Running out

[Ranger 9]

Race-car drivers have a self-deprecating expression they sometimes invoke to explain off-track incidents: "Going into Turn 9, I ran out of talent..."

Last night, looking for old pictures to contribute to an upcoming "25 Years Of _______" collection, it occured to me that in terms of photography, I probably ran out of talent in about 1989.

I wasn't too shocked by that, since it's all too easy for me to get comfortable with my own limitations! But it also would mean that all the time, money and effort I've invested since then in cameras, lenses, publications, workshops, materials, etc. actually hasn't had any effect. All that stuff may have enabled me to make pictures more easily, or deliver them in different formats/media, or have more fun making them... but the pictures themselves aren't really any better.

Anybody else ever feel that way? If so, does it bother you?

 

[Don Libby]

Actually most days I feel the opposite; notice I said "most days". I've had days where I begin to doubt myself and wonder if I should rethink everything and maybe sell everything and find a nice desert island. Then I look at what I just shot and am surprised at how well I actually did.

I also have a tenancy to revisit older work and attempt to reprocess them using techniques that I currently use. Sometimes it works for the better then again I'm reminded of the old saying that you can't make a silk purse from a cows ear...


don

 

[TRSmith]

I go through peaks and valleys of shock and euphoria. The peaks are usually centered around a particular image that I find some joy with. I see something that I like or that surprises me because it resonates as being a vision uniquely my own, but these kind of peaks are usually short-lived. The valleys of shock come when I recognize that for all the churning and sweat, I'm not great and probably never will be. At that point, some sort of pollyanna energy kicks in and I tell myself, "So what! The short-lived joys are worth it and who knows, this might just be a step in some direction!"

But the really sad truth is not that I'm no better than I was 25 years ago (one could argue that I have indeed improved) but that the personal/emotional stumbling blocks and barriers to my aesthetic/creative evolution are still with me and exactly the same as they were 25 years ago. So much for maturity. Maybe what I really need is photo-therapy. Now there's an idea for a workshop!

 

[Ranger 9]

Note that I'm not saying I'm depressed about my photos, or that I want to stop making them or give up.

I'm just saying I'm tempted to wonder if there's any point in expending money or effort in things that might promise to let me make better pictures... that maybe I should just accept that, qualitatively, they're about as good as they're going to get.

Sometimes I feel like a college student who's working so hard to get an A in one class that the rest of his course load suffers... it might make more sense to scale that back and concentrate on getting Bs in all his classes...

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Interesting thread . I have hit many low points in my career and sometimes they may last as long as 6 months when you are just shooting to shoot or get a job done with no real creative juices flowing. Not sure what it is but you hit a wall and get depressed and it takes some type of change or project in your life to correct it and get that juice going again. I feel this is very normal among artist or the creative types and you just have to find ways to plow through it and get back on track again. Change in system or lifestyle. Maybe exercise more or even just changing your routine, drive a different way to work for a month. Try anything to get you out of those slumps, it will happen just need to find the right thing to do it. But losing it for a time I think is a very normal human behavior.

No ad here but try a workshop with others that maybe something you don't normally shoot. Hanging out with other photographers for a couple days is a nice retreat

 

[LJL]

I usually just head off to an art museum or gallery showing or something like that. I find that it does a couple of things. One is that it allows me to really step away from any slump or boredom I may be experiencing in my own work, and two, it helps to see how others, painters or photographers or even sculptors, tackle issues of form, light, and how things look. I usually find that opens up the way I start looking at stuff. Then I go out with a simple camera, like the M8 and a single lens and just experiment doing stuff I would normally not think about doing in normal activities. That usually seems to work.

Reading books and stuff like DVDs can be helpful too, but honestly, hands on playing around is still the best, and when done in a risk-free environment, it is a whole lot of fun.

LJ

 

[johnastovall]

I've found my Holga good for the dry times of the muse. Do worry about anything just click away Random things for the mind to order later. It's the later that starts up that conversation with the muse.

 

[Ranger 9]

Lots of fascinating responses here. Again, I'm not complaining about dry-up or photographers' block or whatever.

But so much of the photography culture is devoted to "making better pictures" that I'm wondering what happens if you reach the point of saying, "That's it, this is as good as I'm going to get."

People do come to terms with this idea. Dance is another artistic culture in which everyone's always trying to get better, and yet there's a common saying among dancers that "you have to dance with the body you've got." I'm just trying to work out what the photography equivalent is.

Mind you, I'm not even sure I've reached this point myself! For example, I probably would have no trouble convincing myself that my pictures would be better if I had a new Leica S2! And since I'm never going to have a spare $30,000 to spend on photography, I'll be able to tell myself indefinitely that the reason I'm not progressing is simply that I don't have a spare $30,000 -- not that I've "run out of talent"!



Footnote: I made the attached photos in the same room, at about the same time of day, of the same type of subject matter, overall mood, etc. The only real difference is that I shot the b&w one in June 1990, and the color one last Wednesday! Nineteen years of additional experience and technological advancement don't seem to have made much difference. And yet I like both pictures, I'm happy with them, and I'm glad I made them. Hmmm, maybe I haven't so much "run out of talent" as just run out of motivation to improve...

 

[glenerrolrd]

No question I have had the same feeling. Sports it happens all the time ..progress is consistent until you run up against your natural ability ..tennis ,golf etc. Same in business ..you have more experience but aren t really any smarter or work any harder. I look at the images I took in the 80s and I am only marginally better.

Photography you do have the advantage of technology. I can do things with digital I could never image with film. Just the faster 21 lux on the M8 has opened up night shooting that was difficult just a few years ago..same with the D3/d700.

