….with a little help from my friends.” –or so sang the Beatles. And it’s true, at least for some of us.

Recently, I was working on a photographic project that I had planned for nearly a year. Evidently the planning was not sufficient because I was getting nowhere. I was doing what I had planned, using the images had shot specifically for the project, and found the results completely unsatisfying. I had hit a wall. Then I mentioned the problem to a friend who has given me the occasional excellent idea, expecting nothing more than being able to talk it out, hoping that discussing it would provide some insight, as sometimes happened. My friend, who is not a photographer but has a keen visual sense, asked me to describe exactly what I was trying to do, which I did.

“Oh,” they said. “I see the problem.” and then proceeded to make a very concrete suggestion, remarkable really, since they had not seen anything of the work. What was more remarkable was that I instantly saw the possibilities in the suggestion. The idea was essentially to shift the focal point of the image, and there were other specific suggestions. So I set to work, attempting to implement the idea, never doubting for a second that it would work. What I discovered was that the details as they had been given could not be directly implemented because the images with which I was working would not cooperate, but the concept was still valid. And, I could get very close to the full implementation of the idea.

The wall that had been blocking me fell away. I examined the images from the shoot with new eyes and immediately discovered seven possibilities. As soon as I brought them into the project, everything changed. I began to see potential everywhere. Well, not quite everywhere; one possibility did not make the cut, but six remained. I worked on those, cropping here, adjusting there. Finally I had six potential images for the project—a great problem to have. I had not followed the suggestion of my friend literally, but instead generalized their idea and then made it my own, which resulted in the six possibilities.

At present, I have cut the six down to three, finding that some were more successful than others. The final cut should be made within the coming week. I am more than satisfied with the way the project is proceeding.

Again I must note that my friend never saw the work in question. Everything was conceptual and verbal. Still, they were able to give me ideas that kick-started my creative impulse by providing a different direction that I was not able to see for myself unaided. I took it from there. I cannot see this as a failure on my part; rather, I consider it the utilization of a resource. Even if the friend had not provided this excellent shift in direction, I would have been able to talk through the block, and perhaps arrive at my own answer. Whatever the case, having a friend or colleague in whom we can confide and talk out creative problems is valuable beyond measure, a relationship to be treasured.

Note: I have not discussed the specifics of the project here because (1) this is, or can be, a generic problem in the creative process and because (2) I presume that every reader will supply their own interpretation and example.

Several weeks ago, a photographer, a writer, and I were having a drink. (Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it?) We talked about this and that, and finally the photographer, who does a lot of floral images, said that he wanted all his images to be sensual, but was having trouble making that happen.

“What do you mean by sensual?” I asked. It turned out that he did not know exactly what he meant by the word; it was more one of those “you’ll know it when you see it” kinds of things. We batted it around for a while and mostly discovered, at least for him, what sensuality wasn’t. It was sort of this and sort of that and a little of the other thing. He said it was a feeling but couldn’t get much more concrete than that.

“Have you ever tried to really define it in words?” the writer finally asked.

“Well…not really.” was the response.

“Maybe you should try.” she said. And we moved on to other things.

It turned out that the writer’s advice struck the photographer, who has spoken to me about it several times since. First he asked me if I thought it was really a worthwhile pursuit. I told him that, in my opinion, if he did not know where he was going, he could get there only by accident, and went on to explain to him the principle of the “directorial image,” a concrete image that many stage directors use to encapsulate their interpretation and guide the play toward a specific audience reaction. I understand that he is talking about a body of work rather than a specific picture, but the principle to me seemed to be the same.

In our next conversation, he told me that he had been doing some research—mostly into the dictionary definitions. He had explored sensual (of course) and sensory and sexual and erotic and titillating and carnal and on and on. None of the definitions had fit exactly the response he was looking for, but he had decided that knowing where he was trying to go was more likely to yield results than striking out blindly, although it was far less romantic.

In our third conversation, he said that he was very close to having a definition but that it was currently “too many words” for his comfort and “not exactly right yet,” and that he was trying to refine it. “More important,” he said, “it’s already affecting what I’m doing. I think about shoots differently, and my work is consistently getting closer and closer to what I want it to be. It actually helps my creativity; it’s like having an abstract aiming point. This is really a worthwhile exercise.”

