Category: Artistic Process

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Mix a New Image

Pseudo aerial. Extensively processed.

Recently I was watching a video series on audio mixing. That is a separate story. But I was struck by some of the similarities between the process of mixing for certain genres of music and image editing and creation for certain types of art. It made me think of the ways we mix a new image.

Audio mixing

Producing an audio recording is simple but difficult. Let me take a rock band as an example. The group goes into a studio and the source material is captured, sometimes for the group all together but more often by “tracking” each band member individually. It is fairly typical to start with the drummer, because the percussion is the base beat that everything else fits into. Then guitars and/or other instruments are overlaid. Finally, the vocals are recorded last, because the singer needs to hear everything else.

Each individual or instrument is recorded on one or more tracks. The drum, for instance, might need 10 or more tracks to capture the full drum kit. And there are multiple takes for each track.

Then in the studio, the recording engineer works with the performers to create a mix that pleases them and had good production value.

Digital image creation

Let me take an example of creating a fine art composite image. It will be built of many layers and elements.

The artist has a general plan for what will be needed and how it will come together. This helps to ensure that all the pieces are photographed and the individual images are created with consistent lighting and perspective and mood and focal length, etc. The artist shoots each element separately.

Working in the computer, the elements are brought together and blended to create the final image.

On the surface, there seem to be certain parallels of structure and process. but let’s go a little deeper.

What really goes on?

What I observed in several videos and in first hand experience is that a song is basically re-built from scratch in the mixing phase. Of course, simple problems are fixed. Pops and noise is removed. Parts of tracks may be re-pitched. The best parts of several takes are cut together for each performer or instrument to make the master.

Then it gets weird. After a good basic master is put together the producer goes on to ‘liven up” the sound. This may involve equalizer changes, to tailor the frequency response of a track. It probably involves effects processing that will add delays and reverberation and echoes to give the sound depth and sound like it is performed in a large venue. Maybe even adding things like claps or new percussive effects.

And it goes on. The producer then may start to “play”. It may involve intentional distortion in parts. It may introduce new sounds that were not in the original recording. As an example, one trick I saw was playing tracks into a garden hose and recording the weirdly distorted sound and mixing it in subtly. You miight even see them put is a track played backwards! Several other very strange techniques can be used to create strangely distorted effects that you would not directly notice, but that add character to the overall sound mix.

My learning was that, to the recording producer, the original recordings were just raw material to be used, changed, distorted, added to and anything else that could be thought of to produce a sound they liked.

Similarities

Isn’t it about the same with photography sometimes? I used the example of fine art compositing. Brooke Shaden and Renee Robyn are 2 good practitioners I think of.

All the individual pieces that were shot are just raw material. The artist puts them together to create the basic image, then starts to mold it into a final work of art.

The finishing may involve distortion, warping, masking, radical color changes, and extreme lighting changes. Then new elements are probably introduced, like textures or patterns. There may be multiple layers of them combined using blending modes. Often subtle and not immediately recognized, but making the image into something different.

An artist using a non-destructive workflow will end up with dozens of layers to create this final image. The end result may only look a little like the original parts.

Let go more

This emboldens me to think I am usually too cautious with my vision of what the final image could be. Being an ex-engineer I have an ingrained tendency to go for realism. The final image must look exactly like the original.

This is probably a mistake. I am self-limiting my artistic freedom. Long past are the days then the novelty of capturing a scene gave interest to a picture. Now an image needs to be a work of art. It needs to show vision and creativity from the artist. That involves letting go of an absolute realistic goal for the image.

Have you ever heard a “dry” (unmodified) recording of a famous singer? There are very few of them who are so perfect they would let it be heard. All music is heavily processed. It is coming to be the same with images.

I do not mean AI. That is a separate issue. I am claiming that, to be well received, many images need to be heavily and artistically processed. We have the tools. Let’s use them well.

A song is built by getting good tracks recorded. Then the producer takes it apart and builds a final song. In a similar way, we can often do the same with an image. The only thing stopping us is our self-imposed limits.

I will try to learn to not be afraid to mix a new image. Think like a song producer. The original data is raw material to be created with. Post processing is just another tool we use to achieve our vision or feeling.

Today’s image

This is me starting to let go. A little. It seems like a pretty conventional aerial image. But of someplace you don’t recognize. Looks can be deceiving.

Sometime I may describe what it is.

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Not A Spectator Sport

How could you sit still at a time and place like this?

For most of us, I believe photography is not a spectator sport. We only learn a little by watching other work, even great photographers. Photography is craftsmanship and creativity and vision. These have to be developed. Watching only helps a little.

