The common and the different

We all live in our little spheres of interest and experience. We are comfortable with known places, known cultural identities, familiar names

of heros, and so on.

 

Photographing what is common to us is great, but also constraining. It can result in clichés or the offen seen image. How many

photographers really work "out of the box" of familiarity and experience. While I am very comfortable and satisfied with my own mixed

cultural identity (advantage of both French and English-speaking influences) and environment, I think that I have a good appetite for the

different. This has led me to photograph the US deep south (very different cultural and physical milieu), small Portugese and French

villages and their inhabitants, and other places different from my own.

 

Of course, difference does not refer only to places and cultures but also photographic themes and subjects. In those areas, I try to avoid

what is too common or too well-travelled and attempt to seek out new visions and images.

 

Are you happier photographing what is common and familiar to you, or are you more intrigued by the different? Do you believe that to

succeed artistically you need to embrace the unknown rather than (or at least in addition to) the commonplace, in order to incite your best

response?

I've enjoyed photographing things that are familiar to me (my bird-dog related stuff, for example), but have been trying to think about how to shoot it with an audience that's <i>not</i> familiar with it in mind. If, as I'm considering or composing a shot, I have a little voice in the back of my head saying, "What would someone who's never seen this subject before make of this shot? What would someone who's seen a thousand similar images make of it?" ... well, that tends to go give me pause, and make me rethink what I'm about to do.

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So, as much as I also like the unfamiliar, I think I may be able (some day) to exhibit more mastery in showing the familiar in unfamiliar ways... or to an unfamiliar audience.

A windmill shot shown in Texas isn't as appreciated as much as a shot of polar bear from Alaska.

 

We all react to a new sensation with more interest. When you walk past polar bears everyday in Alaska then the windmill in Texas looks impressive.

 

Part of Photography for me is to try to recognize the mundane and make it more interesting in my hometown.

Like taking a new view of a parking arrow that I pass everyday at work. Sometimes it works other times I delete and try again.

 

I don't consider myself a better photographer for this viewpoint just a different photographer (just like everyone else! LOL)<div></div>

All my photography is of the familiar-to-me. Whether it is the walk to the barber shop or the bank, the houses and yards in my neighborhood, it is all the commonplace-to-me. But it likely isn't for others. I am not sure what is meant by "succeed artistically". I don't see why it would matter if my photos were shot in my neighborhood or in Bangkok -- unless I was marketing my work, then maybe there's a bigger market for Bangkok photos than for ones of my neighborhood.

I may be wrong ... but most photographers shoot (in pleasure) what is unique/different. Even in common settings, the "something" that catches your attention enough to aim & shoot ... is a uniqueness that you perceive.

 

I never, for example, take photos of my furniture, my back yard, etc... unless something arrises to strike a chord in me, like the unique way the light hits my furniture, or a unique bird arriving in my yard. I think most people begin to take for granted that which is really common to them ... until something drags their attention back.

 

Isn't that why we travel? If common was so interesting to us, we'd always take pictures inside our own houses and yards.

 

The one exception ... is a passion. I could see taking pictures of the same person many times, but it still would entail seeing a different expression, pose, or event. When passion (uniqueness) fades ... we move on. It is possible to regain, but not easy.

While recognizing that even the quite familiar has its still yet to discover aspects, I was interested to know if the unfamiliar

(little known places, peoples, differing popular cultures, subject matter, etc.) holds interest for photographers, and has the ability to

motivate them. The philosophy of discovering something wholly different, and interpreting it (in our case through images), is somewhat like

discovering a new philosophy, or an unknown writer, and distilling and absorbing and using that, within the context of our own values and

perceptions.

I like to shoot a lot of common as well as some different. What is common today will be gone someday and then it is fun to look back at the photos.

 

This is one I did of our town, things change slowly over time, but in 20 years I am sure this view will look very different.

 

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=1234

"The philosophy of discovering something wholly different, and interpreting it..."

 

I'd question the value of an interpretation based on short aquaintance and without background knowledge and experience, although one might end up with some nice photos. It took me three years to begin to see the high desert in the US Southwest with a lot of reading and study of the flora, fauna, geology, geography, and history as well, and I had to live there for some years in order to get anywhere for photography besides the scenic viewpoints or trailheads.