And that last conversation made me think that this story was worth sharing. Many of us who work in the arts have never actually defined what it is that we are striving to accomplish. We move from project to project trying to realize the potential of each individual project without stopping to define exactly what we are trying to do. We, like the photographer, may not find an exact definition for what we want to do, but just the attempt to define our artistic goals can help focus our work.

Recently I did a photographic experiment which involved changing the backgrounds in a set of images. Specifically, I replaced the backgrounds of a fairly standard woman-and-car shoot with fantasy backgrounds. Fortunately, the wardrobe and makeup supported the background change. The result was a completely different set of images, which, with the same subject, communicated an entirely different set of stories. Rather, I should say, communicated stories, which the original images were lacking, since they were part of a quasi-fashion shoot.

Volumes have been written on the importance of the subject and on posing the subject in a photograph or painting. Probably just as many volumes have been written on lighting the subject. Let’s face it; anything approaching a portrait is all about the subject. Of course it is; the subject is the reason for the image. Just as there are volumes about subjects and their treatment, there exists very little about backgrounds, and particularly about background details. This seems to me to be an oversight.

This experiment reinforced just how important the background is. The subject of a piece of art does not exist in isolation; it is part of the whole, and many times a large percentage of that whole is background.

This is a truth that movie-makers seem to have known for a long time. How many of us, upon watching a movie for the second or third time have been completely astounded by the level of detail contained in the background of the film? This is because film-makers learned early on that the totality of the mise-en-scène impacts the viewer, provides information, has psychological impact, communicates meaning, aids in telling the story.

In other arts this seems to be considered less important. In live theatre, for example, critics still consider the sets to be backings for the action rather than in integral part of the piece. The same seems to hold true for dance as well. Perhaps this is a function of economics. Perhaps it’s a function of how we, as audience members, view these various arts. Perhaps it’s just because the arts are different and producers of theatre and dance don’t see the need for the same level of background detail that producers of movies and good narrative television do. Perhaps it’s a function of framing. Those arts which have formal frames seem to value background detail much more than those without such borders.

Whatever the reason and (I think) whatever the art, background is important. Changing the background changes the piece and the story that the piece tells. So background isn’t just a backing for the action; it’s an integral piece of the composition. It’s a significant part of the mise-en-scène that can do for still pictures and painting all that it does for film.

Consider how much better the average portrait or run-of-the-mill engagement picture or even the typical You-Tube video would be if more consideration were given to the background. Think how much better our work would be if we devoted even half as much time and energy to selecting backgrounds and arranging details as Hollywood does. An idea worth contemplating.

In case you haven’t noticed, the internet is rife with advice for artists. For instance, a Google search yields 71.5 million articles. Some of the articles are nothing more than common sense; others border on the surprising. Some seem useful and others no so much. Occasionally, I will read advice articles, particularly if they have something to do with theatre or photography. One can never have too many insights.

Recently, I ran across one that was purported to be necessary tips for photographers. There was one on this particular list that I had not run across before, so it stuck out: “Make standard size images.” It’s very practical advice, particularly if the photographer is doing commercial work. Off-site printers usually price by standard sizes. In-house printing benefits from standard sizes in that (a) those are the sizes in which paper comes, and (b) printing to those sizes eliminates time-consuming trimming. Image-processing software facilitates cropping to standard sizes. Even mats come precut to standard sizes, as do frames. Printing standard sizes makes everything cheaper and easier.

Standard sizes do, however, introduce a restriction into the creative process. Some artists welcome restrictions and boundaries because they have been shown to enhance the creative process. Some photographers take this into account in their workflow. For example, there are photographers who know when they take the picture what formats the prints will be. Indeed, a number of photographers shoot with specific formats in mind for a series they are developing. Some photographers intend to use 100% of the negative or capture in the print.

My experience, however, has been that no matter how much planning goes into a shoot, there will always be images that cry out for cropping, and that, once done, actually “makes” the image. Conscientious cropping can establish the organic boundaries that allow the image to be all that it can be; such boundaries have little to do with standard formats.

