Photography is Easy; Photography is Hard

Yesterday, Robin of Simply Robin posted an attack on my assertion that: 'photography is easy'. We've decided to agree to disagree, but I think an explanation on my end is in order, if merely in the interest of intellectual discourse. The truth about the matter is that I have been thinking a lot about the nature of the photographic medium, even before my dad bought a dSLR. Many of my friends are currently jumping onto the dSLR bandwagon; they are happy to shoot everything and anything that comes their way. I didn't like that. I wanted to be sure, that if I were to pick up a camera, and the skills that came with the photographic medium, I'd be doing it for a good reason. For a meaningful reason. I write because the act of writing soothes my mind, and helps me organize my ideas, and in an ideal scenario my writing is used to store feelings, and thoughts, and images attached to those thoughts that I want to remember. But what of photography? What can photography accomplish that writing cannot? I struggled for an answer, because I didn't want to shoot without a purpose. And I did find an answer, though I'll get back to that in a bit. Here, first of all, is my argument:

Photography is easy. It is. Let us consider the following scenario:

Kid takes camera. Kid shoots. Of those photos that he first shoots, it is likely that a handful would be good shots, though most would be bad.

Kid takes pen. Kid writes. Of those essays that he first writes, all would be lousy.

Kid takes paintbrush. Kid paints. Of those pictures that he first paints, all would be lousy.

Why?

The answer to that question lies in the limits of a medium, and the limits in photography are more solidly defined and more restricting than that in writing and painting, and film. Consider that writing and painting recreates what is obvious in front of us, in the sense that when you're drawing a bush you would have to recreate the leaves in that bush, the environment around it, and the way the light plays on the dappled shadows underneath the branches. But in photography you don't have to do all that: God has drawn the bush for you, God has given you light, you merely have to capture it. In writing, and in painting, you are the God of your work, and it is difficult to be a God, the same way it is difficult to be a 3D modeler of a virtual world than it is to be the gamer that screen-captures your work.

I struggled with this notion for some time, because after the control and the creative power of writing, photography seemed like a farce. Like riding a bike after touring Europe in a coupe. And it appears that I was not the only one with such views ... shortly before I wrote the original blog post, I chanced upon an interview with Henri Cartier Bresson on Google Video,
who said:

Teaching (photography) is how to use a little finger, that's all ... photography is just an instant drawing. BUT, for photography, you need one (finger) ... and in drawing you need three.

Henri Cartier Bresson, for those of you who don't know, was the greatest photographer of the 21st century, the inventor of modern photojournalism, the founder of the prestigious Magnum agency. Slightly more contemporary, however, is photographer Paul Graham's take on the medium, written for Yale University's MFA photography graduation book:

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.

Robin points out in his post that his shots of water droplets on a pair of dragonfly eyes were impossibly difficult to achieve. But let us put that in perspective: if you were to give me one year's worth of practice, some macro gear, an umbrella, an insect and rain I would probably be able to capture something near Robin's level of quality, after maybe 10,000 shots or so. But give me a pencil, some paper, and paint ... and even after 5 years of constant practice I cannot guarantee you an image like that. The thing about photography is that you can capture multiple shots and pick the best; in art, and in writing: this is impossible. There is no 'pick the best'. The real reality of writer and the painter is this: 4 hours worth of work, and I throw it away because the anecdotal lede I used to introduce my article is bloated; 4 hours of work, and I throw it away because the nose on my portrait isn't just right.

It is an accepted truth of all these mediums - writing, photography, painting - that nobody sees the work that goes into the final product. A 15 page essay in the New Yorker is the result of 6 months worth of research, 3 discarded drafts and 1 week's worth of editing and fact-checking; nobody sees this. Michelangelo's murals on the churches of Rome take a year, at least, upside down and draped in sheets; nobody sees this. And there are more writers and painters who commit suicide and inflict self-damage in the pursuit of their chosen art - bereft of the commercial options available to photographers - nobody, too, sees this.

Robin is right: nobody sees the work that leads up to a taking of a photograph. But he is mistaken in the assumption that it is true only of photography - it is true of writing, and painting; and drawing, and film. He attempts to prove that photography is incessantly difficult, but he does so without the context of the other creative mediums available to man. Photography, writing, and art: do they not overlap in the expression of the human condition?

So ... what's so great about photography? Or - to put a twist on an aforementioned question: what's so difficult about it? One good answer would be to refer - again - to Paul Graham:

It’s so difficult because it’s everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now. It's the view of this pen in my hand as I write this, it's an image of your hands holding this book, Drift your consciousness up and out of this text and see: it's right there, across the room - there... and there. Then it’s gone. You didn’t photograph it, because you didn’t think it was worth it. And now it’s too late, that moment has evaporated. But another one has arrived, instantly. Now. Because life is flowing through and around us, rushing onwards and onwards, in every direction.

And also:

But if it's everywhere and all the time, and so easy to make, then what’s of value? which pictures matter? Is it the hard won photograph, knowing, controlled, previsualised? Yes. Or are those contrived, dry and belabored? Sometimes. Is it the offhand snapshot made on a whim. For sure. Or is that just a lucky observation, some random moment caught by chance? Maybe. Is it an intuitive expression of liquid intelligence? Exactly. Or the distillation of years of looking seeing thinking photography. Definitely.

Photography is valuable because it is a freeze frame of a moment in time, untouched by human hands and unvarnished by human opinion. No other medium can do this. Writing can capture a moment, yes, and in more depth - yes. But it cannot freeze that moment and leave it ambiguous, neutral, it cannot allow the viewer and the reader to impose their meaning on it, to give their own interpretations of the image the photographer so chooses to capture.

And in that ambiguity lies the real challenge in photography: not composition, not light, not subject - though all of those things do matter to the learning photographer. Those are merely the technicalities. The real challenge in photography is to capture the ambiguity of the real world, and to make that obvious to the people who are lucky enough to view your photographs. To capture what is real, and to also imply what is unreal, at all the places that are important to you. And that is not easy, nor is it quick; but most importantly it is not possible in any medium but this one.

Photography is easy; photography is hard. And in that sentence you have one of the truths of all the arts, and one of the great joys of life. Now let us stop bickering and go out, with our cameras - into the rain perhaps - to take more photographs.

Endnotes:
1, I owe a very special friend for the argument about painting, and the argument about the value of photography. I owe her many things, actually, and this endnote is just one way of thanking her.

2, N.B.: Various photographers have tried to work around the limitations of the medium, for instance: noted fashion photographer Rankin sees film-making as telling a story; photography as telling a joke.