Get the Heck Out!

The "Photography and Procrastination" post the other day was popular and got a lot of attention. I was elaborating on Jay Maisel's idea of "shoot it now."

But there's a parallel or complementary idea that goes along with this, and it's this: get out there, and good things will happen. When you get equipped for going out photographing, and go put yourself in one of the situations that tend to make you happy when you've got a camera in your hand, you'll get something.

Even if you don't know what it's going to be.

You don't necessarily need a plan. Your don't need an idea. Just get out.

There's an idea afoot recently that creativity benefits from being treated like work. I have a couple of quotes taped to my computer: "A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it," which is Dr. Johnson quoted by Boswell; and the characteristically more pithy "Do your work," which is a quote from David Vestal. Sometimes, just slogging along and grinding it out will lead to creativity and positive accomplishment. The only essay that I ever read that was worth a damn as guidance for writers is a thing called "The Getaway Car" in the book This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. In it, she points out that if you want to be a writer, the very first thing you need to be able to do, the essential requirement, is to sit down and write for an hour a day for thirty days straight. If you can't do that, you're not going to get there. No matter how much you study and prepare.

These things translate to: get going. Get out there even when you don't feel like it.

Do your work.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Ralph Gibson for Camera and Darkroom many years ago, in Manhattan. Ralph might need an introduction to younger photographers, but probably not to older ones. He's a fine (I mean outstanding) art photographer with a distinctive high-contrast B&W 35mm style ("I like a negative that fights back," he told me), so identified with Leica that Leica put out a special-edition camera as a tribute to him. In his darkroom he printed with an old Leitz enlarger that happened to be the very same enlarger on which Robert Frank, a mentor and friend of Ralph's, printed the original repro prints for the book The Americans.

Photographer unknown—self portrait, maybe?—Ralph Gibson
in his younger years

Later we went out, and I accompanied him to lunch. Ralph took along a Leica M6 that had a braided leather lanyard as a strap, and only a 90mm Elmarit. As we ate lunch—baskets of steamed vegetables at a café called the NoHo Star—can you tell this visit made an impression on me?—I asked Ralph what he was planning to shoot.

Alas, I cannot remember exact quotes; my mind doesn't work that way and I never trained it to, more's the pity. But he said something like, "I've been doing this long enough that I know that whenever I get out and start looking around, I'll get something. I don't know what, but I'll come back with some good pictures."

(Sorry to paraphrase. That was the gist.)

By the way, I made no impression on Ralph. The next time I ran into him, he didn't remember me.

Anyway, I used to say that photography was like jogging. There's no such thing as "quality time" with jogging. It's more like just...time. Get out and put in the miles and it'll give back. You'll get benefit back out of it. (The trouble with the analogy is that it provokes runners to start arguing the fine points of training, and believe me, it's better to not go there.)

Photographing is like that, though. Get out of the house with a camera. Be playful; be open-minded; look around; try stuff. You'll find something.

Always a caveat
I suppose I ought to add that you still have to be perceptive about what situations work for you. I like to photograph people and animals best—something happening—and I'm happiest doing portraits. I'm always aware that when I just go for a walk and photograph found scenes that it gives me a sort of nagging dissatisfaction. It's because I'm not shooting what I really want to shoot. I'm only shooting what's available to me. To me, lots of photographs of landscapes and streetscapes feel like settings—that is, they're like a stage with no actors on it. I yearn to see people there somehow. I have a friend who feels the opposite. He likes arrangements of objects and static scenes, and the presence of humans "ruins" pictures for him. I'll wait for a person to appear in a shot; he'll wait for the people to leave.

We're all different, and respond differently to different shooting opportunities. Nobody will tell you what you respond to and what makes you happy when you're photographing. You have to figure that out for yourself. Get out of the house, yes, but you do have to be smart, too, and put yourself in situations that are amenable to your vision. Target-rich environments, in the jargon of the Gulf War.

