Beyond the obvious
Written by John MacphersonPhotography teacher Philippe Sibelly ( @philippesibelly ) and I had a brief twitter exchange a few nights back about teaching students and how difficult it is to get them to see beyond the obvious, to tease out the magic from the unlikely. The current night-class I’m teaching is a really good one, one of the most enthusiastic groups I’ve had in many years and are all fired up, realizing that what their cameras can see is very different from what their eyes see, forcing them to engage a different mindset and look at the world afresh. They’ve realized that photography is a bit like fishing: the surface might all look ‘the same’ but what can be pulled up from beneath it can be wonderfully varied and impressive. It’s very satisfying seeing them ‘reel in their catches’.
Being ‘creative’ has been in the news a fair bit this past week, Radio 4 tackling the issue on the 26th January in ‘Organising the Mind’ . And there’s some previous broadcasts by Radio 4 on creativity in their archive that some of you might be able to access: Jonah Lehrer talking about his book ‘Imagine’ ( * see comments!) and from a few years back, an excellent series by Ian Peacock that looks at the myths, science and psychology behind creativity.
Personally I don’t think we value creativity highly enough, nor provide sufficient environments where creativity can be explored and given free rein. It’s risky you see. Being creative is to be an explorer. To have to leave the tarmac of the familiar, and tread the rougher ground where only inspiration is your guide. That’s scary stuff for many people. Especially some teachers, if my dismal and frustrating experience is any barometer.
Arthur Koestler author of ‘The Act of Creation’ puts it very succinctly:
“The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know”
And I love that notion, that all the teaching in the world might inform you of what other people know, but that only you can tell the world what YOU know and have discovered. You just need to find a way to express those discoveries, and photography is an amazing tool to enable this.
I offered to post a few before/after shots for Philippe to use to give his students some inspiration. So here we are.
Each to their own – but as I’m growing older I’m finding it more liberating to carry less equipment, rather than be burdened with a huge pile of ‘stuff’. The more you have with you, and the more choices you are faced with, the less time you’ll spend actually making the most of your immediate response to whatever it is you encounter. Certainly if I’m being paid to take images, or lead groups it’s worth having a big bag full of tilt/shifts, macros, w/angles, and wide aperture teles to cover all likely scenarios; but for the satisfaction of everyday personal curiosity a single small camera, often with a fixed lens, can be the perfect tool.
The images here are from a variety of cameras: an old Canon G9, some from a Ricoh GR (fixed lens) or a Fuji x100 (fixed lens), with a few from a ‘proper’ dslr. Where I’ve got one, I’ll post a ‘before’ image to give some sense of the scene I encountered, and then a few ‘after’ shots to demonstrate how even what may at first appear to be relatively poor subject matter can have something more ‘interesting’ teased out of it with a little experimentation and imagination or as is more often the case, with just a large helping of luck.
A cold and grey foggy day looked rather less inspiring than bright sunshine.
…but I pulled over and took a few frames through the car window as a couple of cars came past with their lights on. (Canon G9)
The local skatepark had some activity going on, nice bright sun….
…which meant dramatic shadows and a very graphic result in b&w. (Ricoh GR3)
A leaf covered in frost lying in a patch of shade made a cool picture….
…but simply lifting it up, moving into the sunlight, and using the camera’s macro mode to get close up of the backlit leaf turned into something else entirely. (Canon G9)
Two horses on a hillside with a nice cloudscape behind…..
…made a much more dramatic image when a wee bit of careful exposure tweaking took place. (DSLR)
A morning wandering through the gardens of a local castle with its well-crafted hedges……
…produced some quirky results as tourists did touristy stuff and enjoyed themselves. (Ricoh GR)
A japanese maple in a small pot can produce some interesting results when seen through….
…a macro lens, with the frame filled with colour…
…and contrast with the green behind. (DSLR and macro)
A bit of woodland edge, fairly ordinary in many respects, can become…
…a slice of surreal natural barcode, simply by using a slow shutter speed and moving the camera up or down as the shutter is pressed….. (and I love the fact that our sophisticated perceptual ability, able to determine ‘depth’ through subtle changes in tone and shading can still perceive the three dimensional aspects portrayed in the image. We are complex interpreters of scene, even when we don’t make any effort to be.)
…or even moved in a wavy way as here, to capture an image for an AV piece I was creating to illustrate the role of woodlands in inspiring musicians. (DSLR and tele lens)
The windscreen of an old Merc van parked on the street for a few weeks during late autumn became….
…the resting place of a fallen leaf, separated from its brethern….
