Photograph of me making a photograph on my iPhone in Rocky Mountain National Park by Grey Gibbs
Recently, my friend and fellow artist Jerry OConnor and I took a drive/ride to Superior, AZ to do a little video of me blabbing about being a “photographer”. I wanted to use it for some promos I was planning.
An interesting thing happened when I introduced myself on camera as a “photographer”… I felt a little strange about the designation. Don’t get me wrong, I AM INDEED a photographer. I live it breathe it sleep it. Being a photographer is one of the things that define so much of what I do.
I have been a photographer for over 45 years.
I knew what it meant back then. It meant that I captured images using tools, light, chemistry, production equipment, and a huge amount of education – learning. It meant I had followed a process, one clearly defined, clearly measured, clearly quantified.
Knowing how to expose different films, using different formats, and then to take all of that time-consuming effort into a chemical lab and begin to manage the development of the film knowing that any small deviation or mistake could ruin an entire day/week of irreplaceable images. It was not for the feint of heart.
It was a lot of work, and it paid off in something tangible. I could hold that print and see the fruit of my labors. It meant something to me. It proved my ability, validated my work, and said something to the world.
The images that were created told a sort of narrative. I took them by finding meaning in the visual in front of me. I saw metaphor and music, poetry and story. Each image crafted ‘by hand’ to make something special, or at least special to me.
I recall hiking into Sycamore Creek with my 8×10 and 3 film holders. With a really heavy backpack I traversed a rocky terrain full of cactus. An all day affair and I had 6 sheets of film. All that for 6 pictures. If one photo in ten is a keeper, I may not even reach that goal even after spending 7 hours climbing and shooting.
I learned to be deliberate. To take the time needed to find the image I knew was in front of me, but couldn’t see because I hadn’t opened my eyes and mind to the existence of it yet. So frustrating… you KNOW there is a picture there, but it is not revealing itself to you. It’s hiding in the clutter of shapes, the angles of light, the chaos of your mind – and it remains elusive and ethereal until you let yourself open to its existence.
There are photographs everywhere. Not just at the Grand Canyon, or the seashore, or in southern Utah. They are everywhere around us, and the photographer’s job is to find them, capture them, show them to others in order that they might open their eyes and minds to the possibilities that surround them.
It was fun being a member of such an exclusive club. We used expensive, Professional, cameras. Our film was kept in the refrigerator, and we had the ability to make a Polaroid on every format camera we owned. We had strange and difficult to work with lighting, with special modifiers we made ourselves. Building a softbox was akin to a Jedi forging his lightsaber.
But clubs have a way of dehumanizing and demeaning those who do not belong. Clubs can become exclusive havens of elitists who find that instead of exploring the world, they spend more time trying to keep others out of the club.
“Now everyone is a photographer…”
We hear it all the time.
I think it is grand. I really do.
Creating something to keep, whether on one’s phone, or P&S, or whatever camera they have, is such a precious delight. My kid loves taking photographs of her animals, and silly stuff she and her friends do. She has no illusions of what photography is “supposed” to be. Because to her, it isn’t supposed to be anything… it’s just a pic of her crazy dog in a funny hat.
Instagram, Facebook, 500Pix, Snapchat, and whatever else is out there – they are places for people to share the world as a visual experience. And it makes the world better, somehow. For me anyway. Sharing visual experiences help us understand other people, other cultures, simple pleasures, wild adventures… life.
However, “photography” has been forever changed. I know what I do has changed.
Incredibly.
I am still deliberate, shooting far fewer frames than I did when digital first came out. In fact, my frame count is more akin to the frame counts I did as a film shooter than my formative years in digital. (Coming home from a short roadtrip with 1400+ images for instance.)
And now that the action, the substance of being a photographer is ubiquitous – you should see my wife with her iPhone and Snapseed… wow, there is no need to even mention I am a photographer. Because everyone really IS one now.
I might as well state, “Hi, I am Don. I breathe air and eat tacos.”
So what? Really? Everyone does that.
And yeah, we have kicked around semantics for a few years now.
“Visual Specialist”
“Vision Crafter”
“Creative Storyteller”
Meh. Pompous and self-aggrandizing.
(“Show me your ‘story’, I will decide if you did it well.”)
Stating you are a ‘novelist’ simply does not make it true.
But there is one thing that separates some of us from the simple action of recording an event, place, face, or moment as a visual capture… intent.
Intent. Decisiveness. Deliberateness. Pushing beyond the veneer to find the depth of what we see.
Show me something I haven’t seen before.
Show me something I see every day but show it in a way I haven’t seen before.
Show me something that arouses an emotion. Any emotion.
Show me the passion of the world, the challenge of the every day, the triumph of spirit.
Make me feel something new, something comfortable, something breathtaking.
Make me wish I was there, or thankful that I wasn’t.
Make me care about the photograph, the subject, the next moment.
Make a photograph I want to see again, instead of rolling past on a screen I will never return to.
Will that make you a Photographer (capital P)?
I don’t know. I really don’t.
I am a photographer. I guess there is no other term for it. Maybe there doesn’t have to be.
Maybe the designation has more meaning than I can see or less meaning than I want it to have. Maybe the term is antiquated, or perhaps it is just coming into it’s own.
For now, it stands. It really is all we have.
“Tacoist” sounds sort of silly.
