A couple more thoughts on the "Bones" posts.
Before I start, re the side discussion on Lee Friedlander...first of all, he's Lee Friedlander. One of the few photographers whose work always looks like his work no matter what the subject is or what camera he's using. Arguably (which I can say because I've made the argument) he is perhaps the most important American photographer of the second half of the 20th century. Certainly one of the top twenty however you cut it. He's got more talent in his little finger than most people have in their entire careers. Not to mention a protean appetite for working.
So it was said that Lee reputedly would not know an idea if it bit him in the ass. But (there's always a but), my little devil's advocate comment to that would be, if he works by identifying from his pictures what he's interested in, throwing the prints of the pictures he's made so far in a box and then adding to the box as the years go forward, how is that not working to an idea? Say you've started a box of pictures of you-pick-what. Chain link, cacti, TVs, pickup trucks, mannequins, self-portraits in foliage, pictures that are crowded with chaotic elements, pictures that include plate glass and reflections, whatever it may be. (These are all real Friedlander things.) How then do you go out into the world, encounter one of those subjects in what you think are promising circumstances for shooting, and not think of the fact that, back at home, you've got a box going on that very subject? What, do you just wipe it from your mind? How would you do that? That's like not thinking of an elephant. I'd argue that it's impossible not to shoot without any idea once you're actively collecting pictures based on an idea.
But I digress. And, what would I know about Lee Friedlander.
Anyway, my main comment today and the reason for this post is that ideas have energy levels. Again, I'll just reduce it to two simple opposites to make it plainer what I mean. Sometimes you can get really into planning and analysis and justifying and what have you, but, remember, an idea is something that facilitates and motivates work. So you can build a fancy edifice of words like a big three-tiered frosted cake, but then you get out with a camera in your hand and within a few days you're feeling wilted and bored. Well, there you've got an idea that didn't have much energy. Or, you can get a new idea and the dam breaks—it unlocks your creativity, supercharges your enthusiasm, makes it easy to get out and work, and it leads to results. The more you do it, the more you like it. And the more you do it, the more you want to do it. You refine it, you explore tributaries of the major streams, you become known for whatever it is you're doing, and you begin to get rewarded for it, with recognition, respect, money, fame, positions, prints sales, books, shows—whatever it is that defines success for you on your terms. Ten years later you're still doing the same sort of work, as successfully as ever. That's an idea that has lots of energy.
It seems trite and obvious to point this out, but an idea that "has energy" actually gives you energy. Personal energy. The ability to work, to exert yourself, to keep going. You know when an idea is not working because it saps your energy, slows your pace, or gives you feelings of ennui, disaffection, resignation, hopelessness, etc. You cast around for encouragement, you complain because something external is not right, you feel tired when you think about having to do more. When you're on the trail of an idea that really works for you on the other hand, you've got a sense of personal focus, of purpose. You don't need other people's approval for support but are happy to keep going under your own steam. You feel an almost visceral satisfaction or pride when you're looking at the work you've done. You can't wait to do more of it.
"Ideas" in this sense don't have to be complicated. When I started working with my B&W camera, my idea was to get out every day and drive around the Finger Lakes until I had found one picture. That was all. I just had to get a picture. That's good enough, by the way: PAD and PAW projects count as ideas. I think when I first presented the OC/OL/OY idea years ago, I think I specified that you should aim to shoot for 3–5 minutes a day. The way that idea works is that it gets the camera in your hand and gets you started pressing the shutter button. It overcomes inertia and gets you over the impediment of being in your "not-working" state. It can be enough because sometimes you're going to want to keep going.
But you'd have to wait and see. It will either be enough or it won't be. All ideas have some inherent amount of energy. You can't really force it. You just respond to it. Ideas that have energy are a gift. Ideas that don't will fail eventually no matter how hard you try.
I know of one photographer who decided to do a different project every year. Each one was going to be completely different from the last; different camera, different subjects, different methods, different aims, etc. Well, he did that for several years, until he hit on the idea that had energy for him. He loved it. Couldn't give it up. He worked that same way for the following thirty years. (You might have heard of him but I won't name him.)
Here are just a few basic ideas, based on seeing, reading about, and talking to actual real photographers.
A photographer...
...Who shot aerial pictures from his tiny personal airplane. He seemed to like shooting and flying just about equally, and used each to help inspire him to do the other.
