AKA Abraham Bacoln

Anatomy of a Photo IV

I thought that perhaps I’d talk a little bit about my horrid sneakbeast rabbit. I know I said a little bit about him in my last blog entry but here are some more words:

Somewhere over a year ago I got the idea that I should take a picture of a feminine figure holding a stuffed animal. The animal would have ghastly human teeth, though, and the model would be directly interacting with the teeth physically, but in a detached way. Without trying to describe it too much more I’ll show you, because the end result was surprisingly close to my initial vision:

… so there. Now you see what I’m talking about. I’ll touch on a few points that I wanted to bring up about this image. For starters, I specifically did not want the model’s face in the shot. I wanted this to be very directly and intently about the stuffed animal. By composing the image with the head out of the frame I sacrificed part of the human element. In case you haven’t heard it enough, the first thing we look for when we see a human figure are the eyes, because they tell us so much about what’s going on. The expression on the face is a close second, or perhaps a larger part of the first look. By removing this the viewer is left without that initial road map and is forced to try and discern emotion or intent from body language alone.

Secondly, I wanted the model to be distinctly feminine. I chose one of my friends who I knew had long hair and a graceful neckline, and put her in a dress with thin straps to show off her shoulders. For a while I debated something more directly titillating that would also bare the ribs and stomach, but decided that would make too bold a statement, too distracting and possibly gauche, and so I declined to do so.

Thirdly, I deliberately posed her with a fairly formal posture. I wanted her upright and nearly stiff, because I didn’t want her body to act as a reaction. In other words, when the viewer first sees the picture I don’t want them to read her body language in that split second before they see the rabbit. I don’t want them to think, “What is this woman reacting to?”

Lastly, her finger is resting in between the rabbit’s teeth. This is the image I’d had in my head and I was glad to see that it worked in real life. To me it feels like the woman is making a statement about the rabbit, as if she’s intentionally interacting with it. This begs the question about her posture, though: is she stiff and upright because she’s nervous about what’s happening? Is she at ease? Is this routine, or something out of the ordinary?

A bonus was the tension shown in her hands. I didn’t plan for it, but she ended up giving some dynamism to the picture through the strain in her fingers. It could even be interpreted as if she is subduing the rabbit, as if she’s preventing his escape.

As I mentioned in that earlier blog entry, to finally get this photo done was an incredible relief. It was the longest-running planned photo that I’ve had to date, and to finally see it on the screen instead of in my head was a great load off my shoulders. I’d finally finished that One Big Thing (even though I’ve done projects far more grand) that had been plaguing me. Shortly after I posted it I was talking to my friend Kathy and I said, “I’m grateful I’m done with that. Now I can get rid of that nasty little rabbit.” Kathy implored me to think more about what else I could possibly do with the rabbit and my photography. I told her, “I don’t have any more images in my head for it. There’s nothing left. I had the One Big Thing and that was it, I didn’t plan for it to be like this. There aren’t other ways in which it can interact with people. I mean the only other thing I could possibly think of is maybe someone holding it by one foot, faced away from the camera, but that’s not really what I made the rabbit for.” Kathy said, “So?”

And there I was, with the first rabbit image not a week old, left thinking, “Well maybe I could get one more image out of it. I want … yeah. Someone holding the rabbit by the foot. The viewer can be left to wonder if it’s a favorite toy being dragged around, or if it’s something distasteful that the person doesn’t even want to be carrying.”

It took me a few weeks to finally see the right location, the hallway outside my friend’s apartment. It took a few weeks more to get our schedules lined up correctly so that she and the rabbit and I could all be there at the right time. But line it up we did, and I got this:

… which honestly is not nearly as moving or dynamic an image as the first one, in my opinion. In some respects it only works after having seen the first one, because then you truly understand what it is she’s carrying.

With regards to the photo itself, I think I did a decent job of not portraying the model’s relation to the rabbit object as positive or negative. Maybe the viewer thinks differently. I took the picture just by the window at one end of a long hall to give some perspective. The first image was very deliberately flat and I wanted this one to have good depth. I chose this hallway because it is narrow, dark, and a bit beat up. As for the model, I tried to get her to give up a tiny bit of motion. Again, to me, with her weight shifted to her right leg her body language says ‘hesitant’ but it could read on first impression as motion. Hopefully either way the viewer is left wondering exactly how she feels about the rabbit and where (if anywhere) she’s going with it.

