Photography

Lessons from Oskar Barnack: Or, the Story of my Leica IIIa

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Note: This essay was originally written for the fine folks at Frozen Wasteland and can be found here in a fuller form.

I was recently approached by Andrew McClees, aka @andrewdmcclees of Instagram fame, to write an article for Frozen Wasteland on the topic of things we have learned from shooting a specific camera, a lens, a film stock, whatever. I agreed (obviously) and decided that I would try and talk about the most important camera from the panoply of different cameras that I’ve used over the years. 

My ever-changing collection has shuffled through the gamut of numerous digital cameras, 35mm film cameras and medium format film cameras. To be fair each of them has had something to teach me. Shooting a heavy RB67 from a tripod teaches you something about a slow, considered, and contemplative approach to photography. Shooting a small, lightweight digital setup teaches you something about shooting on the fly, in the moment, etc.. In that sense every one of my cameras could probably serve as source material for an essay on the way that any particular photographic tool has something to teach about the many sides of the photographic process. 

However there is one camera that immediately comes to the fore as the most significant. That camera was a Leica IIIa, as well as the Leica 50mm f/3.5 Elmar that was paired with it. I came to possess this camera in a roundabout way from a familiar lust that I would guess many photographers have felt before. Stated simply, I wanted a Leica. Well, actually I had been curious about experimenting with the rangefinder format for some time and had already experimented with a Canonet and found it interesting enough to pursue further. But of course, as we all know, the ultimate conclusion when you want a serious rangefinder is that you need a Leica, specifically a Leica M. 

This was all well and good except for one critical problem: I didn’t have the money for a Leica M. Prices on used film M’s were already crazy even two years ago and the more I searched for one the more I came to realize that an M probably wasn’t going to be an option. It was at this point during my quest for M alternatives that I stumbled upon the interesting world of Barnack Leicas. 

For those that are in the same boat I was the history lesson is as follows: 

The “Barnack Leica” is really just an umbrella term used to denote the large family of screw-mount Leica cameras made prior to the first Leica M in 1954. They are collectively referred to as “Barnack Leicas” because they all share a fairly consistent mechanical heritage which leads back to the Ur-Leica (this is what they call it, it’s German), the foundational camera invented by Oskar Barnack in 1913. 

The Ur-Leica was developed as a light, compact and easily portable alternative to the bulkier camera equipment of the early 20th century. It utilized a small negative made from modified movie film which, when paired with capable Leitz optics, was able to produce a sufficiently sharp enlargement that rivaled the technology of its time at a fraction of the size. 35mm photography was born. A polished version of Barnack’s brainchild was introduced to the public as the Leica I in 1925. This was followed by a number of developments over the next 30 years: the Leica Standard in 1932, the Leica II which integrated a rangefinder, also in 1932, and finally the Leica III which integrated slow shutter speeds in 1933. The last Barnack Leica produced was the IIIg in 1956, and the reign of the Barnack Leicas came to an end in 1960. 

Following the genetic heritage of the Ur-Leica, Barnack Leicas have always been a relatively simple camera. At bottom they are a brass box with a viewfinder, a screw-on lens, and a shutter. Even the later Leica II and III merely added an expanded range of shutter speeds and a rangefinder focusing mechanism for additional focusing accuracy. I will admit that these cameras were a far cry from my original quest for a Leica M. But the more I read about these fascinating old cameras the more I was intrigued about the prospect of using one, and the fact that they were much cheaper didn’t hurt either. And I mean, it was still a Leica after all. 

A lot of deliberation and scouring of the internet later I eventually came across the Leica IIIa + Leica 50mm f/3.5 Elmar combo that would come to be mine for sale from a Leica store in San Francisco (pro-tip: look at the used section of the various Leica stores around the US for some good deals). The camera and lens were in great shape and while the price was a bit higher than I was looking to spend it was less than buying an M and an additional lens. The condition of the pair and the fact that it was coming from a legitimate Leica store took some of the edge off of the premium as well. So, I sent Leica my money and waited eagerly for my old-but-new-to-me Barnack Leica. 

