Has Your Photography Got Better Or Worse?

Harlequin565

Harlequin565

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Ian
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So here's a thought for the day, or just a question...

I put in in F&C because GenPop frightens me, but this isn't a film thing. It's a photography thing...

I spend a couple of hours today doing a socialy distanced photowalk with @Mr Perceptive around the soon to be demolished Hartford campus of our local college. My contact sheet is [will be] on my sig thread.

However whilst walking around, we managed to access an area normally fenced off and saw a big pile of rubble and a digger.

"It's a good digger that" said Mr P and whilst he got his flippy out screen out to shoot over the fencing, I got on my belly in the car park to shoot under it. (it's colour so I won't see it for a while. I need to send at least 2 films off when doing colour because I'm a postage cheapskate...). To be fair, Mr P does have a Fuji 690 and I'm sure he'll soon be sharing his photos in F&C... Absolutely sure..... I tagged you didn't I David?

Anyway, I showed my wife my negs, she just looked at me like I was mad. WTF? was her response to my.... "art"...

I used to shoot stuff like this. Indeed, this photo won the old PoTY comp for January 2011. I was chuffed to bits. My wife loves it. The print we won is still up in the lounge. I am bored with it. I think I was bored with it about 5 years ago....

frosty_castlerigg_hdr1.jpg

Instead, I'm now really happy with stuff like this. In fact, I think it's an improvement.

2020-06-20-othoplus-rollei-05.jpg

I guess at the end of the day, if you're happy doing what you're doing, it doesn't really matter. And I think that whilst photos of Castlerigg are very pretty, there's a degree of importance to other types of photography that might not be immediately apparent. Likes and Faves can sometimes drive photographers to take pictures of things that distract them from what they might actually be good at (or enjoy). Additionally, likes & faves and YouTube and Instagram can force a lot of photographers down avenues that might hide their talent by doing "great shot" 's.

Tl;dr - My wife thinks my photography has got worse. I think I've improved. Anyone else in this predicament?
 
Sometimes the more you know you seem to try too hard, get overly self critical and don't enjoy the results.
There's also the issue of being too gear focused when in the past a very basic camera didn't stop you trying all kinds of stuff and having fun.
Another issue I've recognised is when digital first made almost unlimited photos easy, it was a good excuse to revisit a lot of places but now it's like *done that*.
 
We take pictures for a lot of reasons, and those reasons can change, along with how we see the world and the tools we use to convert that to images.

If I were asked which of the 2 images you (OP) posted I should like printed & hung on my wall, it would be the first without a doubt. That's because it's aesthetically pleasing, interesting in composition and pleasing on the eye for its colours. The second image appears to be trying to say something, but like much photographic art, isn't especially nice to look at (and stuff like the intruding twig on the RHS is a flaw *to me* of a kind not present in the first image). I should be interested to know if you would be bored with that second image if it were hung on your wall for 4 years?

If I look back at the images I was creating 6 years ago, they were usually over-processed and often disappointing to me. However I try not to see photography as a competitive sport where I'm striving to do better all the time, but rather as a way of recording the world around me as I'm seeing it, to try to re-present it to others from my viewpoint. In that respect your second image certainly hits the mark, probably in a way the aesthetic choices you made to create the first image would never allow.
 
ancient_mariner said:
if it were hung on your wall for 4 years?
Click to expand...

There's a ton of sense in that whole post Toni. And it's very subjective when one talks about hanging something on the wall. For me, I felt a good deal of sadness walking round that campus today. I took my youngest there for her "interview" and she ultimately went elsewhere, but we had a tour round the place and I got a good vibe from it. I teach at the local 6th form college, and we now have 0 competiion from local Adult Ed departments because of things like this.

Now it's falling apart, and nature is reclaiming the land (all hail the extraneous twig!).

Which image means more to me? The second. Which image is more likely to sell at an art show? The first - no doubt. Which image would I have on the wall? Neither. Sadly I didn't manage a single image today that would get wall space, but I did a couple of days ago with a cat portrait that would draw groans from many. Although I did get a red pallete on a green background which will be off for dev in a few days. Quite liked the look of that one.
 
I think what Toni says is a fair summation. Your photos aren't better they're different - because they were taken with different intentions which require a different aesthetic to the pictures.

I stopped taking 'serious' photos around 1982 and when I got back into it in 2010 my pictures were pretty much the same - except that they were technically better and in colour because I was using a modern digital camera which does the donkey work for you. My way of looking and seeing was unchanged - judging from revisiting my old negs I developed those aspects early on. What has changed is that I now mostly photograph with the aim of creating bodies of work rather than standalone pictures. That is certainly something I wish I'd done all those years ago and something I'd call an improvement. Looking through my old contact sheets I'm aware of all the pictures I should have taken.
 
