The struggle for greatness (in photography)

[Ben Calwell]

I've often wondered: When the great masters of photography apply their craft, how much effort do you think they put forth?
Do they agonize over every square inch of the ground glass? Or do they finish in under, say, 20 minutes and say to themselves, "Yep, this scene will become a classic and be reprinted in photo textbooks."
Or do they take a "close enough for government work" approach, knowing that their superior eye for art and composition will make their photos rise above the rest?
I could sweat off 10 pounds under the dark cloth, giving myself a backache and knee pain in the process and still come away with a print destined for the dusty shelf in my closet.
I quess what I'm asking is, do the acknowledged masters sweat and agonize over a scene? Do they reach a point where they just say, "Ah, hell, I'm just going to trip the shutter and hope for the best."

[John_4185]

Speaking of earlier photographers, and disregarding fashion photographers, it is unlikely they did their work with any thoughts about "becoming great". They just did what they felt was the right thing, possibly reinforced by sharing with peers. Fame (if not fortune) came later. Many very good photographers are not well known. Yet.

Digressing slightly: I know at least two photographers who have been working for decades whos work is well regarded in their field, but not 'famous'. In each case, I am certain a very good study/book can be made of their life's work, but they have not chosen to campaign or politic to make it so. Such is probably the best way to work so that your work doesn't become persuaded to unfortunate directions by publishers, marketeers, until you are retired, or dead.

That said, I know a third photographer/artist who is famous and his fame brings him grants. He's been at it for over forty years, earned his way, worked hard every day without ever thinking of fame.

[tim atherton]

Ben

Of the photographers I've known or met (and those I've read of) whose work is widely recognised, I'd say for one thing the craft is secondary.

The craft and technique has been mastered and then it's out of the way - so to speak - so they can get on with making photogorahs. It might be they have spent time mastering some aspect so they can do what they want to do and not worry about the craft/technique side - Misrach working out how best to take long night exposures in the desert (and not come back with 50 sheets of screwed up film), Sugimoto figuring out his technique for his 2x infinity work, or hour+ exposures in cinemas of the film rolling and so on. Even just having a film/developing system they know works and that they know well - then they can forget about it.

Many (most - but perhaps not all) photograph a lot. A good/great classical musician still has to practice 8 hours a day so that the hour or two of performance works. It takes a lot of practice. Same with photographers. Most of the ones I have known shoot a lot of film. Think of the average book by some of them - 100, 150, 200 photographs. They probably shot at least ten times that much film -0 and that's just on that one project - whatever it might have been. (and Atget was mentioned - in the archives of his work, we have many of those hundreds and hundreds of prints and negatives - many aren't great - but many are the equivalent of the maestro doing his scales at 10am before an evening concert). And the more you photograph a subject, a topic, an idea the more you see. ( Incidentally, this is also one reason many such photographers have someone else do their printing - they know how to print and often how to print very well - but time in the darkroom is time wasted taking photogorahs...). Photography for them isn't a hobby - it's work, as is all art - often many many hours a day. I'm not saying it's drudgery, but it's not skipping gaily through the Sierra waiting for "the" picture to show itself. As well, as much time and effort is actually put into negotiating access to a particualr place or locatiuon as goes into actually takign the photograph

Then again, as has been mentioned in different ways - they know what you want. They may not know the exact picture, but they aren't wandering aimlessly just looking for a photograph to pop up (not usually anyway). Michael said it best: "When they would "hope for the best," they knew what it means to be awake to a place and to one's deeply personal interpretation of that place."

The simplest answer is they work(ed) hard.

[Steven Barall]

Things happen fast. There is a frugality of time and effort to making things for certain people. How long does it really take to have that vision in your head in the first place? Indecision is what kills you and when you loose that thread, things tend to get complicated and ultimately lost.

If you see something unfold before you and you start to think that this photo is going to be the big one, the one that makes you famous, the one what will make it possible for you to buy that extra extra large SUV, the one that will be your legacy, well then you are almost certainly going to start to think it to death which will surely kill it, suck the life out of it. Each photo is just one breath out of many breaths that happen in one life. A good excercise is to go to some extreme to set up the camera, something that will take a long time, and then instead of exposing film just enjoy the scene for what it is and pack up the camera and move on. Some would say that that is the true experience of photography. For them the print is just a souvenir which is pretty cool if you think about it.

