Perseverance in regaining momentum

I persevered yesterday. Despite feeling that there were no more images in the set of films I had which showed any promise, turns out I was (gratefully) wrong.

A lesson to myself, that I know all too well:

“There is always more than I saw. There is what I cannot see as yet.”

Which is a repeating story for all of us.

I have come to notice there are repeating patterns to my own progress. Particularly so with portfolios. This is what I think the typical workflow and thought process is for me:

LOW MOMENTUM

  1. A feeling of being overwhelmed by so much work to go through.

  2. Procrastination. Worried that if I start on the wrong foot, the work will be derailed.

  3. Sitting on the work for a while, letting it simmer in the back of my mind.

  4. When I start work, I tend to go looking for the really magnetic, powerful images. There are usually if I’m lucky about two or three images out of the entire set that I feel are the best.

    MEDIUM MOMENTUM

  5. Once I’ve edited this core set of images, I get a feel for how the entire set should look. This drives me forward in what I choose next to add to the set. I find I am theme driven rather than picking secondary images that just look good on their own.

  6. I edit the complimentary images to suit the core images.

    HIGH MOMENTUM

  7. As I add new images to the ‘core set’ I start to gain a sense of confidence in the set.

  8. I edit the complimentary images to fit the core set. But I also now re-tune the core set of images to fit the complimentary images.

  9. There is now a high degree of symbiosis between the original core images and the newly added images. They are working together and they influence each other in terms of further tuning and editing.

  10. I find other images to edit which will compliment well the existing set. As the existing set is starting to take shape, I am able to see more clearly which unedited images will compliment the set.

    LOW MOMENTUM

  11. I start to run out of unedited images to fit the set.

  12. I try a few and some work, and some don’t. I start to feel a loss of interest for some of the unedited work, and although there are still some very interesting images, I just don’t feel they warrant further exploration or even any attempt to edit them.

  13. I finish the portfolio, but I still feel there is work left undone that if I tried very hard, I might get some further good images to compliment the set. But by this point, I’m feeling that I’ve gone as far as I can go, and my interest levels are really depleted.

    ZERO MOMENTUM

  14. The portfolio feels complete. I have a full story. It’s rounded, feels balanced, and it’s so set in stone now that I can’t see anything else I want to do with it. I park it. It’s done.

By point 14, I’m well aware that points 12 and 13 could have shown me more work that may have been of value had I persevered. But I do also recognise that my heart by this point, just isn’t interested now. I’m probably tired of working on the set, and I feel I have enough images to make a decent portfolio.

I have learned, as we saw above at the very start of this post, that there are often hidden gems left in the unedited material. It may be worth going back to them a few weeks / months later to see what is there. With some distance and a fresh perspective you may be able to pick out images that will compliment the set. But there are two things we should consider when doing this:

1) The original edited set was a performance. It has a look and a style to it that is partly due to how you were on the days you edited them.

2) resuming work on a completed set of images that have a strong style and approach later on, can be difficult. You aren’t the same person, and you’ve also lost sight of what it was that drove you to edit the work in a particular way in the first instance. You cannot regain it easily, and if you do, it will most probably be through trying several attempts, in which you gain some insight into what it was you were doing originally to make the images look the way they do.

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The loss of momentum

Momentum has a huge part to play in our development as photographers. Pausing when you are in the middle of a creative flow can derail you and set you back.

I was made acutely aware of this yesterday when I attempted to ‘resume’ editing some work I had begun editing two years ago.

Lencois-Maranhenses-2019-(19).jpg

Let me explain. Two years ago edited I the set of images you see below. They were shot in Lençois Maranhenses national park in Brazil around May 2019. I felt the edits below were, and still are pretty good. Over the past two years I have always considered I got the edits about right for this collection. So I wondered this past week whether there were more unedited images in my films that I could add to this collection, if I resumed work on them.

I didn’t find much. Just one image (see above). And even then, it wasn’t so obvious. This process made me aware of several things:

Screenshot 2021-04-07 at 10.42.23.png

1) When we are editing, we are often in a particular ‘creative flow’. Edit the images a week or two later and they will be different yet again, because the results have as much to do with how we are feeling and what we are ‘into’ during the the moment of creation.

In other words: editing is a performance.

It is one of the main reasons why I like to set a block of time aside to edit work in the same ‘session’. My head is going to be in the same place as I edit a collection of work, and I often find myself reliving the experience of the shoot.

So again: editing is a performance. Each performer / actor or musician knows that each time they play or act the same songs / scenes, they do them differently. And depending on their biorhythms, things vary.

2) I’d lost momentum. The ‘roll’ I was on when I created the nine or so images above had passed. Trying to get back ‘into that frame of mind’ was going to be hard. Almost impossible.

It took me a few false starts over a whole day before I was able to edit the top image to be anything close to an empathetic version of the original set. That is because it took me time to ‘adjust to the sensibilities of the original idea’, rather than it bend to suit me.

