and if I can, well, that's less time I spend in post processing. Using cameras with good JPEG engines, I often cannot top them when trying to work from Raw. That might just mean I'm bad at post-processing. But I also don't enjoy that aspect of photography as much as the recording of the image, so the less time I spend doing that, the more time I have to shoot. And JPEG profiles are like film to me, each with their own character. Good ones (like the ones produced by the Epson R-D1 for example) are something to savor."

Comments

[Jamie Pillers]

Ken,
Thank you so much for the links to the Henry Wessel interviews. Henry's ideas about spontaneous response to the visual world as a rich source of great photography is such a breath of fresh air.

[Andrew Lamb]

Ken,

Thanks for the links to the Henry Wessel interviews. Thanks for the great article and, by the way, nice photo!

[Bill Poole]

A lot of thought-provoking material here. Thanks! It's interesting that you should cite Callahan as encouraging photographers to freshen their vision. I distinctly remember a quote in which he said that he had, in fact, explored the same ideas over and over again. And if you look at the work, this seems to be the case: urban landscapes and loving wife-scapes are what I recall. I love Callahan's work specially because of this quiet and repeated contemplation of the things that moved him. (This doesn't mean the other quote is wrong. We are all allowed to contradict ourselves.) Thanks again for the piece.

[Mike]

Ken

Thanks for a nice and intelligent 'start the year' piece of writing. I recognised the picture at the top as one of yours before seeing it was your column.

I'll look through all your links, but am very appreciative of the Henry Wessel interviews. I've enjoyed his work ever since you pointed him out to me elsewhere many moons ago.

Mike

[Bruce]

Articles like this are why "TOP" is a must-read every morning. Mike, Ken, Ctein, Kirk, et al , thank you for the very high standards you keep up.I write a monthly column for a gardening magazine, and often run into "writer's block " to find something completely fresh. "TOP" is always an inspiration. Ken's article is a breath of fresh air. - Mike- yours are ALWAYS a breath of fresh air- especially your "Off topic" rants- which occur at about the right rate for me!! Living in Australia means I can't contribute a lot by purchasing through your affiliates, -(I like to support local retailers who give good advice) but I'll look carefully at my out-goings each month and would like to increase my quarterly contributions to you, although writers and small photographers don't make a lot of money!! , and I've just found my ride-on mower needs major maintenance!! Kindest regards to you all. Bruce

[Ctein]

Dear Ken,

Wow. Can't wait to see how you meet the very high bar you set yourself with this column in future ones.

Mike should talk you into writing weekly (hey, easy for me to say-- I neither have to persuade nor do the work).

pax / Ctein

[Bruce]

P.S. I don't understand your football at all!!!! Australian Rules {AFL) has grown on me since moving to Central Victoria from New Zealand thirty years ago and abandoning support for Rugby, which now bears no resemblance to the game I used to play. Bruce

[Anthony Sawers]

Nice shot.

[Gregg]

Ken,

I seem to recall you mentioning an article in the works about using jpg's. I am new to digital (long time film waster_ and I am embracing this concept. However there seems to be very little written on the great interwebs, about making photos in camera... Can you lead us that are interested to anything?

[Jeff]

I also greatly admire artists who worked successfully in multiple media. Sheeler is at the top of the list, and a lot can also be learned from Ralston Crawford, Ben Shahn and even Brancusi, whose photographs (mainly of his own sculptures) are fantastic (not to mention rare and pricey).

I also highly recommend the book 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards, which offers a wealth of insights for drawing that are quite applicable to photography (new inexpensive paperback edition recently released). Folks who have used a large format cameras, for instance, will instantly recognize one of her useful drawing exercises that involves turning the subject upside down. I couldn't draw worth squat, but the book provided some incredibly valuable visual tools.

The Phillips Collection exhibit has been on my to-do list since it was announced last Spring. Coming up soon!

