The Difference Is Creative Intent

[darr]

Here is an article inspired by a comment about feeling stuck and how "just shooting anything" doesn't always help.
I've been there too, and wrote about why creative intent might matter more than we think.
Would enjoy hearing how others work through dry spells.

The Difference Is Creative Intent


PS: There is no forum for 'On Photography' discussions, so I hope this is posted in the right place.

 

[Shashin]

I like the example of look at other art, not just photography. I learnt a great deal about color by looking at impressionists and other modernist styles. I learnt a lot about perspective from Japanese art.

Sometimes, though, you just need a break. There is no harm in leaving the cameras in a bag. I have had dry spells from time to time. I am going through one now. But the dry spell can just be the pause to let your mind recalibrate. It is similar to an exercise to photograph an object as many different ways as possible--you will go through a lot if iterations and then get tapped out. However, a day later, you will have other ideas. After working intensively on broader subjects, the break can be longer as the energy to go through all the iterations simply takes longer and more effort. But eventually, you get tapped out. That recovery can be proportional to that effort.

I also agree, "just shoot anything" is not a real answer. That is not the same as go out and explore a new subject, which is pushing you into new areas and ideas. But I can't just go out and randomly shoot. The flag I have when tapped out is if I go and simply try to take pictures, I just end up taking my camera for a walk and never return with pictures.

YMMV

 

[Knorp]

Speaking of dry spells and how to overcome them: I experienced the unexpected positive side effect of G.A.S.
Probably the very reason for having too much gear ...

 

[algrove]

At times I will go out and shoot nothing. I assume what ever I saw was not interesting enough for me to capture. Was my intent expecting too much? I doubt it, but at least I went out.

 

[Godfrey]

Nice article.

I go out walking, cycling, or driving to places to shoot. Sometimes I don't feel the intent, most of the time I do, but I always shoot. And when I go out on a walk and don't carry a camera, it is a deliberate choice to not consider making photos but to concentrate on seeing photos. I've walked the same area around my home almost every day since 2019, and I continue to see new photos that fit into my intent every day; I can't take them all. And later, after a day or a week or a month or a year, I look back through the photos of those days when I didn't feel the intent and I see things there, yes even there, that work ... So intent is not always and only a conscious thing.

The development of that intent is the long, slow process of becoming a photographer and not just a camera enthusiast, to me. It was easy to be a camera enthusiast, and still is, because these devices are clever and fascinating, what they can do is also clever and fascinating, and these sorts of things just tickle something in my brain. But becoming a photographer has little to do with cameras and much more to do with seeing, with making connections way below the conscious level and letting them surface in our mind's eye as we walk with the camera and Look at things around us, people around us. And from that, intent develops ... slowly ... as the foundations of our consciousness grow downwards into our subconscious and we let the world inside.

Just articulating that, right now, caused a wave of sensation to flow from my heart to my spine, then up and down through my body; my eyes teared. That's how I know how deeply it affects me.

Let yourself go into your perceptions, let yourself feel the Everything around you, let it truly affect you. Intent then becomes easier.

G

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

This is highly individual. Except when shooting commercial jobs (where I shoot lots of photos "just in case"), I almost always shoot with intent. Often, I even lift up the camera, look through the viewfinder, but think... nah, not my photo.

The parallell to other visual art forms is to me essential. I'm a graphic designer by education (and sometimes by profession), and the time at art school was just as much about art as about design. The rules about composition, perspective, colours and light are more or less the same regardless of (visual) art form. Many of the photos that I've taken the last few decades wouldn't exist in their current form without that background. That doesn't mean that one can't become an excellent photographer without studying classic art, but to me it has been extremely important. That also implies that to me, it doesn't matter much if I use a crappy old camera or the latest, greatest. As long as there's a usable viewfinder, I mostly don't mind the grain or lack of resolution of older cameras. But the viewfinder is important, and the lens. Those are my paint brushes.

 

[Geoff]

Some fifty years ago, I was able to spend a summer studying photography under Goon Mili, a veteran Time-Life photographer and avery skilled Hungarian master. He worked with Edgerton on the flash, and did these lovely time lapsed ballet shots that were just mesmerizing combinations of dancers caught but also flowing. He also did the famous shot of Picasso drawing with light.

Apart from the normal exercises, such as composition, color studies, content, one day he sent us out to photograph with no film in our cameras. This most peculiar exercise was intended to have us focus on what we wanted to capture, how to see and move to take, and to isolate the desire for the image, or the shot, from all other issues. While quite out of the norm, it made us separate our lust/success of a shot from intention, and it's a lesson I've never forgotten since.

 

[rdeloe]

Here is an article inspired by a comment about feeling stuck and how "just shooting anything" doesn't always help.
I've been there too, and wrote about why creative intent might matter more than we think.
Would enjoy hearing how others work through dry spells.

The Difference Is Creative Intent


PS: There is no forum for 'On Photography' discussions, so I hope this is posted in the right place.

Your post is motivating me to get back to a 1/2 written article that's been on my hard drive for a few months now.

My article was stumbling along incoherently until I saw a photo you shared of what looks like an abandoned plantation house; this was a couple months ago I think. What I do made a bit more sense to me when contrasted against what you do (so thanks for the inspiration!)