 

Whether or not a photographer takes better photos because of immersive experience with a place, I couldn't say. If some "different" place catches my eye, I'm likely to spend a lot of time there, and in some cases move there because I want to become familiar with it. I want it to become commonplace.

"What is common today will be gone someday and then it is fun to look back at the photos."

 

It is also not commonplace to all viewers, many of whom live in places exotic by our standards, but commonplace to them. They may find our hometowns equally exotic. There's an historical or documentary value to be considered, too.

 

My viewers haven't been born yet.

The hope in the unfamiliar is that it leads to the edge of failure, where growth happens. If we're not occasionally failing we're not courting growth.

 

John Updike, one of the finest novelists in English, intentionally confined his novels to a bland suburbia to let his writing and characters develop without the artificial aid of places and people that were, on the surface, more interesting .

 

Somewhere Gertrude Stein, poet and foil to Ernest Hemingway in Paris, said something (while she lived in Oakland, California) about poetry finding truth in sidewalk cracks (but she said it poetically :-)

Matt, For a couple of days I once bow-hunted with beagles in frozen February hillbilly Ohio. Tracking squirrels the dogs would dive into impassible thorn thickets, suddenly to emerge wild-eyed, spraying us with blood from their own torn ears and tails. You surely must have done photographically great things with dogs like that...but isn't their singing and hunting lust where the real action is? :-)

You know it, John. It's terribly difficult to really capture that sort of an experience with still images, and it's such a joy to watch the dogs work, you almost hate to raise the camera to your eye, lest you diminish the experience. But that sort of drama - which can be unfolding in the thickets right there on the edge of suburbia - is a good example of some visual treasures that are hiding in nearby, familiar ("common") territory. The narrative is where the gold is, and that's the photographic challenge, for me.

 

Bow hunting for squirrels? Yes! Talk about a level playing field!

Cute little bunnies, not squirrels (different ears). Wooden bows, wooden arrows, blunts. 30+ guys, 6 beagles ...same size group, same outcome as the founding event 60 years earlier: 4 rabbits. I missed a few times, made do with pork ribs.

 

It was the deceptively-named "60th Annual Great Ohio Rabbit Hunt" (59 years passed before the second)..A traditional archery group, we met and squabbled online, made peace and flew there from places like Arizona, New Mexico, Alabammy, Texas, and... Netherlands. Camped. Brrrr.

 

I grabbed every hunter by the collar, dragged him to a simple background for full length (camo, quiver, bow, boots, hat, grizzled mug) Pentax IQzoom portrait. The prints were used as scrap by a multiple-gold-medal children's book illustrator who added several literary rabbits (eg Alice's) to the group panorama he created for us.

 

Some of those beagles wouldn't hunt at all. They were banished, reduced to disobedient, noisy pets.

Everybody's tired of Arthur Plumpton's Youtube links by now, but here's something he offered over on Casual Conversations: www.tagtele.com/videos/voir/22815 :-)

 

Absolutely astounding photography and presentation, waaay beyond any projection or video I've ever seen.

 

OT for explanation. http://www.photo.net/casual-conversations-forum/00Qk3B

 

Make sure you've got the sound turned on. Runs for about 10 minutes. Rewarding.

Thanks for passing on the video excerpts, but you've got me confused with some other youtuber, I rarely go to it. Robert's

production is a good example of trodding a unique (different) photographic path. Those interested in different

cinematography, should try to access his full length movies on DVD like "Possible Worlds" of "La face cachée de la lune"

("The dark side of the moon", not sure it is translated).

I'd agree that we need the unfamiliar and strange ... but it can be found anywhere, even on our own bodies, as much as at the ends of the earth.

Arthur, my youtube allegation was a joke.. you made a similar joke on casual-conversations...this is a terrible medium for humor, right?

 

You've proven that Youtube can be a powerful medium and that stills aren't anywhere nearly as effective, at least in this instance... I doubt anyone can do any big production as powerfully with the best of still cameras as did the individual who shot that Youtube video. It does the job on Youtube.

 

Looping back to your OT: I think anybody with eyes and ears would enjoy your Youtube link.

John, I know this thread is off-subject, but thanks for picking that up. I guess I was in one of my solemn moments (my

wife says I am great at making jokes, but not so good at perceiving them).

