Can A Technical Mindset Stifle Creativity?

[x-ray]

Johnnyt I agree we have to master the technical but it can't drive us to the point of sterile photography.

Oscar this is the nature of forums. For many forum prowlers its all about the gear and you and I know that creativity and excellent photography isn't about that.

 

[x-ray]

I have a painter friend that I've known since 1968. Years ago he had a creative meltdown and threw all his paintings through his livingroom window and burned them in the front yard. He knew his work too well and saw every tiny flaw until the little flaws overpowered his view of his work. His paintings were superb but the technical deamon destroyed his love of painting. Its been more than forty years and I don't think he's painted since. He moved to other forms of art, photography and drawing.

 

[photogdave]

You have people buying $4100 lenses to take photos of their kids who don't know anything at all about basic exposure or aperture, all of them encouraging each other, and 9 out of 10 of them don't have any idea what they're talking about. It's astonishing, the power of the cult group-think to influence behavior.

Don't worry, I'm very familiar with this behavior! I deal with people like this all the time. Sure some of them earn some money by selling the occasional lucky shot, but they are not full time professionals.
I also know of plenty of so-called wedding photographers who don't even know how to use fill-flash and have their DSLRs set to Program all the time. They may get a gig or two but the jig will be up for them eventually.
But I still think that some of the more famous names mentioned perhaps have a little more technical skill than they care to be let known, if you get my drift.
Anyway, these exchanges are all anecdotal and without proof so I will continue to believe in my "urban myth" theory, even if I'm wrong. 😉

 

[Oscar Levant]

This one is hysterical. I read these for comic relief.

Woman with almost no photographic experience gets her husband to buy her a $4200 300m f2.8 AF tele which weighs a ton and is usually only used by newspaper sports photographers. Her posting record shows similar purchases of insanely expensive gear, each of which she doesn't understand. She is angry nothing is in focus, blames the lens.

She does nothing but take family snapshots, has a horrendous pbase portfolio.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=725543

She is encouraged, egged on, convinced she needs this lens, but doesn't know how to use shutter speeds, or anything else. She is angry, wants to return the lens to Adorama, thinks the lens is bad.

A couple of people try to tell her she doesn't need a 3 ton lens like this, they are shouted down and threatened by the mods.

It is absolutely mind-blowingly funny, but these hobbyists are spenders, not like the anal-retentive bottom-feeders here who agonize over a $20 Kiev or a filter (all of them on POTN think they need $200 high-end lens filters).

Towards the end of the thread, she blames her bad photos on epilepsy!

It just goes to show the power of group reinforcement.


.

 

[amateriat]

I rarely put my work on the wall for my pleasure. I put it up for clients and guests. My wife is a painter and feels much the same about her work. We both get great pleasure from others work but little from our own. Our home is filled with other photographers and artists work.

We have a mix of my work and others' work on the walls here. There are things I've photographed that evoke pleasant or intriguing memories. It's a bit less about their being my photographs as mush as images that take me back a few years or perhaps decades. And there are prints by a few other photographers I know and respect, which evoke different things for me.

I have a painter friend that I've known since 1968. Years ago he had a creative meltdown and threw all his paintings through his livingroom window and burned them in the front yard. He knew his work too well and saw every tiny flaw until the little flaws overpowered his view of his work. His paintings were superb but the technical deamon destroyed his love of painting. Its been more than forty years and I don't think he's painted since. He moved to other forms of art, photography and drawing.

The flip side of passion, perhaps...?


- Barrett

 

[x-ray]

Oscar you must be talking about my cousin. She's a retired MD that played tennis until she got bored. She went to golf and now photography. She wants to photograph wildlife but has no photo experience at all. Like her patients, she advised them on health matters because she's an expert and trained plus many years of experience. Just like her and her patients she came to me for advice because of my experience. I adviser her on equipment and like her patients she ignored me because I didn't tell her what she wanted to hear. My cousin is a small lady of roughly 110 pounds. Get this, she purchased a full frame canon dslr, 100-400, 600f4, wimberly head and the largest Gitzo tripod. Guess what, she called me to complain how expensive it was and how heavy it is. Now let me tell you what I recommended. I suggested the upper level digital Rebel, 70-200 f4, 400 f5.6 and a modest weight Gitzo and magnesium head. She also complains her pictures aren't sharp.

I see it on every forum including RFF and that's OK. When they get tired of the toys and they realize equipment doesn't make much difference the rest of us can get great deals when they sell it and get their D70 or Rebel.