We can't always do that. But in general the rule holds—the more you get out there, the more likely you are to find good photographs. So get the heck out there!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Stan B.: "It really is like fishing, you go out where you hope they're biting with no guarantee whatsoever. And often, you just end up buying a burger on your way home (i.e., you sit yourself down and peruse someone else's work to fill the void of coming home empty-handed). Fate doesn't care how well prepared you are, how well studied, well equipped, or sincere you are—sometimes the moment comes on your way to get a coffee on the corner during break. Did you get it? Or did you think it would happen only when you deemed it to? Sometimes the stars align, everything checks and you get your prize; it's an intermittent gambler's high, the most addictive there is."

Ed Kirkpatrick: "I am like your friend; I wait for the scene to revert to its natural state with no human sign. I am uncomfortable photographing people for some reason. I would like to do it more but it just doesn't come naturally to me. Landscapes, those I see by the dozens every day. As I travel around the country in my RV I get a chance to shoot most days. I don't even think about it any more, it just happens. I have learned that the best shots happen when you left your camera home so I always have mine with me. It's true, get out and do it."

Mike replies: As a coda to today's post, today I walked my two miles along my lakefront road—it is a wild, blustery Fall day, with roiling clouds and gusting winds and kaleidoscopic shafts of sunlight. Of course I saw an absolutely wonderful picture...created just for a few minutes by the shifting light on the far side of the lake. Not only did I not have a camera with me, but I don't even own a lens of the right focal length (about 135mm-e, I would estimate) to have shot it. Serves me right for not taking my own advice? I stood there and stared for as long as it lasted.

Jim Richardson: "Certainly there is much virtue in trusting to serendipity, which is also a kind of deeper faith, that the world has wonders waiting for you if you just go looking for them. (And that you will never know they exist if you don't go.) But there is danger there, too, that you'll be contented to just take whatever comes along, either in the way of the subjects that present themselves or (more perilously) in your willingness to settle for your first impressions. Too many of the stories photographers tell me about their pictures are shaggy-dog tales of lucky moments with a camera or curious twists of photographic fate.

"In the end I find myself more drawn to photographers who treat their craft like a great string quartet treats a work by Mozart, going back to it over and over again until the first flush of virtuosity gives way (perhaps after many years) to deep insight. It is not a relaxing way to work; it is fraught with anxiety. I don't recommend it to anyone who want their photography to be relaxing. But if you seek the satisfaction of building a body of work over decades, then I think you have to consider it."

James Weekes: "A friend of mine, when he was young, was assigned jobs around the house by his father. One day he complained, as young boys do, about the onerous tasks and how hard they were. His father answered, 'Just do it until you get used to it.' That quote is up in my office and reminds me to go photograph."

Struan: "If I go for a walk with the main aim of taking photographs I usually end up reinforcing my worst bad habits. My photographs, especially those more creative, break-a-mental-block photographs, benefit more from an open, empirical bent and an emphasis on the walk itself rather than how it may or may not be a productive investment. Forcing myself to take photographs is the worst way I know of getting out of a photographic rut. Art galleries, books, conversation, or going for a walk without a camera are usually better ways of reminding myself why I take photographs and why it is worth persevering even when things don't look promising."

Mike replies: Point taken, but I'm not necessarily advocating just taking a walk. If you have a plan, you still have to work it ("plan your work and work your plan"). Whatever it is you do, whatever your plan is, you still have to get out there and get to it. Your suggestions are good too, but I believe if you're stuck, the best way to oil the gears and unstick the machinery is to go work. Whatever that means for each of us.

Stephen Scharf: "While I wholeheartedly agree with the 'Get the heck out' sensibility, I don't agree with not needing a plan. All my best work resulted when I got the heck with a plan."