If it's just a question of learning camera movements and focal lengths, well that just takes time and you have to stick with it. You have to realize that there are many reasons not to take a picture and that those reasons are just as important to photography than making a finished print is.

As a poet once said: Life is a highway...

[Bill_1856]

Two of the Masters with whom I've worked were both quite meticulous about examining every square inch of their ground glass (Paula Chamlee and Marie Cosindas). It's well-known that others (AA and Weston) directly visualized the subject matter as a final print, paying little attention to the ground glass image.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I think you are starting with a false premise Ben. If I understand your post correctly you are assuming that any of these famous photographers made a master piece every time the pressed the shutter. Nothing can be further from the truth. It takes practice and a lot of hard work to develop a personal style and original composition.

I doubt any of the photographers became photographers in a quest for fame, I think they just wanted to create and their drive did not allow them to compromise on a 9 to 5 job and let photography take a second place.

With few exceptions most of us in this forum have an alternative primary source of income and did photography when we had the chance. Now that I am able to dedicate myself full time to photography I realize how important it is to practice, to be out there taking pictures and printing at least once or twice a week if not more. If I get lazy and stop making pictures for a couple of weeks I notice I become "rusty", I have a harder time making good compositions, visualizing what I want, choosing a proper subject.

This is what famous photographers do, they are out taking pictures most of the time, just by the law of averages if you are out taking pictures constantly you have a better chance to be in the right place at the right time than if you just do it once a month.

Personally, my goal is to share what I can create. If fame comes it is welcome, but not something I necessarily need or I am in search of.

[paulr]

"It's well-known that others (AA and Weston) directly visualized the subject matter as a final print, paying little attention to the ground glass image."

And perhaps less well known that both, later in life, admitted that they hardly ever actually worked this way. It was a fad among their contemporaries to believe they saw it all in advance, but in the moment things rarely worked out like that. Like many other great artists, they responded very spontaneously to what attracted them, and worked out the details later.

As to the original question, I think Tim and others agree with me that strength of vision is primarily what distinguishes any great artist. As far as actual working methods, you're likely to find all kinds. I think of the difference between Mozart and Beethoven. Mozart composed whole symphonies in his head. He'd have to go off alone for days at a time, working out the details. When he was done in his head, writing it all down was purely mechanical transcription. He could be in a noisy cafe for all he cared. The notes were already composed. Beethoven worked it out on paper, laboriously, going through draft after draft. The creation and the scribing were one and the same.

Which is better to emmulate? Depends on how your brain works. It you work hard enough at expressing your vision, one way or another you'll figure it out. You might end up with a way that's different from either ... and different from Weston's, and differnt from Winnogrands, or maybe just like one of them. It's all secondary to what you have to say, and to your willingness to work through what it takes to get it out.

[Scott Fleming]

Great thread. Being a lowly newb I find making the print (having the lab make the print) and having it hanging on the wall is the most important learning element for me. Then when I'm out there ... set up ... looking at, absorbing, pondering the scene and critically ... the light; it is my prints that inform me of what to do ... or not do. Every print is a combination of failure and success. One just has to weigh the percentages. I have about a dozen scenes I could spend the rest of my life trying to capture in their constantly varrying moods. Perfection is an impossibility.

As to what is success ... it is strictly personal. The market for photographic art is so miniscule one must not even think about it as far as I'm concerned. Today only marketing can get a photographers images out into the public and marketing is about the last thing I want to do in life. How someone else might react to my images means less than nothing to me. Can have no bearing on how or why I go about my photograhy in either method or technique or intent.

Besides, the public is blind. They absolutely can not see the forest for the trees. Even IF (huge if) perhaps something about an image (any image any medium) catches their eye ... they don't actually see it. It's just a another fleeting image amoungst a myriad per day they contact and they are unable to SEE and FEEL what the image has to say.

If success is important to you .... develop a good script for new and different sitcom.

I do enjoy it however when occaisionally I run into someone whose eyes are still open. Love hearing from them what they take away from one of my images. It's so rare however that I count it as seridipity. Never to be expected or even hoped for.

[Ellis Vener]

the hardest thing for most photographers is to both see things their way and to simultaneously get out of their own way. One constant among the really outstanding photographers that
I know is that it isn't so much effort that makes great photographs as it it is intense concentration on what they are looking at and looking for.