It’s a first person experience

I have written before about life and our art not being a spectator sport. To me, this is still strongly true. But I’m taking a slightly different direction here. Many of us take workshops or watch videos to observe other photographers taking pictures. I watch a lot of videos, but I have to realistically ask why. What is gained by it?

The reality is that we do not learn our art or develop our vision by watching someone else. Unless they are an exceptional teacher. But even then, it does us little good until we have internalized it and made it our own style.

Craft

Photography is a craft. Any craft has to be learned and then practiced over a long period to master it. So I’m not saying there is never anything to be learned by watching another practitioner work. I’m just saying that it is a somewhat dangerous act. We must be careful what we are taking in.

Some instructors are good about talking us through what they are doing and thinking. Giving us insight into their thought process. This is very beneficial. As long as we carefully examine what we are learning and deciding what to keep and what to leave.

The basic craft aspects of photography can be learned, to some extent, by watching a good instructor. Then we have to practice, and practice, and practice… Repetition, evaluation, mistakes, trial and error practice that teaches us how to do the craft. So there is a little instruction then a lot of self-teaching.

It is easy to make the mistake of trying to mimic a teacher. We respect them and are in awe of their ability, so we want to be just like them. Don’t do that. They have their vision, we have to create our own.

Creativity

Our art is not really ours if we are just copying someone else. The instructor we admire and copy may be very creative. Doing the same thing does not make us creative.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I have studied this a long time. A good instructor may inspire us to be more creative, they may challenge us, they may give us some good ideas, they may even give us some hints how to do it. But we cannot achieve creativity by watching them. It has to come from within.

Cole Thompson was tempted to copy the style of artists he revered, especially Ansel Adams. He famously started the idea of “Photographic Celibacy” – never looking at other photographer’s work. I think that is going too far. We can learn a great deal from studying other people’s work. But it worked for him and it emphasized the danger of copying other artists.

We don’t have to be celibate. But we do consciously have to maintain our own identity. Follow our own interests.

Vision

What we express with our art is our own vision. We each have a unique vision, unless we are slavishly copying someone else. A tendency when we are starting out is to try to copy someone, because we are insecure. We don’t think we have developed a “vision” yet.

I think Chuck Kimmerle insightfully captured the essence of it in an article in Nature Vision Magazine #1: “We can’t discuss style without mentioning vision. The two are related but vastly different. While style is fairly easy to describe, vision is much harder to define. At its core is who we are as individuals: our experiences, lifestyles, likes and dislikes, politics, spirituality, family, priorities, and so forth. Our soul. It is the story of our lives, a personal diary if you will, and is what makes us unique. Vision is what drives our style. Unlike our personal style, our vision rarely changes.”

This vision influences and comes through in the work you produce. We can’t help it. That is one reason why several photographers can be out together shooting the same area at the same time and produce a variety of different images.

So don’t worry that you don’t have a vision. You do. The trick it to let go and let our vision express itself. Don’t be concerned about it being different from what other artists do. Eventually you will recognize yours.

Who are you learning to be?

So watch other photographers and get what you can from them. But never loose sight of who you are learning to be – you.

Just this morning I watched a short tutorial on an aspect of Lightroom editing by a good instructor. He was very good about describing why he did every step of the process. It was a little valuable. But overall my internal dialog was “nope, nope, that’s interesting, not the way I see it, not the result I would try to get”.

Was he a bad instructor? Not at all. He is good and quite well known. Was is a useless genre? No. He was editing a landscape image. that’s reasonably close to what I do.

So why did I reject a lot of what he said? Because I am pretty confident in my craft and vision. I can watch another photographer and not be intimidated or pressured. This is because, for the most part, I have learned to be me. I know what I want to achieve. I appreciate picking up tips on doing the craft better, or easier ways to get to the product I want, but no one is going to (very easily) convince me to become something I’m not and don’t want to be.

How do you learn?

So how do you learn? Do you intently study a master and “try on” their style for a while? Do you study basic theory, such as composition, design, color, etc? Do you go to workshops where the instructor shows you where to put your tripod and what settings to use and how to set up your shot to get the same results he got?

Any or all of this and anything else you do is fine, as long as it works for you. But never forget the purpose of studying is to learn to be a better you. Not a knock-off copy of someone else. No matter how much you admire them. Personally I would shun experiences where the instructor seems intent on making you a copy of them.

Most of us are self-taught. That is, we do not have a fine art degree with a specialty in photography. We learn through various formal or informal methods. Make the most of it. Learn from every opportunity you get. But you will grow fastest by getting out and working and evaluating and learning from the results. Pick up ideas and techniques anywhere. But don’t ever forget the goal is to grow as an artist and find your own path.

