Do you have a Mental Model?

[williams_gallery]

<p>Something Sally Mann once wrote in the preface to one of her books sticks with me (I don't have it with me so can't quote it,) but roughly she said that she values and utilizes the unexpected and accidental in her work, and I constantly try and emulate this approach to shooting. I try to be in as much technical and conceptual control as I can be when starting a project, but ultimately I like something else to take over - I like to learn and see what is revealed. If I am shooting primarily to match a set or even dynamic mental model of what has already been done it gets pretty uninspiring very quickly. I ultimately credit the Creator with instilling the creative instinct in me, and so I feel that it's my job to go as far as I can on my own instincts, but that my best work - those truly rare photographs - will be so because there is something taking it a step further without my intention - it is best when the work is just slightly out of my control because that's when I see things that freshen and inspire my understanding of what photography can be. </p>

[alan_zinn]

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<p><strong>Anders</strong>, "I agree that you can certainly be extremely creative and yet produce something your neighbor already produced yesterday and therefore not at all, anymore, "original", because it exists already."</p>

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<p>The amazing thing I keep discovering is that <em>everything </em>has already been done! I was thinking of creativity most often written about in popular art journals and How To books - the "art" treatment suggestions. The too pretentious, "arty" kind of stretch is always apparent to me when I'm trying too hard to be original. Seeking novelty for its own sake is a trap. There are plenty of alternate (to your usual mind-set) kinds of creative thinking that are productive. </p>

[alan_zinn]

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[Norma Desmond]

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<p>"The writer and I plan out the entire script down to the smallest detail, and when we're finished all that's left to do is to shoot the film. Actually, it's only when one enters the studio that one enters the area of compromise. Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest.</p>

<p>Once the screenplay is finished, I'd just as soon not make the film at all... I have a strongly visual mind. I visualise a picture right down to the final cuts. I write all this out in the greatest detail in the script, and then I don't look at the script while I'm shooting. I know it off by heart, just as an orchestra conductor needs not look at the score... When you finish the script, the film is perfect. But in shooting it you lose perhaps 40 percent of your original conception."</p>

<p>--Alfred Hitchcock, from an interview with Roger Ebert in 1969</p>

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<p>Hitchcock is known as one of the most rigid film directors. That's rigidity in terms of approach to his work (which is somewhat different than the mental models Shore is discussing but interesting nonetheless). Ironically, it's a case (and this is often the case with artists) where the method actually <em>belies</em> the results. The rigid methodology goes toward creating a very fluid and in-the-moment result. Though Hitchcock left little to chance or spontaneity, when we view his films we can't help but ride a wave, be on the edge of our seats, and experience the moments as they unfold.</p>

<p>The moral of that part of the story, to me, is that how an artist works does not necessarily correspond to how his work appears to the viewer and the viewer might very well not guess how the artist worked just from seeing the work itself.</p>

<p>Now, admittedly there is a difference between this discussion of Hitchcock's methodology and Shore's talk about being stifled by mental models, or one's pre-conceived notions of how things should be. But, here too, I would question Shore. It is often the artists with the most strongly-held opinions and tastes, mental models that overtake their very being, who produce the most compelling and transformative works. These rigid mental models can be very much <em>owned</em> by great artists. They are driven by them, often obsessed by them. And they are driven to <em>realize</em> these sometimes extremely rigid and defined mental models through their medium. It's in the <em>realization</em> that the results we see occur. The rigidity of the mental model may very well be creatively or artistically expressed or transformed by and through its realization through craft, through the act of MAKING.</p>

<p>______________________________________</p>

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<p>"Seeking novelty for its own sake is a trap." --Alan</p>

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<p>Yes. Very important and observant point. A good photographer and artist absorbs his influences and makes them his own. Creativity, for me, has more to do with allowing myself to be an individual and to get personal than worrying about coming up with something new. If I can show the world something quite familiar but with a Fred twist, or from a Fred perspective, I have expressed something significant.</p>

<p>.</p>

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<p>Bad artists copy. Good artists steal. --Pablo Picasso</p>

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<p>Implied in "steal" is making it your own! IMO, It's OK to have either fluid or rigid mental models. As long as they're genuinely YOURS.</p>

[john_a5]

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<p>These rigid mental models can be very much <em>owned</em> by great artists. They are driven by them, often obsessed by them.</p>

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<p>Fred, I think this is the very area where we seem to have a very different idea of the mental model. I see a rigid mental model as a limiting factor to expression and can preclude discovery or adaptability and even the ability to see brilliance before us. When I read your interpretation here, I interpret it as focus and intent and vision which are certainly important elements in the creation of great work but different to what I see as the Mental Model. With that interpretation, I am fully on board with what you are saying.</p>

[sjmurray]

<p>Fred said:</p>

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<p>A good photographer and artist absorbs his influences and makes them his own. Creativity, for me, has more to do with allowing myself to be an individual and to get personal than worrying about coming up with something new.</p>

