New thread for Bill's problems to keep Joe's thread on topic :)

R

RML

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OK, let's use this thread instead of Joe's to discus Bill's problem with his current photography. 🙂

Joe, maybe some Moholy-Nagy can help. At least reading his German language book on photography will cure your illness for a while. 😛

I like that IR photo you posted. Maybe you really should pursue that line. Just be careful not to step over the line and end up wanting to photograph souls leaving a (your?) body upon death. 🙂
 
Sorry, all. I have to go into a meeting for an hour or so, will post more.

Shorthand for those who missed my unintentional hijacking of Joe's thread...

1) I said I was going to sell all my cameras and buy beer and matches with the proceeds.
2) Matches are for setting fire to all my prints, because I hate them.
3) Some back-and-forth about depression, setting new directions, learning from bouts of self-criticism, and so on.
4) I posted an example of a photograph I took recently that doesn't suck TOO badly, but I fear that if I continue down this road, I'm going to be making a lot of photographs that no one will like but me.

http://www.mattocksphotography.com/infrared/pages/imgp7174.jpg.jpg.html

More later, gotta run.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
I kinda like that one. In fact, there were a few from that series I liked. One especially of you walking toward the barn that was very nice.

Don't burn your prints, Bill. You're an excellent photographer.
 
Artistic greatness is rarely recognized during the the life of the artist. Often what makes the art great is that it was out of the norm and ahead of its time.

(Words I cling to during moments of desperation.) 🙂
 
off and on topic at once-

When I was a wee art student, we decided one year that it would be a great excercise to have a bonfire - with our work. When I say we I mean our teachers decided. A "Royal We."

The plan was to burn 5 +1 pieces. 5 that weren't really good work and 1 good one as an offering to our muses.

Everyone groaned. Each piece of art was precious to us. Only a couple of students got the muse part. Once we all got it, we were into it.

We had to pick our least favorites and submit them to the crowd (teachers and students). The teachers, 3 of them, picked one piece of good work from each of us. We weren't allowed to protest, since this was being done across the board, including the teachers.

Surprisingly, students and teachers began to save other's least favorites. The process took a week. Once it was over we had a nice bonfire in the country (a nearby farm in Maryland).

Bill - if you choose to burn them as way of jolting yourself into improvement - it can work. If you just aren't happy in this particular moment, wait a bit. Put them away and take them out 2 or 3 months from now. You might see something different.

By the way - one of my paintings turned up in a teachers house a year later. I saw it at a party at her house. She had saved one of my typography paintings. She is the person who helped me onto the path of Graphic Design. She liked it because she saw where I was headed.
 
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Hi guys, I'm back.

OK, couple of things. Hopefully these don't sound weird. First of all, it is not that I think my current work is technically bad. I have enough of an ego that I believe I have some talent and I know I can produce work that sells and that people seem to like. But it does not currently satisfy my soul, and that is why I say it 'sucks'. It sucks not because it is bad, but because it does not please me. I don't know why it does not please me, I just know that it doesn't.

In response to Frank's statement - I don't think my work is 'great' or that I even have the potential to produce 'great' work. I rather suspect that all my sturm und drang is nothing more than the feeble flutterings of the suburban dinner-theatre diva. I'm ok with not being 'great' and with my work not being considered 'genius'. I just want to please my soul.

In response to Joe's comment about caring if others like my photography - I'd love to be able to say that I have the strength of self to 'not care' if everything I produce is instantly dismissed as dross and hated by one and all. Perhaps I can achieve that in time, but at the moment, I must be honest with myself and say yes, I seek validation and critical acceptance of my work. I mean what is art if not another form of communication? If everyone hates it, or worse, ignores it, then with whom am I communicating?

And perhaps that is the core of my current state of anxiety. I am concerned - perhaps fearful - that the directions I feel myself being pulled photographically will leave me unable to communicate with others by way of my art. I don't want to feel that 'pulling away' as I leave the beaten path and go off on my own. Perhaps once I've done it, I'll feel better - but the beginning is always the hardest, and it feels like I'm going against the grain of myself, even as I seek what makes me happy.

And to answer akalai, who in the 'other' thread mentioned Meatyard - yes, Meatyard is a big influence of mine. Although I am not southern, I live in the South, and I am beginning to find a connection with certain 'Southern' photographers and their way of looking at things. I am also heavily influenced by the Czech 'Avant-Garde' photographers, and nearly everything I see in the pages of 'Shots' magazine (http://www.shotsmag.com/shots91.htm). If you looked at my linked photo and saw a connection to Meatyard, then that pleases me greatly - I was thinking of him when I went out to shoot that day.

Frankly, I didn't think this was all that interesting, but thanks, friends, for wanting to talk about it. Helps me get some perspective on all this. Feels a bit like a broken tooth. Hurts to touch it with your tongue, but you can't seem to stop doing it, eh?

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
Take heart in the old saying: "All great artists are either dead or dying, and I don't feel so well myself".