…and when the first frost came it turned into a lovely little natural urban moment…
…that left it looking rather splendid. (Canon G9)
Late evening light casting tree shadows onto houses…
…becomes a lovely contrast between nature and concrete (Ricoh GR3)
A small fresh water stream running over a beach created little ripples, but when I moved round so that the sun glinted off the water…
…the contrast increased and the ripples became a writhing magical thing. (Canon G9)
Out cycling I came across this pollen floating on a puddle on a rural road. A close-up in high contrast b&w revealed…
…a multi-layered ‘thing’ reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’. Nature does that sometimes. (Ricoh GR3)
My wee boy staring out the window at the birds…
..when viewed in b&w made an altogether more memorable image. (DSLR)
A small weir on our local river, nice but not spectacular…
..in b&w becomes much more mysterious and intriguing. (Canon G9)
Trying to entertain a cold wet group on a miserable day prompted some experimentation with a compact camera, twirling it as it was moved in towards the boulder…
…which, after much failure, produced this little gem. Hard to repeat though. I only got one like this. (Canon G9)
Take two small boys for a walk in the woods…
…add one beetle and implore them to be gentle and curious. (Ricoh GR)
A bend in the river, the water peat-stained dark, with fallen autumn leaves on its surface, on an overcast, cold wet day…
..reveals the little whirls and eddies of the current’s gentle passage…
…when using an exposure of between 10 and 30 seconds. (DSLR)
A high viewpoint above the town…
…gives an interesting perspective on the many roofs and chimneys.
A wander through the Natural History Museum
..can reveal some interesting juxtapositions of strangely lit subjects and people.
A close encounter with a peacock, in itself fairly impressive (in colour)…
…in b&w became a black-eyed staring demonic thing. (DSLR)
The upper terrace in our local theatre, above the cafe area, provides…
…a great view down onto the floor below and the various ‘stuff’ there.
Just water and rock.
Just water and rock, but moving around so that the greenery behind is reflected in the water too.
So there you go. It’s fun doing this on your own, but even more fun doing it with others, to see what unique perspectives they can offer. I had a wonderful day with a group of 6 – 8 year old primary school children on the Isle of Raasay off Skye one day, teaching them how to ‘see’ and explore their familiar surroundings through a camera. They were brilliant. Here’s one of their images:
Offbeat portrait made by a very small primary school pupil. Magic. Image © A Raasay Primary School pupil
…and if you want to see a few more of their glorious images, have a read at this: ‘It’s Good To See‘
Creativity matters. It’s worth investing time in. But the bottom line…the absolute bottom line? If you’re not curious, and not prepared to take a risk and invest some time in failure, you’ll rarely see success. Every failed image is a stepping stone to the one special image that works.
It’s winter.
I’ll leave the last word to Arthur Koestler, he knew a thing or two about the creative impulse: “Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality”
So be original. It’s really easy, you just need to be yourself, and show everyone else what YOU see.
(PS…and have fun. Its got to be fun, otherwise whats the point?)
(All images © John MacPherson, apart from Raasay P.S. image)
Author — John Macpherson
John MacPherson was born and lives in the Scottish Highlands. He trained as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards, before completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter, and then qualified as a Social Worker in Disability Services. Along the way he has cooked on canal barges, trained as an Alpine Ski Leader & worked as an Instructor for Skiers with disabilities, been a canoe instructor, and tutor of night classes in carpentry, stained glass design and manufacture, and archery. He has travelled extensively on various continents, undertaking solo trips by bicycle, or motorcycle. He has had narrow escapes from an ambush by terrorists, been hit by lightning, caught in an erupting volcano, trapped in a mobile home by a tornado, kidnapped by a dog's hairdresser, rammed by a basking shark and was once bitten by a wild otter. He has combined all this with professional photography, which he has practised for over 35 years. He teaches photography and acts as a photography guide & tutor in the UK and abroad. His biggest challenge is keeping his 30 year old Land Rover 110 on the road. He loves telling and hearing stories.
Discussion (6 Comments)
This is a huge amount of fun, and great to see and read, but, nitpicking slightly, Jonah Lehrer was not that creative or imaginative when it came to Imagine http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/08/jonah-lehrer-plagiarism-lies-keep-coming.html, or other writing http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/08/jonah_lehrer_plagiarism_in_wired_com_an_investigation_into_plagiarism_quotes_and_factual_inaccuracies_.html. In fact in his $20,000 apology speech he acknowledged he needs the “help” of others http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/02/jonah_lehrer_apology_standard_operating_procedures_can_t_fix_arrogance_and.html.
Nevertheless, not to take away the point you are making, which is to look, observe and see, and you might just go beyond the obvious. Wonderful stuff.
Ah sorry Ed – I replied but in the wrong box – you might need to revisit to read it?
Ho ho! Thanks Ed. Well knock me over with a feather! I wasn’t aware of all that jiggerpokery. I heard some of his R4 blethering but never realized he was such a slithy tove. I guess he figured nobody would look beyond his obvious, and discover it belonged to someone else! Are you all well in the sub-arctic?
Good, good. All well here. Not quite as sub-arctic as we were expecting. How about you?
Snow off and on most of last few days, now -2 and still but snow likely for the next 3-4 days it seems. William happy – downhill all the way to school so sledge is well used!
Thank you so much for this eye-opening post. At present I’m into dead-pan landscapes, usually on average-sized scenes (neither grandly sublime nor micro), but it reminds me so very well of all the other places I could go.