And if the boundaries are organic the image will naturally look better. Why? Because the edges are part of the picture. Where the photographer draws the boundaries defines the image. The distance of elements in the picture from an edge contributes to the composition, modifying the image’s impact, and probably its meaning.

So it turns out that perfect cropping often results in a nonstandard-size print. Sometimes it’s off by a little; sometimes a lot. But it almost certainly will be off. Then the photographer has to decide whether or how to massage this perfectly-cropped image into a standard size. If the photographer decides on standardizing the size, the question becomes how much of a compromise is s/he is willing to make.

One photographer I know has five different scalable “standard sizes,” four of which are based on height-width ratios. The last is a variable size for long, skinny pieces. The rationale is that given that many “standard” possibilities, one would come close enough to the perfect crop that any compromise would be minimal. He says, however, that even with all those choices, he still occasionally has a crop that just won’t work with any of his standard sizes. What does he do? He prints a custom size.

There are circumstances which dictate that standard sizes are the proper choice. My vote, however goes to the photographer mentioned above. Art is not meant to be fitted into standard-size boxes. Think about novelists or poets or composers or choreographers or directors having their work confined to “standard sizes.”

Selecting an artistic form is far more complex than selecting which standard-size box it fits in. One of the goals in creating is, I think, to allow the artifact to reach its full potential. And whatever size that turns out to be is, by definition, the perfect size for the piece, whether it is standard or not. This is true not only for photography, but for all the arts.

As many of you know, part of my photographic practice is building grids, which consists of arranging macro-photographic squares of (usually) biological subject matter into abstractions whose forms and lines flow into each other creating a new whole. It’s a matter of seeing and arranging and has been a reasonably successful and satisfying artistic path for me.

A couple of weeks ago when I had just finished two very different grids from the same shoot, one of those freak computer accidents occurred when the file you have been working on disappears and cannot be recovered despite the presence of a recycle bin and good backups. Since I was not completely happy with the grids, I decided to look on the situation as an opportunity to tune my ideas.

So I made a new “basket”—the file in which I put all the images to be arranged and manipulated—and put 67 images in it. Then I set it aside to work on other projects. When I got time again, I opened the basket ready to put the images together and was completely startled to discover that I did not recognize some of the images. Not only that, the relationships that were instantly apparent in the old basket were nowhere to be seen. Instead there was a whole new set of relationships among the images. I was so taken aback that I just stopped and stared at the collection of images.

What had happened, I finally figured out, was that the basket I had built had dimensions radically different from those of the old basket. (There is no set size.) Since the images are set into the basket edge-to-edge, the result was a whole different arrangement of images. Thus the relationship among the images had been altered, so in order to see the relationships that had existed in the old basket, I had to concentrate much harder and keep my mind even more open to possibilities. At the same time, relationships that I had not seen before were suddenly obvious. It was almost like working with an entirely different set of images.

In all reality, I should have expected this. Four years ago, I posted “The Most Beautiful Part of the Picture is the Frame,” an article about how the framework surrounding a work of art influences the work and modifies the experience of the art for the audience. There is certainly no legitimate reason to think an intermediate step would be immune to such influences. So now the frame theory has a corollary: the size and shape of the frame influence the relationship of the internal parts; this corollary also applies to intermediate artifacts.

The implications are enormous. The size and shape of a book may well influence the impact and significance of the contents; the size and shape of the canvas may alter the meaning of a painting as well as its composition. And this seems to apply to intermediate documents as well. The size and shape of the working sketch notepad may impact the final painting or sculpture. The size and shape of the notebook on which a director or actor or choreographer makes notes may influence the nature of the resulting work since words and symbols are likely to gain or lose significance based on their position on the page and their relationship to other words and symbols on the page.

As a photographer, I have probably known this subconsciously; I constantly worry about the size of mats and borders, but the full nature of the impact of size and shape on the work-in-progress had never before been so apparent. Now I think I may have to change my working procedures, particularly as they apply to grid creation. But it also occurs to me that this “discovery” influences almost every aspect of the creative process, regardless of the genre of art, and that we might do well to consider it when we set out to create.

