Say Something New

Coercion By Arrow

Can we say something new, something fresh, with our words or our images? It is an inquiry that at first seems a bit daunting, if one looks across Instagram or googles nearly any topic. I have found myself asking this way: what revealing insight do I have that really hasn’t been expressed before.

Heading down that twist of trail leads to feelings of defeatism and loss of interest and energy. Oh well, guess its time to mosey along to something else, is a conclusion that has popped up. While I’m not the only one with these kinds of low energy doubts, I’m going a different direction now.

I’m beginning a new look at what it means to have something new to say in photographic work. This is not necessarily the same as creating a totally “never before seen” image.

i am finding that making an image which is “out of character” for me can deliver a delightful sense of discovery that carries on to better new work. I’m heading toward saying something that I haven’t said before, even if someone else has a similar expression. My voice carries its own timbre, and it colors that “said before” to a shade of new that satisfies me.

I’m learning the distinction between finding a fresh view for my own personal work instead of expecting to originate a never-before. Few of us ever touch that rarefied space.

Today I finished making an image that I did not anticipate, “Coercion By Arrow”, and I feel like I’ve said something new.

Depend On Dialog

Structuring Dialog

So much depends on getting in dialog about what you are working on. I’m finding more and more that when I have inner doubts about an image or am struggling with a concept, resolution comes when I communicate. Talking over the technical issues helps clarify everything from what’s too bright or poking into the frame (doh - sometimes I furiously overlook the obvious in pursuit of a subject) to how to balance elements in the composition.

I find that when I start talking through an issue with my photography, it often leads to something deeper and more meaningful in my life. I was working on this image taken at the Vessel in NYC and just couldn’t bring out the interesting pieces that first caught my eye - hats and strong contrast in lines and shadows. As I worked with the image, my frustration grew. Talking through this with a friend brought a realization that I was trying too hard for perfection - as if my own “image” was tied up in this composition. My ego was simply pushing away any creative fun I tried to have.

From engaging in dialog, it came out that the shadow was perhaps much more interesting than the hats. Turning the image upside down opened up a new possibility. For me, it suggested that what we are talking about in words often has a subtext in structural language, the shape of our hands, the intensity of expression. The shadow perhaps reminiscent of a cartoon balloon with inner thoughts and feelings that is as solid as hats on heads.

Curvature accepted by Your Daily Photograph

I opened my email to a very nice surprise this morning. An image I submitted to the call for submission “Not What You Think” was accepted and featured in this daily email/post from YourDailyPhotograph.com.

This image, “Curvature”, is not what you think! I made the image in 2011 while photographing by my home. It was in a juried show at the Abington Art Center the following year and was in my archives until this call for submissions summoned it up.

A moment to celebrate!

Ms Pretty Elusive

Why am I taking a photo of stools, orange stools? I’m not working on a Diner Stools project, and while I love the color orange (and the taste of oranges), there really is no good reason to be framing up and photographing these empty seats in a nearly empty LA diner.

Perhaps you too have been tugged out of your normal course of day and pulled to capture something so ephemeral it does not appear directly in an image. I imagine this inner nudge to take a photo as Ms Pretty Elusive - very hard to get in touch with if I try, and harder still to recall once gone. It is a bit like looking at the photo afterwards and wondering, Wasn’t there a Ms Pretty Elusive slipping out of a back booth? Or a slinky cat nipping under a chair? Something just out of sight, the creative impulse is pretty elusive and leaves no direct evidence in the frame of itself spurring us to turn these small personal moments of observation into a photograph.

My inner nudge for photographing these stools resulted in an image that I just don’t quite know what to do with. Have I been led astray by a creative urge to yet another personally interesting, tenuously meaningful, and quiet photograph in search of contemplation? Perhaps it is enough just to say, this one dances anyway, swaying into my photographic archive without music, just because orange likes to twist about.

The next time I’m out photographing, I think I’ll raise my camera in the hopes of catching another glimpse of Ms Pretty Elusive.