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<p>I’m completely on board with this. One way to look at a mental model is to see it as the individual differences that make us unique. No one can see the world as I do and vice versa, hence, different “mental models.” I realize as Fred says, that I incorporate things that I have seen, things that please me, so my mental model is influenced in some way by that. When I do pick up a camera, I become very “visual” and I don’t have much awareness of thoughts. I trust my mental models are at work guiding my work. When things look “right” I take the photo. I don’t try to analyze what constitutes this rightness, but it simply feels strongly like the right arrangement of visual elements. Other people may have different methods and experiences, of course. We are all different.</p>

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[Norma Desmond]

<p>Interesting Steve, thanks. Actually, to be honest, when things look "right" to me, I often do something else. That's just my own lack of experience and knowing that I fall into habits easily. So, sometimes, I actually get a better photo when I feel a little wrong, a little uncomfortable, push myself to veer. On the other hand, like you're describing, sometimes it just seems like it can't be any other way, and then I will honor that. For me, it's not just that we each have different methods and experiences. It's that each photo seems to demand its own method and experience. (Sometimes rigid, sometimes fluid, sometimes instinctual, sometimes much more thoughtful and plodding.) That's why it's so exhilarating.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>As far as I see it, the way Shore uses the term "mental model" is wrong and misunderstood - and that may exactly be why it is interesting reading. Things are indeed sometimes "right" when they are slightly or completely wrong. That's why we notice them and they catch our eye. If they were plain, commonly and boringly "right", they would not call our attention. Consequently, as photographers, we would not shoot such banalities - and if we did, we would probably not show it to others.</p>

<p>To understand such obvious contradictions, one has of course to clarify what is meant by terms like "right" or "wrong". Shore is "wrong" when using the term "mental models", because the term comes from psychology, where it means something else than what Shore uses it for. On the other hand, he is right in using the term wrongly because it suttonly becomes interesting and ended even up in this OP apart from having inspired thousands of readers of his short text.</p>

<p>If "mental models" are used in the way Shore proposes, then they describe some kind of "life project" of an artist, something the artist try to express or to disrespect. Such "mental models", as far as I see them, are "reference points" for artistic work, which are linked to the personality and life situation and history of the person. Some artist, surely, are totally at ease reproducing their "mental model" over a period of time (Picasso's blue period or his cubism; Pollock's abstracts etc) but most artists would challenge their "mental model" of a period of their life to emerge with different and new challenging "models" (as Picasso did repeatably throughout his life and Pollock did not have the time to do more than maybe once). Within each such period, things are made when they are "right". Between models, things are made when they are slightly or totally "wrong". Nothing is afterwards then "wrong" in doing things "right".</p>

<p>In my eyes, if we force things to be "wrong", just for he joy of the provocation, it would equal a party-game of the moment.<br /> I might be "wrong" or "right"!</p>

<p>To quote today's <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/america-needs-hedgehog_b_928871.html">Huffington post</a>, we can all be foxes or hedgehogs when pursuing mental models: "the fox will "pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way." In contrast, the hedgehog offers an "unchanging, all embracing... unitary inner vision." (in fact a quote from the philosopher Isaiah Berlin)</p>

[sjmurray]

<p>Anders states:</p>

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<p>If "mental models" are used in the way Shore proposes, then they describe some kind of "life project" of an artist, something the artist try to express or to disrespect.</p>

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<p>This is perhaps something like Miles Davis "inventing" Cool Jazz, as a new model for the jazz form of music. But within all jazz playing is the primary element of improvisation. Interesting, because for me using a camera is most like improvising with an instrument. I have developed my "chops" over the years so I don't have to think about the technical things and I am free to improvise with light and form, which is what it feels like to me. I don't like to set things up, but prefer to use available light and to document a real situation. During improvisation, one is "flowing" within the moment, often being surprised with what happens and what results. I much prefer that to setting up a studio, which for some people is what is interesting and challenging. </p>

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[samples1]

<p>Humans perform pattern recognition. It is only natural that we create models for the images we capture, or that we are influenced by what we have seen. Having seen, also allows us to know what has not yet been seen.</p>

[keith_alan_sprouse]

<p>I hadn't been actively taking photos for quite some time until I recently got my hands on a DSLR a couple of months ago. As a personal challenge to myself and a way to jump-start my return to photography, I started a photo a day project (<a href="http://kasprouse.tumblr.com/">http://kasprouse.tumblr.com/</a>). After a few weeks, I noticed that there are some definite patterns or preferences or themes or whatever term you'd prefer in the photos that I've been taking: I respond to patterns, even when they are quite abstract, for example, and I like to photograph them; also, I have yet to have made any photos of landscapes. Some of these choices have to do with where I live and the things I see on a daily basis, but some clearly have to do with what we might think of as my mental model. I suspect that many of us, if we look back over the totality of our work (or even a solid cross-section of it) might find that there are themes or recurring graphic elements or somesuch that stand out. But, as always, your mileage may vary.</p>

<p>Personally, I'm trying to make an effort to expand that model to include more and more different types of subject matter and compositional strategies and so on, but there will probably still be some distinguishing feature of the photos that I make. And I'll just call that my <em>style</em>.</p>