Gary Nylander: "As a daily newspaper photographer, I am often tasked with finding a picture or two for the next day's paper, sometimes for the front page. I call them enterprise photos. I don't have a real plan, but I have found the best pictures come from walking around somewhere, street, park or whatever. With my personal work, sometimes I just get out of the house and get in may car and drive and go and photograph what I can see. Usually I have a place in mind which I often return to time after time, seeing it under different lighting and seasonal conditions."

Wesley Liebenberg-Walker: "I have been using (or trying to use) those words—'Get Out There'—as a sort of mantra lately. I apply them to the act of shooting something, but also to the act of being outside, in the real world, rather than inside, on the couch, in the virtual one. It works, mostly. Now if only I could get off the computer...."

Joe Holmes: "My favorite quote along these lines is from Chuck Close: 'Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.'

"The full context: 'I always thought that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. You sign onto a process and see where it takes you. You don't have to invent the wheel every day. Today you'll do what you did yesterday and tomorrow you'll do what you did today. Eventually you'll get somewhere. Every great idea I ever had grew out of work itself. If you’re going to wait a around for the clouds to open up and lightning to strike you in the brain you’re not going to make an awful lot of work.'"

Comments

[Mark Hobson]

to the picture maker with eyes wide open and an open mind, the entire world and everything in it is a target rich environment.

[KeithB]

On my door I have a quote I got from Walt Disney:
"Everybody needs deadlines."

(It was on a poster on a wall blocking the view of some construction at Disney World.)

[Bob Gary]

I'm an older art director/designer, and in the past have had to arrange costly set-ups with photographers, models, props, etc. Upon the day of the shoot with the clock ticking all the players would usually be plying their craft. Now, when I go out to shoot and haven't a particular plan, I sometimes imagine that everything I see happening is a gigantic rented movie set with hired extras, waiting for me to frame a pose or snap an environment. It's all there, waiting for me not to waste.

[John Camp]

I'm a writer and I talk to writing classes from time to time, and one thing I tell them is to "get out of the house and look at stuff and write it down while you're looking at it." I suggest a bar (if the people I'm talking to are old enough.) If you have even basic writing ability, and you sit in a bar and try to describe it as accurately as you can -- don't try to be arty, just accurate -- you will generally find that you've just produced an excellent piece of writing. Doing that will often spark off other ideas, and get you rolling along to something serious.

[Bill Tyler]

You don't even have to get out. You just need to photograph. Here's an assignment I've given myself from time to time. Grab a camera. Once it's in your hands, find a picture, but with this caveat. Your feet don't move. Stay put. There's a photo somewhere. Find it.

[Jim Meeks]

I met Ralph a number of years ago when he came to do an installation of his photos at the museum where I worked. I found that unless you were a young, attractive woman, he didn't have much time for you. So I soon discovered that I liked his work, but I didn't like the person. Still like his work.

[JG]

Familial circumstances have significantly crimped my photography over the past three years, but I persevere regardless. At least twice every week, my dog and I head out the front door late at night and then walk around my neighborhood for a few hours. I stop often to let her sniff and in turn, she waits patiently when I take a photo.

Most nights, she gets lucky -- there're lots of bunny tracks for her to sniff -- and I get skunked, but occasionally I come home with a few decent photos, and either way, we both get some much-needed exercise and time outdoors.

This routine works for us and I think I might well go crazy if I didn't have this time alone, temporarily free of my responsibilities and distractions.

[David Raboin]

I agree with this post 100%. Simply going out with a camera has been my guiding principle for several years now. I don't know if the practice has improved my photography, or if it's just a matter of improving odds, but I do have lots of new portfolio worthy photos that are a direct result of taking a camera everywhere.

This morning, I got woken up early in my hotel room to the sounds of cheering. I was jet lagged, two time zones away from home, but I dragged myself to the window and saw that a veterans day parade was setting up just below. I carried a cup of coffee in one hand and my camera in the other, and proceeded to do some street photography in the parade staging area. Within a few minutes I was loosened up and having fun. I might have even got a few keepers. There's one shot of kids with guns sitting in an army jeep and another of a fireman climbing a huge ladder to hang a flag that I'm hopeful for. Maybe I should quit typing and upload the pics from my SD card?

