Are you an artist?
Do you:
1. Create your images to satisfy yourself first and foremost?
2. Feel you have to make images, rather than want to?
3. Are you hard on yourself?
4. Does recognition matter to you?
5. Do you care what others think of your work?
I could answer each of these questions very easily – because I often find myself asking them. I have trouble figuring out just ‘why’ I do what I do, but I do know that I feel I have to.
I’d love to hear what you think about these questions and what you’d answer, and why too.
1. just for fun, to be away from the mainstream and the crowd. to have some space to myself.
2. no. only go to shoot when I feel in the mood. Same as i do with my work!
3. I like to achieve great results witch I still don’t but can’t say that I stress out with that.
4.no
5. Only by someone who admire his work.
In short note, I use to make my life around surfing till I get my income from the surf too. Now it’s too difficult to be away from the mainstream of the surfing world and just be in the water enjoying, I find out in the photography the scape to have some time off away from everything and everyone like I use to feel when I was in the water to get some waves.
Comment by retro movement — 10 November, 2009 @ 11:06 pm
1: Yes, first and foremost to satisfy myself. That can come from several different things: sometimes it’s building an image from the ground up, selecting the elements of the shot or working out a technically tricky scene. Other times it’s simply getting out on the hill and taking a pretty picture.
2: Very often, yes. It is more than a passing desire to take a picture. If I see a shot, I’ve got to take it. If I can’t I must admit that I’ll not enjoy the day out as much as I would have, regardless of how good the walk/climb/whatever is otherwise.
3: Yes.
4: I’d like to say no to this, but it wouldn’t be 100% honest. I’ll probably never be famous, or even well known, but I do like to think that people appreciate my work and yes, it is nice to get feedback. I don’t want my name in lights, just to know that people appreciate what I put out there.
5: Absolutely. Photography is often a very solitary pursuit, but I do believe that the images we create should be seen by other people. It’s only natural to want people to connect with them. They don’t have to like them all (heck, I’d be slightly worried if everyone liked every shot) but I would feel like I had failed if they didn’t feel engaged by something. I have a small exhibition up locally and one of the most gratifying things about it has been the fact that everyone seems to have a different “favorite” from the collection, and often not what I thought would be popular.
As an aside, I’m leaving for Patagonia in a few weeks, just me, my tent and my camera. I’ve spent quite some time going through your galleries of the area – they are stunning! If I can come back with images as compelling as yours I will be a very happy man.
Cheers.
Comment by DougieC — 10 November, 2009 @ 11:43 pm
1. Yes. It is in my research work (which I love) and in the making of images that I feel most connected to myself. This is me, in this image of a hill. Or this river. Or this portrait.
2. A lot of the time, yes. I rarely leave the house without some kind of camera (even if it’s just a Fuji single-use camera!), and find myself compelled to photograph things, patterns etc. But I also WANT to do this – it’s a very fine line between need and want here.
3. Yes, though this takes time, and practice, and a growing awareness of how something could have been done differently (which is what I got from the workshop).
4. Not really. I do it for myself, mostly, and if other people like what I do, that’s nice. They might see completely different things in an image to me, so if I photograph something it’s done for me, not for other people. There’s no likelihood of me ever doing this, but I imagine that some advertising photography must be quite hard, if you can’t photograph things to say what you (the photographer) want to say.
5. With portraits, I’d like the subject to be able to relate to the image in some way, though they don’t have to like it. For everything else, I suppose in some ways it would be nice, but only because I see so much of myself in an image that people seeing it are seeing something of me. But I’m fairly self-sufficient, and am not that bothered.
It’s an interesting set of questions. I can answer them very easily, but they don’t get to ‘why photograph?’ That’s a question I’m continually thinking about!
Comment by michael — 11 November, 2009 @ 1:21 am
1. Create your images to satisfy yourself first and foremost?
Yes, but while I can satisfy the need to create (temporarily), I’m never satisfied. I truly is like a drug in that sense.
2. Feel you have to make images, rather than want to?
Yes. I can feel my spirit drain away if I don’t.
3. Are you hard on yourself?
Insanely hard. I honestly don’t think it’s in my nature to sit back, look at one of my images and say “Yep, it’s perfect”.
4. Does recognition matter to you?
The recognition of my peers – yes. Everyone else, not so much.
5. Do you care what others think of your work?
While I create purely for me, I do want people to have a reaction to my art. Good or bad, I want to move them emotionally. If I can convey the feeling of the scene I captured, or more accurately the feeling I want them to have, then to me that is when a photography goes from being a snapshot to being art. If I’m photographing a place, I want to capture the spirit of that place and transport the viewer there.
