Do Children make more truthful images?

It's been four years now, that I've been self-employed as a full-time photographer. In that time, I've made the transition from looking upon my own photography as a passion / hobby to something that is at the core of my identity and is also my work.

I was told by a few friends who are photographers, that there is always the danger that turning any passion into a job, can kill that passion. It's true, this is a real possibility and I've had periods over the past four years when I've felt as if I'd hit rock bottom in terms of inspiration, simply because I was working too hard, making sure I was making a living, and spending most of my time teaching others, but not making many images myself. There has to be a dividing line and if you are to venture into something you love doing as a job, you need to make a distinction between 'work' and 'hobby'. It's taken me a while to get there, and part of that process has been to realise that each year, I need to set time aside for myself, for my own photography. It's a hard balancing act to do, when you're always thinking about ensuring you keep making a living, and is not, as I'm sure others assume, an easy life.

So I've been on the lookout for some inspiration. I'd dearly love to put my landscape work to one side for a while, and focus more on making images of people. The last time I did this was in 2011 in Ethiopia, and my real 'blaze' at making people images happened in India and Nepal in 2009.

A good friend of mine mentioned that there is a children's charity called Amantani, based in Peru, who's primary aim is to help Quechua children with their education. Often walking miles each day to get to school, Amantani have been looking for funds so they can house and educate the local Quechua children and prevent them from walking many many miles each day to and from their school.

I decided to look into Amantani a bit more, and I stumbled upon a little photographic gallery (which they have kindly allowed me to reproduce here). The work was really beautiful. I thought, wow - I'd love to go there and work with these children if I could get images like these. They are fly on the wall documentary images. But what struck me most, was that they were taken by the children themselves.

I find it truly inspiring to think that little girls and boys made these images. It's made me wonder - do children in general make more truthful images?

I think they do. Or at least, they must do. I can hardly imagine a child being full of pre-conceptions, and if anything, their eye's must be closer to their hearts and to what they feel, than the average adult.

And the thing is, I really want to get involved. I just don't know in what way as yet, or indeed, if it's a possibility, but it's given me inspiration, and any creative person should follow what inspires them.

One thing is clear to me though, the images captured here were made in the least self-conscious way. I'm fully aware that anything I could do, to document what these children experience each day as part of their Quechua lives, would only capture the surface. For one, I'm not a child (well, I do have some friends who would dispute this) - it takes a lot of effort to blend in, to become invisible. I'm so envious.... if only I were 7 years old again, maybe I could create images as honest as these are.

If you'd like to see the children's original photographs, or find out more about Amantani, then please go here.

And if you would like to donate, please go here.

Baffin Island

A few days ago, a friend of mine showed me this video. [vimeo 33516816]

What a spectacular place Baffin Island is. Remote, wild, I'd love to traverse the frozen sea just like these guys have done. It reminds me so much of my time on the southern patagonian ice field.

But I'm also struck by the high production values that go in to making a movie like this.

I dislike the term 'post-processing'

It's like saying you're doing your washing. It lends nothing to the respect that any good image deserves after the shutter has been clicked. The term 'post-processing' could just as well be a way of doing a tax return on an incomplete image. It's a truly horrible phrase, and one that I feel should be removed from the dictionary of any self-respecting photographer who cares about his art.

The birth of an image requires care and attention. It is a long process - one with no defined beginnings or endings.

The conception of an image may start the moment you set foot out of your car, put your wellies on, begin that hike into the moors. It may have begun much earler - while you were dreaming the night before the shoot you eagerly anticipated. And let's not forget the point at when an image is complete. This step too, is ambiguous at best: I've never really known when my work is done on many of my images. It may be at the point of the shutter being clicked, or it  may be after a week or so of living with it in my digital-darkroom. Sometimes, I realise months later, it was nowhere near complete and is still unfinished.

I make this point because I don't think we should make a distinction between our time out in the field, and our time behind our computers. I think the word 'post-processing' helps create a divide, and it's unhealthy. It encourages the idea that any work done after the shoot, is an after thought. For some, it instills the attitude that their approach out in the field *should* be different from their approach once home behind their computer. But most importantly, it encourages one to separate the creation of an image out in the field, from the work that is done once the image is back in the studio.

I see no separation.

Image creation and manipulation are one and the same. I compose in the field; I recompose (by cropping) in the digital darkroom. I think about shapes and tones in the digital darkroom; I do the same whilst out in the field too. I think about the scene in 2D in the digital darkroom;  I've taught myself to look at a scene in 2D whilst out in the field. There is no separation. In fact, I'd say that there is a symbiotic relationship between my time out in the field and my time behind my computer. Things I learn behind my computer screen, feed back into my time in the field, and my time in the field influences the time I have behind my computer screen. Again, there is no separation.

While I am out in the field making images, I'm thinking about images. I have learned to abstract scenery into a photograph while I am on location. I have also learned what I can do with certain tones, contrasts I encounter out in the field during the digital-darkroom work. I see textures and tones in the landscape and I think about how they can be transformed, brought out, enhanced or subdued in my digital-darkroom. I do this on location. And because all of this is happening at the same time, there's never any post-anything to be done. It's just a continuous flow of creativity.

My main reason for bringing this up, is not because I feel it the term 'post-xxx' encourages us to become emotionally distant to our work (it does), nor the fact that it makes us think of photography as two different approaches (it does), but mainly, because I think a lot of photographers think about 'scenery' whilst out in the field, and they think about 'images' once back at home: there is an unhealthy contextual shift in attitude to ones work the moment we move from location to computer. Our approach and attitude to our work should not change, regardless to where we are or what we are doing, if we wish to be better photographers.

There should never be any dividing lines in art - images evolve. To assume that our time out in the field is one of two clearly defined steps, encourages ourselves to put limits on what each of those stages involves. It's creative pigeon-holing. Images are born and grow in the most surprising of ways, and by keeping an open mind, we let them go where they want to go.

Let your creativity flow by removing confining terms such as 'post-processing' from your artistic vocabulary.