11 Great Quotes By Photographer Olivia Parker
Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Olivia Parker.
“Photography, even though some people refer to it as a mechanical process, forces you to reach out to the world in front of you.” – Olivia Parker
“The biggest transformation comes through what happens with the light.” – Olivia Parker
“It’s very easy to do the things that are obviously manipulated, but to do things that are subtle, that might or might not be manipulated, can get much more interesting.” – Olivia Parker
“People have been trying to fool other people since photography was invented.” – Olivia Parker
“These are stories of the constantly changing ideas of what is real in the human mind, some attempts to make illusions real, and the search for greater order or greater freedom amidst ever changing perceptions of reality.” – Olivia Parker
“What teachers wrote on the blackboard at school was inherently assumed to be true, but I wasn’t so sure. My uncertainty is evident in the blackboard pictures. All I can say is that the chalk drawings and taped paper on my blackboards came from books thought to be true at the time they were published. Blackboards began as small slates, almost an educational toy. They have been around so long they have become an icon of education, but when left unguarded, they can become tools of subversion or items of play again, open to graffiti and games.” – Olivia Parker
“Still lifes permit endless expressive experimentation within a form that remains close to universal human experience.” – Olivia Parker
“The thing is really how people look at things and what they think is real. The more you go along in life the more you find the absurdity of some of it. And so often so much is blocked out, or so much is added by the imagination.” – Olivia Parker
“Human beings are always trying to structure things so that they will be more understandable and more navigable. Games can be working models. Games often have very set rules. Often there is a game board with delineated outlines. There seems to be sort or a pleasure that comes from dealing with a situation that is so manageable or controlled. You know when it’s going to be random or controlled by a throw of the dice. Even when there is that randomness, there are still limits. By contrast, in real life where there are rules and they often break down, things get messy. Its fascinated me, what games are. Almost all civilizations seem to have some.” – Olivia Parker
“I think that the whole process of trying to by creative whether it’s making art or discovering things in a science, any kind of creativity, involves this sort of going off the edge of the map, so to speak, a willingness to go someplace where you don’t know what the structure is going to be.” – Olivia Parker
“If you are not willing to play a little, there are so many possibilities that you won’t see. Often something interesting will come up by accident.” – Olivia Parker
Read our conversation here.
Find out more about Olivia Parker here.
Read Great Quotes By Photographers collections here.
View 12 Great Photographs collections here.
What Do Your Images Look Like When You Share Them In Social Networks?
Social networks can be wonderful ways of sharing events in our lives, with or without images. Most posts are seen, commented on, and shared more if they include an image.
Some posts are just images. And there are social networks just for images. This all creates an insatiable demand for images, specifically photographs. Now, over one trillion photographs are made every year. (For the past several years, each year more photographs are created in the current year than in all previous years combined.)
Usually when photographs are shared there is no indication of what kind of photograph it is. They’re all shared equally, almost as if they’re all equal and all made for the same reasons, which they’re not. Never mind that some photographs are of higher quality than others. Making this kind of value judgment is another matter entirely – and not the point here. The point here is that we make many different kinds of photographs for many different reasons. (We quickly disregard the imperfections in family snapshots, sometimes they feel more real and immediate because of them, favoring instead their accuracy and spontaneity. We evaluate and use formal portraits in entirely different ways.) How successful photographs are is determined by how well they do what we want them to do. There is no one set of criteria that can be applied equally to all photographs; instead we apply different criteria to different kinds of photographs.
They shouldn’t all be read the same. If we looked at all photographs as being the same, and if we looked at all photographs in the same ways, we’d make many inaccurate conclusions and miss many important points.
So it’s important to ask, “How do we want the photographs we share to be received?”
Can we make it easier by taking some of the guesswork out of it all and tell our viewers more about what we’re trying to say by telling them more about how we’re trying to say it? There aren’t standard conventions for this – yet. (And we need them.)
In an attempt to embrace the challenge of communicating what kinds of photographs I share, I’ve started using specific language to describe and ways of presenting different types of photographs differently.
Here’s my current solution.
Documents are shared bare with no border.
Studies made during the development of more resolved work are shared with a textured paper border.
Fine art is shared with a matt and frame.
It takes a little extra time to add these touches but I think it’s worth the effort. In the end, I feel I’m communicating more effectively. I also find making the distinction between these types of images personally useful. I become clearer about what I’m trying to do, often while I’m making photographs. I’m better able to assess how well I’ve done what I’m trying to do and don’t waste time and energy applying an inappropriate set of criteria; sometimes this affects both productivity and how I make photographs. And finally, because I ask these questions I find new ideas – and that may be the most rewarding part of this process.