Ed Sutton said:
Your photos aren't better they're different
Click to expand...

I guess my incentive for the post was that whilst I think they're better (they're different, but in my eyes they're better because I think my way of seeing things has changed for the better) my wife - and many others - think that it's worse.

Very few people see that they're just different which just struck me today as something that's worth writing about.

At least David put his digger shot up :)
 
Harlequin565 said:
I guess my incentive for the post was that whilst I think they're better (they're different, but in my eyes they're better because I think my way of seeing things has changed for the better) my wife - and many others - think that it's worse.

Very few people see that they're just different which just struck me today as something that's worth writing about.

At least David put his digger shot up :)
Click to expand...

It's not so much that your your way of seeing has improved as matured. You have made a leap which most hobbyists never manage - to get beyond facile representation of the picturesque and consider the medium as a means of communication.

You might also be surprised how many members of the general public are willing to appreciate pictures like your black and white one. People you might not expect to.
 
These discussions on photography frequently remind me of the parable of the "blind men and the elephant", a camera and photography in general is a multi-faceted tool, it can be many things to many people.

A few weeks ago I came across a quote from the artist Francis Bacon
"Isn't it that one wants a thing to be as factual as possible and yet at the same time as deeply suggestive or deeply unlocking of areas of sensation other than simple illustrating of the object that you set out to do? Isn't that what art is all about?"

I don't know what Bacon thought of photography but that quote really spoke to me with respect to photography- "deeply unlocking of areas of sensation".

For me the first photo is neither "as factual as possible" nor does it unlock any sensations, I'm sure for some people it does but not for me. The second at least speaks of demolition and after seeing @Mr Perceptive 's other images images from the college, in that context it really does start to unlock some other things, questions, stories, etc.

On my walls I have woodchip wall paper (it came with the house) and mainly white/cream/magnolia paint. Hung on top of that is mainly paintings, not photos, there is one dim corner in the farthest reaches of the house where I put up a few shots I am least embarrassed by. Do I then own photos? Do I look at them? Do I value photos? Yes I do, I have a number of photo books, I daily view the Guardian's edited photos of the day, I follow photography on a number of on-line channels. But for me photos work best in the context of a story, a project, a body of work. Its more like a music album than a single.

Getting back to the original question - has it got better or worse - well for me the starting point was pretty low :) but the central idea of this waffle is that it is about context, better or worse in what context? Winning a competition or conveying a message? I would ask: in one or two hundred years time which will capture people's attention? a Castlerigg stone circle shot or a zine about the demolition of a recently built place of education?
 
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We all need to go out for a pint.
 
At the end of the day, if you're a hobbiest, even a serious one, you take photo's & make images for just one person, you.

In the last couple of years I have got in to landscapes, my main subject was wildlife, mainly birds, but since moving to the Wiltshire hills, my interest in landscapes has risen significantly. I also like to hang my work on the wall. The issue I have is that although my wife is "happy" with the images, too many of them don't "fit the colour scheme" she wants in the house. So I am slowly filling the wall of the spare bedroom. After all, I'm shooting for myself anyway.

Now, looking back at the two images you posted, the second generates very little interest for me, it doesn't ask me any questions. Whereas the first certainly does. But does it matter? Does the image replicate what you were visualising in your head? If so, then it really doesn't matter...
 
I have good days and bad days, technical challenges posed by new equipment etc. In general I would say it has improved, I have gone back to film so instead of getting 10 shots out of 800 I now get more like a 1 in 4. Had I got a bit more practice with the current set up today would have been a 3 out of 4 day, I like the shots and intended composition I just didn't get the tilt/shift quite right and that affected the framing.
 
To me it is not inportant if they are good or bad , it is if I like them and remind me of times gone by to look back on. If a photo is for commercial use then producing he best is a different matter
 
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Ian, I didn't reply yesterday apart from the digger shot :) as I was busy in the evening - the digger was a simple cut and paste from another thread!

Personally I think the best thing to do is not to overthink it!! By 'forcing' things I think that creativity is stifled, as is our interest as the results we produce are not what was expected. As we all know there are number of things that a key to a picture holding our interest, for me these are light, composition and often a narrative. Chocolate box images perhaps require less of a narrative, but certainly I have found composition to be challenging when changing photographic 'genre', it takes me time to start to 'see' images that will hold my attention and I often spend a long time just creating 'record' shots before something clicks - obviously this can get expensive with film.

I often explain this methodology as a 'photographic journey' is a bit like going up a staircase, you spend time on one step before something clicks and you move up a step. This amount of time might be very short, or it could be weeks/months, but once you've gone up that step you never forget the whats been learnt - riding a bicycle theory! Our challenge is to reach that top step, but its an infinitely long staircase!

(PS I didn't have a flippy screen on that camera yesterday, though when I went back for some more 'digger' shots I did!!)
 
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