[John McMillin]

Regarding your first question, "how do you feel, " I'd have to say, "getting better, a month after the surgery." Though I'm "only 58," I was diagnosed last fall with basal joint arthritis, causing chronic pain in the right palm below my thumb.

I chose to fix my worn thumb-to-wrist with with surgery before things got any worse. From here on out, this joint should give me no problems...once I teach it how to move again. I chose to do this now while photo business is slow. It really makes me notice the total lack of left-handed cameras, or even something hand-neutral, like a Rolleiflex. Holding cameras and manipulating rear control dials is very thumb-intensive.

[Christopher Lane]

Hi Ken,

Admittedly I have not read the article. No mind, I love the image.

Chris

[Dan]

Studying other art forms is always a good idea, and something I don't do enough. It got me thinking about art-ed videos — something to watch while running photos through Lightroom or waiting for the film scanner. Any recommendations on quality art documentaries? I'd better see if Netflix has anything along these lines.

[charlie]

Well done Ken,

In fact I have just started to shoot JPEG again with a new puppy in the house. It makes my life easier and I am more impressed than I thought I might be going into it.

Also, 3 cheers for studying paintings and other medium!

Nice to have you writing here.

Charlie

[The Lazy Aussie]

To counter your first snow pic Ken, trying to get ID 11 down to 20c (68f) to develop a few rolls. The water is coming out of the tap at 30c (86f). The cold tap.

[Moose]

I agree that spending time with paintings, drawings, etc. can be quite helpful. I do so, both in reproduction and originals.

In Fall 2010, I found new insights into light and shadow in the drawings in Millet and Rural France, at the Boston MFA. Fortunately, photography was allowed, so I have images of those that most affected me available to refresh my memories. Quality compact cameras are a great way to save samples for oneself.

Still, sometimes a book of photographic images created with a different mindset or worldview, or simply a different mind thinking and writing about them, can shake things up.

Last year, The Practice of Contemplative Photography, by Andy Karr and Michael Wood was that changer for me. It was reviewed on TOP also by Ken Tanaka.

This year, it may be George Barr's Why Photographs Work. Although many reviewers compare it to Szarkowski's Looking At Pictures, and sometimes find it wanting in comparison, I've dipped into Looking At Pictures several times, without any felt-shift of something new inside. So Why Photographs Work is already more useful for me, only part way through. (Yes, I work these things slowly.)

Moose

[Rob Atkins]

Your Kerteszesque image is beautiful, Ken, and your words very inspiring for this bright new year.

I definitely WILL shoot more this year.

[Bryce Lee in Burlington, Ontario Canada]

"The dogma of using only camera-Raw image files was well-founded in the days when in-camera processing produced horror shows and anything shot higher than ISO 200 looked like pointillism.

To completely ignore these facilities on today's cameras is to
discard a big portion of their intrinsic value.

But the plain, blasphemous truth is that most of your
images might be better, and more practically handled
by your camera's own processor, at least as a starting point.
It probably knows much more about what needs fixing than you do. "

In short why the heck do any of us do all the stupidity involved with
converting a digital image from a RAW image to a finished product?

The once small point and shoot cameras now have as good results
if maybe better than all those expensive DSLR's in end results.

Suspect long term the purists shall continue to tout RAW
however for the most of us who use point and shoots and
yes still use (as in my case, slide), film.

JPEG's rule, and all of those small cameras
yes can utilize RAW, however bottom line, most of
what is seen in the popular press is a JPEG, not RAW!

[Chuck Kimmerle]

"But the plain, blasphemous truth is that most of your images might be better, and more practically handled by your camera's own processor, at least as a starting point. It probably knows much more about what needs fixin' than you do."

No, Ken, my camera does NOT know more about what need's "fixin" than I do. It's a mindless tool. The true fact is that shooting jpeg, a perfectly valid file format for many endeavors, can/will greatly limit post-processing potential, thus limit creativity.