Recently I have written a couple of posts about artistic failure, and here’s another one—but from a completely point of view. What occasioned those posts was a photo shoot that had virtually no yield in terms of useable pictures, at least immediately. So I thought the grown-up thing to do was write it off and move on.

Normally, this is no too difficult for me. Not every projects succeeds. I try to learn and go on to the next project. At least this is what I usually do. Something about this shoot, however, would not let go. So I decided to listen to the project or my inner voice or whatever was telling me not to leave it alone just yet and reconsider.

So I made a list of what I considered to be salvageable images. (Some say my standards are unreasonably high and that was the problem in the first place. I disagree.) I found about 20 that I thought might have potential, all very different from each other.  For a while, all I did was study them, trying to see how acceptable images could be made from them. Then I set out to repair. A Photoshop™ tweak here, an adjustment there, a re-crop to modify composition and acceptable images began to emerge.  At the same time, I edited the list.

Of the images that I originally identified, a dozen proved, with work, to be acceptable. A little more than half of those are actually worth showing.

The experience made me want to reexamine images from other shoots that failed for one reason or another. So I took a look at some of them. Some were just as bad as I remembered; others, however, caused a little tingle of “maybe…” Perhaps the time that I have spent away from those projects has allowed me to have a different perspective.

And all of that has caused me to reevaluate my thoughts on the nature of artistic failure—what it means and when to make the call. Maybe a project is never a failure—we always learn something. Maybe we shouldn’t label it a failure until we completely abandon it. Maybe the difference between a successful project and one that is not successful is simply a matter of perspective and viewpoint.

Because of all those maybes, I have learned that it is probably a mistake to declare a project a failure until every little piece has been examined, every possibility explored. The project may represent an unexpected kind of success and not be a failure at all.

Edgy, in terms of art, is one of those words that fall into the I-can’t-define-it-but-I-know-it-when-I-see-it categories. Since the term has come up in conversation recently, I thought I would seek some definitions. Here are a few: “new and unusual in a way that is likely to make some people uncomfortable;” “Applied to books, music, or even haircuts which tend to challenge societal norms and reveal the dark side. Cutting edge;” “things, behaviors or trends which are provocative or avant-garde.” Edgy seems to have connotations that go further than those associated with cutting edge, generally defined as “forefront; lead.”

Both Charles Bukowski and Edward Albee have been called edgy, and both have earned that label. Albee has always exceeded contemporary norms for playwriting. When Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hit the stage in 1962, much of the talk was about how edgy it was; when it was released as a film in 1966, it was considered to be “pushing the envelope both in terms of language and content.” When the play was revived on Broadway in 2005, some of the language was updated, e.g. “Screw you!” changed to “Fuck you!”—probably to reflect the times and keep the play as edgy as it could be 43 years after it was initially performed.

Bukowski, so far as I can determine, did nothing that was not edgy. In fact, edginess seems to have informed almost everything he thought or said publicly. For example:

When you flip the pages, nothing but butterflies, near bloodless butterflies. I am actually shocked when I go through this magazine because nothing is happening. And I guess that’s what they think a poem is. Say, something not happening. A neat lined something, so subtle you can’t even feel it. This makes the whole thing intelligent art. Balls! The only thing intelligent about a good art is if it shakes you alive, otherwise it’s hokum.

Bukowski was talking about poetry in a magazine he had run across, but he could have been talking about any form of art. While Albee is much more reserved in the advice he offers, Bukowski encourages, almost demands that artists be edgy: “Let’s allow ourselves space and error, hysteria and grief. Let’s not round the edge until we have a ball that rolls neatly away like a trick…We must let the candle burn—pour gasoline on it if necessary.”

So what, if anything, does that mean to the individual artist? An artist certainly does not have to produce edgy work. An artist can produce work with very round edges if he/she wants. Some would say that Thomas Kinkade did exactly that and made a great deal of money in the process. Again, such an approach is not limited to painting or poetry or any particular medium; it rather is a philosophy of what art is really about and what it should do.

