At some point roughly 3 years ago, I had a breakthrough in my photography—as in, I broke some stuff and everything got better! I didn’t go from bad photographer to good photographer, or good to great, and certainly nobody started paying me for my work, but I did break a whole lot of assumptions about what I could and should be doing with my camera, and emerged with some recognition that I have a way of seeing that is mine. But my “unique vision” (barf) isn’t what I want to talk about; after all, why would I do that? So someone seeking to find their unique vision can copy mine and have an un-unique vision? There are plenty of books out there already offering to sell you that bridge, so instead, here is what my dumb ass should have done 10 years ago so I could have gotten off the derivative train before it crashed into middle-age.
Sometime in the 1990s I made my Utah pilgrimage, took this shot of Delicate Arch (on film), successfully solved the landscape photography equation. But the Utah desert is so much more than this….
Step 1: The first step was the realization that I was wasting my time reading 7 tips to improve your Whateverthehell articles on the internet, going through post-processing software like 1980s hair bands through cocaine, and switching from slides to negative film, Kodak to Illford, film to digital, and Pentax to Nikon to Canon. One morning, several hours and seven cups of coffee into clicking through YouTube videos I’d probably seen before, it hit me—I knew everything there was to know. Of course, I didn’t—I’m not an arrogant bastard, just a dumb bastard, and I have a lot to learn about a lot, but my shortcomings as a photographer had nothing to do with techniques, methods, or equipment. Not good. That meant I wasn’t going—to the sound of angels singing hallelujah—to come across that esoteric piece of knowledge that would blow open the doors to heavenly image-making perfection like a monk nailing thesis statements to a church door. There was no map, no X, no spot, no treasure. Like the last bus of the day in Middleofnowhere, United Kingdom, that bus wasn’t coming. Bloody Hell.
Stone Age Hill Fort, Isle of Skye, Scotland. This image transports me back in time; I love it. Not sure if it means anything to anybody else. Rented a car on Skye because at least they admit the bus isn’t coming.
More recently, I’ve been trying to use color and still capture the ominous feeling forests can invoke. Many mossy tree images evoke the beauty and majesty of the trees, but I prefer to render them mysterious and somewhat unwelcoming.
Step 2: With that particular door closed to me, I had to find some other promise of salvation for my emerging photographic talent—look at the work of others: that was the recommendation popular with the podcasters! I started googling and bookmarking the websites of individual professional photographers, and looking not just at individual photographs, but entire bodies of work, looking for an approach, theme, or style, presumably so I could hijack it. And here was my second realization: their stuff wasn’t that good. Ok, that’s not true, some of it was amazing, but some of it stank, or, at least it wasn’t that interesting. In relative terms, and taken as a whole, photography is like music—for every Led Zeppelin, Springsteen, and Nazareth there are 100 equally talented…you know where I am going (and sorry about the Nazareth thing, that was a joke). I was in serious trouble, I realized that I was capable of making great photographs, that if I quit comparing my work to the shortlist of “greatest photographs of all time” and dropped the resulting aspiration to become a photographic one-hit-wonder, I was out of excuses. Almost. I had one more:
The Desert was formed by water, and is here envisioned as waves. Canyonland National Park.
I can even make the Utah Desert look spooky! Ultimately, this shot is much more important to me than an iconic shot of Delicate Arch. When I look at the shot of Delicate Arch, I think “I love Delicate Arch.” When I look at this image, I think “I love that image.”
Step 3: Perhaps I had the chops, but I just didn’t have the time and money (I have a full time job as a history teacher, so both those things are right out). Landscape photography is all about being in the right place at the right time, and there are only two places, Iceland and the Utah Desert, and two times, Sunrise and Sunset. How could I expect to make great images if I couldn’t spend enough time in great places waiting for great light? In the landscape photography equation, half credit is not available. Fortunately, never one to be deterred by the anal retentive nature of math and its practitioners, I realized that even a computer program named Joshua can speak-and-spell its way out this kind of problem—”The only way to win, is not to play the game.” Here endeth the lesson. And the excuses. And this is the Third Step: declare anathema your popular photography websites, Instagram influencers with infinite followers, and anything titled “the 10 greatest landscape photos of Wheneverthehell,” and burn them all! Use lighter fluid. Solving the landscape photography equation just results in a derivative (I think that was a math joke, but I dropped calculus, twice, so I’m not totally sure). Instead, give yourself permission to make the kind of photographs that you want to make, even if your own mother won’t put them on the refrigerator, and especially if they don’t get Instagram likes. In other words, decide you DGAF. (If you aren’t familiar with that 4 letter acronym, look it up, boomer!).
