My problem with photography is that it is a limited medium. In writing you are not constrained by what is in front of you; you can slow time, speed it up; you can give the gift of sight and sound; you're able to take a person into the zeitgeist - the mood of a moment, pointing to him the interesting, the beautiful - quickly skipping past the ugly and the mundane. You can grow whole forests at the speed of thought, feed your travellers exotic insects, send them on a tour of the royal gardens on the back of a bee. Writing is unrestricted, plugged directly into the imagination, and it changes the way you think simply because you can now capture thoughts - pluck them right out of the air, even, and store them in a format far more versatile than the printed image. Photography, however, is superficial. It is beautiful only in what you capture. Your style is the kind of things you shoot, as opposed to the kind of things you do to your subject. It is subtle, light. And it is inherently limited: even Henri Cartier-Bresson admits this - though he was talking about painting as a comparison, for he was himself a failed painter.
And yet ... photography is fun. It is a social activity, and it is a commercial one - you don't have such silly things as group outings in writing, for instance, because group writing produces some of the most horrible end-products known to man (i.e.: the Transformers 2 dialogue). Writing is also not commercial, for you do not see people arguing about the best brand of pen to use for their next novel; but it is lonely, and retentive, and often frustrating, and it is all those things in exchange for the creative control and power a writer wields over his work.
I'm going out for a photography outing tomorrow, and we're set to have a hell of a time (half of which would be commercial, materialistic comparison of gear). And the truth is that I am decidedly confused about photography, because for all the frustration I have with the limits of this medium ... photography is fun, and I have shot some pretty damned cool things in the short time I've been doing it. Like this, for instance:
... which is probably the one photograph I am most pleased with. And because I am a writer, I am a street photographer, because my storytelling habits have followed me off the page and onto the road, behind the lens and the mirror box. Photography is fun: it is accessible, easy. Sexy, even. And if photography has a place for me - the cynical, storytelling writer - then it has a place for everyone with the resources to get themselves a dSLR (and lens, and flash, and camera-bag, you get the idea ...)
If there is a art for the masses of the 21st century - mark my words, photography is it.
14 comments:
Looking forward to your works later =)
Oh, that'll take some time, Lance ... I've still got two photoshoots to post-process. =S
What compact camera would you recommend?
i've somehow come to believe that photographers (if equipped with the variety of vocabulary) would be good writers. somehow. i've known a few people who do photography AND write well.
anyway, that's not the point. i love photography because it's so beautiful. you don't need to understand anything to appreciate photography.
imo its harder to be a good photographer than to be a good writer. its hard to make something look mediocre look oh so beautiful. and thats what i really admire in photographers - being able to capture the moment, telling the world 'hey, i see beauty in this thing. don't you?'
so yea, i appreciate photography a lot more than literature. just because i dont have to think ;)
keep snapping. will look forward to more photos from you. remember that there's beauty in everything even in the (supposed) ugliest things. so no, photography isn't THAT restricted. :)
*Jealous*
Your macbook is perfect for OCD photography.
And it's okay to enjoy something Fun Ced. Which I am pretty glad you do.
Now to convince you to bring the 1KD with you to Sg...
@Tsar: created a UGS thread to answer just that, so you can benefit from more than just my opinion.
@Anne: Nawp. I mean, c'mon - I'm not a particularly talented photographer, and I can already shoot pretty damned nice photos. What does this say of the medium? Give a painter the same amount of time to practice, and trust me his/her paintings would be horrible to look at. I started writing at Primary 2, but it took me about 10 years before I became competent - and even then I STILL suck at fiction. Sigh. Photography is easy. Or, at least, easier.
@Sam: Can't. =( It's my dad's. But thank you for the comment about the little boy photo. In MSN, I mean. =3
haha then i'm thinking you and i will think differently of both photography and writing.
photography to me isn't just about the right angle or right lighting etc. the real stuff is when a photographer can make something inanimate look... animate. lol. or when one can embed the joy/sorrow/whateverfeeling in pixels. photographers have to make a something something with what they're given. writers are free to create a something something out of nothing - be it unicorns or leprechauns and pots of gold.
and no, you can't quite compare the quality of the 'products' from a photographer and a painter/writer given the same time frame. you give a photographer a years to improve his/her skill, he/she'd have taken thousands of photos. giving a painter/writer the same time frame, he/she'd have produced a looottt less work than the photographer would have.
how bout this. you go take a thousand photos. and go write a thousand essays. and lemme know which turned out better. hahaha.
anyway, none of that is important. im just in the mood to crap atm. so you can just completely disregard what i said earlier. ;)
oh and enjoy the last week (or two) in Kuching.
