Every Picture Is a Compromise
Lessons from the Also-rans
Most photography websites show the photographer's very best work. Wonderful. But that's not the full story of a creative life. If we want to learn, we'd better pay attention to the images that aren't "greatest hits" and see what lessons they have to offer. Every picture is a compromise — the sum of its parts, optical, technical, visual, emotional, and even cosmic – well, maybe not cosmic, but sometimes spiritual. Success on all fronts is rare. It's ok to learn from those that are not our best.
This is a series about my also-rans, some of which I've been able to improve at bit (i.e., "best effort"), none of which I would consider my best. With each there are lessons worth sharing, so I will.
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Original digital capture
What I saw that I liked:The above is a rock floor in the Sun Yat Sen Chinese garden (Vancouver, BC), photographed in 2003. My first field session with my first digital camera, the whopping 6 megapixel FujiFilm S602. What I don't like in the picture:The rock patterns are kind of fun, but what is the subject? What is the purpose? What is the content? What I learned:Don't worry too much about failures like the above. They may have a purpose that you won't realize for years. They may just plant a seed that will come to fruition years later. The image at left was photographed in 2017 and is part of my project titled Searching for Su T'ung Po that appeared in Kokoro, Vol. 3, No. 1 August 2017. It was photographed at the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon on a very wet day. Carl Chiarenza says that "Pictures come from pictures." Here is an example how a picture idea might take a long time to mature into a success — sometimes 14 years or more. |