...Who was preoccupied with adolescents. He liked them, sought them out, and was an accomplished physician with a specialty in adolescent development who gave lectures and (I believe) had written books about the subject. He might also have been attracted to them, possibly, which I only mention because he told me about the great lengths he went to to keep his behavior ethical, considerate, and above suspicion. (He passed away long ago, so I'm not at risk of embarrassing him with this.)
...Who collected unwanted old cameras and shot pictures with all of the cameras in his collection just to try them out.
...Who made exacting, very skillful replicas, using digital cameras and inkjet printers, of the Polaroid SX-70 prints he shot as a kid on family vacations, of subjects that evoked similar feelings in him that the old pictures did. He had learned to mimic visually the look of the old pictures.
...Who loved photographing beautiful women in elaborate quasi-Victorian, old-fashioned-looking costumes, jewelry, and hairstyles, and seldom if ever deviated from this style.
...Who loved harsh, high-contrast pictures that implied dark and violent or foreboding feelings, I think along the lines of a horror movie (which I almost never watch, so I'm not completely sure).
...Who photographed with a badly broken lens, often using extreme underexposure or overexposure, or hand-holding very long exposures to achieve random blurring. The pictures were "extreme" snapshots that used the vocabulary of actual random photographic mistakes.
...Who was shy about photographing people (she said "that's not available to me"), so she made exquisite tableaux of found objects exquisitely arranged on a small set, which sometimes would take weeks to collect and build.
...Who photographed small single objects that could seldom be precisely identified in the middle of large backgrounds of solid color, which he printed very large.
...Who was a dedicated trainspotter, and photographed scheduled trains as they passed specific locations. He was devoted to doing this even though he didn't have any specific purpose for the tens of thousands of slides he produced.
...Who did selfies while daringly climbing or clinging to public skyscrapers.
...Who loved manual unsharp masking of 4x5 negatives, which could take two or three days of work to make before Photoshop came along. He confessed that his actual pictures were not important to him; he just loved the darkroom work and the look of unsharp-masked prints.
...Who loved the old architecture that was vanishing from his city and tried his best to preserve or save it, even to the point of physically salvaging architectural details. He was so dedicated that he met an untimely early death when beams from a partly demolished and unstable structure collapsed on him while he was photographing.
...Who said she gradually realized that most of her work included light sources of some sort (she made large color prints), from Christmas lights, to patches of interior sunlight,to streetlights or headlight, to flames, and that the technical challenges she loved were describing these light sources as well as possible. Once she realized this, she started adding to those pictures deliberately.
Those are just a very few examples, to briefly imply the range of what an "idea" might be. Of course I've only presented the view from outside, you might say, as I can't really speak to the interior motives or conceptions that any of these people might have had—although a few of them might have left writings, or are still alive and could speak for themselves if they wanted to.
Lastly, I'll tell a story about a student who was pursuing a very involved and elaborate, but also very conventional and unoriginal idea, which she would interrupt constantly so she could take descriptive notes of the experience with her phone. She finally realized she loved shooting with the phone more than with her "real" camera doing the "real" work, so she just dispensed with the latter and concentrated on doing more with the phone.
Be sure pay attention to what has energy for you, no matter how weird or offbeat you might think it is. If it isn't an idea itself, it might provide clues as to where you might want to go in the future.
Mike
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Mike, this post should go into the All Time Best box. Excellent Observation
Posted by: Tim McGowan | Tuesday, 21 January 2025 at 04:34 PM
In the 1970s, I bought and read Ansel Adams’s entire Photo Series books with the hope (and expectation) that my photography would improve. Much N+1 and N-2 processing later, my pictures were unimproved. Reading Minor White’s interpretation of the Zone System and his theories of photography were even more of a waste of time. Looking back, it is clear that I learned from looking at prints. Though it may be old hat, it is my opinion that the left-brain / right-brain construct is applicable here. (It was once argued that language functions reside in the left lobe, and intuitive – perhaps artistic functions – reside in the right lobe). I need to engage my left brain to write an artist’s statement. However, the pictures that I value are ones that I took when I was most able to ignore my left brain (after it helped me determine the correct exposure). To summarize, I don’t accept the argument that one must work from an idea to take meaningful photographs if the idea must be expressable in words.
Posted by: Peter | Tuesday, 21 January 2025 at 08:09 PM
The Friedlander story highlights a weakness in one argument I’ve seen recently, including here. That is the notion that a photographer should specialize in one kind of subject and the correlary that a photographer who doesn’t do this and instead “shoots everything” has no center.
