Pixiq

What Type of Photographer Are You?

 “My favorite thing is to go where I've never been before.” - Diane Arbus

And yes, that is one way to look at things. Photographers are like other people. Some like to go back to the same place every summer. Maybe it's a spot on the beach. But it's familiar and they know the people and the surroundings. And at the same time, although they go back to the same place, the always seem to find new things to photograph.

Other people are globe trotting to find new things.

 Before the “open air” art movement, before impressionism, painters would usually work inside and not directly from nature. Claude Monet would visit museums and sit by the window painting what he saw outside.

 In later years, he was known for his “series” paintings. An example would be his series of water lillies. Other painters might return again and again to a certain place – or subject – for inspiration.

In photography, one branch which was sometimes simply called travellers photography gave rise to magazines like National Geographic and other traveller magazines. The purpose was to show new and exciting places and peoples to their audience.

Two extremes: one type of photographer (and this is extreme) picks a subject, let's say still life, and spends day after day, and month after month, photographing photographing fruit arrangements.

So Claude Monet (not to be confused as I often do with Edward Manet) spent the latter of years of his life returning day after day to paint the water lillies in his formal garrden.

Cartier Bresson seemed to do best when sent on assignment to a new place. You couldn't really call his work travel photography without getting nasty emails from fans – but I offer him up as the other extreme, and I'm sure you can name a few photographers that fall into this camp.

And so, when I saw this quote by Arbus, it helped explain where she was situated on what I'll call the stay-go curve.

 Either method can produce junk or great art.

I fall into the “stay” category. For example, when I went to Paris for the first time, I found a hotel that seemed to be in the middle of most of the gardens that I wanted to photograph, and that became my hub. Every day, I took a different day trip that began and ended at the same hotel.

I need to be familiar wtth a location, used to it, before I can see what's original about it. I need to feel like I've been livnig and seeing this new place for years, even though it's only been a week.

When I moved to my studio apartment on the upper east side, I did so because it was halfway between Central Park and Carl Schurz Park (by the East River).

I never tire of either park. And they don't tire of me. They offer me new light, new events, and new ways to look at things every day.

And when I returned to Paris for the second and third times, I went back to the same hotel. I didn't need to think about how to get from one place to another any longer. I didn't need to think about where to get food, or what sort of thing I wanted to shoot that day.

Don't get me wrong – I love to travel and see new things. But not for photographing. If I find someplace there's going to be a favorite spot and I'm going to return to it repeatedly.

When I landed in Paris for the first time – I had a map of an area that had a bunch of cheap hotels. I could speak some French. And I just walked up a hill in the Montmartre area and went into each one asking for the price of a room for three weeks.

I wanted to live as close to “the people” as I could. When I looked out my window, I saw old tennement buildings that reminded me of where I grew up in the Bronx.

For a week, I returned to a particular garden that I liked, over and over again. I wouldn't do well on tours. I like to wander around on my own and will probably stop someplace that has no interest to anyone else on the tour.

I always take photographs of manhole covers or sewers. I don't know why. Is it a collection? Is it because the manhole cover is some dreamlike entry point to the unconscious? I think of the city that way sometimes, in Freudian terms. The streets and surface of the city would be the Ego, or the things we are very aware of in daily life. And the underground, the subway, cellars etc. would be the the unconscious. The place we go to see what's “really” going on.

Just because I think of the city that way doesn't mean that it's true. Nothing that symbolic is true or false. It just shows how I think of manhole covers and why they may interest me.

The external world is there for my imagination to work with.

The photographers pallette is limited to the following techniques:

Shutter speed

F-Stop (depth of field)

Length of the lens (wide angle to telephoto)

Color or black and white (though this is now determined in post-processing)

Composition (including high or low angle and lighting)

And the thing, the subject itself.

If you took 20 photographers and asked them to take one picture of – in this case let's say a fire hydrant – you will end up with 20 different pictures.

 One person will want to play with the angle of the shot. Low angle, straight on, overhead looking down.

Some people will use a slow shutter speed and the picture will come out blurry (motion blur).

Some will get very close to the hydrant and use a macro lens to show a bit of the chain that hangs down from the top.

I could go on – but one difference between photographers has to do with how well they understand the options that are open to them -a nd what they want to express. And even if we gave everyone the same camera, and the forced them to use the same lens, same shutter speed, and same f-stop – we'd wind up with very few duplicate shots.

What we should be interested in is how to frame and compose the image. My own feeling about photography is that it seems odd, but you are partly shooting yourself when you believe you are recording external objects.

And if you are really photographing yourself and making these choices – then seeing something new may only be important because it inspires you and makes you want to find a way to capture it in a new way. 

So ask yourself which type of photographer you are? Do your photographs get better if you stay in a place for a long time? Or do you need to be o the move to feel inspired. One way is no better than the other. It's just important to know what works for you.