HCB - dissected...

richardman · January 23, 2012

This makes me even more in awe but also despair at the same time :-)

http://www.adammarelliphoto.com/2011/12/surrealist-manifesto-part-iii/

http://www.adammarelliphoto.com/2012/01/surrealist-manifesto/

RSL · January 24, 2012

Richard, why despair? Remember, HCB spent a long time studying drawing and painting before he got into photography in a serious way. He studied under Andre Lhote, who was a rigid, rule-bound teacher of composition, and he mastered the rules of composition. By the time he picked up that first Leica the rules were indelibly imprinted on his brain.

For ten years from the late seventies to the late eighties my wife owned and operated a gallery. It was a pretty eclectic gallery that ran all the way from flat art, mostly painting, to pottery. Everything came from individual artists, some local, some national. During most of that time I was deeply involved in software engineering, teaching part-time at a local college, was mayor of the town to boot, and didn't have a lot of time to devote to the gallery, but from the people who brought in their efforts to try to sell I learned two things beyond any shadow of a doubt:

1. Artistic ability is inborn. You either have it or you don't have it. That fact probably is most obvious in music, but it's no less true for painting or photography. The critical artistic ability you inherit -- from who knows how far back -- is the ability to look at something, or, in the case of music, hear something, and know immediately whether or not it's any good. Which is why people like HCB know when to snap the shutter and, when they look at the results, when to dump the result.

2. But ability alone doesn't get the job done. Time after time I'd see work brought in by people who had the ability but hadn't done their homework. They hadn't studied the work of the masters in their genre, and they hadn't made the many expendable experiments you have to make to learn how to create a keeper. They thought that since they knew they had the ability, anything they produced was bound to be good. I see that all the time in photography fora, and it drives me nuts, since in most cases there never seems to be anybody willing to tell the poster: "back to the drafting board with that one." Even more annoying, I know damn well that somebody with artistic ability can see that what they're posting isn't as good as it should be, but they post it anyway.

But I also saw the other case far too often: the guy who had no talent, but had worked his butt off trying to do what he simply wasn't capable of doing. One painter in particular comes to mind. He'd studied the glazing techniques some of the old masters used in their oils, and the technical quality of his paintings was stunning. Only problem was he didn't understand human anatomy, and his grasp of linear perspective left a lot to be desired. The result was paintings that were a joke, especially funny because of his mastery of the technical side of his work.

The bottom line is this: If you've got it, keep working at it. You'll have a lot of losers and very few winners, but that's the way the thing works. Even when you've pretty much mastered the genre you're working in you'll still have a lot of losers and very few winners, but by then you should know the difference. There's no destination in this kind of thing. It's all journey, and it never ends. If you have the ability your work will improve, but there'll always be room for more improvement. If you see that you don't have the ability, find a different line of work.

You're doing good work. Keep working at it, but only post your best, because in the long run your reputation as an artist hangs on the whole body of your work, not just on one or two things that stand out.

torags · January 24, 2012

Well said Russ.

I would veer from your comment, only post your best. The photog may think it's their best; the viewer may think differently.

Seems to me it's more complicated. Photog's develope a style that can be improved by posting less than best, but be open to C&C.

I think the danger is pandering

bdcolen · January 24, 2012

It's worth remembering that the rule of thumb at LIFE in its heyday was that if a photographer got two "keepers" - two images he or she thought were special out of a 36 exposure roll of film, the photographer was doing well. This doesn't mean that most of the images weren't acceptable, but that at best 1 in 18 would be something the photographer might want to keep for herself.

Oh, and Russ - inherited talent? Absolutely. Virtually any creative endeavor; either you have it, or you don't. In photography, "it" is an "eye." A lot can be taught, and learned. But if one doesn't have that eye...

richardman · January 24, 2012

One out of every one to two rolls is about my average so far.

RSL · January 24, 2012

That's a damn good average, Richard. I certainly don't do that well. Some of them are, as BD said, "acceptable," but not, in my estimation, postable.

HCB - dissected...

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