Friedlander’s body of work, however, is almost precisely of the “no primary subject” sort. He photographed everything. What gives his work unity is not his particular subjects but rather his own way of seeing any subject.
Also in this post I read that feeling lost, casting around for a focus, and o on is a sign that you are on the wrong track. I’m not so sure. Rather, I think that having periods like this (though not an entire career!) is a normal part of the life of most creatives. It isn’t a steady, always on target, unified process. It is more like a series of skips and leaps, digressions, periods of frustration, new foci, and so on.
There’s a lot more that could be said/written about this, but I’ve perhaps written too many word already.
Posted by: G Dan Mitchell | Wednesday, 22 January 2025 at 10:05 AM
I've enjoyed this series, and had thought to comment on one of the earlier posts, but didn't have time. Just as well I waited, since this one resonated even more for me. The bit about the photographer/small plane pilot in particular reminded me of my own co-mingled pursuits.
For me, photography, natural history, and cultivating relationship with place have been the three mutually reinforcing strands that have kept me going for over 20 years.
On the photography side, of course I like to have aesthetically satisfying photos. Those haven't been an everyday thing in my experience. If that's all I was going for, I suspect I would have lost interest along the way. However, since photography is also support for my natural history interests, I'm motivated to document what I'm seeing.
Sufficiency for basic documentation (to be posted on iNaturalist.org or on my website as part of a photojournal) is a much lower bar, and one I can easily reach. Once I clear that bar, I often find myself continuing to strive for 'better', with the efforts occasionally resulting in something aesthetically compelling for me.
Since I'm out daily taking pictures for documentary purposes, I'm in the habitat of looking for photos with my camera, and am more often receptive/available when the compelling shots show up. (I experience myself as much more of a finder/receiver of photos than one who envisions/creates them.)
Posted by: Matt G | Wednesday, 22 January 2025 at 02:42 PM
The majority of my work is not based on 'ideas'. I did one series once of cemetery angels, interspersed with my usual methodology but tired of looking for a specific subject that fit the idea.
I call myself a visual omnivore because I photograph a variety of things I am attracted to. I rarely go out with the specific intent of 'getting a photo of' this or that. I go out for a drive, a walk, or a hike and I take my camera, just in case I see something. What 'catches my eye' as you say. It could be the way light falls on something, its color, reflections, and the way it is situated to make a well-composed image. Some aspect of it that asks to be noticed and photographed.
Today I was walking for exercise in the field house of a local college and at one point walking around the track I spotted a ball on the floor inside the netting that separated the track from the basketball courts in the center. The skin of the ball was torn and the netting was partly lifted in an inverted V that framed the ball. I didn't have a camera but did have my cell photo and made a photo with that. No 'idea', just looking deeply.
I'm not alone nor is my approach original. I have a video of conversations with Jay Maisel whose personal work approach is much the same. It is more about curiosity than 'an idea'. Ideas are fine for journalism or commercial work but I feel curiosity is a better basis for meaningful images. The world around us is full of things that are visually interesting if we make a habit of being open and noticing them. There are times I will make no photographs for days or weeks but it because I am distracted and not being curious. You don't need an idea or a prompt. My advice to any aspiring photographer is 'be curious', and have a camera handy even if it is just your phone.
Posted by: James Bullard | Wednesday, 22 January 2025 at 11:12 PM
Ideas are easy - these days the doing takes far more effort. Also I find dragging a DSLR more of a chore the older I get, and have never really warmed up to using my phone for pictures.
Posted by: Paul Van | Saturday, 25 January 2025 at 09:08 AM
Here's a current project that I'm working on: Every day, going to work on my bike (bicycle), I stop at the same point and take a panorama picture overlooking Copenhagen Harbour.
The composition is the same every day (I use a faux XPAN App and the 52mm lens on my iPhone) - the only thing that I vary is the vertical position of the horizon in the frame, depending on whether the clouds or the water is more interesting on that particular day.
I don't know what will come out of this - possibly a zine - but I intend to do this every weekday for a calendar year. It's a very "easy" project for me, since it takes me about 90 seconds to stop, take the picture, and ride off again, so I certainly expect to be able to keep up steam until 03 DEC 2025 :-)
Posted by: Soeren Engelbrecht | Saturday, 25 January 2025 at 12:13 PM
Ideas are the currency of philosophers, not photographers. I see it. I like it. I photograph it.
Posted by: kirk | Saturday, 25 January 2025 at 01:09 PM