[Dave_lumb]

It is like fishing. You don't catch fish by sitting at home, and the more you fish, the more you catch. But...

Fishing isn't all luck. The right hour in the right place is better than all day in the wrong place.

Besides, you can make them bite.

The more you think, the more you catch.

[Dave Levingston]

I started out as a photographer...my first job was at a daily newspaper...but, thanks to the Peter Principle, I ended up more a writer and editor for much of my career. But I never stopped being a photographer.

For me, writing and editing is work. It's a job that I can do moderately well. On the other hand, photography is play. When I'm photographing I don't get tired. I forget to eat. I'm totally immersed in it because I'm having fun. It never feels like work. I suppose if it ever does, I'll be done.

[Ben Rosengart]

You ate at NoHo Star? Funny. I've been there many times; it's just up the street from my mother's apartment.

[John Krill]

When you write a post like this one I almost always think I will have to leave a comment but then after reading the entire post I find myself unable to add to what you already said.

OK I will add one thing. I love just hitting the street or here in Laguna Beach it's the Boardwalk and shoot, and shoot. But the one thing I can't do is stand or sit in one location and let the photo come to me. I just get to antsy(?) and start walking. That being said some of my favorite photos came from sitting in one location waiting until the picture showed up.

[Thomas Rink]

From my own experience, I fully agree with this. It's basically the ability to marvel at the beauty of the world around us. Interestingly, this beauty becomes more and more obvious the more time one spends photographing; probably because the camera enforces attention to the surroundings, but also because photography establishes something like a feedback loop. The photograph shows to you in isolation what caused you to take the picture. So it helps you to find out what works for you and what doesn't.

[Omer]

Carrying a camera continually, if not always, has become a burden so I no longer take one often. Getting annoyed at having missed a photograph takes more energy than I have now, and frankly am content to be able to live with myself at not having taken an opportunity. But when I feel the pull of the shutter button then I make the effort, which has recently been more often than not. I think procrastination gets a bad rep.

[-et-]

This summer, for reasons that are not relevant to photography, I drove along the Oregon coast, which is one of my favorite locations for scenery even if it is 1000 miles from home.
I stopped several times at places where it looked like there was the potential for satisfying images, and pressed the shutter many times. At one of those locations I finished with the scene for which I had stopped, and turned to go back to my car. When I did, there was an ocean view in front of me that I had missed completely from the highway.
I am happy with almost all of the images for which I stopped the car, but the unanticipated shot is the only one that I have printed - and it is a 12x18 print for which the decision to print was made last week after living with the image for 11 weeks.
- Tom -

[Roger Bradbury]

Here is another quote for you: "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair" (American writer Mary Heaton Vorse)

Here in England, where pants means 'underpants', this has a newer and fresher meaning when working from home on the computer. With nobody to see you, you can dress, or not, as you please.... : ]

[Jim]

I think this will take several posts- here's #1

When I was just starting photography while in college, my high school art teacher who remained my friend for life gave me an assignment with my new Leica M2 and Summilux 35 - go to a small area, no more than a city block or a 1 acre field in the country and shoot a roll of film on what you see. Then I brought them back to him to see. Several of those photos are still my favorites. I've repeated that assignment many times over the last 50 years.

#2

I have always owned a pocket. camera or one light weight enough to keep with me all the time. I used a Minox 35 for 20 years, later a credit card sized Casio digital which has been supplanted bu cell phone cameras - just got an iPhine 7- so I never am without a camera. IMHO the iPhone is the ideal 1C1L1Y camera. I never have an excuse for missing a photo.