 

[Chris101]

I have a painter friend that I've known since 1968. Years ago he had a creative meltdown and threw all his paintings through his livingroom window and burned them in the front yard. He knew his work too well and saw every tiny flaw until the little flaws overpowered his view of his work. His paintings were superb but the technical deamon destroyed his love of painting. Its been more than forty years and I don't think he's painted since. He moved to other forms of art, photography and drawing.

Since he moved to photography from painting, I consider this a win! 🙄

This one is hysterical. I read these for comic relief.

Woman with almost no photographic experience gets her husband to buy her a $4200 300m f2.8 AF tele which weighs a ton and is usually only used by newspaper sports photographers. Her posting record shows similar purchases of insanely expensive gear, each of which she doesn't understand. She is angry nothing is in focus, blames the lens.

She does nothing but take family snapshots, has a horrendous pbase portfolio.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=725543

...

I wasn't able to read this one all the way to the end, but I did read the forst few pages. The heroine of the story started out believing that her midday soccer photo's softness was all her fault. She asked for help from that forum, and struggled well into the second page to take responsibility for the shots. But instead of encouraging her to learn to stabilize her camera, they convinced her by the end of the third page that the lens was no good.

Goes to show what listening to the wrong crowd will get you. I know RFF always has the straight dope though.

 

[mfunnell]

We have a mix of my work and others' work on the walls here.

I have to reserve wall space for my own photographs: if they're not on my walls they won't be on any walls at all 😱

...Mike

 

[Gumby]

Que sera, sera.

Hail, hail, the gangs all here! 🙄

 

[Al Kaplan]

Epilepsy has nothing to do with spatial relationships. Now the anti-seizure meds, they're a different story. I've had ample experience! And the doctors are just winging it themselves. The neurologist puts me on a med and tells me to make sure I don't drive if I'm not taking it. My general practioner tells me not to drive while I'm on the stuff. The neurologist tels me that some minor symptoms I'm getting are from having had the seizures. The GP says they're a normal side effect of the drug. Going on-line myself indicates a possible reaction with certain things in my diet. I finally got the doseage adjusted and changed my eating habits and didn't tell either one of them.

The only thing that might affect my camera handling would be if I develop a cataract in my right eye. I have/had one in the left eye. When I told the eye doc that it was getting smaller and about gone he said "Impossible! That never happens!" Well, here we are a year later and I can now read clearly with the left eye.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Forty years ago while in college my cinematography professor and I often argued about creativity vs technical skill. I always argued that creativity was only an accident unless it could be recreated and had technical merit. My professor argued technical skill wan unimportant and creativity was what it was all about. Larry, my professor, felt it didn't matter how you arrive at a final point and the ability to predict or repeat an outcome was unimportant. Accidents are as much art as precisely planned and executed work.

This is a great debate, fiercely argued by both "camps".

I am more inclined to agree with your point of view, but with this caveat: creativity is about creating, not simply re-creating.

I utterly agree that "accidents" are not in itself what "creativity" is all about. However, if someone has a great command of their technique, factoring in serendipity and embracing entropy, it is far more, in my view, more admirable, for it factors in a command of complex elements.

Whereas technique itself is a recipe, a means to achieving the end result, which controls every aspect of its life cycle.

I admire a work with technique and entropy well-balanced or well-complemented far far more than "pure" technique, or unabashed exploitation of "accidents" without any thought behind it whatsoever.

Call me Goldilocks. Not too hot, not too cold. Just right. 😀

 

[mfogiel]

X-ray,
I know some of your award winning photos, and I look at them every now and then in the B&W magazines. I think these are great photos, and would not call them not creative. However, photography has many faces, and it can be artful in many ways.
I love to look at photos that are so breathtaking that they invite you to "walk in". You cannot "wallk in" into an unsharp, tonally ugly and badly cropped photograph. Some other photos I like, convey above all the concept of beauty - like your tulip shot.
I do not think you can convincingly show beauty in a technically poor photograph, although here the sharpness might not be mandatory - many soft focus or pinhole images appear beautiful to my eye.
Then I like photos that convey a mood - these can be of varying degrees of technical perfection, and often they are on purpose technically" imperfect",like Daido Moryiama shots.

Finally, I love shots that convey emotion, that bring vitality, movement, go to the edge of visual perception. These are seldom examples of technical rectitude.

Yet, each of these artful kinds of photography, bear some kind of a technical language which is appropriate, or shall I say, sufficient, to supply a framework for conveying the creative vision of the author.

So, to sum it up, I do not think there is any conflict between the technique and creativity, it is rather that sticking to the same technical canon can bound your creative expression, because it ties you just to a certain way of seeing.