So those are the two important rabbit pictures. Those are the two that had the most thought put into them, the two that mean the most to me. In the weeks between them I took a few others to pass the time. They aren’t nearly as significant but I do feel that I should mention them, so here they are:

1.) The self-portrait wherein I literally embrace this creature that I have created and try to show the viewer how I feel about my monstrosity. Interpretations on the emotion stated in my gaze have varied wildly and I’d love to hear yours.

2.) A vision of what it might have looked like had I not physically pieced together this abomination but instead found him whole, already existing in our world. I aimed for something cinematic, hoping that the off-camera flashlight would help the viewer feel as if they were not alone, as if someone else had laid the light upon this scene and there was no reason to worry because they were not experiencing the situation alone.

3.) Finally, I wanted a point-of-view image so that the viewer could imagine interacting directly with this thing. What would one of us truly do if we saw this climbing up our wall or coming in our window? Would we meet it head-on?

And with that, finally, I have finished with the rabbit. He’s going to live in a house far away so that I can not hear his teeth clacking together at night, and so that he does not upset my guests when they enter my home. Maybe one day in the future I’ll need him again for a photo but perhaps by then he will have left his new home to find his true place in the world.

Satisfaction

I feel very accomplished after my quick vacation to Tennessee because I got a picture finalized that had been in my head for well over a year. It even turned out somewhere near 90% of how I had envisioned it so long ago. I’m very pleased. Oh, yes, which picture?

That picture. I guess it goes without saying that I had to construct the rabbit, since you can’t just go buy a rabbit that has human teeth in it already. Part of the delay was finding the teeth, which proved difficult in Cookeville. Turns out that you can find just about anything you need down here in the Humid City – if you know where to look.

So that was one bit of satisfaction – taking a picture that had plagued me for nearly a year and a half. Seriously, I have had this image in my head for so long and now that it’s finally taken I feel relieved. Also, I absolutely hated having that rabbit in the same room as where I was sleeping … until the picture was taken. Afterward it was as if I had exorcised whatever demon was plaguing me. I thought our muses were supposed to bring comfort and not cause distress. If making the pictures chases them off and lets me sleep better then I’ll do whatever it takes.

Another bit of satisfaction came from taking these panoramic images: Tennessee Tech campus and south Cookeville. About a year ago (almost exactly the same time as the toothed stuffed animal started plaguing me) I took a self-portrait in an elevator which prompted one of my friends to ask, “Where … did you find an elevator in Cookeville?” That has stuck with me since then, and it makes me think about this ground-based culture in my hometown. There’s nowhere in Cookeville to go up, to get above it all and look down and get some perspective. Okay, yes, that statement has more than a literal interpretation but I’m going to avoid that road. Anyway, turns out that if you know the right people you can get to the right places. It’s silly, but I don’t feel at liberty to come right out and say from where I took those panos, but if you’re a Cookeville native it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. Regardless, I hope you enjoy seeing that sleepy little town from a different perspective.

And finally, as I was looking through my photostream for various images that reminded me of my personal timeline, reminded me when I started fixating on the denturebeast and also the comment about elevators in Cookeville, I found the following quote. From me.

During last semester I’d get a little stressed and anxious and the best way I found to relieve that (no off-color jokes, please) was to go out and take pictures.

Now that semester’s done, I spend the day at work, and when I get home I have nothing pressing to do. So now where is my inspiration? Where’s my anxiety and desire to create? I can’t find it. I’m feeling kind of tapped out here.

And that is indeed a relief, to know that this isn’t the first time I’ve been through this. Part of the reason I write (and photograph) is to get things out of my head. The problem with this is that often once they’re out, well, they’re all the way out. Forgotten. Because of this I put myself through the same tortures over and over, apparently.

But yeah, anyway, this isn’t the first time I’ve felt a little creatively challenged, and now I’m sure it won’t be the last. We’ll see what comes of this.

Plateaued, but on the path

Why do I feel like I’m in a creative slump when I’m still producing good photographic work at a fairly constant rate?

There’s a small critique group with whom I meet here in New Orleans, and sitting for hours discussing the works of artists of all mediums, styles, and calibers has helped me understand better the imagery I’m producing with my camera. More importantly being forced to discuss my photography with others who won’t let me bullshit my way out of the conversation, who encourage (or force, actually) me to truly look at what I’m creating – that’s been very helpful for me. Because of these meetings I have been able to better clarify my thoughts on why I feel like I’m at a creative low point and why I’m disappointed with my rate of production.