Guy s point about the workshops mirrors my experience. Find something new. I took a workshop on street shooting..didn t know anything about it. Spent two weeks on the streets of Prague and I thought I had reinvented myself . This summer I took two weddings (hadn t shot one in 35 years ) think I was a little rusty? But it was fun to push myself to watch all the videos and struggle with the new flashes etc. So I am now trying to keep at my street shooting and add breath to my skills.

I think a part of this is also maintaining focus and a clear sense of purpose. I am at a level of shooting over 20K images a year (and this is normal shooting not machine gunning a D3 for sports). I lose interest faster in a collection .... editing and post processing 1000+ images feels like work .

Maintaining the fire in the belly to do better is a critical factor in getting better.

You are not alone in feeling that improvement is hard to come by.

 

[johnastovall]

I'm seeing an interesting sub-text here. Are we looking for technical or aesthetic improvement? I don't think they are the same

 

[TRSmith]

I'm seeing an interesting sub-text here. Are we looking for technical or aesthetic improvement? I don't think they are the same

I agree and have the same question. My response above was to what I had thought was a question about aesthetic improvement.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Lots of fascinating responses here. Again, I'm not complaining about dry-up or photographers' block or whatever.

But so much of the photography culture is devoted to "making better pictures" that I'm wondering what happens if you reach the point of saying, "That's it, this is as good as I'm going to get."

People do come to terms with this idea. Dance is another artistic culture in which everyone's always trying to get better, and yet there's a common saying among dancers that "you have to dance with the body you've got." I'm just trying to work out what the photography equivalent is.

Mind you, I'm not even sure I've reached this point myself! For example, I probably would have no trouble convincing myself that my pictures would be better if I had a new Leica S2! And since I'm never going to have a spare $30,000 to spend on photography, I'll be able to tell myself indefinitely that the reason I'm not progressing is simply that I don't have a spare $30,000 -- not that I've "run out of talent"!



Footnote: I made the attached photos in the same room, at about the same time of day, of the same type of subject matter, overall mood, etc. The only real difference is that I shot the b&w one in June 1990, and the color one last Wednesday! Nineteen years of additional experience and technological advancement don't seem to have made much difference. And yet I like both pictures, I'm happy with them, and I'm glad I made them. Hmmm, maybe I haven't so much "run out of talent" as just run out of motivation to improve...

Actually the shot 19 years later is a lot better with composition,mood , framing and placing your subjects.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

I agree and have the same question. My response above was to what I had thought was a question about aesthetic improvement.

But they relate very much to each other . As you become more proficient in your technical abilities than this frees up the creative abilities to concentrate on the image and not how to go about doing it. You can get very hung up on the how than the why early in your shooting experiences.

 

[TRSmith]

I totally agree Guy, and investing the time to enhance the technical can certainly payoff when it comes to realizing the creative. I just wasn't sure what the OP was asking in his first post.

 

[johnastovall]

I totally agree Guy, and investing the time to enhance the technical can certainly payoff when it comes to realizing the creative. I just wasn't sure what the OP was asking in his first post.

But some times the technical can get in the way of the creative as Bill Pierce says:

"Never ever confuse sharp with good, or you will end up shaving with an ice cream cone and licking a razor blade."
Bill Pierce - Leica M photog and author

 

[Guy Mancuso]

That is true but if you have the technical to a point that it becomes automatic not much thought needs to go into it and frees the creative . Not sure what Bill says but I will read it

 

[Lisa]

Gosh, reading all this makes me feel very, very fortunate. I've been taking photography very seriously as an amateur for over ten years, and much less seriously for about ten before that, and I feel I'm still improving dramatically as time goes on. I look at photos I took only about five years ago and think "Gosh that was crappy!". I look at a large framed photo I bought at a gallery about 10-15 years ago that I thought was absolutely beautiful, and now I look at and think, "Eh, it's OK, but I can do better than that."

The advent of digital (which for me was a Nikon D70) gave me a tremendous leap forward in technical quality, since I learned a great deal more about proper exposure, focus, and focal length when I could get immediate feedback on what I was doing wrong. That didn't particularly help the aesthetic quality, but I do find that the aesthetic quality has been slowly but steadily improving over the years just with practice.

I've never, ever felt that I was in a slump. My only problem is going back to yesteryear's photos and being very disappointed with most of them because my standards have been steadily increasing.

Sorry, I don't mean to brag, but just wanted to share my very different experience from what most others here are saying.

Lisa

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Which really brings up the most important part of this. Some folks are just flat out born with a eye for photography and some are taught and developed . Being a instructor I see this all the time as some from the beginning workshops now have really developed a eye over time. But some folks come in and already have it or had it since birth but really just form it better in time. You can learn to see but that process takes some years behind it to develop composition and artistic output. For people that already have a eye there work is basically the same as when they started ( I am luckily one of those people that was born with it) but as time marches on we develop a style and fine tune our vision. But folks that need to develop a eye this process with experience seems a more dramatic change as they continue on. I seen some folks after 2 years improve so much it is mind blowing when I look at there images on review now compared to when they first started. Seriously take classes , workshops , shoot with others and be involved in photography all this stuff really helps you develop yourself. Just hanging out on this forum we learn a ton from seeing others work.

 

[woodyspedden]

I am going through an interesting period.

My early work (the good stuff) I think was much freer in overall look.

The newer stuff is technically much better but lacks that freedom of spirit.

I think I am now at the point where the technology is on autopilot and I need to resurrect the old "love for the subject" so as to get back to that freer look but with the improvements brought about from the technology.

A hard concept to explain without comparisons of images which I may do.

Woody

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Change your shooting Woody , go out and shoot stuff you have NEVER shot before. It could be anything so don't worry about that but it stretches the creative and sounds like you are where I get once in a while just in a shooting slump which I find perfectly normal. Us longtime shooters just fall into the traps and we need to get out.