[domenico Foschi]

I agree with Ellis, in part, but I would not talk about concentration ( especially in picture taking stage), but of instinct and a corageous leap in creating an image that doesn't follow any parameter other than your own.

www.dfoschisite.com

[domenico Foschi]

Well, Ellis, reading again your post I realized we said the same thing : - )

[Michael Veit]

Unfortunately, I don't know any great photographers, but I do know that most of my own personal best shots are very intuitive and painless.

About a year ago they were slowly dismantling a large industrial building in my area with a great view of the progress available via a nearby overpass. I watched for a couple weeks and when the time was right, went out to get the shot. The day was windy and cold and pretty miserable all the way around and as I took the shot, the only thing I really remember concentrating on was finding a lull in the wind in which to fire off a 1/15 exposure. It wasn't until after I got back into the car and reviewed things that I was forced to ask myself, "what the hell did I just do????" There was a half demolished building in the middle distance, piles of differently sorted metal in the foreground along with some large horizontal beams, a series of rail cars stretching off to the right... But I had neither used a long lens to isolate any of the elements nor a wide horizontal to capture them all. Instead, I'd unthinkingly put a slight wide on the camera, flipped the GG to vertical orientation, filled 60% of the shot with grey sky and cut off most of the interesting rail cars in the foreground. I drove away thinking I'd totally blown the shot and when I got home, chucked the negative into the "afterthought" pile, only to be developed when I needed to fill out a full comi-tank. Well, that shot turned out to be one of my favorites of the past year and, screw with cropping possibilities on the print as I might, I don't see any way of making the thing work better. That huge, leaden sky just makes it ...though I can't remember appreciating its importance at the time. But on an intuitive level it obviously registered.

Sorry for a story about +me+ when it's the greats you were asking about, but perhaps it's relevant.

[paulr]

"...I do know that most of my own personal best shots are very intuitive and painless...."

Having intuitive and painless moments of creation is, i suspect, what we all strive for. The challenge lies in creating a life that encourages a never-ending stream of these moments. Do so is rarely intuitive or painless!

[Frank Petronio]

The best (and most successful in terms of respect, wealth, and fame) photographers are the best editors.

[Kirk Gittings]

'The best (and most successful in terms of respect, wealth, and fame) photographers are the best editors."

Many, perhaps most of the great photographers never achieved wealth though they may have enjoyed respect and fame in their lifetimes.

[Murray Fredericks]

The bodies of work that have been recognized as 'great' by the photographic or wider 'art-historical' community tend, IMHO, to be ones that have contirbuted new thought or direction to the medium. I agree strongly that work forms an essential part of any success, but in any art form that work does not neccessarily imply 'time at the easel' or under the dark cloth.

Intuition, as has been mentioned, must play a huge part in the composition process - but where is the intuition developed? Thought, reflection education and experience develops this vital part of the process and seems to me to be far more important than scrutinizing compositions over every inch of the ground glass!

Cheers

Murray

[Brian Ellis]

I just bought a book a c ouple days ago, the title of which escapes me and which I can't retrieve because it's in a piece of luggage that the airline has lost, but it featured three or four photographs made by each of about 20 well known contemporary landscape photographers (e.g. Joe Cornish, Charles Cramer, Jack Dykinga, Galen Rowell et al). The photographs were selected by the photographers as examples of their best work and included a discussion by each photographer about what was involved in making the photographs. There were two common threads running through all of them: (1) they were all pros with many years of experience in perfecting their vision and their craft and they all probably made thousands of photographs in the course of a year, and (2) they all worked very hard and devoted a huge amount of time, thought, and effort to making the photographs that were printed in the book . In most cases they were intimiately familiar with the area in which they were photographing (none of them made the photographs on their first visit to the areas) and they usually visited the site of the specific scene many times before making the photograph. In some cases this involved hiking for miles back and forth every day for a period of a week or more waiting for the light and everything else to be the way they wanted it before they made the photograph. In other words, they were perfectionists who knew exactly what they wanted and were willing to do whatever it took to get it.