[JH]

Nice piece, Ken.
Interesting coincidence that I emailed Mike some comments on the Photo LA show last Sunday night that are relevant to this. A conversation with a LA pro photographer (whom I did not know before we met over pizza at a restaurant's communal table after the show) found us in agreement that the show was mostly boring. Boring? Yes, we've seen the classics (e.g. Ansel Adams) so many times we want to see something new - like the half dozen Vivian Mayer photos on exhibit or the surrealist work from some Czech photographers from the 50s.
We both agreed that the Weegee "Naked Hollywood" exhibit at MOMA was much more interesting. And the recent small exhibit of the favorite photos from the LACMA Photo Board's member's private collections was exquisite.
But even more interesting are the vast number of exhibits of other art like "Pacific Standard TIme" running here in LA. We seen photos from the building of the atomic bomb, lots of wonderful sculpture and even 50s industrial design that are much more stimulating.
Our personal favorite is to go to art schools (one son went to CCS in Detroit and we have Art Center and Otis for example here in SoCal) where the work is fresh and untarnished. Second favorite is architectural tours here where we have the Eames, Lautner, FLWright, etc. structures - not to mention Julius Schulman's photos - to inspire us.
Or head for the Getty for sunset over the ocean. Bring camera!
So living here in SoCal, and on a farm most of the time, we're never bored. There's always something to see and photographs to take, adding to the hundreds of "Only In California" photos or just sitting on the patio shooting the hummingbirds.
And one project I've had for more than 4 decades is photo abstractions. I dump them into a folder and use them for the screen saver on my iMac, so sometimes when I've paused in my writing or are talking on the phone, I'll be entertained by some of the hundreds of photos I've taken.
Makes me feel great!
Inspired!

[Bob Travaglione]

This January Reassessment really touches me today as I simplify and clean up my photo life and business. The Ctein's quote included hits home so directly..... "Nobody Cares how much time you spend on an image!"
Means to me The Image Buyers quickly Look and Decide. Ctein's quote could also be translated into "Nobody Cares what Camera or Lens or Smart Phone you used to make an image!" Or "The Images stand on their own... once you release them out there to the Image Eaters!"

[Robert Roaldi]

The jpgs-are-ok comments are interesting. I found that after I read interweb threads on the topic, I actually feel a little guilty when I don't use RAW and the image turns out just fine. Like I cheated or something. We're so easily influenced.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Thanks everyone for the good comments. The community of mature, knowledgeable, and curious readers here represents the tremendous value of what Mike has grown here at TOP. That's why my main goal for this year's articles, as I proposed to Mike, is less to inform readers than to inspire and provoke rich commentary.

@ Bill Poole: Keen observation regarding Harry Callahan, Bill! Indeed Harry sopped every drop of juice from his visual ideas trying every trick, however gimmicky and camera-clubby, to reach his goals for his generally self-assigned projects. And that tended to be the spirit of the Institute of Design here in Chicago (the Chicago Bauhaus) where Harry taught. (You can get an idea of how many concepts Callahan explored by browsing the fairly extensive collection of his prints we have at the Art Institute of Chicago.) But exhaustively exploring possibilities requires consistent forward progress (either apparent or conceptual) which only you can determine for your work.

I could go on and on about the ID (which melted into becoming part of the Illinois Institute of Technology). So many of the folks who studied there in its brief golden age - Ray K. Metzker, Barbara Crane, Joe Sterling, et.al. .. went on to become some of the truest examples of photographic artists the world has known. But the topic is just too big for a comment. And it's already been covered nicely by an exhibit catalog still in print: Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971".

@ Mike Johnston: (from a message) You edited-out my claim in the "Painting Your Pictures" topic that "...that nearly all of the most admired photographers throughout the medium’s history started as artists or at least as art students.". I may have exaggerated the proportions, and of course "most admired" leaves some taxonomic wiggle room. But I do stand firmly by my claim; the best photography has come from those who studied and/or taught art. Yes, Harry Callahan started as an amateur in Detroit camera clubs. But he certainly lived his professional life in the art world as both a teacher and practitioner. Yes, Barbara Crane initially studied art history at NYU but she, too, spent her life as an artist and, in fact, received her MFA in photography from the Institute of Design.

