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Edward Weston on “Portraits in Photography”

26 January, 2013 ⋅

“…to reveal the individual before his camera, to transfer the living quality of that individual to his finished print…Not to make road maps but to record the essential truth of the subject; not to show how this person looks, but to show what he is.” - Edward Weston

I searched through my albums looking for an image that would work well with this quote. The image of the Black Horse worked the best. It was a moment, I think, when I saw in to this horse, beyond the façade of being a Sable Island horse; the true wild spirit of this horse came out and showed itself on print.

One can find this hidden depth in people through looking. Sit across a small table from the person to be photographed. You have the camera in hand. Waiting. Through looking at this person, with a little chatting, you will make a connection. At some point the person stops looking at the camera, to them the camera has gone, and they will look right at you. At that point, and it may take time, the true character of that person comes through. One click of the shutter is all it takes. I tried this approach when photographing a teenager in a group home. She never really came through. And then, just as I was to leave, my friend started to comb her hair and she came out. For privacy reasons I can’t show the photograph but the story makes the point that through looking, and with patience, you will see.

 

Black horse Sable Island

 

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Photography is an art of observation, Elliott Erwitt

18 January, 2013 ⋅

Every second of our day we are seeing things. There is a lot of visual information entering our heads all the time and our minds keep very busy processing that information. Indeed our minds never stop processing; it is active all day and all night.

With photography however, you are only seeing when you slow or stop the mind from processing and allow the image before you speak. Its like going out for a beer with friends and one of those friends cannot stop talking. You might say something, and then a second later this friend has taken your thought and is running with it and talking all sorts of gibberish. Thankfully, perhaps unlike the friend, we can stop our minds and allow the image to speak. I think that is when we develop a connection with what we see and the photograph that we take of that image fully expresses that connection.

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt

Love!

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Who am I anyway? by Helen Levitt

11 January, 2013 ⋅

When you take a photograph, you are expressing yourself, often unknowingly, and it shows in the final image. I am a zoologist and am certain that interest itself in the images I shoot, whether they are of wildlife or of people on the street. But people are complex beings and all of what makes you who you are, shows in the final image. Images, then, are mirrors of who we are.

“Since I’m inarticulate, I express myself with images.”- Helen Levitt

Japan-53

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Keep it or throw it? by Garry Winogrand

4 January, 2013 ⋅

I visit Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia twice a year for my work as a research zoologist. Shooting images on Sable Island is just like shooting images on the street, except that there are no people, rather birds, seals and horses, and the buildings are dunes and the streets are beaches.

When I tell people I am off to Sable Island they imagine me coming back with a stack of images and putting those images out to sell.  Well, that does happen but it takes months before I will look at those images and ‘decide’ which one is worthy for adding to my collection. This process is a bit like error checking in science. When I shoot the photograph I usually have a sense of whether that photograph is good or not, and sometimes I have no sense at all or a sense that it is poor.

When I return from Sable the last thing I want to do is look at images that I have been seeing for weeks; I need a break from the images of Sable. But more importantly, if I immediately look at those images that sense of whether an image is good or not is still quite fresh. If I wait for a month or more, that sense is gone and I can take myself back to Sable and revisit the moments when I took the image and listen to what the image is now saying.

“Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good” – Garry Winogrand

Sable Island horses

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Seeing by Henri Cartier-Bresson

28 December, 2012 ⋅

Photography can be about the camera and what the camera can do. But for me, the camera is there to catch what I see. The photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson is also all about seeing and he is a great inspiration to me.

“Pictures, regardless of how they are created and recreated, are intended to be looked at. This brings to the forefront not the technology of imaging, which of course is important, but rather what we might call the eyenology (seeing)”. - Henri Cartier-Bresson

Untitled

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THE KARMA OF A SOUR LIME

4 December, 2012 ⋅

“When someone says “sour,” it may remind you of biting into something sour like a lime. Since you already have had the experience of eating a lime and tasting how sour it is, just hearing the word sour and thinking about it, your face makes an expression as if you were eating a lime or lemon right now. Habit is formed out of memory, from that point of view. We begin to reshape our present situation according to that habitual memory and ape instinct, as we might call it.”

Chogyam Trungpa, “The Tibetan Buddhist Path” a seminar at Naropa University, Summer 1974.

So what relevance does this have for photography. Well, a lot. When we see something on our way to work, while shopping or simply brushing our teeth, during that split-second we see the raw qualities of whatever that thing is, its colour, texture, light and form, and thus its raw beauty. But after that short period, our minds arrive at the scene and label, and judge, associate and recall memories of whatever we see, ‘oh, its a can of coke’, ‘its a bus! ugly!’, ‘oh that reminds me of my..”. The beauty in our world sits peacefully in the split-second, and with practice that short period can become minutes.

 

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Elliott Erwitt on seeing the photograph

30 November, 2012 ⋅

When we look at a photograph we sometimes want it to be something else. We might say that we like this, but don’t like that; or I wish I could see more of this. In doing so, we miss what the photographer is trying to show us. At a recent craft show, I listened to a couple discussing which photograph of mine they should purchase. In one image, the chap didn’t like the two horses on either side of the image that were almost cropped out. Clearly, they were looking for their own image and totally missed what I was trying to show.

“A picture should be looked at – not talked about” Elliott Erwitt

Mother, Sable Island horses, NS

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Seeing wild horses

16 October, 2012 ⋅

I visit Sable Island often, perhaps twice a year for 8 weeks or so. It is a great place for photography but after coming here since 1997 one may think what you see gets old. There are horses, sand, sand dunes, seals, birds, sea, and so on. But when one is really looking, there are endless perceptions. When I see a horse I don’t just see a horse…

 

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A flower does not talk

25 September, 2012 ⋅

Silently a flower blooms,

In silence it falls away;

Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,

The whole of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming.

This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom.

The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.

Zenkei Shibayama

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The delicate nature of “Silver Mound”

11 September, 2012 ⋅

There is a plant that I have in the front of my garden called Artemisia schmidtiana “Silver Mound”. When I saw this plant at the garden centre I was impressed by its colour and texture and uniqueness so I bought it. After I had manhandled it for planting, it looked totally awful, like I had stamped all over it. However, after a period of time it came back to the plant that intrigued me earlier.

This is the nature of Silver Mound. It is also the nature of the raw perception in contemplative photography. Once that perception arises, you have to treat it well. If you let the busy dialogue of the mind enter, the perception will collapse.

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