If an artist decides that he/she agrees with Bukowski and really wants to produce work that will be avant-garde, provocative and perhaps dark, it is certainly his/her prerogative. The trouble is that when the artist steps completely out of the safe zone and goes too far, he/she can lose any potential audience. And that is a risk some artists are willing to take. But if an artist wants to produce edgy work and still have an audience, then he/she will have to produce work that goes almost too far.

Deciding how far to go and still produce honest work can be challenging, but worthwhile. For example, in the past my photographic work has tended toward the subtle; recently I have begun to experiment with edgy. Whether these experiments will alter my overall body of work remains to be seen, but I have certainly found the experience valuable. Based on that, I would encourage you to give  a try, or at least think about giving it a try. Of course, the most difficult part will be deciding how far to go and exactly where the line is between too far and not far enough.edgy

Good luck.

One of the most difficult things that artists have to do is to look at their work with new eyes every time they review what they’ve done. While we might get away without doing this in the creation phase, it’s an absolute must in the editing phase of making our art. If we don’t bring new eyes to our work, we miss things, we wander off in nonproductive directions, only to wonder later how we missed this or that or the other thing. The explanation is simple; we didn’t see it.

Although I have tried to train myself to look with fresh eyes, I recently failed to see what was right in front of me. Another photographer for whom I have a great deal of respect offered a critique of one of my latest photography projects. He said that he thought the work looked “forced” (although he was not quite satisfied with that word). He is of the opinion that no matter how much time and preparation goes into the making of a photograph, the result should look effortless, an idea that I agree with and have written about. He went on to say that all of my work that he had seen up until this point had had that quality of effortlessness, but this project did not.

And he was right. I had had so much trouble with the project that I wrote about it, but thought that I had resolved it. And even though I thought that I had found the right new forms for this undertaking, I had known that something was not quite right with a number of the finished pieces. I had no idea, however, what that something was. He told me—at least what he thought. The conversation caused me to go back to my other work and examine it in a new light—never a bad idea. Once I had done that, it was easy to see what he was talking about with regard to this project.

Although I hardly ever think of apparent effortlessness as a separate component, I do think that is a quality of good art. I therefore try to make it a part of all my work. In this instance, I failed to do that. So then I had to deal with the why of that. And the why was that the project had been so difficult, had required the development of completely new structures, that I was ready to sign off on it before it was really done. Otherwise, I would not have had that uneasy feeling that something was not quite right.

The feeling was correct; something wasn’t quite right, but I was so ready to close the file on the project that I missed it. In this case, I needed someone outside myself to see with new eyes. Once he had done this and told me what he saw, it was glaringly obvious. The project is not finished.

All of this could have been avoided had I not gotten so wrapped up in the difficulty of the project that I forgot to look with new eyes. And that cannot be. If one is to produce really good art, one must approach the work at every session with fresh eyes.

It’s why we put things away before we put things away before we edit them—to give ourselves time to forget a little so it’s easier to look with fresh eyes in the editing process. And it’s certainly not true just for photography. No matter what medium we work in, we must approach our work daily with new eyes—if for no other reason than to insure that our vision is being properly realized. If it’s not, we need to stop and fix it. It’s not easy; it sometimes requires great effort. The results, however, are worth it.

Every day it seems that there is at least one article in my news feed about creativity; some days there is more than one. And since we in the US are an entrepreneurial society, I find my email full of announcements for this or that seminar or webinar or workshop in creativity—for a small fee. (There’s probably a future post in this.)

Let me be clear: I am certainly not opposed to creativity. I have blogged about it many times and probably will again. But what I’m not seeing in all this talk about creativity is any discussion of craft. In fact, there seem to be very few discussions about craft and the mastery of craft at all. The message is almost that creativity and self-expression are all there is to making art. This, as many of us know, is not the case. If the prospective artist does not have a mastery of the medium, then all the creativity and self-expression in the world are essentially useless.

