Wrote this in journal few days ago..

[AshNZ]

Hi

I wrote this in the journal few days ago. It sort of describes the internal dilemma I am facing with my photography. Would love your input on this!

Everytime I go to the bathroom, I look at the painting on the wall. It is not an expensive painting by any means. But when I look at it, I see brush strokes. Delibrate brush strokes covering the whole canvas and every stroke of the brush is where the artist wanted it. Even the most mediocre painting is made up of delibrate brush strokes. That is art.

Now is my photography an art? When I look at my pictures, sure, they are nice to look at. I have a fair fan following among family and friends. But when I look at my photos, I feel they are bland. The only satisfaction I get from the photos is when others tell me how good the photos are. It's like having a hot girlfriend who is dumb as a brick. You might love and enjoy the ego boost you get when you are out with her but it is all superficial. I feel the same way about my photos. Internally, I feel there is something missing. The vision, the greatness, the artist is missing in the pictures. I feel the pictures are taken by a technican rather than an artist. Its a technician who has a decent camera and has read few technical books but nothing more. If all my pictures were to be lost forever, I wouldn't care much because I feel I can easily go out and recreate them over and over again. And yet the technician is out with the camera knowing that there is something deeper. Trying to find the deeper artist inside. Is there something deeper or am I just trying to find that exotic ideal that doesn't really exist?

This was originally meant to be a personal entry but I think it will probably help me if I share with everyone. Has anyone ever felt something like this?

[Izzy]

I feel like this frequently. Rather than concentrate on the individual images I concentrate on the growing part. When I feel like this I look back in my old catalogs and then find one of my earlier ones from last year and then find something I like from recent. It is in the comparison that I can see how much my work has grown.

Sometimes I don't even have to go back that far. Sometimes it is a matter of a few months. One thing that I have learned over time is that no amount of seminars, books, or tutorials will teach you to see. They teach you only the technical part.

[faeriegodess612]

I like what Izzy said. Also, since you said " I feel I can easily go out and recreate them" I'm assuming that you shoot outdoors, nature and landscapes? Try something inside, if that's the case. Try creating something indoors. There is a plethora of ways to shoot normal everyday items. Interesting lighting can go a long way. Then maybe you'll feel the artist coming back, since your the one creating it, and its not something that nature created or some architect thought up.

[SwissJon]

I think you nned to reconsider why you're taking photos.. Don't you think if Da Vinci, Monet, Saurat, Michelangelo and so on had a camera, some of them might have chosen a different way of expressing themselves? Or an additional way?

When you look at great works of art, they're self expression, they tell you the mood of the artist, what he was thinking.. It's what separates "The Scream" from "Sunflowers". It's not where each individual brush stroke landed that's important, it's what the combination brings about.. The end result. The painter paints a scene and adjusts it to his liking, the sculptor takes his chisel and chips a bit off so that the finished product departs from reality to make the end result more pleasing to the eye.. You, as a photographic artist, don't have this luxury, you can't choose the chapes and forms in that way, so you find me often sitting in the middle of a field at 10.30pm at night, waiting for the sunset to turn into a night scene. You'll find me patiently waiting and observing how the people flow in a street so that I get the forms I'm looking for.. You'll find me precariously hanging over a ledge so I can get the photograph "just so".. The art for a photographer is not in manipulating the image as it's being recorded, it's in manipulating the image BEFORE it's been recorded.. You must have the vision and the foresight to know that you need to be in a certain place at a certain time.

Last night I was sitting in a field, I sat there from 8.30pm before the colours arrived to 10pm, after the colours were gone.. I took my camera, tripod, mixture of filters and other plethera, a drink and a stool, and I sat and waited.. Moved a bit because I didn't like the angle, sat, moved, sat.. Snapping as I went.. And yes, I took a few photos I didn't like, but there were three I was happy with.. Not overjoyed, just happy. I had created something nobody else had, something I would never be able to repeat.. In the same field tonight, there were no clouds.. The colours were different... The photo would have been crap, but last night, choosing what to leave out, as much as choosing what to leave in, I created my own little bit of art.

Yeah, if you look at photography from a technical perspective, it's an accurate rendition of the world around you, and that kind of photography is akin to technical drawings and architecture blueprints, but if you think about what you choose to leave out of a photo, you start to see that it's actually about lying to the observer.. Leaving stuff out, showing the scene in a certain way, zooming on something, using light in a certain way, this all leads you to tell the observer a different story to how the observer would see it if they were there themselves.

Of course photography is an art.. Light is your paint, your camera is your paintbrush, it's only your imagination and the way you manipulate your paintbrush that separates your photograph from a snapshot, and the further you push your work from a snapshot, the further you stand from a sketch by a 5 year old.

I don't shoot for anyone except me.. My wife complains because I often don't share my work, or won't show it until it's finished.. She complains because I don't like it being displayed, for me it's never good enough.. But if you think about it, that's not an uncommon sentiment among non-commercial artists..

Whether you are an artist or a technician is up to you to decide.. Me, I feel that what I'm attempting to create is art.. What that makes me, I don't care.

[metallion58]

Correct me if I'm wrong but, it seems to me that you've work hard to develop your technical skills but not quite so in developing your vision, how to reproduce the way you see the world, the way you feel about it.

May I suggest a little exercise.

Go out there with a little P&S and shoot.

Nothing technical will get in the way so you can concentrate on the WHY instead of the technical HOW.

Why am I taking this picture? Why is it so appealing to me?
You can then move on to the non-technical HOW

How can I make this picture stronger, more forceful, less generic, etc.
Should that part be left out of the frame or included? Does it reinforce the message or diminish it?

Shoot with a purpose that you set yourself.
It will help you develop your vision and that should translate into your pictures.

Good luck in your process and keep in mind that we all evolve even if it's sometimes not easy to see.