I have often thought of editing as a performance. Indeed, everything I do as a photographer has a ‘time’, is dependent on how I am that day. And trying to reproduce something later on to order seldom works.

Rather than think of this as a problem, I personally find it quite liberating. Because of the instability of how things might turn out, you have to learn to let go. You have to accept that some days are better than others, and this is quite a freeing idea. It removes the need for ‘perfection’. And allows room for give and take. For accepting things are they way they are, and is a strong reminder that creativity has an ebb just as much as it has a flow to it.

The presumption of acquiring photographic style

I often hear photographers say ‘I don’t know if I have a style’. For many years I wasn’t aware of even having one myself, and mostly I never thought about gaining one either.

Similarly to the photographer that only goes out to shoot once in a while, a weekend or two and a couple of weeks a year, aiming to be better just won’t happen. You don’t become a better photographer by not photographing, or only photographing a little a year. So stumbling on some nice shots once in a while is probably as best as you’re going to get. And if you keep applying the same level of practice to your photography, that is where your ability will stay.

Lencois-Maranhenses-2019-(2).jpg

However, you can also spend many hours, days, weeks, years working on your photography and never improve either. Because spending time alone on something does not make someone better at something. There has to be something else at play here in order to improve, and that thing is called ‘self-enquiry’.

Self-enquiry is the art of seeing and understanding what one is doing, and of learning from oneself. It only happens when we’re able to reflect and consider what we’re doing. Applying several thousand hours a year on your photography taking pictures without any aim to consider and reflect upon what you are doing will mean you learn very little, if anything at all.

Then there is the subject of what style actually is. I think there are two kinds of ‘style’:

1) a recognised format or look to your pictures that is accepted as a known ‘style’. It is something others do and if you do it too, you become part of that tribe of photographers. Your work looks like other people’s work but at least you have a style.

2) a unique style. That’s the thing we all wish to gain. To be able to look like no one else except ourselves. To find that when we create work, others recognise it as ours, without even having to ask. To do something that others do not do. To follow our own path.

Point one is much easier to do, while point two is almost impossible to achieve by hard work alone. I would say that point two is probably in the hands of the gods: the result of hard work and innate talent. Fortunate if you have that talent, but also fortunate in that you had the aptitude and mind-set to work hard at uncovering that unique style that you didn’t know you had. I believe there are loads of talented photographers out there that would have an emerging unique style, if only they put the effort in to uncovering it.

I have often believed that someone with half the talent but who worked twice as hard as someone who is twice as talented but does very little work, will be more successful. Talent is a magic ingredient we all want, but without the effort put it, talent will be squandered. Someone with less talent but the determination and drive will go much further.

When you meet someone who has a unique talent, and they are very very successful, you tend to find there is a very strong work ethic driving them forward. From my times with Michael Kenna, he very much fits into that category. An artist who defined a genre but also someone who is very dedicated and driven.

For most of us, just achieving point 1) above is the holy grail. Something that mere mortals can aspire to. Very little after all is original. Originality is the territory reserved for point 2) photographers.

So how do we find out if we have a style such as the one described in point 1? Do we just wake up one morning and realise we have a style? Or do we have to work through a set of problems in order to get there? Is it simply all about putting the hours in?

I don’t think so.

I think that you just have to keep making photos. But when you do create new work, consider if things are changing. Consider how much further you have changed from your work from a year ago. For me, changes aren’t obvious in weekly steps, but more in yearly steps. And when I zoom out to a decade the changes in my work become extremely obvious. Zoom in too much, and you won’t see the progress.

So just keep doing what you do, but develop a 3rd-person point of view about your work. Learn to be able to step outside what you do and look in as an observer would. Reflect about the work and try to leave your ego outside of the room. Try to learn from your own progress and study your work.

Studying one’s work is the only way I know of to recognise if a style is beginning to emerge.

We have no right to presume we will acquire a photographic style. That one day we will discover we have reached this magic target. We simply have no right to assume anything. We have to enquire, and we have to learn as much as we can about ourselves. The only way that will happen is by photographing often, and most importantly, through a lot of self-enquiry.


Portfolio development class announcement

This summer, I am running a portfolio development class

The class comprises of over three hours of instruction in building a portfolio. From initial image selection to final image tuning.

I will be using my own work, that was shot in Bolivia in 2019, as the basis for the portfolio creation. You will in essence be a fly on the wall, watching as I shape and hone a set of images into a finely tuned portfolio.

We will also cover the topic of developing one’s own photographic style. Portfolios are a great way of uncovering themes in your work and finding out a lot about your yourself as a photographer.

Each of the sessions is delivered weekly through the month of may  as a video,  and you can watch each of them as many times as you like. You also get to submit questions which will be answered in a follow up Q&A after each session.

Portfolio development is one of the best ways I know to help improve one’s own photography.

I hope you will join me this May.

Portfolio Development video class 2021 (Bolivia)
£175.00
One time

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