This is an issue in a number of arts, but is more pronounced in some. For example, there are a number of photographers who use only “canned” effects to achieve their final images. These are likely the same photographers who neglect to learn all of the dials and settings on their cameras. After all, both cameras and software are very smart and can do most of the work so the photographer actually needs to learn very little. However, while images created that way might be technically quite good (exposure, shutter speed, color), they may be very much lacking. Julian Calverley in an interview about professional photographers shooting with iPhones, notes “Just because you own a nice camera, doesn’t mean you can take a great shot. Composition, lighting and understanding a subject are things that will always remain.” Calverley also notes that the photographer needs an eye for a good shot and lots of skills to make that shot possible. Craft.

In another field, actors who achieve some measure of success early on often rely on whatever skills they may have developed or show an extraordinary devotion to one particular school of acting. The result is that their acting quickly goes stale because they are essentially one-trick ponies who demonstrate little inclination to develop their craft in different directions, or sometimes even to try to improve at all. If you talk to seasoned actors, men and women who make their living on the stage or in front of a camera, you will hear them discuss their “tool kit.” If you explore the metaphor further, you discover that those actors have gathered techniques from a variety of schools and sources and use ideas from the entire spectrum of available theory, including personal invention. Moreover, you will find that those actors continue to train, experiment, and hone their craft.

In an earlier post, I posited that great art requires great craft. The gist of that argument was that mastery of craft underlies all great—or even good—art. This is really obvious in arts such as music and ballet, where it is simply understood from the outset that the artist must master his/her instrument before anything approaching art can occur. Artists in other fields where a wrong note or a missed step are not so apparent should take heed. The necessity for mastery of craft is no less necessary—if that artist wants to excel.

We must learn not only to use our tools but to master our craft in every sense of the word, then work to maintain that mastery. Only then can we give full expression to our creativity and perhaps make lasting, meaningful art.

With the beginning of the year come the inevitable superlative lists of the year past which include lots of things, including the arts. You can find lists of the highest paid musicians, the highest paid visual artists, the most paid for an art work, the best movies, the best songs (in all categories), the best photographs, the best new whatever or whomever. Americans, at least, seem obsessed with “best-of’s.” There are even best of best of lists.

And, of course, most of these lists will evaporate just like New Year’s resolutions and mean about as much. Some will have impact, e.g. when a list of best movies is tied to this or that award, it means more money for the investors and perhaps a larger paycheck for the star on his/her next project. And some will even provide the winner with a plaque or trophy to display.

The impulse to look back and evaluate a past block of time is understandable. What is troubling about at least some of the lists that have been recently published, however, is the “small print,” or more accurately, the invisible print. Some organizations are up-front about what the rules and criteria are. The Academy Awards, for example, have page after page on rules and eligibility. The Golden Globe Awards do not seem as transparent, given the controversy over Scarlett Johansson’s ineligibility this year for her performance in Spike Jonze’s Her.

Many lists come with no apparent rules at all, but it doesn’t take long to discover the bias of the compiler. For instance, many “best photographs of the year” lists have crossed my newsreader screen in the last week and a half. Although some are travel images, most of them are really “best photojournalism of 2013” lists. The notable exception is Rangefinder Magazine, where the editors compiled several lists, and often organized those lists into categories.

There is certainly nothing wrong with photojournalism; it has produced some of the most memorable images ever made. What is wrong, at least in my mind, is to suggest, even by implication, that photojournalism comprises the totality of excellent photography created within a 12-month span.

Aside from the need to summarize the past, I suspect that the impulse to incorporate art works into lists are bragging rights—the ability to be able to claim that the compiler was the first to recognize the worth of a work that becomes iconic at some future date. But some of the most iconic works of art didn’t receive the prizes they were up for. Case in point: Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? did not win the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The lack of the award did not prevent the play from being one of the best of the twentieth century.

It is certainly a good feeling to appear on a list of winners, whether it is the list of those accepted to a juried show, or the list of those who won an award of some sort or a list of the best whatevers of whatever year.  But it’s not why we do what we do. It is doubtful that Scarlett Johansson took the role in her, thinking she might get a Golden Globe, just as it’s a stretch to believe that Albee sat down to write Virginia Woolf with a Pulitzer in mind. We make our art to say what we have to say in the best way we know how to say it using the best tools we have. Sometimes we make it onto a list; mostly we don’t. That’s just fine.