(Side note: The real wonder of late-discovered amateurs such as Vivian Maier and Gary Stochl is that they were able to nurture and hone their natural talent in the absence of formal instruction and outside the invigorating and supportive spheres of the art world. For each Maier and Stochl there are countless millions of talented people who become discouraged or simply let other life rails lead them away.)

So thank you for erasing what was probably an exaggerative claim. But I really do want to make the apex point to help urge others to roll their sleeves a bit higher if they want to progress in photography.

@ gregg: Yes, I did suggest a piece on working with in-camera JPGs. Honstly, I was planning to just let it melt into a suggestive point in this article. But you, and several other readers (some privately), do seem interested in a more dedicated treatment to the topic. And how could I not at least acknowledge the formidable gauntlet tossed to the ground by Chuck Kimmerle! ;-) (Robert Roaldi, I hereby absolve you of your 8-bit sins.)

So, with Mike's permission I'll plan on putting a small piece together in the next week or so devoted to this topic. OK?

[Mike Johnston]

"So, with Mike's permission I'll plan on putting a small piece together in the next week or so devoted to this topic."

Ken,
Just a side note (for others to read as well, so they know): You don't need my permission. All the Columnists at TOP are entirely free to choose their own topics.

Ctein just published column #222, and I think there have been two that I might have quarreled with him about (his memory might peg that number slightly higher, I don't know [g]). But for the most part, he has wide discretion as to what to write about.

As do you, now.

Mike

[ctein]

Dear folks,

Futilely trying to keep the record straight--

I did not originate, "Nobody cares how hard you work." (or some such to that effect)

Bob Nadler deserves full faith and credit for it. I merely pass on the words of wisdom.

~~~~~~

Dear Mike,

Well, and there were the two you entirely rejected out of hand.

Not that an author would EVER dwell on such things, no never. [g]

pax / Ctein

[Mike Johnston]

"Well, and there were the two you entirely rejected out of hand."

Those were the two I was talking about. I just put it more delicately. [g]

Mike

[ctein]

Dear Mike,

Ahhh, a semantic subtlety; there had been others you'd quarreled with, it's just the good and righteousness (that'd be moi) prevailed.

pax / unassuming Ctein

[jean]

Hi Ken,

So glad to see you here at last on a regular basis! I have been eagerly awaiting your first piece and this was, in my experience, not the "high Bar" you set for yourself, but simply you and all that you offer all of us. Thank you so much!

Jean

[Tim]

On studying art: "It just imparts a keener eye for organizing elements in space."

I think you might be right. My sole memory of art was at school, being told that my drawing of a dog looked like a pregnant dinosaur.

However, a friend of mine came up with the advice, "look *at* the viewfinder, not through it" regarding composition - because the result will be 2D only. That's hard when you have a regular viewfinder and the distractions of real-world scenery in front of you; however, as I discovered the other month, if you set out to make a simple, minimal work based around a piece of paper, laying out objects on it makes the photographic composition so much easier, and yet more profound (rather like what you get in a fancy restaurant). This applies whether you're going for SOOC results or when combining multiple elements in PS. Quite recommended as an exercise.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

I am very glad you shared that anecdote, Tim. Treating the viewfinder (lcd) as a picture, rather than as a hole, is exactly the type of exercise I would have proposed if space permitted. Organizing flat shapes of various sizes within a rectangle is very much an early art school-type exercise (known as "figure/ground composition") that anyone can practice nearly anywhere and any time, with pieces of paper or pencil to paper. Rather like doing isometric exercises for muscle toning while seated.

[Fer]

A very inspiring article. For several months, I've been meaning to put into practice two of the suggestions made here, i.e. studying a couple of books about art, and trying to rely a bit more on my camera's (a K-5) jpegs. Now I feel that I've been given the definitive arguments to stop postponing this and get down to work. Thanks Ken.