#3

When we moved to California 14 years ago, I started documenting CA life for my friends back in Boston. Since all the snapshot apps were still in their infancy, I created my own page on my website I called "Only in California. I discovered that CA was heaven for street photography since everybody here is living in a movie in their imagination! I havent kept it up much lately but I still go to it and chuckle at the results - http://jimhayes.com/cahome/OnlyInCA.html

#4

Besides the Only In CA theme, I use my pocket camera to take abstracts - photos of patterns,shadows, designs, etc. - for example I have hundreds of photos of the floors of artist's studios taken during art walks - and the best goes into a file on my iMac that is used as a screensaver. Often when I am working in the office and on the phone, the screensaver distracts me from my conversation. Creating photos for that "slideshow" has become my favorite photography exercise!

enough!!!!

[Jeff]

I like to take walks to the lake/park that's near my house. It began as an exercise routine 9 years ago, but now I routinely take a camera and one lens (typically 35 or 50mm) with me, despite the fact that each time I start out I think that there couldn't possibly be anything new or interesting.

The thing is, there always is, and it's rarely something I anticipated. And because I've returned so often, there's a variety of subject matter: some landscape, some with people; some in sun, some in snow and ice; some documentary, some abstract; some distant, some close-up; and a mixture of color and black and white. Cropping allowed, Mike (don't need no stinkin' 135!).

While it wasn't my intent from the start, I know there's a book in there. The planning and editing process should be fun, but not so easy. I hope that I don't need to plan shots to fill in any gaps; that might ruin the fun.

In the meantime, I enjoy making prints and juxtaposing small series on the shelf in my work room.

[Chris Norris]

In 2014 I made my slow and contemplative dreams come true by selling my Leica M6 (and 35mm lens... sigh) and buying a 24mm tilt-shift lens for my Canon. The necessity of shooting with a tripod certainly slowed me down. I decided the best way to really learn to use the lens was to go out and shoot every dayand then process and print a photo every night for 100 days. It was a bit of a slog at times, but it netted me a lot of photographs that I still enjoy. Eventually I put together a small book and used those photographs to land a few gallery shows.

This year I decided I should do the 100 days exercise again. I wrapped it up a few weeks ago and just tonight went through all my picks from 2014 and 2016 (I shot about 1000 pictures each of the two times I did this) for another show application. It's pretty amazing how much more focused the subject matter is in the second set. Despite just being two years apart, the second set just strikes me as a much better set. I'm excited to try it again.

The older I get, the more I'm convinced that putting in the work is the only way to really get better at something. Inspiration, epiphanies, and sheer genius are great but it's usually the person who works the hardest that ends up being spectacular.

In unrelated news, Larry Clark was on Marc Maron's WTF podcast recently and spoke a little about an enlarger of Ralph Gibson's that he used, I think when printing Tulsa or Teenage Lust. He surmised that it was probably the same one that Gibson got from Robert Frank. Larry Clark is certainly a big figure in art and photography and obviously a friend of Gibson's, but boy was his interview hard for me to listen to. It wasn't so much a conversation as it was Larry running on and over Marc Maron for an hour or so.

[Peter]

Mike, Great job, wonderful thoughtful writing and a joy to read, that's what makes me keep coming back to TOP!

[Mark Kinsman]

Mike : "...Not only did I not have a camera with me, but I don't even own a lens of the right focal length (about 135mm-e, I would estimate) to have shot it. "

Good reason to get the xf55-200mm Fujifilm lens, it has IS, sharp and is reasonably priced. Michael Reichmann was impressed with it, used it during a Lightroom video tutorial. I use mine frequently while out and about. The IS is quite good too for controlling the yips.

[Dave Van de Mark]

There are two take aways in your article for me.

The first echoes what Ann Patchett said about digging in and writing everyday. My first years of photography were mostly activist environmental photography (Redwood National Park proposals were being attacked by logging, etc.). You had to be "there" when things happened and thus you had to be on your toes and time tables were not of your choosing and rarely relaxing. I self taught my way in those exciting years - photography, development & printing - the whole 9 yards!

