Beyond the Hobby

Walsenburg’s Gentle Giants

Brooks Jensen has become one of my favorite photographic philosophers. Ever since my introduction to him through an issue of LensWork that was passed on to me by another photographer, I have found myself captivated by his commitment to the art of photography instead of the ubiquitous discussion about gear that seems to be all that everyone else talks about. Even Ted Forbes, founder of the excellent YouTube channel, The Art of Photography, has been on a major gear kick recently. I will grant that Photokina is approaching and most of the big name camera companies have issued some big product announcements, so it’s to be expected. And as I mentioned in another blog post, gear does matter. Still, I find myself craving photographic discussion centering on photographic output rather than photographic input. Of all the legion of internet photographic voices, Brooks is the best at distilling everything about photography into its essence as one of the major visual arts.

One of the ideas that Brooks has postulated that has taken the most hold with me is organizing what I do into projects with real, tangible output goals. When I look at photography around the ‘net, I find that one of the key factors that can differentiate hobby photographers from photographers that take the next step, it’s the idea that there is some coherence to their work. Something unifies their photography and how they present it. The gold standard of this has to be the book. Photographers who have focused enough to publish a book have learned how to organize, edit and parse their work into a cohesive whole. At the other end of the spectrum is the photographer that just goes wandering with his or her camera and shares everything (literally every picture they take sometimes) on social media. In between are a nearly infinite number of intermediates.

Please don’t misunderstand me about this. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking thousands of photos of everything you come across and sharing those on social media. If that’s what works with you for your photography, by all means, I urge you to pursue that. I just feel that photographers who can edit and organize their work help their audience rise above the static of photography around the internet. Thanks to the omnipresence of smart phones, more photos are produced every day than in the first century of photography. It’s predicted that there will be nearly 2 trillion photos taken in 2018 alone. 2 TRILLION. 2,000,000,000,000. Importantly, automation has made the majority of those photos technically sound. One no longer needs to understand exposure, focus, etc. in order to produce a technically sound photograph. While the majority of those photos will still be snapshots and will be lacking in  the artistic department, there will still be millions and millions of exceptional photos produced.

This is where the importance of a well thought out output really comes into its own. Photographers who are judicious with the quantity of photos that they produce and organize their work into projects are going to assist their viewership. Even if it’s only a simple project webpage, condensing your work to the best photos centered around a defined theme will be far more appealing than a social media post of the 289 photos you took yesterday. Presenting these projects in tangible forms – magazine articles, gallery shows, folios, books, etc. – will reflect even more positively on your work and help you gain traction amongst those other trillions of photos.

I’ll be honest and say that this is a little bit daunting to contemplate. This website was my first effort at organizing my work into projects. If you find me on my older Flickr page, you’ll note that it’s a far noisier internet presence for my work. Something that I need to address one of these days. Creating the website helped me really start thinking about photographic projects. Some of the projects are very consciously pursued. My grain elevator project, for instance, has been a very deliberate exercise in documenting a single subject that I feel very passionately about. My newest project gallery is another matter though. I just published the first images for a project documenting windmills and wind turbines. That came about via pure serendipity. I explain it briefly on the gallery page, so I won’t expound on that here. 

I do hope to pursue other “higher” methods of output in the future. A book of my grain elevator work would be something that I would truly love to put together. I’m still working on organizing myself on the much more easily publishable medium of the internet, though. So, baby steps and goals.

In closing, I’d like to offer my encouragement to think about your work with the idea of defined output. It really will change how you present the art that you produce.

For those that are interested, I highly recommend seeking out Brooks Jensen across his various internet presences. The most obvious site is www.lenswork.com. A subscription to LensWork Online does not cost a lot of money but it does give access to a plethora of wonderful articles, podcasts, videos and other output full of Brooks’ wonderful photographic philosophy. You’ll also have access to the PDF versions of the three latest issues of LensWork. If you’ve never experienced an issue of LensWork, let me say that you are in for a visual treat. Top quality work from a variety of talented photographers. Highly recommended!