An "Eye-Muscle" Photography Collection Game

Here's how to make a photography collection for zero money that will exercise your taste, your discrimination, and your eye.

The Objective: Collect a cogent and coherent set of 35 photographic images from anywhere on the Internet by making screen grabs. Because you will only look at them yourself on your own computer, and not republish, exhibit, sell, or claim credit for them, you don't need to worry about rights—you can use anything you find. This is just an exercise, and just for your own edification.

The Rules:

1. The only thing that is off-limits are pictures already recognized as artistic, valuable, well-known, or otherwise recognized or sanctioned by others as "good" in some way. It takes no stretching whatsoever to screen-grab a JPEG of Weston's Pepper and Adams's Moonrise and say you're building an imaginary collection. Rather, you have to find out-of-the-way photographs that embody your themes and recognize their unique value for yourself. You might give yourself extra points for pictures that are purely utilitarian, such as pictures harvested from Google Street View, pictures from ads or eBay auctions, real-estate photos, catalogue photos of objects, screen grabs from YouTube videos, stock photos (but be careful not to republish these), Facebook photos meant for friendly communication, etc. Even porn if that's the way you roll—no one will see this unless you show it to them individually on your own monitor, so harvest from whatever sources you decide to allow.
2. You must be able to articulate your "principles of collection" and all the photographs must adhere to it in some way. Pay special attention to how the photographs work together—the sequencing, and how each relates to the whole. Hint 1: be flexible about your principles of collection and don't be afraid to change horses in midstream—follow your interest and the "energy" of the project. If you lose impetus or enthusiasm or find yourself bogging down, chances are you haven't hit on the idea that's really right for you, that energize you and nourish your real interest. Hint 2: Follow a visual interest more than a conceptual one. Something that satisfies a gut response, that gives you a feeling of gratification or satisfaction when you look at it with your eyes.
3. You must "love" (for your own definition of love!) every one of the 35!

As far as corrections are concerned, suit yourself, but I'd say you can crop and color-correct your finds; but don't "transform" them (to use the term from copyright law).

As far as what 'Principles of Collection' might mean, this might be a very fecund topic of conversation in a few days' time, but look to history or what you know of history. Joel Meyerowitz did a project called "Redheads," Karl Blossfeldt made analytical closeups of plant parts, or just look at one of the very basic themes of one of our Baker's Dozen posts, for example, "Yellow." Your collection idea could be centered around a place, an emotion, a genre, a type of equipment or media, a mood, a type of photographer—only you know what kinds of image most satisfy you in your gut and would therefore be fun to gather and sequence. Peter, for another example, did a book called French Kiss, and most of the pictures in the book featured couples or people kissing. Andre Kertesz did a book on reading. Take Peter's "Venice" picture from this sale for another example: legs. There's a principle of collection, if it resonates for you. Can you find 35 pictures of legs that form a balanced, coherent collection? If Peter's "Venice" picture was the first one in your collection, does the first photograph in the "Yellow" portfolio I just linked to work for you, or is it too similar or too different in some way that creates dissonance?

Pictures with dogs in them. Redneck vehicles. Pictures that include spheres. Old press photos. Pictures that include ice. Musical instruments made of metal. Forgotten photographers (MoMA did a show of this title in 1951). Rediscovered photographers. Snapshots. Pictures taken in the 1910s. Asian people. Black-and-white pictures taken on or in an ocean. Really, any interest, any source of satisfaction for your eye, is fair game. The sky's the limit. Pictures of sky, for that matter.

Brief example, which I found very quickly on the Web. Imagine your idea is something very simple like "symmetry":

You'd have to ask yourself, does the picture fit with the others in your Symmetry collection? Does it work strengthen the other pictures or clash with them? Do the slight asymmetries in the picture create pleasing tension, or detract from its symmetry? Do you actually love this after looking at it for three days? Maybe it will fit less well as you add more pictures and go in a different direction, and you like it now but you'll have to discard it later. Maybe it will shift the direction of your collection slightly and render several other pictures superfluous. You never know. Gotta stay flexible, keep the collection dynamic.

It's a picture I found quickly on eBay, illustrating an auction for the antique angle brackets. I liked the distressed wood.

Tip: Pick a simple theme and do one of these quickly to start with—dash it off, so to speak. All the while pondering what really interests you, what really grabs you, before you start a more serious collection. Or maybe do another quick one. Or just wait until a picture you stumble across in your Web-travels grabs you so hard that you just feel compelled to make a capture of it so you can look at it again and you think, Aha! This is something I could collect! And build from there.

I think if you do this exercise a couple of times, you'll have a pretty fair idea of what the practice of collecting—the nuts and bolts of it—is really all about. It's a rich subfield within the broader medium we call "photography," and it's one of the ways you can get, and be, involved. (Consider all the people who collect cameras.)

And for this, you don't need money. Because you see, in collecting, really, money is optional. What's required is your seriousness about it, your focus, your insight. Your organization and discipline. And, of course, whether you're able to find, and mine, the fun in it!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Comments

[Sharon]

Cropping and color correcting are transforming.