Here it is, my attempt at Kirkjufell. I did it, I’m not proud of it. OK, I am, I like this photo a lot, and Iceland more. I also took a number of images in Iceland that are more important to me, most of which you wouldn’t recognize at Iceland.
Step 4: Now that you DGAF, decide what you GAF about. For me, the former was way harder than the latter (probably because it had another letter and I suck at spelling). Once I asked the question, the answer was easy—I had a lot of images that I really liked, but I didn’t really share, because they weren’t the kind of thing people seemed to be into, based on what everyone else was putting out there: old ruins that felt like what they looked to the people who once occupied them, forests that feel like what I imagine ancient people felt when walking through them, scenes that would give Edgar Allen Poe nightmares (or, more likely, more nightmares than he already had), and anything that looked like it could be used in an illustrated version of The Lord of the Rings. I’m such a dork. It's harder to admit that realization with your photographs than it is in writing. And I’m worried people will think I need counseling on account of all the darkness. But I DGAF, photographically speaking. But, you say...so here is an attempt to undercut your remaining two possible excuses:
Take that, Edgar!
Could be Iceland. Could be Mordor.
Unacceptable Excuse #1: I still have a lot to learn. About the rule of thirds, ISO invariance, or luminosity masking? My suggestion, wishing somebody had suggested this to me forcefully, upside the head, about 10 years ago, is to decide you know enough to make great photographs and admit that the only thing that you suck at is imitation. I’m a firm believer that “the head follows the ass,” which is just an erudite way to say I believe in Behaviorism, ala B.F. Skinner, psychologically speaking. Commit to spending two-thirds of the amount of time you spend on photography taking photos of the things you want to take photos of, and not giving two f-stops if anybody else is taking those photos or wants to see yours. This includes time reading about photography and watching YouTube videos. Seriously, keep track—two-thirds, minimum, no exceptions. Do or do not; there is no try.
Unacceptable Excuse #2: You don’t know what you like. I would submit that this is not a photographic question; it's an existential one. But “like” is a stupid word, that’s why we use it to describe the social media interaction that involves the least amount of effort possible. Instead, lets focus on emotions—in the variety of attempts out there to define what makes a photograph good, I favor the criteria that it triggers an emotional response in the viewer (as opposed to the more common call to tell a story, which sounds like a bad first date--story after story after story…oops, TMI). (Look it up, boomer). Better words are Awe, including its close relatives Awesome and Awful, Melancholy (my favorite), Joy, Wonder, Curiosity, or Freakoutedness. If you are an emotional being, you feel some of these some of the time, and that’s probably a pretty good indication of what you might want to capture and share with others. If you are void of emotions, don’t worry, somebody will probably pay you good money to solve derivatives all day.
Could be Iceland. Or Scotland, judging by the architecture. Or anywhere north and bleak and old. Wherever it is, life is hard and harsh, and I can imagine being shuttered up in this building by a fire listening to the wind and waves and rain, long ago when it was no ruin at all. This is, indeed, Iceland.
Acceptable Excuse #1 (bonus track): What if you just like what everybody else likes and what you want from life is to get a better picture of the Aurora behind Kirkjufell than any photographer in Denmark? You are probably a boring person. Sell your camera gear, figure out what the difference between vacation and travel is, read a book not recommended to you by an algorithm, get different friends, have them recommend a book, listen to music you hate over and over again until you like it (I’ve already given you a few ideas of where to start with this one), spend enough time with something you idealize to discover nothing is ideal, sell all your belongings and venture into the wilds of Alaska. Do whatever you have to do until you find something that makes you get eaten by a bear, laugh, or cry, initiates a spiritual crisis, or haunts your dreams but shouldn’t. You’re on the right path—get lost. When you buy another camera, it will be way better than the one you sold and cost half as much.
So there it is, the magic formula for finding your vision, a one-size fits all, connect-the-dots, 4 things you need to do, a “guaranteed or your money back” way to be unique. If you are unsatisfied with this product in any way, dial 1-800-555-DGAF.
Love Hurts,
David