Finding your voice

Monday, Miz Becky and I went to see the big Jacob Lawrence show at SAM. There was a great quote from Mr. Lawrence near the beginning of the exhibit:

"My belief is that it is most important for an artist to develop an approach and philosophy about life -- if he has developed this philosophy he does not paint on canvas, he puts himself on canvas."
-- Jacob Lawrence to Josef Albers, 1946

This particularly resonated with me because it fits a realization I had a few years ago, and which has since become my stock answer whenever someone writes to me and asks for advice on becoming a better photographer.

The succinct version is this: Figure out what else you're interested in besides photography. Go photograph that.

"That's well and good," some of you are thinking, "but what the &#$! does that mean, Dave, really?"

Maybe an example would help. Many beginning photographers, myself included, think that they need to shoot like Ansel Adams to be a Good Photographer. What they miss is that even Ansel wasn't trying to shoot like Saint Ansel. What he was doing was expressing his feelings about the natural landscape.

What I realized was that I'm fundamentally a city boy. I have some affection for the natural landscape -- I like wandering around on beautiful trails -- but I don't have a very deep relationship to it, and thus I don't have anything particularly profound to say about it. "Yep, there it is, the landscape. Nice, huh? Say, what are we going to do about dinner?"

On the other hand, I am endlessly fascinated by people: their relationships, their emotions, how they approach the world. I'm so interested in people I like to read cognitive psych books in my free time. People Are Cool.

Once I realized that, I was able to focus my efforts (ha ha, I make ze leetle photography joke) on people, including my street photography and my work with Circus Contraption. My work improved dramatically. Why? Because I was photographing something I was interested in, and I had something interesting to say about it.

Thus the advice to correspondents to go figure out what they're interested in besides photography. Interested in horses? Car racing? Naked people? God help you, babies dressed in cute costumes? Go take pictures of those things. The results will be much more interesting.