Reaching

I recently heard a phrase along the lines of keep your taste above your current skill level. This keeps you reaching. It resonates with me as good advice and a good model of our photographic growth.

Skill

At any point in time, we have achieved a certain skill level in our photography. We start out taking terrible to mediocre pictures. That is not a failing, it is the best we know how to do. It is never a failing to do the best work you can at the time. With time and training, we improve. Our images get better technically, and we learn to apply the “rules” of making pleasing pictures.

But we feel something is missing. A fact of the artistic life is that we will always have dissatisfiers. Something is nagging us, pointing out that we haven’t arrived, yet. We can do better. We want to do a little more and better than what we have done so far.

At this point in our journey, we realize that technical ability is not the main thing limiting us. Our images are OK technically, but they are still missing our expectations. If the unmet expectations are not based on the technical qualities of our images, then there must be another dimension to it.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Taste

In the quote I used to start this, the author called that other dimension “taste.” This is a word that is not used as much as it used to be. Our current culture promotes an “anything goes” attitude. There are no real standards in fashion or furnishings or behavior. If I like to dress this way, generally you are not supposed to be critical.

But we know that is not entirely true. We do have our own ideas and standards of what is good or acceptable. While we may not openly criticize other people, we still make our own judgments.

An applicable definition of taste is “the ability to discern what is of good quality or of a high aesthetic standard.” Notions of culturally shared standards of taste may be breaking down, but in our own lives and our art, we form our own standards of quality and aesthetics. These drive our vision. They form a basis of what it means for us to call our work good.

Our sense of aesthetics is something that is a mix of our natural inclination and what we learn over time. One of my sons is a t-shirt and shorts guy. He would go to almost any event in his normal preferred attire, regardless of expectations or how everyone else is dressed. That is just a weird bent he has. I don’t know where it came from.

Our taste typically gets refined over time as we mature and expand our intellectual circle. We study the work of other artists we admire and pick up things we want to add to our vision. New ways to visualize or compose scenes or express ideas. We constantly shape our desired vision.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Vision

I would like to generalize the idea of taste a little to include what we often call vision. Very simply, vision is the sum of all our experiences and beliefs and preferences and knowledge. As photographers, our vision is expressed in our images. If we go out shooting with our buddy, our photographic vision is what makes my images different from his, even though we were at the same place at the same time.

Vision is something that changes and develops over time. We can refine our photographic vision (improve our taste) by studying the work of great visual artists. This can be by going to museums and galleries, buying art books, or looking at their work online. Maybe even take an art appreciation class. When we expose ourselves to other artist’s visions we can’t help but grow and expand our own viewpoint.

And we can refine our taste introspectively by closely examining your work that you like best. Try to understand why you like those images and what they say about your vision. When you understand what you like, stop shooting images you know you will not like.

But i do not want to leave this as a one-dimensional view. Cole Thompson describes vision as “the sum total of my life experiences that caused me to see the world in a unique way.” The sum total is more than just photography. The incredible Jay Maisel once said “if you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person.”

There are many ways to become a more interesting person. This is part of what life is about. Read more interesting books, surround yourself with more interesting people, and have actual conversations with them. Study new subjects that your curiosity draws you to. Broaden your interests. Without breadth to support it, depth is uninteresting.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Reaching

The interesting concept to me is that our taste causes us to be reaching for more in our art. This is a good thing, and it is encouraging. Without something to challenge us, we stagnate.

As we refine our taste, we get new insight on what we want to say and how we want our work to look. This makes us not quite satisfied where we currently are. We know we can get closer to our vision. That makes us put in the extra thought and effort to stretch toward this new understanding. We may not yet consciously understand what we are reaching for, but something is drawing us. We will know it when we see it.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Growth

Becoming a better photographer is a process of growth. We grow in our technical skills; we grow in our taste. Our expanded taste draws us to experiment, to work toward a vision hanging just out of reach. When we finally express that vision, that is satisfying, but we discover we have now refined our taste slightly and now want to push for something a little different, still just beyond our grasp.

So, photography is a constant cycle of growth. We may love what we are producing right now, but something is nagging us to change it is some way, to do more, to expand on what we have done, to experiment. This is healthy growth.

Is it frustrating for the prize to always be a little out of reach? Not really. It means we are growing and getting more capable all the time. Our taste expands with our ability, and it leads us to desire to do better. Along the way, we are much happier with the work we are producing.