A sharp portrait?

A bench where you would like to rest for a while?

A cactus you would like to caress ?

Or a metro car that you might want to skip, just to stare for a moment?

A direction you might like to find...

A coffe you might like to leave cold on a caffe' table...

A black cat you might want to avoid...

A drink you might want to take with a friend...

A moment of anxiety ?

A reflection on your everyday life...

Or on the life of the other people...

 

[Michiel Fokkema]

Hi,

I have firend who makes great pictures. mUch better then mine anyhow. She uses a D70 and just puts it on P. But sometimes the lack of knowledge gets in the way. She asked me how she could get good flash picturees inside. I told her to get a good flash and bounce it. That was already too much hassle and difficult.
I really think some technical knowledge is very usefull in order to get what you have in mind.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokekma

 

[Al Kaplan]

My ex still calls me to come over and change the film in her Minolta X-700. She had the camera when I met her in 1983 and we've been divorced for a dozen years or more. She does bake me some good pastries though.

 

[Spider67]

Hi Wiggy,
Welcome to the forum! Great Avatar.

"Dear R. What happened to you, did an Artist bite you?"
Dogs that bark usually don't bite....
I know some Artists Roger could have meant.: Very arrogant and surprisingly ignorant. But that's a charatcer trait . For me as a comedian people like those are priceless easy to mimic abd great fun for the audience.

....And now get away from that keyboard and keep studiying f-stop/speed combination for the next three hours! ;o)

 

[lawrence]

Looking In

Looking In

I've been reading the latest tome on Robert Frank, called "Looking In", and there's some fascinating stuff about this. When working as a commercial photographer in Switzerland Frank's work was as precise as a Rolex, just as you would expect. Fast forward to The Americans and we have all the rules broken -- Frank had to 'unlearn' his Swiss love of precision and objectivity before he could fully express himself. But could he have produced The Americans without the knowledge he had gained from his years as a commercial photographer? Personally I think not, the early years gave him the knowledge of what is possible in photography and the skill to achieve his ends which were, and still are, wonderfully subversive.

 

[semordnilap]

Chiming in late but... Duchamp could paint like nobody's business. We'll have examples in both directions from now 'til forever. I figure that there are just lots of different people, and they make their art in different ways.

x-ray, Why not try shooting with cheap cameras... Not necessarily a holga, but disposables or pinholes or whatever you can find. It could be a fun challenge, more so because it's such a popular style nowadays that to work outside of that, to make images you like but with no chance of technical perfection, would be hard work. Maybe you'll make something different, or maybe you'll make nothing you like and appreciate what you have and can do with it. You make great images as it is.

i like this thread, it's interesting, and raises several issues. Regarding some other, earlier posts, I make pictures that i want to hang on my walls, and that's where they go. 😉

 

[x-ray]

I do have a holga and along with the G10 I think both are helping break me from the tight a$$ style I have. I have to say I'm really enjoying shooting the G10. The quality is superb and the size flexibility of controls make it a point and shoot or a technical camera depending on how I feel. I find I am now putting it on P and snapping away. The instant feedback is great and i don't connect the G10 with work as I do my digital equipment that I use in my business. I've had a problem taking my work digital cameras out to shoot. In my mind I connect them with work and not pleasure. This is not a good thing so I've avoided shooting digital until the G10. I'm shooting from the hip, over the shoulder, from the ground and more candid work with more satisfaction and increasing the free flowing spontaneous look of my work. It took decades to get as tight as I am and I expect it will take time to break free of the monster.

 

[thomasw_]

The light in everyday situations is able to reveal much if I can be open to it, even true beauty. But this is often not without a certain artistic struggle with one's own misconceptions and passions, according to the old adage applicable to spiritual and creative warfare; "si vis pacem, para bellum" [If you wish for peace, prepare for war]. Is this not the case in most creative activity? It is the way it is for me. I shoot film and wet print, all the while battling my own demons. The worst monsters are the ones I set.

 

[x-ray]

I have to agree that the worst demons are the ones I create. I think our demons can work for us and also destroy us depending on how we deal with them. I've at least tried to use the demons to drive improvement. Destruction and failure come when we let the demons destroy our drive and confidence.

I don't know how many of us have felt from time to time that no matter what we do we constantly screw up in our work. Other times no matter what we do we could do no wrong. The demon that drives the screwing up mode tends to motivate me to work even harder and never give in. The demon that gives me the feeling of success can also make me lazy but I don't give into it. I figure if I'm on a roll then I need to push myself harder. I try to use both demons to grow in my work

Your thoughts?

Very good discussion!