Nicely said. Keep on taking photos!
Nice one ^^
@Garrick, @Reening: thank you. =)
@Anne: Hrmm. You DO have a point when you say that in the span of a year a photographer is likely to have improved more than a painter ... simply because he can take thousands more photographs than a painter can with brush in hand. Good one.
I think what bothers me the most about photography is how ... easy it is to become competent. Okay maybe not good, but you do have to admit that competency in photography is almost immediately achievable, what with increasingly intelligent camera bodies, and auto/semi-auto modes that instantly choose the best settings for a scene. With writing and painting ... competency is a tough slog away.
Hey dienasty,
I am not exactly sure how you see photography, but to say that it is easy, might just be an understatement.
You seem to compare writing to photography. They both tell stories, but they are both completely different things. They can complement each other, but they are not the same !! Of course I can see how and why you would favor one over the other medium, but i do not believe photography is easier.
If you know the story behind how one awesome photo you see in that national geographic magazine (for example) was taken, at what lengths they went, what risks they took, and what hell they suffered just to get that one shot, you will realize that photography, GOOD photography will never be easy to begin with.
@Robin: you're talking about the occupational hazards of photography, not the actual difficulty of the skill involved. It's two different things, really - and if we're to talk about occupational hazard then there are more writers imprisoned, killed, or lost over the years than there are photographers.
But the actual skill? Henri Cartier Bresson, on photographic skill: 'A photograph is an instant painting. Skill? You press a finger. That's it.'
He was, of course, simplifying, but what he meant was that compared to painting (which he did before he switched over), photography is loads easier. The difficult bit, perhaps, is being at the right place and at the right time.
To be good at photography is hard. To be competent at photography is easy.
To be competent - not even good - in painting/writing is crazy assed difficult.
Oh dear.
I guess we will not see eye on eye with this photography thing.
Hence, I shall not elaborate further, though I probably have a thousand things to say here.
But to tell a photographer that his work is easy, you might want to reconsider this before lashing out because it may just seem like a heartless insult.
I guess it is best elaborated with a simple example:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/__fHhlckwDjI/SlshhhzhSSI/AAAAAAAAAG0/nhACAO7lBZQ/s800/P7110252.JPG
well, since you mentioned photography is nothing more than just clicking the trigger. (WTF)
try and click your trigger and make that shot happen. then come back to me and tell me its THAT easy.
And by general standards that is not exactly what one would consider a good photograph just yet. Still plenty to be improved on. But to obtain just this level of quality, you have no idea how difficult it was.
Lets see if your instant painting can create this.
(Do take note I never mentioned writing is easier, I have complete respect for writing, but to say that photography is easy is just not acceptable)
@Robin:
First of all, I think I must apologize, especially if I have offended you somehow. I believe this topic to be very interesting (and debatable), and my opinions aren't JUST my opinions: here are two links, from two professional photographers:
Paul Graham recently said this:
It’s so easy it's ridiculous. It’s so easy that I can’t even begin – I just don’t know where to start. After all, it’s just looking at things. We all do that. It’s simply a way of recording what you see – point the camera at it, and press a button. How hard is that? And what's more, in this digital age, its free - doesn't even cost you the price of film. It’s so simple and basic, it's ridiculous. (he also says why it's so difficult, so you should check it out)
Henri Cartier Bresson, the icon of modern photography, on Charlie Rose ... note the part where he comments on skill in photography.
I've read your post, and I admit that the dedication you bring to your art is admirable. But let us not pretend that that is too difficult. If a painter were to paint the same image, he would need at least 10 years of instruction and practice in order to attempt the same picture that you shot. We do not need so long a period of learning and instruction - photography skill is simply: technicalities, and composition. Painting is drawing and sketching and paint mixing and technique (and there are quite a few, depending on which style/age of painting you subscribe to) plus practice - for there are tricks in painting that you must learn over time - like when you try to render foliage, say, or light on water - and composition.
That is not to say that photography is any less valuable. It's just ... valuable in different ways. It's valuable in the fact that it is immediate, and it can capture moments in as perfect a condition, and neutrally, without the bias of opinion or the injection of views (like when you capture a scene in writing, for instance). It can also be more powerful in a news context, to communicate the mood of the movement - though probably not as deep as writing itself. But it DOES have it's place, and it IS valuable.
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