So is it true that photography is not a spectator sport? Well, that’s a little bit of click bait. Be a life long learner. Eagerly watch other photographers work. Listen to what they say. But discard what does not apply to you. Never forget the goal – be you.

Today’s image

I couldn’t find a single image that illustrated this idea of “not a spectator sport”. I guess because I have always believed it and gone my own independent way. This image was chosen because maybe it shows that, if you are in a place like this at a time like this, shoot! Don’t watch someone else. Make your art.

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Sustainability

Watching paint run - creatively

Sustainability is a common buzz word these days. It is applied to everything. Every company and product claims it. For this, I’m going to redefine sustainability from an artistic point of view.

Creative sustainability

As artists, we live on our creativity. Do you worry that the well may dry up? What if your creativity goes away?

If we produce hard, do we use it up? Or is the engine somehow fed by using more? Is creativity a “sustainable” resource or does it get used up?

Since this is the core of what we do as artists, it is natural to worry about it. Probably all of us at some point have concerns that we may use it up. What would we do then?

So, an ongoing concern for many of us is, should we ration and conserve our creativity so we don’t use it up? Is it even possible to conserve it?

Sustainable creativity

I don’t believe creativity actually gets used up. It is like a good well that always seems to be full when we need it. If anything, creativity thrives on being challenged and used. It seems like the more we call on it, the more there is.

But is it sustainable? I think so, but we can be our own worst enemies. If we keep doing the same stuff over and over we get less creative. When we try to stay in a safe rut, there is less need to exercise creative. We’ve done it all. Many times. It is a major challenge to apply new creativity to repeating the same things.

Unless we are following the lead of where our creativity wants to take us, we risk getting stale. When that happens, we seriously fear we are not creative any more. And we are right.

That doesn’t mean our creativity is gone. But if we do not give it free rein to take us in new directions, it stops challenging us. For all practical purposes, our creativity is them used up.

Creativity is like a good friend. It will be there for us, but we have a responsibility to nurture the relationship. If we ignore it, if we do not make time for it, it will eventually give up on us.

Burnout

Everyone goes through cycles. Creativity, and everything else in life, can ebb and flow. That is natural. But burnout is an extreme. It is a depressed state where it can seem impossible to ever again do the quality of work we want to do. It can persist for months or years if we let it.

I know. I have been there. There was a time in my career when I worked long hours for years in a job that was not fulfilling. It caught up to me. I crashed. I pulled back, working less hours and not being as satisfied with the quality of my work. Eventually, by changing position and increasing the creativity of my role, I became productive and happy in my job again. It was probably a 3 year process.

In burnout, it seems evident that creativity must be unsustainable. That’s not true, though. It is not creativity that lets us down, it is the other parts of our context. It is important to manage our lives and environment if we want to stay creative.

Creative stimulus

Like an athlete trains constantly, we must exercise our creativity to stay on top of our game. Everyone’s needs are different, so it is impossible to lay out a plan for you to follow to do it. You have to figure that out for yourself.

I can provide some creative stimulants I have seen and used. Consider them. Try the ones that seem to fit you. Develop your own methods.

I will just bullet point some of them. Each could be a topic on it’s own.

Read. And not just the same old stuff. Read new things. Read things by people you disagree with. And also read some light stuff just for fun.

Study something new. Don’t plan to get a PhD in it. Just learn something about it. If you like it, go deeper. If not, try something else.

Write

Go back and review your old work. Put together a new portfolio.

Go to a museum.

Travel to a new place that is NOT a major iconic photo location.

Put blocks of time in your calendar to do nothing. Turn off your phone. Let your mind wander. Doodle. Look around. Intentionally be unproductive.

Spend time with friends, just living life.

Take your significant other out for a nice and unexpected meal.

Find things that make you happy, but that are not just entertainment. Try to do more of them.

Take walks, with and without your camera.

Just do it

The theme here is to fill your mind with new information. This connects in strange and unexpected ways, leading to who knows what. And to give yourself space and time to just think, ponder, consider, unwind. The more pressure we put ourselves under, the more it shuts down creativity.

And like the inspired Nike tag line, “just do it”. Get out and work. Take pictures, Don’t worry so much about the results. Going through the motions is comforting and leads to results. Eventually. Creativity is not just inspiration, it is a process.

Relax and try to de-clutter your head. Follow your instincts.