Fast forward through several days of waiting and I finally got my hands on the Leica IIIa. I was immediately smitten. Unwrapping the copious bubble wrap revealed the beautiful, hefty, compact brass body, knurled advance knob, shutter speed dials, and film rewind knob, all in that beautiful Leica chromed brass. The collapsible 50mm Elmar, while undoubtedly funny looking, also had its own antique kind of charm. 

Aesthetics aside there was a beautiful tactile quality to the camera as well. Advancing the film/cocking the shutter involved turning the large knurled knob several times until the film had been advanced and the shutter was cocked. Setting the shutter speed involved lifting the speed dial slightly to be able to rotate it to the desired speed. Framing and making an image involved looking into two separate windows: a tiny peephole of a viewfinder which showed a 50mm field of view, and another window through which you could use the rangefinder focusing mechanism to achieve focus. And of course releasing the shutter elicited a responsive click and that ever-satisfying sound of the Leica cloth shutter. 

There was a decidedly non-modern, even spartan simplicity to the whole thing paired with a brilliant craftsmanship that I absolutely loved. It was a camera that did everything a camera needed to do, but nothing more, and nothing less. And it fulfilled its function in ways that only the most masterfully crafted tools can, with an efficiency and precision that allows them to function effortlessly and invisibly, as all great tools should. The way that a great pen simply writes, the Leica simply made pictures. As I would eventually find out, this was part and parcel of its deepest capacity to teach.

To be sure, the methodical (some might say cumbersome) process of image making taught the virtues of a slow and considered approach, and the minimalist form factor taught the virtues of working freely, unencumbered by overly complicated equipment. The Leica certainly had technical and practical lessons to offer, but looking back these things, important in their own right, aren’t the distinctive things that the Leica taught me. I had worked with cameras in the past that had taught these and many other lessons in one way or another, but the Leica taught lessons both more subtle and arguably much more important from an artistic point of view than the merely technical or practical aspects of photography. 

To concretize this a bit: wandering through the forest lugging a heavy tripod mounted RB67 or Bronica with ten or fifteen frames of 120 film might have taught me about looking carefully for potential compositions and assembling those compositional elements within a frame to construct a well ordered image. And to be sure this is important technical knowledge. But walking through the same forest with that simple old camera allowed me to more readily lose myself in the rich and meaningful experience of the landscape that had always been the impetus behind my making photos of the landscape and to more easily bring that rich and meaningful Lebenswelt into intimate contact with my photographic endeavors. This was a paradigm shift for me. 

That old Leica, in its quiet simplicity, allowed me the ability to simply walk, to think, to experience, and ultimately to engage in the photographic process in a way that was richer and unencumbered by overmuch technical concern, plunged into the depths of life rather than the lifeless arena of technics. It showed me a way to blend the rich and meaningful content of my experience with my photographic work in a way that previous cameras had, for whatever reason, not. In becoming an invisible component of the rich and meaningful context of my lived experience the Leica enabled me to partake in the photographic process not simply in a detached, technical manner, but in a new, engaged, and more meaningful way deeply in contact with the heart of what mattered to me as a photographer.  

I cannot imagine a more profound lesson that a camera could give to a photographer. The lesson of that old Leica was not about this or that technical or practical aspect of photography, but something that cut to the very heart of what it means to make photographs, something that fundamentally changed how I understood the meaning of photography. So, in the end I didn’t really get what I was looking for in the first place. It would be some time before I even came to own a Leica M. But what I did find in that old Leica IIIa turned out to be valuable beyond anything I could have possibly foreseen, and for that it will always hold a special place for me.

A Test: HP5 vs 5D: Or, is the film look bullshit?

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Backstory:

For the last two weeks or so I have become a bit, uh, obsessed with this matter of “the film look.” It all began when I posted an Instagram story reflecting on some thoughts from my time shooting exclusively digital over the last few months. In the story I stated outright that there is no such thing as “the film look” and that any qualities that we might use to define it can be pretty well emulated by digital manipulation. This wasn’t a revelation. I have held this position for years, ever since shooting a combination of medium format film and digital and noticing that I was able to make my digital images and my film images look at least passably identical. Grain, tonality, even the latitude/highlight rendition of film can be pretty well copied via digital sensor technology and digital manipulation thanks to the juggernaut that is technological dynamism.

