Finding your voice.

Tin House Studios videos are a favourite. I like the guy (Scott), like his honesty and tone. Some really hit home more than others.

This one on finding your voice;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrtVV7gX0sQ

and this one about being you, really you;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NczXJBSBP4Y

Answers to questions posed are tough, tougher than they should be seeing as the answers are known only to you.

The first one, which is to identify who you really are, what are your influences and what created the shape of your imaging “brain”, seems like many other “find yourself” vlogs, but it is deeper.

My influences are from mid to later twentieth century photographers, most American, although most of those were European refugees and immigrants, fleeing World War 2 or later.

My love is for the lyrical and simple landscape, especially details (Adams, Sexton, John Shaw), for emotive and interesting light, the sort most early colour shooters used (Haas, Leiter) were forced to use, or later period National Geographic style shooters (Sam Abell etc) chose to.

This ties into where I live, a place of surpassing beauty, cold temperate light and clarity, but I also dreamed of other places.

Quiet images, clean, powerful, stereotype resistant (usually by preceding the stereotype), mono or colour, any format but generally subdued, gentle.

For video, I was an early sucker for Ken Burns documentaries and epic movies, but I guess that is anyone over 40.

The second one is easier.

Things that make me unhappy and force me into stress cycles before (more controlled anxiety these days) and recovery mode after completion are:

• Controlling adults for environmental posed portraits, especially if the end result is not to my liking (the paper) and under pressure. This includes weddings, non studio portrait sittings, environmental portraits with limited scope. The other togs at the paper did this zombie-like, but I just could not, not care. I thought having help would help, but it does not.

• Still life, which ironically is the happy place for the inspiration of this post above. No time for this. I cannot even get a consistent lens or camera test setup. My subject needs action, movement and above all it’s own free will or I am bored, frustrated and pretty ordinary overall.

• Old fashioned landscapes, astro etc even though I started there and know it like the back of my hand. If I am going to do landscapes etc, they are “on the fly”, which modern cameras empower or possibly extreme long exposures in mono and concentrate on details, not “big sky” shots.

• Street shooting. This one is tough, because I thought I loved this, but I miss-identified it. I love randomly found compositions of things natural and man made with extraordinary light (see above), not human-centric confrontational street shooting in the original sense.

• Distractions, which apply to all these above and below. I hate working with the knowledge I need to caption (take names) which always breaks my engagement, or to be under the purview of a “creative director” which is more often than not just a person with an opinion, their own stresses and a need to control, be they educated or not.

Things that make me happy, excited even;

• People and animals in their natural space, or to be more precise ignoring me and just being themselves. This includes environmental portraits that allow me enough time to get the job done properly, to lose myself in the process and forget other pressures. The schools like my “fly on the wall” approach and I repay them with bucket loads of natural, genuine images.

• Studio portraits, which for some reason take away all the angst of the other types of portrait sittings. I guess it is the application of control, real control, not just trouble shooting that makes the difference as I can then let them be themselves in that space. This is a contradiction I know and I cannot explain it, but it is a thing. This also goes for video interviews. Again, not sure why*.

• Found things. This is actually what I identified as street photography. It may include people, but not as the primary subjects, more as a part of the overall picture.

• Action and drama. Sport, stage, parades, concerts, you name it. If it people doing something dramatic, count me in. The capturing of these comes as second nature and plays into my love of people being themselves, but it must be from an observers perspective, not a choreographers’s.

• Video. Generally video appeals because it falls into these categories. Movement in video is natural by default, static is studio like, but all good in that space. Not a huge fan of over stylising video, the subject should sell it or go home now.

Probably for me at the moment, I need to look less at my photographic likes and dislikes and more at my career path overall. The welfare of people and animals are where it is at, maybe the imaging is a revealing of that, not an end point.

*At the paper, I used to shoot my interview video over the shoulder of the journalist, then some B-roll, while also getting my natural stills the same way. The posed shots, something both the journalist and subject expected were taken, but rarely used.