Doing your thing

And as an afterthought: I liked this little video testmonial on Blurb. Just a guy who continues to shoot with his trusted all-film Leicas. The kind of documentary photography people have been doing for ages. But he does it, in all modesty, very well. Inspiring.

Time to regroup ...

It’s been a long while since I have been blogging on Bravo20. Soon I may be taking up the thread again more energetically. But let me pause for a minute on the many reasons why I dropped the ball for so long in photography.

First of all I think it is only natural that the intensity with which one pursues interests and passions periodically waxes and wanes over time. Over the last 30 years I have grown deep affections for books, music, mountains and photography. The intensity of these passions oscillates in cycles with different frequencies. My passion for mountains, for example, has a yearly cycle, with a first surge of interest around late February. This steadily builds up towards the summer and after our return from holiday it seems I’ve been able to stock up on alpine vitamins enough to allow the passion into hibernate a little. In music, it seems the frequency is much lower. 10-15 years ago we went to concerts very often but then this started to taper off. At a certain point in time I also thought that I had explored most of the interesting repertoire in classical music. However, the last 2-3 years the interest has been steadily growing, thanks partly to the rediscovery of vinyl and thanks to the listening diary have been keeping for about 6 months now. So lately we have been going more to concerts again and I find it hugely rewarding again. As regards photography, I have invested an enormous amount of time and passion over the last 8 years. It is not unnatural that at one point one has to pause to catch some breath. However, I also believe that those crisscrossing cycles of intensity also influence one another. It is no accident that I put together the Matterhorn Blurb-booklet early March, when those alpine bugs start to tickle again. And also the deep involvement in music has given me so much energy lately that I feel I have again some spare oomph to pull myself into creative photo mode again.

Another factor has been the frenzied speed with which photography and the supporting technology has evolved. I confess at being a gearhead. But I’ve always been ambivalent towards the digital wave. It really hasn’t captured my imagination. I found it mildly interesting until the full frame DSLR came on stage. That seemed a natural end point to me. But since, the race towards more pixels, higher ISOs etc has been relentlessy pushing on and it seems to me there is nothing new there anymore. I’m keeping an eye on the M9 and the Fuji X100 and that’s about it. Meanwhile, film has been pushed aside to a really peripheral position. For film-based photographers there is hardly any news out there. The market for new stuff and emulsions has come to (almost) complete stasis.

In terms of the practice of photography itself, that has been exploding in a most incredible way. Literally everyone is taking pictures now. Whilst there are tons of rubbish, there is a lot of very good work around too. And photo magazines and books are spreading the knowledge about esoteric techniques at lightning speed. Keith Carter used to be one of the very few photographers who would use the tilt-technique (with his Flexbody) to create this kind of dreamy, slightly surreal landscapes. Today everybody is doing it. Never mention the legions that are prowling the streets with their Holgas and Dianas. Alternative processes? Whip out your iPhone and download one of these apps. You want real sharpness? It used to be so that only big negs could give you that. Today a decent mid-market DSLR provides all the sharpness you want up to serious print sizes. In a way this has a sobering effect. There’s no way one can stand out of the crowd by relying on some sort of technologically-supported gimmick because in no time everyone is doing it. The same applies to photo subjects. Derelict cities? Old factories? Landscapes? Exotic locales? Small photography? Nightscapes? You name it. It is all being practiced massively by huge throngs of enthusiastic photographers. Don’t even think about being original ... So it really boils down now to the purity and depth of one’s photographic vision that one can develop. Only this will be able to put you aside from the snapshooting masses. In a way it is a very good thing, because that has always been the ultimate distinctive feature. But it is also a very tall order as a genuine vision (‘un regard d’auteur’, as the French say) takes years and tons of energy to develop. Ah oui, no pain no gain. And that is something that continues to intimidate me ...

Another factor has been my studies in urban planning/design. This has panned out in two ways. First I had to put a lot of time in. This was time I did not have for shooting. And then, more importantly, this study has given me a very different look on the city. It’s a much richer, more technical look also. And I’m still wondering exactly how to reflect that in my images. Today I find the EU Capitals project very naive. I couldn’t do that anymore. But it’s not yet clear what an alternative approach might. I think the important thing here is to break through this lethargy and start to do some shooting. Very soon I will do that. With my course mates I will go on a 10-day study trip to visit projects in France, Germany and Switzerland. I’ll try do some shooting there. And then at the end of May I am planning to go an a 3-day walk from Rome Fiumicino airport to the city centre. I’ve always found this a very interesting, suggestive peri-urban wasteland.

There’s maybe a final element playing out in my creative lull. It’s the lack of printing. Indeed, I have made very few prints of my own pictures over the last two years. It’s partly the hassle, partly the ability to see your pictures on a screen which keeps me from doing so. But seeing pictures on a screen is not the same as holding a print – even an inkjet print – in your hands. So, when I saw that 80x100 print that Bert did for me of one of my Matterhorn pictures (sold to a Swiss client) I suddenly got a jolt. Immediately I felt like grabbing a camera. Now, yesterday I received those Blurb booklets I ordered. And, wow, I’m impressed. They look very good with that premium lustre paper they are offering now. There still is a greenish cast over the black-and-white pictures but it’s tolerable I find. Importantly, I think the prints in the booklet communicate that kind of majesty and purity that I want to put in my pictures. You really can’t see that on a screen.

So it’s time to regroup. I’ll be making more Blurb books in the coming months. My Matterhorn website will go live. I’m going to submit more pictures to Millennium and I will start shooting again.