To be completely honest though there is always something that keeps me from standing too firmly in the “the film look is BS” camp. My eyes are always drawn across enemy lines, so to speak. Or maybe it’s my heart. I have been shooting film for a long time and that old film affinity and the lurking sense that there is a rendering that is just special or unique in my film results never fails to unravel any overly certain dismissal of the “magic” of the medium. Whenever I go through my backlog of images I can’t help but feel a certain fondness for some special something that I find my film work rather than my digital images.

The fondness for film that draws me toward affirming the reality of “the film look” and my sense that it may be bullshit created a kind of internal struggle in the wake of broaching this topic online. The number of stimulating conversations that I had from both sides didn’t help quell my desire for definitive answers either. So, growing tired of endless theoretical speculation and the tension of waffling back and forth between my perspectives I decided to conduct something of a test to try and get a better hold on this issue. The following describes the test, results, and offers some interpretations of my findings.

Putting things to the test: Principle and Process

The principles of my test were relatively simple:

1) Shoot a number of photos on both film and digital
2) Develop, scan, and process my film images per my usual procedures to provide a sound baseline for a film sample*
3) Try to match the digital images to the finished film images

With this test in mind I made my way out to a local haunt of mine equipped with my Canon 5D MkI and a Canon 50/1.8 STM as my digital setup and my Minolta XD5 and 50/1.4 loaded with HP5 for the film setup, oh and a tripod (ugh). Both the film and digital versions were shot from the tripod so as to keep compositions as close to identical as possible. Shutter speeds were set from the Minolta and then transferred to the 5D so as to keep exposures identical as well. Both lenses were set to a constant f/5.6. The HP5 was shot at box speed, and the 5D sensor was therefore set to 400ISO.

After shooting was complete the film was developed in Ilfotec HC at a dilution of 1+31 for 6.5 minutes, given a water stop bath, and fixed in Photographer’s Formulary TF5. Film was digitized with a Plustek 8100 and Silverfast SE Plus at a resolution of 3600DPI, saved as a TIFF and given final adjustments in Lightroom. The 5D files were also brought into Lightroom and the finalized film versions were used as the guiding rubric for processing the digital files, the primary aim of course being to duplicate the film results as closely as possible.

*By working from a final film image I am hoping to circumvent the murkier issue of defining what exactly “the film look” is. A film image presumably has it if it is real.

The results:

Below are five pairs of images: each contains one film image, and one digital copy doing its best to duplicate the original film image. Can you tell which is film and which is the digital copy?

How did you do? Maybe you know already but if you don’t the digital is always on the left side if you are viewing from a desktop, or on the top if you are viewing from a mobile device. Now that you know, how did you do?

Looking over the finished pairs I think it is safe to say that the digital copies routinely get 90-100% of the way to copying the film images. In other words the differences range from barely perceptible to imperceptible. I’m personally convinced that if one was presented with a random sampling of these images it would be difficult to impossible to tell whether an image was the real deal HP5 or a digital fake (I am especially convinced of this because I myself often got confused about which image I was looking at in the process of doing this whole test).

For the 1-10% difference that separates barely perceptible and imperceptible there is part of me that wanted to say, “Ah, there is the irreducible remainder of film magic!” Were it not for some image pairs that were essentially identical this might have been a plausible answer. But the more honest answer, I think, is that this is an expectable degree of variance given the number of variables in the test. And given the number of variables we cannot conclusively say that the variance is necessarily some irreducible film magic eking out an edge over the digital counterparts.

An interpretation:

So what of the results, then? Stated most conservatively the results simply show that digital is able to convincingly duplicate film images. But what does all of this actually tell us about “the film look”? More than we might think at first.

At first glance the results seem to show that there is nothing special about film or any “film look.” Film doesn’t seem to be doing anything that digital can’t do with the right processing and the digital copies seem to say to film “Anything you can do I can do just as well, or better.” So, that’s it, right? The film look is bullshit. Case closed…right?