How do you share images in social networks?
Follow me on Instagram.
Like me on Facebook.
Follow me on Twitter.
Circle me on Google+.
Keith Jarrett On Piano – The Tokyo Concert 1984
You can hear Keith Jarrett seeking the unexpected as he hunts for inspiration in his solo performances.
View more inspiring performances here.
9 Great Quotes By Photographer Kenro Izu
Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Kenro Izu.
“Feeling is a very important aspect because my subject is sacred sites. There is a very strong spiritual feeling regardless of what the religion was. The important thing is the spirituality of these monuments. It’s not just a photograph of a building. The building has to be there to photograph but the atmosphere is what I’m really interested in. The building is a representation of that spiritual side. Without architecture there is nothing I can photograph. But what I’m photographing is atmosphere, air actually surrounding that monument.” – Kenro Izu
“I try to teach students to try to see with your eyes not through the camera because through the camera is always something different.” – Kenro Izu
“If you don’t see it you don’t get it. If you see you’ll get it.” – Kenro Izu
“When I’m fresh things always surprise me somehow. But if I see something everyday for one month then it doesn’t surprise me anymore.” – Kenro Izu
“I took so many pictures and I never gave back. I thought in taking we have to give something.” – Kenro Izu
“We photographers are privileged to have a communication tool like the camera. It’s great communication. I have to use that privilege for good not just for my career or artistic or personal business.” – Kenro Izu
“People always ask me why I am photographing stone monuments. It’s the closest thing to something that lasts an eternity. But look here there is a border line between the sand and the stone. It’s so vague. When I saw this I thought, “Stone is not forever.” Everything eventually goes back to the soil or water.” – Kenro Izu
“In general what I learned was in the west something eroded, rotten, disintegrated is not something beautiful. Fresh is better than dying. Sometimes I got very weird comments when I photographed a dead or dying flower. They said, “Why don’t you take it when it’s really beautiful?” That’s a different point of view. One might think these roses are ugly, that two days before they were much prettier. I see both ways. When they were in full bloom, peak, they were beautiful, of course. But I see this as equally beautiful. In a way it is more beautiful to me. I sometimes wonder if that is one difference between eastern and western.” – Kenro Izu
“I try to search my own sense of beauty. And where I can see it, I use it as a study, thinking about what is life and what is death. It’s a big subject and I still can’t figure out what it’s about. But by observing I can sometimes feel … but I can’t really say.” – Kenro Izu
Read our conversation here.
Find out more about Kenro Izu here.
Read Great Quotes By Photographers collections here.
View 12 Great Photographs collections here.
Olaf Willoughby's Improvised Landscapes – Alumn Portfolio
It’s worth seeing these images at larger scale here.
“Many writings on creativity stress the value of play and experimentation. Using techniques such as multiple exposure, camera movement, layering and compositing, this series improvises on the traditional landscape.
Elements of water, stone, forest and sky become counterpoints in much the same way as a jazz musician improvises on the melody. The music is transformed but the underlying chords remain recognisable.
So with Improvised Landscapes the basic patterns, textures and forms of nature are visible yet blend in a web of inter-connectedness.
As Bill Evans said, ‘It bugs me when people try to analyse jazz as a theorem. It’s not. It’s a feeling’.
I believe the same is true of photography.” – Olaf Willoughby
See more of Olaf Willoughby’s photography here.
Find out about his Lightdance workshops here.
Read more Alumni Success Stories here.
My Free March Desktop Calendar Features Iceland
My April desktop calendar features a recent image from Snaefellsnes, Iceland .
Download your free copy here.
Find out more about this image here.
Alumn Olaf Willoughby On Collaboration & Creativity 2
The Creative Space, Part Two
In part one of this post I imagined an inspirational photographic location – a creative space – and then looked at how different artistic disciplines might interpret that space. I ended with the question, ‘how can we enlarge the creative spaces we inhabit to energise our work?’ Let’s look at an example from last year’s workshop, using poetry.
Following an introduction looking at Japanese books illustrating haiku poems and touching on the work of Duane Michels, you are given two poems with the request to visualise them photographically. This introduces text and therefore activates both the left and the right brain.