When I was fifteen I started playing bass guitar on a whim. I could hardly differentiate the bass line from the guitars in the music I was listening to but that didn’t matter, I liked the way it felt and sounded when I played it. I never took any lessons but I spent most of my spare time playing. When I was sixteen someone said, “Wow, you’re pretty good – how long have you been playing?” I was proud to be able to reply, “Oh, only about a year. I haven’t had any lessons or anything, I just kind of picked it up.” That was a good feeling, to think that I was naturally talented.

Of course time shortly showed me that whatever’s considered good for a kid that’s been playing for one year without lessons is pretty mediocre – or even a little bit sad – when it’s been two years, or three. I didn’t have any drive to improve my playing and I was still treating the bass as a part-time distraction, not even a proper hobby.

With regards to the creative learning curve I shot up rapidly at the beginning, quickly reached a low plateau, and stayed there. With the bass I was content to remain where I was as a beginner. I could clearly see the path ahead of me, and where I could have gone had I taken lessons, or learned to read music, or even figured out a way to practice (as opposed to just screwing around) but I didn’t care to go down that road.

And now I’m transferring that understanding of natural creative talent and the inevitable plateau to my photography. A while back I went through my photos to determine when I personally felt I took the step from “a guy who likes to take interesting snapshots” to “someone determined to create proper photographs” and I mark that time as January 2006. That means that before I know it I will have been doing photography seriously for four years. In some ways that’s depressing to me.

Okay, so honestly if I showed the me of four years ago the photos I’m producing now, he (I) would be astounded. But me of today, me-right-now, is not content. I think my natural talent has taken me as far as it can. In terms of the creative learning curve, I’ve had my rocket upwards and now I’m on my plateau. This is where my overall frustration with my photos is coming in to play. When I was just starting out I learned something new every week, and for a while it was every day. I figured out how better to compose images, how better to edit (both in terms of post-production and also how much to show to other people), how better to visualize in advance where the capabilities of my equipment and brain could take me.

Now I’m missing that feeling, that “Eureka!” of finding or understanding something new, and I don’t know how to spark it. I’m certainly not saying I’ve mastered photography and have nothing left to learn – far from it! – but as the slope of the learning curve levels off the tidbits of learning become smaller in scale. There’s a difference between the huge pure joy of discovering how to manipulate depth of field to good effect and the tiny, almost insignificant, self-congratulation when I think, “Oh, in this situation I should just go ahead and under-expose by a half-stop before I even start shooting” because of learning from past experiences. It used to be that I could see where I needed to go when I would look at photos and say, “Wow! How did they DO that?” Finding that out was my goal. Now I know how they did it. Now I don’t have clear milestones ahead and I feel like I’m trying to track my predecessors on rocky ground. I’ve gone from having huge road signs to sifting tiny pebbles.

When I look through the photographs of others to find the ones that I envy, the ones that are so good that I grit my teeth and can’t think of anything other than just how much I wish that I had been the one to take it, they usually fall into one of three categories:

1.) A photo taken at a location that is foreign to me or to which I do not have access.
2.) A photo taken using huge props, great studio, paid model, or any other indication of someone having poured money into the shoot.
3.) A photo taken with a kind of creativity that originates from a higher plane than mine, something I can only hope to be able to tap into eventually.

The first two I can rationalize away if I spend long enough trying to convince myself that I should. For example the vast majority of the viewers of my photos do not live here in New Orleans so the locations that I think are mundane are indeed foreign or exotic setups to them. Just because I see them every day does not negate their potential usefulness or beauty. Likewise I have been able to come up with some pretty good photos with found props, hastily-rigged home lighting, and so forth. Most of my visions can be created on my budget, even when I get extravagant.

That leaves the creativity, something I can’t force, cajole, plead, or otherwise magic into existence. I am left in despair when viewing the work of Chema Madoz for example. Every single one of his images sends me into a whirlwind of emotions – “I love it for its incredible stark simplicity. I love it for its tone. I want to have been the one who took this image. I need to have been the one who took this image. I can never recreate it because he’s already done it better than I ever could. I’ll never be able to take pictures like this.” For every. single. image.

The upside to all of this rambling discussion is that when you understand where you are, you can hopefully see how you got there and – if you’re lucky – where you’re going. I know I’m frustrated with what I’m creating, and how I feel I’m never making anything new. I know that I rail against the idea of repeating anything in my photography – I don’t like to use the same prop or theme or idea more than once if possible. I know that this artificial and unnecessary restriction is part of what’s keeping me stuck here in this trough.