This seems like an obvious conclusion and it’s the one that is commonly invoked to dismiss the uniqueness of film, and in some respects it is correct to do so. But this quick answer also felt wrong in a way that I have been struggling to articulate for the last couple days. After much consternation what I think the test actually shows with more careful reflection is that there are some truths from both sides of the debate and that a deeper interpretation is able to show how the film look is, somewhat paradoxically, both bullshit and a very real phenomenon.

Firstly, from the bullshit camp: it is indeed bullshit in the sense that there is no mystical property of film and film alone that bestows upon images some ineffable quality that digital technologies are unable to duplicate. The results, I think, show that this view of film magic is demonstrably ridiculous. Taken as a purely objective set of quantifiable aesthetic qualities, digital is clearly capable of convincingly replicating the look of film to the point that it is difficult or impossible to spot a fake. This much is true and is a respectable salve against some of the misguided deification of the medium among purists..

But stopping at that common conclusion felt like a shortsighted dismissal of a subtler point we could glean from this test that points favorably to some of the beauty beloved by film shooters. More specifically there is an important point lurking in the third step of the process that we outlined at the beginning of this piece. That point is the subtle fact that I need to process my digital files in order to get them to conform to the results from film.

At first this sounds like a trivial point but we would do well to note that the very fact that I must massage and manipulate digital files (somewhat extensively) into matching the results that I get from film suggests by that very fact that film is, at least at some level, rendering images in way that is different than the output from digital sensors. Sure, the skillful manipulation of data has proven capable of generating passable simulacra of film but that very process also functions to highlight the unique qualities of film. The experience of this real distinction between the aesthetic tendencies of these two mediums is the seed of this phenomenon that we call “the film look.” So it seems to me that film lovers who insist on something special in the rendering are far from delusional regardless of what digital wizardry may be able to do with 1’s and 0’s.

Conclusion:

So, is the film look bullshit? The short answer is kinda, but also not at all.

Against the "Good Image" in Favor of Personal Vision

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The Problem with Archetypes

A specter is haunting landscape photography - the specter of Ansel Adams.

- Marx & Engels, probably

Bad variations on The Communist Manifesto aside I want to take some time in this piece to deal with an approach to image making that I find to be alarmingly prevalent as well as what I take to be the problematic aspects of it (or at least it should feel problematic if you care about anything but copy and paste photography).

The approach that I’m talking about is the kind of formulaic approach that seems to be especially prevalent among landscape photographers. You know what I mean, or if you don’t then start paying attention for the following and you’ll start to see it: So much of the landscape photography milieu seems to approach the process of image making the way one might go about building a house. One begins with a blueprint, and then sets about constructing a house on the basis of the framework outlined by the blueprint. A good photograph just becomes that photograph which most closely approximates the “blueprint.”

The blueprint here is what I will call the archetype. More concretely there is an archetype containing the ideal set of properties which comprise the “good landscape image.” This archetype covers everything from subject matter, to lighting, to compositional elements and beyond. All the would-be landscape photographer has to do is assemble their image following the steps delineated by the archetype, and just like that one has themselves a “nice photograph.” These archetypes are largely the collective aesthetic(s) established by the “past masters” of landscape photography. This is also what I mean to imply by the specter of Ansel Adams (to be fair one could substitute Michael Kenna, David Muench, et al to make the same point).

The problematic part of this approach, at least for me personally (a lot of people seem totally happy with this copy and paste approach as far as I can tell), is that these images are more often than not entirely empty as anything other than a recapitulation of the same basic archetype. Have you ever wondered why so much landscape work looks like it could have all been made by some small handful of people? This formulaic approach/the archetype is what leads to the monstrous cliche that is most landscape work. Everyone ends up making the same image because they are all working off the same basic archetype that informs their decisions about what makes a “good image.”

Even more troublesome than this is the fact that this recreation of the archetypal landscape image too often becomes the end in itself. The point of making photographs becomes, well, to make “good photographs,” as defined by the archetypes! Photographs as the end in itself. Rather than any compelling engagement with the subject matter (which many of the greats actually did) and the subsequent creation of genuinely meaningful work that comes from that meaningful engagement with one’s subject matter, we enter a realm in which the sole aim of photography becomes the empty repetition of these archetypes. We are inundated with images which, while certainly technically proficient, say nothing. And this is the deeper problem with the tyranny of the “nice photograph.” It empties photography of its meaningful potential, obliterates the capacity to do meaningful work.