[Dave Millier]

Sounds pretty much like putting together a Royal Photographic Society Distinction panel (except those have to be your own photos).

[Andrea B.]

This is also an excellent exercise for learning how to create a themed portfolio of one’s own photographs. This has never been easy for me. Takes practice.

[James Bullard]

I've been doing this for years, sort of. I say sort of because I don't limit my collection to any particular theme or even medium. It includes photographs (of course) but also paintings, sculptures, ceramics, various wood objects (furniture, handcrafted doors, even whole buildings). In a sense, you are talking about a private Pinterest which, BTW, can be private if you designate your categories as private. I also don't limit it to a particular number. My requirement for admission? It has to speak to me and/or exhibit craftsmanship that I admire.

[Len Metcalf]

Mike, can I take a moment to say how good you are at this particular type of post. I am a professional educator with three degrees in art, art education and adult education. I have been teaching photography professionally for the past ten years full time, and thirty five years as a professional educator, In my opinion no one else comes close to offering sound educational exercises to thier readers. This is a great idea and well written, I will definitely be sharing it with my students next year and getting them to do it. The thing you do well, is illustrate it with examples and make the exercise very specific. Would love to see more. I am forever quoting the one lens and film for a year one you wrote years ago. Thank you.

[Jamie Pillers]

Great idea, Mike. I love it when something like this gives my brain a little zap... maybe some new synapses were just created!

[Stephen Scharf]

Yeah, I did pretty much exactly this in developing my Vision File for my Finding the Photographer's Vision course I took in August taught by Small Camera, Big Picture's Giulio Sciorio.

Its helpful for clarying your vision and understanding what photographers influence yours and why, and in what ways, and then, using those insights to developing your own singular vision.

Completely off-topic: Capture One Pro 12 was released today! We now have 1) luminosity masking and 2) "official" Fujifilm film profiles!

Sporting a crisp and clean new interface, C1 12 looks KILLER.

[Rob Campbell]

Mike, you're living too close to the job. I recognize the symptoms: my last studio was one we built alongside the house. Not a good idea; the soul needs to compartmentalize to stay in tune with the mind. It's safer to have to go elsewhere to work.

:-)

[Jim]

One of the problems of collecting is space; you need lots of it. Having run out of space, especially wall space, I basically quit printing photos some years ago. I still have the walls covered with art and photos, but they are the ones I like best - they have won out over almost 50 years of viewing and changing.

But a decade ago, I found an interesting way of displaying my own photos - I use the screen saver mode of my MACs. I started with one of my ongoing projects - photo abstracts - pictures of things that look interesting as abstractions. Over time I left only the abstracts and continue to add to the collection, now at about 800 photos.

If you try this yourself, create a file and export to the file photos about the size of the monitor resolution and the lowest jpg quality to reduce the file size - it won't matter as they move around. On the MAC, in Preferences/Desktop&ScreenSaver/ScreenSaver/ choose your file as the "Source" and choose "Shuffle slide order. When your computer goes into screen saver mode it will present a slide show of your favorite photos.

Obviously you can use this with Mike's idea of photos from the web too. And use Personalize Screen Saver on a PC.

[toto]

Thanks. I can finally afford to start my camera collection.

[David Boyce]

There is a New Zealand artist now based in Australia, Patrick Pound, whose entire field of exploration revolves around this. He collects photographs from a wide range of sources and puts them together in groups that reference some idea, such as women looking to the left, or men with horses and etc. etc.

Here is a link to a gallery that shows his work. http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/artists/pound/

[Joe Holmes]

Here's a slightly off-topic suggestion (in that it involves actually paying for a real print): Check out charity auctions. Photographers and galleries donate prints to auctions, which then often sell for way under the going price. Like half.

I've donated prints to auctions and seen them sell for half of what my gallery charges (the bidding usually starts at half the retail). And last year I bought a signed Aaron Siskind photo from 1940, gelatin-silver printed in 1981, for half its going price. My wife and I were the only bidders.

The framed print is the first thing we see when we walk in the front door.

[Tim Bradshaw]

This is an interesting idea, because it told me something immediately about myself, which I partly already knew.

My immediate reaction to the idea (really, within the first two sentences) was 'OK, I'm not interested in doing this, at all' (I did read the whole article though).

And the thing I partly already knew is that I'm interested in collecting physical objects: I like looking at photographs on screen well enough, but I really like photographs as physical objects -- prints I can hold, and smell, and touch, and look at the tiny details of how they were made (I am mildly obsessed with the edges of prints -- I like to see how things bleed off into the rebate (is that the right term?) of the neg, and all the little oddities you get there depending on how they were printed & what the enlarger was).

So, thanks, I've learned a thing about myself by not even doing this

(I don't actually have a significant collection of prints, other than too many of my own work prints I never find time to weed through, but I do have enough photobooks that it's becoming a bit of a problem. But good photobooks are also very physical things: just looking at the surface texture of images in photobooks is often fascinating.)

[Clayton]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8pOOJKkAS8