Is creativity sustainable? I would say definitely. It is one of the most important traits we have as artists. We can consciously take actions to keep our creativity healthy and flowing. But we have to listen to ourselves and recognize what our needs are.

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Created From Joy

Radiance. Sun beams over mountains on a summer sunset.

There are many motivations and reasons for creating art. I can’t say any are wrong if the result is art that truly pleases the artist. For me, I am sure my art is created from joy.

Many motivations

What is it that motivates artists to create? Trauma? Money? Desperation? Joy? I am not qualified to say, because I can only speak for myself. Without being in the mind of another artist and experiencing their motivations, I cannot know.

Much has been written on this, but, again, i am not sure we can fully know what motivates someone else.

We can look at some works and believe they were created as the artist tried to work out some grief or tragedy or great wrong. Or maybe just try to understand life.

Guernica

Picasso’s Guernica seems to be a deep reaction to the horrors of war. Actually, he had been given a commission by the Spanish Republicans to paint a mural for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. He was not making much headway on it and did not seem highly motivated. Then on 26 April 1937 the Nazis bombed the village or Guernica. Picasso was urged to make this his theme and, after reading eye witness accounts of the attack, he did.

Yes, he was Spanish, although he did not live there at the time and never would again. But rather than being a deeply personal experience for him, he seemed to be able to empathize well enough to bring the emotion through. Anyway, it is considered by many to be his masterpiece.

This does not prove or disprove anything. It just shows that artists motivations are deeply internal and personal. As much as critics try to analyze and dissect a work, they are groping in the dark unless the artist enlightens them.

Joy motivates me

I have discovered myself well enough to understand that joy is my primary motivation when I am making images. Even though I am old and increasingly cynical, joy is what enlightens my work.

Joy can be a small thing like finding a dew covered spider web in the niche of a wall or it can be the sweep of a grand landscape at the right time, like the image with this article. It is not a particular thing or place or time. It is my reaction to it. How does it move me? What does it bring to me at the moment?

Finding these moments of joy draws me on from one to the next. The act of selecting a scene to photograph, framing it, composing it, deciding on exposure settings, etc. is a skill. Doing it is a calming and pleasant activity to immerse myself in for a few moments. Everybody takes pictures. To take one that people stop to look at or talk about is art.

My joy is in capturing and expressing a scene in a way that will be memorable. But even if no one other than me sees it or enjoys it, it is joy and it is my art. No critic or reviewer can take that joy away from me. It matters little what other people think about an image. It can still give me joy.

Not happiness

We need to distinguish between happiness and joy. Many people take them as about the same, but they are quite different. Happiness is a pleasant feeling because circumstances made us content at the moment. A warm cup of cocoa on a cold day. An unexpected letter from a friend.

The next moment, something can take away our happiness.

Joy is a long term view of life. It comes from within and is not completely dependent on what is happening around us. We tend to be joyful when the way we are living our life is aligned with our values and beliefs.

Making images that bring me joy definitely aligns with my values and closes the loop. It reinforces my joy. That is, my images come from joy and making them increases my joy. For me, they are created from joy.

Values

Do you ever consider your values? The principles you build your life on are too important to go un-analyzed. We are more fulfilled when what we do is aligned with our values and we tend to be frustrated and unhappy when we are opposing them. Think about what you believe.

I’m not saying everything we do needs to be for some grand social cause. Not at all. I think that tends to make our work stiff and preachy. I am just suggesting we will be happier and do better work if we are doing it for the joy of our feelings and the pleasure of the creativity.

Try it. You might find more joy in your art and it might come across that way to your viewers.

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To Be, or Not to Be.

A mindful view of fall colors near me

I’m not discussing Hamlet’s famous existential crisis. I want to continue an ongoing theme of mindfulness. To be or not to be refers to our state of mindfulness when we go out shooting.

Backwards

John Barclay is an excellent photographer and workshop leader. I read an interesting article where he talked about a student in a workshop who changed John’s approach to photography. The student was a new photographer, but a Zen priest. His work was noticeably better than the rest of the student, even maybe John’s. John said “I had been approaching photography backwards and I believe this to be true for most people. Flint arrived at photography because he had learnt how to become mindful and present in the world, so when he picked up a camera, he’d already done all the hard work.”

What an interesting idea. And I see it playing out constantly. Photography instructors spend massive amounts of time teaching the technical process of taking pictures. Apertures and shutter speeds and depth of field and rules of third and all the other trivia we think is important to taking a good picture.

But this student, Flint, had already figured out how to see what was interesting. Now he just needed to learn the technical process for recording it. Amazing. He starts out at the level most of us strive over years to attain then just has to learn to use a camera.