But meeting with other people, people that don’t know me and don’t know where my photography has come from or is going … that helps. Their opinions (at times blunt or loving or both) help me see that I’m not repeating myself too much, that I am indeed on the right path. To these people that don’t live inside my head my work is indeed fresh, and welcoming, and enjoyable. It’s giving me a little bit of space to stop worrying and just go back to creating.

I just have to accept that the honeymoon is over and I don’t get that adrenaline rush every time I learn or find something new, and that my discoveries will be smaller, but they’re still discoveries. I’m still on the right path.

Camera and bag, maybe in that order.

I’ve had enough people asking about my camera that I figure I should write an update (since not everyone follows me on Twitter and why should they anyway? I just make a bunch of noise and never impart anything useful).

The story in brief is that I sent my lens in to be fixed as it was back-focusing. The first time I got it back it still didn’t work right. I sent it in a second time with a CD with samples of the problem. It came back un-fixed. Canon convinced me to send in my camera body with the lens – WHICH I HATED DOING WITH ALL MY HEART – and eventually it all came back fixed, pretty, and sparkling clean.

So … aside from a few days of anxiety and some irritating conversations with Canon’s repair department, all is well.

Partly related? Tangentially related? Anyway, somehow related if you use your imagination is that I got myself a new non-camera bag. My old and busted bag needed replacing because it was A.) old and B.) busted. Plus it was kind of a stupid messenger bag design with pockets on the main flap, which meant that every time you opened it they tried to spill their contents, even if zipped, and … yeah, enough talking about that. It sucked.

I set out to find a new non-camera bag and came across Rothco’s Classic Messenger Bag in black. If you do a Google search for that item [*] you will find that it is seriously popular because ZOMG IT IS JACK BAUER’S MESSENGER BAG, MOST MANLY OF BAGS EVAR.

I have never watched even one minute of 24 but by the time I finished price shopping across several sites and reading customer reviews I found that many men are convinced that this bag alone will allow them to kill terrorists. Me, I … um … *nervous cough* I ain’t got no terrorists to kill, but this bag does allow me to carry things to and from the office with ease.

Aaaanyway the point here is that some people said, “I even use this to carry my camera gear” and I thought that ludicrous. I have a Lowepro Slingshot 100 that has been my tiny heavy baby for a couple of years now. Okay, fine, it’s not the bag’s fault that it’s heavy, it’s the gear’s fault, but you understand. The Slingshot is like the perfect camera bag. I can’t imagine keeping my stuff in any other. But! Last night I had the strange desire to go photograph drunken tourists on Bourbon Street, something I have never done, and I didn’t wish to carry my conspicuous camera bag. I emptied out my Rothco Classic Messenger Bag (JUST LIKE JACK BAUER USES ON 24 AMIRITE) and put my camera body and two lenses inside. Turns out it did a fantastic job. I got the picture I wanted and I was comfortable during the entire excursion. The interior section was more than large enough for camera + lens, and the smaller pockets are the perfect size for additional lenses. Now don’t get me wrong – I won’t use this as my primary camera bag. All my gear is already packed back in the Slingshot. Should I ever again have a specific need for just camera + lens, though, I will consider the messenger bag.

I think that’s it.

…

Yeah, that’s it. Anything else?

How you been? How’s your camera?

…

Fine? Great.

Listen, I gotta … go … do that one thing. I’ll catch you later.

Anatomy of a Photo III

Today’s Anatomy of a Photo is about the frustration of failure. Bear with me here as I ramble over, under, and around the point. Hopefully I’ll get there eventually.

The other day when I was at the craft store looking for spray adhesive to mount my most recent photo poster I found a set of fifteen glow stick bracelets for one dollar – assorted colors even. I love glow stick bracelets except obviously I never wear them nor do I know anyone that would, and they’re too small for cat collars, so … I bought them anyway. They seem like a good kind of emergency prop, you know?

Fast-forward a week or so and we arrive at yesterday. This is the part I can never explain, the part that revolves around the stupid things that happen inside my head without me asking them to. While cooking bratwurst I suddenly had a vision of a regular hot dog with a red glow stick poking through both ends (having been inserted through the dog longways). It was one of those moments I enjoy wherein I find the weird juxtaposition I’m always longing for. When I was a kid I was afraid to cut open a glow stick because whatever was inside was obviously not for eating and would probably kill you in horrible ways instead of turning you into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or something*. So what better thing to put a glow stick into but something you are supposed to eat? Or the other way around – what better to put into something you’re supposed to eat than a radioactive pink glow stick?