Archetypes: A Personal Story

In the interest of not coming off as completely arrogant and condescending I do want to make it clear that this issue is something that I myself have struggled with off and on over the years, even as recently as, well, currently.

The earliest instances of my own personal struggles with this issue date back to my very first forays into photography. I, like most people that are just picking up a camera and thinking about taking photography seriously, often felt overwhelmed by all the creative decisions surrounding the kind of images I was going to make. I knew that photographing nature was important to me. So I naturally began digesting all of the landscape work that I could find on sites like Flickr, 500px, Instagram, even YouTube, looking for work that I found appealing, inspiring, etc..

And indeed perusing all of this work certainly gave me a kind of aesthetic foothold and helped me have a better idea of the kind of images that I would work on making. And so I did just that. And this “aesthetic foothold” gave me a target to work toward in order to hone my skills and grow as a photographer. But as I kept working it wasn’t too terribly long before I began to feel that something was amiss. To me it began to feel that there wasn’t really anything deeper to the images that I was making outside the project of making images that fit this arbitrary archetype of what I had taken to be a “good landscape image.” They may have been nice photographs but they were essentially meaningless copies of an abstract ideal, devoid of any deeper meaning.

Upon this realization there were two options. I could stay the course or radically rethink my approach to making photographs. Staying the course felt entirely too inauthentic to me, and I chose to really step back and think about my work in a deeper way. To think about what it really was that I wanted to say and do with my images and work on saying and doing those very things in my photographs rather than just repeating the same empty archetypes. To forge and express my own personal vision rather than the visions set for me by received aesthetics. This realization and the following changes that came about because of it have been some of the biggest breakthroughs that I have had in my time making photos.

So, What of Archetypes, then?

In conclusion I do think there is a place for this archetype approach. It’s just that I personally think the reliance on archetypes should serve a pedagogical function for new photographers as they learn to perfect their technical skills and get a feel for their own personal aesthetic. The archetype gives the new photographer a target to aim at before they have begun to tackle these larger issues for themselves. But they should ultimately be left behind in time as one grows as an artist, the way one eventually stops having to consult recipes when making their favorite meal. To cling to them rather than letting them go as you explore your own personal approach is only to place a limit on your own potential growth. The point from this essay to integrate into your practice is this: Do not repeat archetypes, create your own.

Why Monochrome? On Ansel and Black and White

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In a semi-recent interview with Adrian, aka @aows of Instagram fame, I was asked the following question:

You are a B&W photographer, even though you share some color on your Instagram every once in a while. Why Monochrome?

While my initial response to the question, which can be read in the original interview here, was good as a very brief overview of some of my main thoughts on the matter I would like to take some more time here to expand on some of my answers, in large part through a case study of Ansel Adams’ work followed by some brief conclusions.

Ansel Adams: A Study in (Great) Black and White Photography

As I stated in the interview, black and white imagery has always been a deeply beautiful medium to me. Some of my earliest memories of being struck by certain images relate to my encounters with some of Ansel Adams’ work as a kid (a cliche story, I am aware). But, cliches aside, images like Clearing Winter Storm, Snake River Overlook and others definitely had a lasting impact on me. And in large part my tendency toward working in black and white probably owes much to these formative experiences which instilled such a love and respect for black and white as a medium.

More to the point here, there is something about Adams’ presentation of the monochrome landscape (and the presentation of the landscape in good black and white work in general) which I think changes our modes of experience in very interesting ways. In Adams’ black and white work we are shown a view of the world which is both familiar and yet different for reasons which can be difficult to pin down. The absence of color seems at first blush to be a small difference. But the impact of this subtle difference is visceral and contains some of the deepest import of black and white as a photographic medium. .

Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite, 1949 - Ansel Adams

Over the years I have spent time dabbling in both color and black and white, and over those years of experimenting with and reflecting on both mediums I have slowly come to some more solid conclusions on those difficult to pin down qualities of black and white presentations of the world. The short answer, stated both in the interview and above, is that black and white allows us to present as artists, and experience as viewers, the world in ways which are more difficult if not impossible within the familiar medium of color. At the risk of being overly simplistic, a monochromatic presentation, by the simple removal of color, opens up a space for a different encounter with the world.

To expand on this point, Adams’ above image of Cathedral Rocks in Yosemite would most certainly be a stunningly beautiful scene in color. But in Adams’ monochrome presentations we are thrust into that interstitial realm between the familiar and the unfamiliar. We behold the landscape in a way which we have and cannot ever experience outside the medium of the black and white image. By throwing us into that realm between the familiar and unfamiliar we are called to reconsider, to re-encounter our once-familiar world. The monochrome landscape calls not simply to be experienced as a picturesque color scene might, but to be considered, contemplated, encountered in a deeper manner.

I think this aspect becomes especially clear when one views Adams’ color work, and the necessary contrast that one feels between it and his black and white work. While Adams’ color work still comprises a beautiful body of work, there is a clear experiential difference between much of his color work and his black and white work. Adams’ color work, while still strikingly beautiful imagery, does not seem to elicit the same kind of response. Perhaps, as I would postulate, this is because it does not offer us that window into the unfamiliar that black and white imagery does so well. The world “in living color,” so to speak, is too close to the world of our everyday familiarity to spark within us that encounter with the unfamiliar that motivates that deeper engagement that was spoken of above. Put another way, one does not contemplate that meaning of the landscape in a color image. But one would be hard pressed not to in a monochrome image.

An example of Adams’ color work

Conclusion

The point here in highlighting Adams’ work, as noted above, is that I think it functions well as a case study on those particular qualities of great black and white images, and consequently such a study is a helpful guide in the search for an answer to the question, “Why monochrome?” Or, in this case, serves as a helpful avenue to expand on some of the answers I have given to this question in the past.

And in reality this treatment of the question “Why monochrome?” is not markedly different from what I initially put forward in my original interview with Adrian, but it was never supposed to be. The same key point remains: through the medium of black and white we are able to present the world in ways which push our experience into the realm of the unfamiliar. And in so doing we create a space for a kind of experience which has the effect of moving us to think or see differently about subject matter being presented to us.

In my own work such a quality is deeply important. As I stated in my short piece, Why Photography?, the moving force behind much of my work stems from my attempts to “…express, as well as I can, a certain kind of spiritual, religious, or mystical experience.” While such a goal can certainly be achieved within the medium of color, the capacity of black and white to open up that space wherein people can enter into these quasi religious kinds of encounters with the landscape is one that is especially important to me. That, for me, is the answer to “Why monochrome?”

Square Photography: On Shaking Things Up

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I’d like to take some time in this post to reflect on some practical benefits of shaking things up. In this instance I want to talk a bit about my experience shooting square format images and some of the primary benefits that I have personally seen from the shift to shooting exclusively square format images for a short period of time. It is also my hope that perhaps similar practices might work for shaking up your own photographic processes and lead to growth as they have for me.

As some brief background: I have always had something of a love-hate relationship with square format. On the one hand, I have always had an immense respect for well done square images. There is a certain balance and elegance to a well composed image in a square frame. In addition to this there is, to me, a certain kind of contemplativeness to the medium. Well done square images almost call to be considered, as a work of art should be. For example, I have always admired the work of Michael Kenna for these features (among others), not to mention a number of other primarily square format shooters who do beautiful work with the format that I have enjoyed following over the years. So this fondness for the medium has always informed the “love” side of the relationship.

But on the other hand the square frame has always felt like my Achilles’ heel when it comes to the various image formats. It seemed that no matter how many times I tried to head out with the explicit goal of making square images the resulting work always felt like some of my weakest. Every time I tried to make a photograph and fit it inside a square frame the result just felt weak, awkward, etc.. As a result I would usually end up switching back to shooting rectangles after what felt like a few failed frames and that would be the end of that, my frustration (or hate depending on the day) with the medium freshened.