The second echoes your paraphrased words of Ralph Gibson, "...whenever I get out and start looking around, I'll get something."
That approach represents my later - refined by experience - years of photography exactly. I do not carry a camera with me all the time, but whenever I get out...[now with my camera in hand]...I'm gonna get something! And, by golly, I mostly do bring home something that moves me.

[Ray]

My motto has always been: Will travel, have camera.

Today I had a great afternoon photographing dogs at an annual sheep dog trials in our township. I've been doing this for three years, always looking for a different angle.

It's always attended by the most friendly people that one could meet (as well as dogs) and it provides something unique that city dwellers probably wouldn't even know existed.

[Patrick Perez]

John Camp wrote about how he encourages writing students to go somewhere and write down what they see thusly: " I suggest a bar (if the people I'm talking to are old enough.) If you have even basic writing ability, and you sit in a bar and try to describe it as accurately as you can -- don't try to be arty, just accurate"

The late Steve Goodman used to do just that. One day, while taking a train trip, he wrote down the things he saw on the trip. A photo of the notebook page appears in the materials with his CD No Big Surprise. The train trip notes became the song City of New Orleans, and many of the descriptions became verbatim lines in the song.

So I guess in agreeing with John, I'm adding that it isn't necessarily an exercise with no direct application.

Patrick

[Rodger Kingston]

Out at lunch with friends a week or so ago, I took the photograph in the link below, "Table by the Window":

<https://rpkphoto.smugmug.com/Recent-Photographs/i-8wgNXKm.>

When I shared it with my lunch companions, one of them said that he used to give his students an assignment to take a photograph from right where they were at a given moment, without moving except to turn around in the same spot.

Beauty is always available to those with eyes to see it (and it helps to never go anywhere without a camera).

[Kenneth Wajda]

As Gary Nylander said, and called them Enterprise shots, at the newspaper I worked at, we called them Roamers. Because you had to roam around to get them. Often for a front page pictorial with weather info.

I think a camera case is in the way, as is a camera over your shoulder. Only a camera turned on and around your neck or in your hands is ready for photos. And when you are looking, you start to find.

I can't even walk with someone and try to shoot, because I miss stuff. I can't do both at the same time. There's a time for shooting and a time for photography.

I think of Garry Winogrand hitting the pavement daily. That's what it takes.

[Simon Grosset]

Joe McNally once said (from my memory - I've not searched for the source) "I've never seen a landscape that wouldn't be improved by someone in it."

[mike]

When I leave the house I make sure I have a few things, my wallet, my watch, my spectacles, my phone, my keys and my camera.

If you don't have a camera, you're not a photographer.

A phone is not a camera.

[Bob Casner]

I always remember a great quote from artist Chuck Close when I saw him interviewed by Charlie Rose, which, it turns out, he's said many times over the years - "Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work."
Ralph Gibson is now shooting with a Leica Monochrom and making inkjet prints - I saw an exhibition here in L.A. at the Leica Store/Gallery a while back, and the prints looked JUST LIKE his film and silver gelatin derived prints, which is to say wonderful!

[Dave Van de Mark]

Mike,
Your comment about your view of landscapes often "needing" people - and your friend (and Ed Kirkpatrick's featured comments too) feeling just the opposite - I am reminded of one of my most favorite scenes I took a few years ago. It was a late afternoon setting of a bay with trees and wild flowers in the foreground; but what made it sort of "romantic" and visually interesting, was a wooden bench situated amongst the flowers and facing the bay. No people were sitting on the bench and I would have pulled my hair out had they been there! Because all other features of the scene - the light, the flowers, the colors - were perfect and I preferred no bodies!

What is so ironic is the fact I didn't want people in the scene, even though an object made for people - the bench - made the photo immensely more interesting and pleasing. I walk past this point almost daily but it has never been as special as it was the day I "captured" it. Which does run contrary to my own MO of walking often without a camera. Thanks to featured Commenter Struan for help there!