This is the other part I can’t explain – why that idea derailed and I never bought the hot dogs. I got fascinated with the idea of an atomic apple instead, using the green glow sticks. Why? I don’t really know. I think it has to do with the fact that glow sticks put off light (duh). To make them obvious and glowy, well, you have to photograph them in dim lighting. A hot dog is a complex beast with multiple toppings, all of which have their own colors, and all of which would be lost in murky light. So … better to go with an apple, a fairly recognizable shape (as long as you turn it so that the stem is in profile). A banana was also briefly considered but I feared it would turn brown around the entrance points while I was shooting, and who wants their fruit puncture wounds made so blatantly obvious? Not me. Not me.

With that great green apple in mind I went to the grocery store with an expired glow stick. We shop at a small neighborhood market where we know all the cashiers, which explains why eventually Pinky came up to me and said, “Kevin, what in the world are you doing?” I told her I was looking for the perfect apple for a photography project, and while saying so I bent the glow stick around the apple I had in my hand, pantomiming the awesome forces that were to be unleashed from this humble fruit. She shook her head and walked away. A different cashier completed my transaction.

Originally I had planned to use this apple as a test apple but I have a history of trying “test” photographs that end up taking forever and turning into the real thing because I have no patience nor willpower when it comes to waiting until the light is better tomorrow. In this case, well, it kind of ruined my photo. By the time I got home all my natural light was gone daddy gone and I resorted to using lamps, which never ever works for me and you’d think that with a few years’ of experience under my belt I’d have learned by now, but no. I haven’t.

I used a disposable chopstick (you keep those in your kitchen, right? They’re insanely handy. Ask them for extras next time you pick up your Chinese carry-out) to push holes in the apple because it (the chopstick) was the same diameter as the glow sticks. I originally wanted the glow sticks curved around the apple kind of like the atomic symbol, you know, an atomic apple, but the sticks were too short and wouldn’t make graceful curves but instead big bunny lump ears. I settled on straight through, then, like some kind of horrid landmine. A little spiky luminescent abomination.

I needed a base for this glowapple to sit on, of course, and I couldn’t think of anything interesting. Books? No. Wine bottle? No. Cat? Maybe, but no. Eventually I realized that one thing I rarely use in my photography is ice. Ice! I envisioned this glowing apple atop a hill of ice, shining like some tribute to radioactivity, the prize awarded annually to the grower of the best frankenfruit.

Just in case you were ever thinking of piling ice cubes into a mound, well, let me save you the trouble and state the obvious: ice is slippery and does not mound well.

So there I was, ice mound slipping into ice flats, the lighting also flat and lifeless since I was trying to use various combinations of lamps. The background was uninspiring and I couldn’t get the apple piled high enough to get it out of view of the baking tray I was using to collect the water from melting ice. I couldn’t make a far off telephoto shot work, and I couldn’t make a close-up wide-angle shot work, and oh did you know that cold will slow down the reaction inside a glow stick and make it last longer? This is cool if you need to keep one overnight, but in my situation the ends of the glow sticks that were resting on the ice were hardly glowing, while the other ends (in the air) were blazing away, so it just looked cheap and unbalanced.

Finally I got frustrated with the whole damn thing and just threw the pan, ice, glowapple and all into the kitchen sink and went to clean up the front room and put the lamps back in place. I reviewed one of my test shots on the computer and it was just as miserable as I feared. All this “work” lost put me in a foul mood – not to mention I had used the only three green glow sticks from the assortment pack, which meant I couldn’t do the apple shot again even if I figured out how to make it look good. I spent some time reading, some time goofing off on the computer, and by then I’d forgotten all about my miserable failure. I went into the kitchen to put my water glass in the sink and there it was.

There was something pleasant about the glowapple sitting in the sink in the dark, with the light from the street coming in. We’ve all gone to the kitchen in the middle of the night and seen the dishes in the sink. It’s the very picture of American domesticity. Okay, maybe you are perfect and wash your dishes every night, but some of us occasionally let it slide. Anyway, the apple set so innocently in the mix seemed to fit perfectly, while at the same time obviously it was something completely out of place. Likewise to me personally the moment seemed perfect – this monument to earlier failure tossed casually aside suddenly became the very thing it wasn’t: an opportunity for a decent photograph.

I went and got my camera, ramped up the ISO so that I didn’t have to dig out my tripod, underexposed the shot by two stops so that the room would remain dark and the exposure time would be short enough that I could do it hand-held, and … there you have it. Nothing at all like I originally envisioned, certainly coming across as a hand-held snapshot, but still containing a little bit of something interesting.