And so there has always been this tension between my love of well executed work in the format and my frustration with my own (many!) failed attempts to work within it. I think it was ultimately this tension that motivated me to spend the month of August 2018 forcing myself to shoot only square images. I figured that the only way I was going to learn how to work with the format would be by limiting myself exclusively to it. This way I could no longer fail a few times, become frustrated, and fall back into what was comfortable by shooting more rectangles.

To my own surprise I did find that after several outings forcing myself to work exclusively with the format I slowly began to start assembling some square format work that I no longer felt were total failures. I actually began to feel that my square work was some of the strongest work I had been able to produce in a while, another surprise!

After some recent reflection on this I think that the largest reason for this change in the strength of my images had to do with the fact that switching from a rectangular format to square format forced me to rethink many of my decisions/habits/etc as I went about assembling images. Shooting square, I had to think much more carefully about my compositional choices for the first time in a while (I am a bit ashamed to admit this). But this more careful or thoughtful approach that I had to focus on as a way to try and hone my aptitude with the medium was what led to growth in my skills and ultimately to stronger images.

After a month or so of square shooting I did ultimately go back to shooting my usual format(s), but the more thoughtful approach to composition was something that I found I had kept with me. Granted, I ultimately shot square format because it was a medium that I felt I was weak in and wanted to work to hone my skills in a medium that I respected. But nevertheless this shift in my standard process had the effect of shaking things up and leading to some positive benefits.

And this is the real importance that I want to point to in “shaking things up.” The practice of changing up our approach to making images, in this case by forcing ourselves into a practice that is markedly different from our usual approach, is a good way of shocking the system, so to speak. These “shocks to the system” are beneficial. They force us to rethink our approaches in ways that can lead us to growth. For me it was shooting squares and being forced to confront challenges of composition, building skills that I was able to then take into the rest of my work.

Whatever way you may decide to shake up your own workflow, I think it is certainly a valuable exercise that should be considered if you are looking to grow as a photographer.

Why photography? A brief reflection on medium

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“Why photography?” is a question that I have not spent a lot of time thinking about over the last two or three years of my foray into the medium. But the overwhelming amount of my “artistic output” takes place through it, and yet, for some reason, I have never reflected on why that is.

I will say that to be quite honest, despite my waxing and waning interest in photography over the years, it is a domain of art that I have never spent a lot of time studying the same way one might study the history and the past masters of painting, sculpture, music, etc.. I know very little about “the greats” (aside from the four or five that I find resonant) and I have always engaged with photography in a more personal and private manner. So, the urge to dive a bit deeper into the reasons behind what seems to have largely become my medium of choice (next to poetry/prose but that will have to be another piece) seemed like an interesting avenue to explore. Without further ado:

Outlining the working conclusion that I have come to also requires expanding a bit on the motivating factors behind most of what I do. Those of you that have been following closely will have probably already heard much of the motivation behind my work but for those who have not, a crash course seems like a pre-requisite for a proper engagement with the reasons behind photography as my dominant medium of choice.

Questions like “Why do I do what I do? What am I going for with this?” are some of the ones that I have asked myself frequently in my (seemingly) unending attempt to clarify, understand, and generally get a grasp on the deeper forces at work behind these things that I dedicate so much of my time to. After visiting these questions again and again one starts to distill some more lasting answers.

The most pertinent one that I have come back to over time is that in all of my photographic work I am attempting to express, as well as I can, a certain kind of spiritual, religious, or mystical experience. And, over and above expressing this experience in a photograph (when I get it right!), it is an attempt to establish a means by which to share that experience.

I think it is also this aspect of attempting to share an experience and/or a perspective and a photograph’s unique ability to do so that has led to it holding such a central place in my work. A photograph allows me to give a viewer the ability to step into my perspective, or to have a glimpse into my experience in a very unique way, it allows a viewer to quite literally see as I saw.

It is this capability of a photograph to give someone the ability to in some sense “step into” these experiences and perspectives, that I wish to share, to “see as I saw,” that is so important to me about photography as a medium for my work. In capturing my experience of a tree, a river, or a mountain, and in being able to share that experience with someone in a photograph I am able to, with any luck, share a way of seeing and thinking about the world and ourselves which is deeply important to me.