[Manuel]

Do you want to know how the so-called Generation X got to know Ralph Gibson's work? His photograph of the ghostly hand reaching for a door handle featured on the inner sleeve of Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures' 1979 album. Legend has it that Steve Morris, the drummer, was so taken by it that he suggested Peter Saville, who penned most Joy Division and New Order sleeve designs, included it in the album's artwork.
Unfortunately, we all got in touch with this photo without knowing who its author was, as Ralph Gibson's name does not appear in the album's credits. Apparently, Gibson never bothered, though he could have (and, arguably, he should). Joy Division became so influential, and Ralph Gibson's picture matched the album's athmosphere so seamlessly, that it's plausible Ralph Gibson condoned the use of the photo in 'Unknown Pleasures' inner sleeve. I don't know, I'm just guessing. I'd ask him if I ever were to meet him - which would be the greatest honour of my photographic life. (I presume he never told you about any of his, did he?)

Here's the photo:
http://photonlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/photo-ralph-gibson-1970-somnambulist-hand-thru-door-1968.jpg

[Mark Jennings]

Good question, this one about application. For me, at one time or another, photography has been something like each of the many different personal expeiences described, and that includes approaches that seem mutually excusive or even contradictory.

The constant that ties them together in my own experience is that after all these years I''m still crazy about my subjects and working with them in the medium.

The late British art historian Kenneth Clark said " We tend to make art out of what we love, and we tend to love what is familiar." When it's going right I'm more familiar with, say, a wooded swamp than I am with the couch in front of the TV.

My subjects are a first love, so it's not hard to keep my nose in them. What I bring to the pursuit comes out over the long run.

[Mark Jennings]

There's a lot to be said for getting out there. I look around the room at C's paintings, and I'm reminded of one reason. Right now her figure works stands out in my eye: many of these are pictures of people seemingly caught unaware, in private moments of relaxation or reflection. Yet to see them is not so much to be caught up in an obvious sentiment as it is to be drawn into a reaction to an innocent and gentle side of the human spirit expressed by the haphazard collection of lines, planes, shapes, masses and movements that comprise the human body in unguarded moments. I look and I think to myself that yes, "That is us, and that is who we are."

That penetrating yet sympathetic view of the human form and it's expressions comes only with long faithful attention and deep love of subject.

Get out there.

[Rob L.]

This is great advice for getting better, and, well, for getting better. I need the work, no doubt, but this has not been a year of sunshine and joy for a lot of folks. Just finished printing for the first time in months, and have decided that my cub scouts are going to work on photography for a bit. Already feeling a little less heavy - amazing how a camera bag loaded for bear can lighten the load.

[San Warzoné]

I was fortunate enough to live in San Francisco during the summer of love in 1967, and returned there in the early seventies to discover bookstores with large "photo-art" sections. You'd see books by Les Krimms, Duane Michals, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, and Ralph Gibson. Lustrum Press was Ralph Gibson's publishing house and include his trilogy: The Somnambulist (1970), Déjà-vu (1973), and Days at Sea (1974). Back then I could see the groove and the eye of his work and the way he placed images on opposite pages or before and after each other to make the connections complete. Erotic and surreal were the look he created in rich black and white. Luckily I could afford to buy his books back then and still hold on to them. He has always been a teacher to admire and respect. The idea of having a camera in hand with our eyes open and head up...or down, constantly looking for those moments of a connection with the mind's eye is what keeps us creatively alive.

[Dave]

In Steven Pressfield's book "The War of Art" he talks about how you have to get up and do the work every day. Amazingly enough, the Muse shows up when you do too.

[David Lee]

Ralph Gibson's " Deux Ex Machina" was one of my permanent bed stand books back when I was living in Mexico. I got a second copy and it's one of my bed stand books here in the UAE. Perfect example that there are photographs everywhere, you just have to keep your eyes open. They will find you.