My photos suck sometimes, and other times I like them. Sometimes, even other people like them. I just keep on burnin' film. It makes me feel good! 😎
 
Hey Bill,

From about 1986 to '92 I had a pretty good streak going photographically. For reasons I won't get into here I quit abruptly. I torched a lot of my stuff...in a burn barrel at the gun club that I was a member of. Instead I should have worked through what I was feeling at the time and I should have kept more of my photos and negs.

So now I'm here because I had to start over and I made a concious decision to start over with rangefinders instead of a 35mm SLR. I like what I'm doing, but I would like for acceptance from others as validation. What I really need is constructive criticism so that I can approach my preferred subjects with a more refined eye.

Since I'm not taking photos for other people's money I don't really care if I connect or not, I'm shooting for my own mental health. However I would like to do it well so I care what people think of my choice of framing, etc. The subject is not up to anyone else but me. Perhaps you could try to look at it this way. I don't know the issues in your life so what I'm relating might not apply.

Regards,
Greg
 
memphis said:
hustle a gallery show, have fun with it
Click to expand...

I've got one going on now, and another starting in July (7 matted and framed photos due by 6/12). I have no idea what I'm going to shoot for this show, but my photography club has been given the entire Wilson Arts Center gallery for display / sale the entire month of July.

--- take a week and shoot nothing but manhole covers -- re-invent yourself -- take a different direction --- it took me years to figure out what soothes my soul --- and I'm a moody, tempermental pr*ck === it was once told to me that 1/1000 images that you shoot will hit and fulfill that inner need -- and your goal is to reduce it to 1/500 then 1/250 then 1/100 --- then 1/36 one killer shot per roll --- i've gotten to the point where I'm happy with most of my work --- but there's still tons I hate because it just doesn't do anything for me--- then I see work that others (even here, daily) have done and I think I never would have done that shot -- but it's wonderful ---

take a break and shoot fashion glamour for a while --- do what you need to do...
Click to expand...

I wish I knew what I need to do. I'd do it in a second. "Nothing like having an itch you can never scratch." - Leon, Blade Runner.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
Kragmeister said:
Since I'm not taking photos for other people's money I don't really care if I connect or not, I'm shooting for my own mental health. However I would like to do it well so I care what people think of my choice of framing, etc. The subject is not up to anyone else but me. Perhaps you could try to look at it this way. I don't know the issues in your life so what I'm relating might not apply.
Click to expand...

I hear you, and good point about burning your prints/negs and later wishing you still had them. As to the subject...

Well, think of it this way. I like to tell jokes. And sure, there are some people who don't like my jokes. But when I'm with an audience who finds the type of jokes that I like amusing, I enjoy telling them, and a big part of that is the enjoyment I get from amusing them. See, if all I liked were jokes that nobody else 'got', I would not want to tell my jokes, I'd get no enjoyment from my jokes, and I'd be suffering somewhat from despair that I was unable to communicate what I thought was funny.

I'm social. I realize that there is no way to make photographs that everyone likes - assuming I don't do puppies with big eyes or something - but I think that for me, I need to know that someone out there appreciates what I have to say photographically - this would be what gives me pleasure, besides the pleasure I get from making images I like. Of course, I don't know yet what kind of photos I want to make, so I don't know who, if anyone, will appreciate them.

In the book "Camera Obscura," Roland Barthes tried to figure out what a photograph is - what it signifies, what it represents. He realized in time that a photograph is really three photographs - three 'things'.

The first is the art of the photographer taking the photograph.

The second is the art of the making of the print.

The third is the art of the resulting artwork as viewed by others.

Yes, I can derive pleasure from the first part - making a photograph that pleases my soul (assuming that I figure out what that is). And I can take pleasure in creating a resulting print, whether through traditional wet-darkroom enlargement processes or by way of computer and subsequent commercial printing. But for my joy to be complete, I have a need that *someone* out there see my work and find it worthy, acceptable, or pleasing in some way. I have a need to make a complete photograph of the three. If this makes any sense.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
bmattock said:
I have a need to make a complete photograph of the three. If this makes any sense.
Click to expand...

Yes, this makes sense. I, too, find some frustration in this because I have neither the time nor the equipment to do my own darkroom work (chemical or digital). Most of my focus has been on "part 1" and "part 3". My most satisfying work has involved iterative "part 2" with a local custom B&W printer. I'm sure doing all three parts by one's self would be orgasmically satisfying.

I gave up... long ago... on the notion of needing to do all 3 phases on the same image in rapid succession to be satisfied. Some of the images I am currently refining are negs shot 10 to 15 years ago. Once I came to grips with the temporal separation of my "needs", I could live with myself a lot more happily.
 
greyhoundman said:
Other than beer, matches and cameras. What is a subject that evokes a passion or intense interest for you personally?
Click to expand...

G'man... I'll bet Bill's real frustration has nothing to do with lack of diversity in subject matter or interests.
 
Hey Bill,

I just looked at the IR photos your link goes to. Image 7143, you in front of the house is good. Sort of like a ghost. Maybe you could blur yourself a little more and it would be great.

I think sometimes we don't recoganize our own work for what it is. Just keep taken' 'em! 😎
 
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