Mindfulness

John’s takeaway was a change of philosophy. A desire to become more mindful. He states it as “we don’t take pictures, we are taken by them.“

Cutting through the mystical fog that often surrounds its discussion, mindfulness is learning “to be”. We need to be present, to be still, to pay attention, to quiet our minds and let go of the plans and schedules and demands and interruptions that are constantly calling us.

This is increasingly hard for most of us in the Western world. It’s a 24/7 world. We are over scheduled; we multitask; we carry devices with us that are always connected and bringing us “critical” information that is more important than our art. If we don’t respond immediately to every ding of our devices, we might miss out on something.

Out culture is the opposite of mindful.

Why do it

I believe, and have seen research supporting it, that we cannot really multitask. We work much better concentrating on one thing for quality time, even getting into a flow state. Every time we are interrupted, it takes us at least 20 minutes to fully engage with the previous task we were doing.

Even more seriously, as artists, we cannot think, reflect, introspect, envision creative new work when we are constantly stimulated and distracted by other things. The arena we perform in is our mind. We must take enough control of our mind that we can focus our creative energy on our art.

Our work comes from our own mind. We need to carefully protect that and be serious about managing our own thoughts and environment. Outside forces want to impose on us and control our attention. We must fight that.

How to do it

Ah, how. That is the challenge. And the challenge is different for everyone and the solutions are different for each. We are each in a different situation.

My personal experience and what works for me is all I can speak of with any confidence. I do not have a problem with social media, because I have never let myself become addicted to it. I realize this is a problem for many people to day. While I can sympathize, I do not understand it. In the same way that I can sympathize with an alcoholic even though I do not truly understand because I do not have a problem with the addiction myself.

Social Media

Social media is one of the worst attention sinks in most people’s lives.

I know people who are on Facebook, or their drug of choice, dozens of times a day. They feel compelled to immediately respond to everything they see and spend hours hypnotized by short video clips. And if they do not post something every day they fear they will become irrelevant – in a couple of hours. This Fear of Missing Out is a primary tool of the media companies. They have huge staffs of unbelievably smart people working daily on ways to keep us addicted to their service. Results show that it works.

What would happen if you put yourself in control of your attention instead of defaulting to what the media companies want you to do? For instance, if your main creative time is 8 to noon, then turn off your devices and do not allow yourself to access social media during those hours. Set a meeting on your calendar to block out time for you. Honor it and reserve it for your creative work. Put a wall around yourself and fiercely protect your creative time.

After that, get in touch with the world and light up your huge network of followers if you need to. But an interesting thing to ask yourself is, in cold marketing and financial terms, what are those likes and followers worth to your business? How much revenue does it bring? Might your time be better spent on your art?

Benefits

I am talking generally about mindfulness. I strongly believe that we must be mindful in order to create the art we want.

Do you ever just take your camera and go for a walk? I highly recommend it. But it is not effective if you are still fully tapped into the online world. Silence the phone, Take out the AirPods so you can actually listen to what is happening around you. Coach yourself to look at the world you are passing through. Really look. Take some time. Walking is good exercise, but forget the personal best goals. Just walk. Maybe even slow down if it will help you to pay more attention.

It will take practice to slow down and start seeing. Keep doing it. It is a form of meditation to unplug from the connected world and get in touch with what is actually there. Life is a series of moments, and we have to re-learn to recognize them.

Having a camera along is important to me. It gives me license to look for pictures. This ties back to what John Barclay said “we don’t take pictures, we are taken by them.” I go out, not to force myself to take a picture, but to allow myself to find something that interests me that should be photographed. I am often amazed.

To be

To be, or not to be. Being, in the moment, undistracted, is a powerful tool and a strong meditative force for artists. We engage different parts of our mind, waking up the right-brain creative side.

Plus it has other benefits. We come back refreshed, more alive. Ready to do more creative work. Maybe we even want to keep the devices silenced for longer periods. Unwilling to put out precious attention under someone else’s control.

Like the student John Barclay mentions, being in the moment is the hard part. Then we pick up the camera and capture it.

We don’t take pictures. We are taken by them.

Today’s image

This was a mindful day in the woods. It was fall. The leaves and undergrowth were changing color. I love that time of the year, but I was feeling a reluctance to just snap pretty pictures of fall trees. On this occasion I got in tune with the rhythm and flow of the day, The wind blowing the leaves and grass. The light moving through all of it. Rather than a normal picture of fall leaves I worked on capturing the movement, the transitory feel of the season. I like it. It seems more in spirit with the day as I remember it.

I want to hear your comments! Let’s talk!