 

The Youtube production is very good (it's received 5 stars from viewers). I guess the difference of impact between still

and video is a bit like the difference between theatre and cinema. Theatre cannot do everything that cinema can, but

can do some things so well that it is hard to think how they could be bettered.

 

You know, the Québécois culture (primarily French speaking) is such a very small part of the huge North American

population (not even 2%), but this isolation has a positive effect in inducing a different approach in many sectors of art

and life. Lepage, the Cirque du Soleil and Leonard Cohen are perhaps the more visible artists that express that

difference.

 

While excellent, the Youtube video misses some excellent parts of the Lepage presentation, as it is but 10 minutes out

of 40. Even if much of the history that serves as theme is no doubt strange to most viewers, the artistic and

photographic creation is surprising and in some respects ground-breaking.

 

I really hope they come out with a complete presentation on DVD.

I'm eager for a complete DVD presentation. The Youtube was well shot, for what it is.

 

The Youtube is an attractive lure, a DVD would be a little more. Some important things work brilliantly on video and even, for their purposes, on Youtube. Some important things only work fully in the original.

 

The most astounding movies I've ever seen are virtually never available now in the original formats: "Lawrence of Arabia," and Abel Gance's "Napoleon." ...and neither work well in lesser formats.

 

I've been lucky to see both : Lawrence in 7Omm, Napoleon in 3 synchronized 35mm projectors WITH LIVE ORCHESTRA (in San Francisco Opera House, Carmine Coppola conducting).

 

Lawrence barely works in 35mm, is turned into a mere melodrama on DVD. I dread to see Napoleon on DVD. I may find it to remind myself of the original, or may avoid it to preserve the memory.

 

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/flikfx/imax.htm (Lawrence) ...met Bobby McFerrin during intermission:

http://www.bobbymcferrin.com/dwbh_loader.html

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napol%C3%A9on_(movie) (Napoleon)

I really really really wish there were a video forum on photo.net

Hey, and why not, Don and John? Video IS a form of photography.

 

Thanks for the links, John (My memory of the history of Lawrence is thin, but I recommend a book I am just getting into

and in which his, or England's, politics were a factor: Margaret MacMillan's "Paris, 1919 - The Six Months that Changed the

World").

The most wonderful visual moments of Lawrence came shortly after the opening credits....a long, long desert shot. Lawrence's book is "Seven Pillars of Wisdom." I didn't find it as worthwhile as the movie.

...and I did nearly finish "Paris, 1919": a good read and enlightening. Without that conference we wouldn't have had an Iraq. Interesting that Newfoundland represented the British Empire (because Newfies died far more per-capita than people of any other Empire country), Japan was a player, but the Soviet somewhat-Union didn't participate in dividing up the world because nobody could figure out who ran it (telegraph only back then)...the answer wasn't Stalin, quite yet.

 

A similarly recent, similarly thick (!) American history that's also new, important, and compelling is Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." It's about Lincoln's origins, who he was, how he became and structured his Presidency, and how he managed Civil War, essentially creating the "union" in United States.

 

Obama cited this book as important, very early in his primary campaign...Lincoln, like Obama, had zero military or executive experience prior to Presidency.

You are right, the Newfies left per capita wise a lot more bodies on the battle fields. Australia and Canada were thorns in

the backs of the British Empire and France, as they had little interest in profiting from the colonies. Interesting how Newfoundland

almost didn't enter Confederation in the late 40s, two close votes, near 50%, and Quebec came within a whisper (49.5%)

of opting out in 1995 (and who can predict the future, maybe even the in-the-news Alaska Independence Party will

increase its following). Wilson wanted each democratic country to choose its future, but the European colonies were not

considered mature enough (and women to vote) for that by any of the major powers of the time. The details of the Balkan

country complexities, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the other central European countries is intriguing (I'm but 30% of

the way through), aswas the Japan-China conflict, and the fact that all the major powers were looking after their colonies (except the US)

and not very visionary. The problems of Serbia, Croatia, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Israel, Ireland and other hot spots of today owe a lot to

that period of bartering amongst the four or five and dividing up of countries. They sort of made a mess of things, but history before and

after was/is not very different.

 

It's given war photographers needed work, albeit risky.

With apologies for sidetracking the thread. Hopefully someone may feel like continuing the "common versus different"

discussion.