Practicing Photography - PhotoTrice

See My Work – See Me

Press Camera People get into photography for many reasons. I suspect that most of us who reach the point of competency with cameras have a strong desire to show work in public. I certainly do. So as a non-professional, how do you gain an audience for your photography? The simple answer is that I don’t know and I’ve never met anyone who could answer that question adequately. In many ways it comes down whether your ultimate goal is to market your photographic skills and of course, ego.

It seems to me that most photographers participating in online forums fall into two broad and overlapping categories. My experience is that 80-90% of all serious amateurs aspire to be professionals. That is a mighty bold ambition when the market for paying professional photo gigs is small and probably getting smaller. Broadly speaking, the remaining 10-20% is made up of family, nature and wildlife photographers of one stripe or another.

These groups of photographers are very different but share the problem of organizing and presenting work to their intended audiences. Just to be clear I’m not talking about posting pictures online in photography forums. An audience of nit-picking fellow photographers is probably the least effective way to get your work in front of the public. My goal, which I think is broadly shared, is to present work to non-photographers, regular people.

Over the years I’ve tried many different ways to gain an audience. None have been entirely successful or for that matter completely unsuccessful. Here is a short list of my attempts to reach an audience.

I currently have two websites, one active and another static for years
Photographing at historical reenactments over several seasons and donating a book of portraits to the living history organization
Creating small portfolios of work that are donated for display or sale
Attempting to submit work to the National Park Service
Making and distributing portraits of friends and family
Creating PDF calendars featuring my work distributed free of charge (see sidebar)

Here are some things that I intend to try.

Creating small collections of short essays and images in PDF format for solicited or unsolicited distribution
Creating small collections of loose prints packaged in presentation boxes with artist statement and a short essay for distribution to local arts venues
Building a Texas regional travel website featuring my work
Producing matted prints for local art sales
Producing matted and framed prints of Texas themed content for consignment to western furniture stores

I’m sure there are many other options that I’ve not considered. When you are a non-professional, budget and time are limiting factors. None of the things I’ve mentioned will help me reach a mass audience. I simply want to get my work into the hands of people who would enjoy seeing it if they knew it existed. To that end I’ll keep plugging away. Patience and perseverance are virtues, right?

Dark and Light

I saw jazz saxophonist Will Donato a few years ago at a local festival. It was a single night event set up next to a roundabout in Old Town Helotes, Texas. The equipment was fairly rudimentary with a portable stage, some rather harsh LED lighting and a wireless sound system. Certainly these were not great conditions for available light photography.

There was one thing working in my favor; I could get close to the stage without guards or roadies in the way. As the night progressed I got closer and closer until my camera was on the front edge of the stage. The musicians tolerated my presence and even commented that they hoped I was getting good pictures. Which I’m sure actually meant something like ‘please go away and take that camera with you’. I persevered.

Lights were hung above the stage in the front and back. At first it looked like I could take advantage of the stage lighting if the musicians were individually lit. That was not to be. Once night fell they cranked all the lights across the stage. Worst of all it was difficult to find shooting angles without lights intruding in the frame. The hot bright circles overwhelmed everything else in the frame. I told myself the music was the thing, even if I didn’t shoot anything.

Getting in close to the stage was a big advantage in avoiding lights in the frame. Some of the time I was able to use equipment and musicians to mask the direct lights. With careful framing it was possible eliminate lights or push them to the edges. This left me with high contrast directional light on the performers and very dark backgrounds. It reminded me of jazz photos from the 50s where photographers popped flash bulbs close to the musicians. Only the performers were lit, everything outside of flash range being completely black. Excellent, I was channeling early William Claxton, at least in my mind.

Most of the RAW files shot that night have remained unprocessed until recently. My post processing skills were not up to the task of working with the extreme lighting conditions. Now I am able to produce decent finished images from some of the frames. Over time I’ve learned a great deal from the images shot that night. They have helped me understand the dynamics of working in an uncontrolled performance environment. In the end that is the real value of my night’s work.

Blocked!

You often hear about writers block affecting someone’s creative abilities. It can last a day or sometimes years, causing anxiety and even affecting careers. People try various strategies to get creative juices flowing. Sometimes they work and sometimes not.

I have a similar creative block that affects me from time to time with photography. This situation probably does not occur with professional editorial photographers because they work to a brief. If you are doing independent creative photography either professionally or as a non-professional it could have an impact. So what to do when this happens?

My answer is to keep actively pursuing photography by exercising my creative visual thinking. I am a strongly visual learner. That’s what brought me to photography in the first place. Visualizing a scene in my mind is something I’ve always been able to do. For me becoming a photographer is about learning to capture the image in my mind’s eye.

When the block comes and the creative juices start to ebb I turn to my archive. When I started doing photography around the turn of the millennium I decided to archive my images. This was so I could chart progress and analyze past efforts to continuously improve my work. The concept is common business practice and effective in creative endeavors in a more subjective context. Art is difficult to quantify.

I begin by reviewing work starting with early images moving forward to the present. I’m looking for patterns and anti-patterns. What practices contribute to a successful photograph and what mistakes or tendencies contribute to unsuccessful outcomes? This can be tricky because it is easy to substitute the judgment of others for your own. Once you get past basic technique it is very important to see your work through your own eyes. That is assuming you intend is to produce a body of work that reflects your unique ideas.

Since I’m familiar with my images it’s easy to always see the same patterns. That reinforces past outcomes but it isn’t the point of the exercise. Looking beneath the obvious tendencies in my work there are more subtle thoughts. Often the difference between good work and excellence is in the small details. They are reflected in patterns beneath the surface aspects of my images. I try to understand those thoughts.

I generally process interesting raw images while sifting the archives. There are at least two reasons to do this. First, skills and attitudes change over time and hopefully develop into personal style at some point. Second, it is an opportunity to explore new ideas uncovered along the way. My goal is not to produce finished work for publication but to exercise creative freedom. Occasionally good images do emerge.

This exercise often breaks my creative block. Even while I’m struggling to produce new work I’m able to be productive by seeing my existing work with fresh eyes.