Mark
Comment by olwick — 11 November, 2009 @ 10:49 am
1. Yes
2-3. I tried to change my perception of this matter. I don’t pretend to be photographer in my mind anymore. I just take pictures as I come along and hope they will be better in 10 years time. However I see that since that moment when I decided not to be too hard on myself I became lazy and less enthusiastic. Something’s gotta be done about it. Being hard on myself was the force that made me go farther and do more and maybe better.
4. That depends on who recognizes. When I started to write I got a lot of praise and learned to shrug it off, then with the photographs as well. But I knew that those photographs were shiteous. I think, one shouldn’t be excited about compliments from people who don’t understand photography at all. But to be honest I want to be recognized in years to come, if my photographs will be better. Say, as good as yours.
5. Yes and no. I have idea of what I want to achieve and I know more or less what to do. If you listen to so called “critique” that will only bring you down. If you pay too much attention to compliments it will stop you from becoming better. So I’d rather have a plan and follow it not paying much attention to what people say, but still I am open to any valuable suggestion from more experienced people.
Comment by goosetea — 11 November, 2009 @ 10:56 am
1. yes – My drive to photograph is to share MY vision of the world around me with my viewers, to give them a different perspective on the world, not one that they expect.
2. no – I have to make images because I always want to. If I don’t, I’m very unhappy with myself. If I do, even if I toss them all, I have a feeling of peace and serenity deep inside me.
3. very – I am very critical of my work. When I feel something is OK to keep and work on, others think it’s amazing. Nice, but I’m the one I have to satisfy.
4. I’d like to say no, but it does matter to me. Not getting recognition will not stop me from shooting, but it’s gratifying to have some recognition and know that my images have had an impact.
5. yes and no – If others don’t like my work, that won’t stop me from doing it. But I’d like to know that people value my intuition and insight, and that they derive some sort of transcendence from it.
Comment by fiddlergene — 11 November, 2009 @ 10:08 pm
1. Create your images to satisfy yourself first and foremost?
Truly myself.
2. Feel you have to make images, rather than want to?
At the moment it feels like the wanting to is definitely taken over by the having to. Working full time in an office, the fast approaching winter makes me looking out of the window each day feeling sorry to loose all the chances of fantastic light because there is just little time in the morning before work and the time I get out of office it is pitch dark – dawn light and blue hour all gone and it feels very, very annoying indeed!
3. Are you hard on yourself?
I think I am. I scrap a lot of what I do, not being convinced about it.
4. Does recognition matter to you?
It pleases, of course, but it is not an issue. Non of my friends or family share my passion, so I am sort of a “loner”. I take photographs to keep an image of my feeling of a moment or location for myself and this is very personal, recognition does not really matter anymore then.
5. Do you care what others think of your work?
Everyone appreciates some backslapping once in a while – it is good for your ego. But in the end I think it is more important what people think about you than your work. If you treat other people right in life I am convinced you get paid back in recognition of what you do – no matter what. It will be positive and good for you.
Comment by Redhair — 12 November, 2009 @ 12:02 am
Some interesting stuff there – thanks for sharing.
I would like to contribute my own feelings on the matter, but I simply don’t really understand why I do what I do and can’t really nail down any firm answers. One thing I do know – is that I’d probably contradict myself quite a lot if I did!
Comment by Bruce Percy — 12 November, 2009 @ 6:51 pm
1. Create your images to satisfy yourself first and foremost?
Myself first definitely. But what does it mean if my ’satisfaction’ in a picture is informed by the range of photography that I have seen previously?
2. Feel you have to make images, rather than want to?
Hmm… I feel taking pictures is part of what defines me as a person so I suppose I have to take pictures to be myself.
3. Are you hard on yourself?
I think I’m generally crap and have taken a few lucky shots that I’ve post rationalised into artistic creations. I look at other people’s work an see so many more things in them than I see in my own. Then again I sometimes realise a small fraction of the potential I like to think I have. I don’t think I’ve taken a ‘great’ picture yet but perhaps that is a good thing because it means I’m improving? I don’t know – ask me tomorrow and you’ll get a different answer. Perhaps a form of manic depression is a necessary characteristic of creativity.
4. Does recognition matter to you?
Yes – some form of peer approval is very satisfying. However, I think as you develop as an artist (?!) the ideal peer group shrinks until perhaps the only peer you actually have is imaginary?
5. Do you care what others think of your work?
As above – generally though I love the pictures I love anyway – if someone agrees it’s a bonus but if someone dislikes them then I won’t change my mind and won’t be depressed. People like different pictures for different reasons and even when people agree on liking a particular picture, the reasons for liking them is very different when you get into details.
Comment by timparkin — 22 December, 2009 @ 10:40 pm