The process of finding a hook on which to hang a photograph forces us to study the meaning in a way quite different from reading a poem in a book. It stretches our imagination, helps us think in terms of metaphors and pushes us to explore new directions. It is a simple technique but it works. The first reaction is surprise. It seems baffling but we teach tools which help conjure up images out of words . So the initial reaction is quickly followed by intrigue at the challenge and usually delight at the refreshing end result.
But is the idea of enlarging your creative space right for you? There’s an easy way to tell but you will need to set aside a few hours.
Look back over your work of say, the last two years.
Pick twenty favourite images from each of those years.
Lay them out in Bridge, run a slideshow or preferably look at postcard size prints. Review that body of work. What do you see?
Using free association, what are your strongest impressions? Here is a starter checklist;
Rational: choice of lens/camera, depth of focus, vantage point, colour palette, image composition, post processing style …etc.
Emotional: human interest, decisive moments, emotional qualities, use of analogy or metaphor … etc.
Do you have a strong signature style which you execute consistently across different creative spaces?
Or is it that you are traveling the world basically taking similar pictures?
The question is: in short, are you in a groove or a rut?
Most of us fall somewhere between the two. And where we fall on that line tells us what we need to do next. Whatever the outcome, this is a useful exercise and I hope you benefit from it. If you like the idea of seeing how different artistic disciplines can influence your photography it is easy to try out the poetry example above with a friend.
If you’d like a more comprehensive approach to enlarging your creative space, then please check out the ‘Visual Conversations’ workshop I co-teach with Eileen McCarney Muldoon at Maine Media College in July and at the Leica Studio, Mayfair, London in August.
Visual Conversations
July 10th – 16th, Maine Media College, Rockport, USA
Aug 23rd – 25th, Leica Studio, London, UK
Find it here.
Alumn Olaf Willoughby On Collaboration & Creativity 1
Olaf Willoughby
The Creative Space, Part One
Imagine yourself in a favourite photo location. Maybe for you that is Street shooting in Bangkok or Brooklyn. Or for this post I’ve chosen a beautifully backlit waterfall in Iceland. You excitedly pull out your camera and start shooting. You already know that you’ll get at least some good images. You smile inside at the expectation of processing, posting and printing. Right. Job done. Where to next?
This is a well trodden path which produces some great images and good friendships. But this time let’s not rush off. Instead let’s pause, rewind and consider some alternative scenarios. Consider that location as an empty ‘creative space’ waiting to be filled with an interpretation.
Now rewind and imagine a poet enters the same creative space. He has more leeway to convey the full sensory impressions; the deafening sound of the waterfall and the delicate touch of the spray. The poet might consider how in Iceland it is easy to feel a deep connection to the elemental forces of nature. How trolls might live in the rocky recesses of the mist covered mountains. Is there a photographic equivalent to this kind of inspiration?
Finally, rewind again and imagine you are a composer entering the space. What kind of mood could you conjure up with the full complement of musical instruments at your disposal, ? How do you capture the majesty of a landscape? As Gustav Mahler said when a colleague enthused about the view of the lake and mountains from his cabin at Attersee in Austria, ‘Don’t bother looking at the view – I have already composed it’. How can we approach a fuller sense of the potential of the scenes in front of our cameras?
You get the point. When we are in our personal photographic creative spaces we are seeing only one small part of the creative whole. A good analogy would be our eyesight where visible light is only a small part of the total electromagnetic spectrum, only one version of reality. There is more to be seen.
Similarly each of the artists above will interpret the magic of that creative space in very different ways. Whilst this is a simple point to understand intellectually, very few of us are skilled in a variety of artistic disciplines. So to expand into any of these spaces seems in practice almost impossible.
And this is one of the much debated issues in photography as an art form. The instrument itself is quite limited. Yes we can stray into impressionism with camera movement, into the surreal with multiple exposures and blend modes and into metaphor with ‘equivalents’ (http://www.moma.org/ collection/works/44200?locale=en)
But these are ‘technical’ solutions and only slightly change how we think about and see our images. So how can we bring some of that artistic inspiration available to other disciplines, back into photography? How can we enlarge the creative spaces we inhabit to energise our work?
There is a way that Eileen McCarney Muldoon and I have developed and teach in our workshop, ‘Visual Conversations’. The principles are covered in part two of this post to be published next weekend.
Meantime if you’d like more information on the workshop please check here:
Visual Conversations
July 10th – 16th, Maine Media College, Rockport, USA
Aug 23rd – 25th, Leica Studio, London, UK