[Michael A.Smith]

Edward Weston looked very carefully at every square inch of the ground glass. So do I and so does my wife, Paula Chamlee. And so does every photographer who uses a view camera seriously, famous or not. At the same time, the recognition that "here!" is where the image on the ground glass looks best is totally intuitive. Later the photograph can be analyzed, but at the moment of recognition of the image there is nothing intellectual about it at all. "It just feels right" is about all that can be said at that moment. (When Paula teaches this in our workshops she uses words to explain what is going on and I can undertand that can be misinterpreted as "figuring it out intellectually."

So, every square inch (no, every square millimeter) of the ground glass is considered, but it is not agonized over. For me, the recognition usually comes in a minute or two, and often in a moment or two, (but never before looking on the ground glass) though it can take a few minutes additional with a long lens (30 or 35-inches) to get the damn thing properly stopped down and focussed. Only a few times have I ever felt, "I have a classic." And, I can only think of two of them that are. The rest of the time, usually, if I think that, I usually find the photograph too predictable and the negative goes in the trash. When I work, I have the feeling that what I am seeing looks good on the ground glass, but I do not know how it will look as a print. If I knew how the print would look when I was making the negative I wouldn't bother--there would be no sense of discovery and hence no growth. It is only when one is taking risks (visual risks) however incremental, that making art is worthwhile--to the maker. The viewers may be, probably would be, happy to see pictures that confim what they already know, but artists aren't interested in that. Winogrand said, " I photograph to see what things will look like photographed." That implies that if he knew what they would look like he wouldn't have bothered. "Good enough for government work" is such an alien concept that I cannot imagine any artist having that attitude, ever. The process of photographing with a view camera is one of intense concentration--it truly is a heightened state of being. Rarely is there sweat and agony, but the process is certainly not casual. "Relaxed intensity" might best describe the process.

[Michael A.Smith]

Regarding the subject title "The Struggle for Greatness." I do not believe that is a struggle any serious artist ever thinks about. You just try to make the best pictures you can and try to keep growing. It is the pleasure in the process that keeps artists making things. Artists are concerned with making, not with things made. You try to make the best pictures you can. If they come out good, consider it a bonus, if others like them and want to buy them, that is a double bonus, and if some modicum of recognition comes, that is a triple bonus. But these bonuses are never the motivating force. Artists are essentially givers. As such they need an audience of receivers to complete the circle. Poor Van Gogh went mad for lack of an audience. The audience need not be large--one or two people who fully understand what you are trying to do can be enough--even if they do not like your work--as long as they understand the depths of what you are attempting. And if a larger audience responds to your work, that is wonderful (but beware if everyone--the general public--likes it)--one wants an audience of depth, not breadth. But the motivating impulse must come from within, not from a desire for recognition or greatness. Recognition and so very rarely, greatness, overtake one and come as a function of living and working fully. They are nothing to strive for.

[Mark Sawyer]

Interesting to hear how people work with their cameras...

I almost always compose before I set the camera up. Not just a quick, "yeah somewhere around here," mind you. I walk back and forth, side to side, into and back from the scene. I bend over and stand up and wander around, finally decide, yep, here," make a little scuff in the dirt and a mental note how high the tripod goes, and already have the lens in mind. (Generally not for cropping the sides of the frame; that's decided by the position of the camera. Lens decisions are more for how they decide space, and spontaneous biases of the day.)

Looking at the ground glass is usually more an exercise in pointing, lining up, and focusing. Maybe a little backing up or moving in...

[Mark Sawyer]

Mind you, I'm not in a "struggle for greatness," as the thread title goes. I'm just trying not to embarrass myself. (On a good day, I can pull the negative from the fixer, hold it to the light, and cry, "Behold! I have achieved mediocrity!")

[paulr]

Among artists who achieve greatness, I don't see to many who struggle for it. They do struggle though ... and it's struggle to say what they believe must be said, but that so far hasn't been said.

All of this business about how to use the camera, how to "compose" ... these the kinds of nuts and bolts issues that fall under the heading of competence, not greatness.

[Mark Sawyer]

"All of this business about how to use the camera, how to "compose" ... these the kinds of nuts and bolts issues that fall under the heading of competence, not greatness."

In some ways, yes, but it's the critical time and process of the creative act. A person's "struggle" with physically making the image might provide more practical insights, whereas their inner "struggle for greatness/art/pleasure" might provide more intellectual/emotional insights. They are separate stuggles, but parallel and intertwined...