OTTAWA ART GALLERY Auction

Did some shooting this past Thursday at the Ottawa Art Gallery auction.
A gala affair it was.

They put us in the Chocolate Room which, as you may guess, had tables
stacked with chocolate to keep the bidders happy. The room also seemed
to be a major thoroughfare from somewhere to somewhere else. After some
attempts at crowd wrangling (no easy task when there’s a table covered with
free chocolate) I packed up the digi kit and shot some 4×5 BIGHEADS. Lets
see anyone get between the camera and the subject then…..seeing as how
the lens was about a foot and a half from the subject’s face. Yeah baby!

Guerilla Magazine’s gonna run some (or something) and put a whole bunch
of other ones on their web site so this is really all I can show you for now.

PALAHNIUK

I’m reading the new Chuck Palahniuk paperback: Rant. Here’s a couple
of sentences I came across:

If you look at old pictures, she is so pretty. Not just young,
but pretty the way you look when your face goes smooth,
the skin around your eyes and lips relaxed, the pretty you
only look when you love the person taking the picture.

MOTHER’S DAY

Guy, who owns the gallery where I sometimes show my personal work, told
me that he sold one of my photos to a fellow who was going to give it to his
mom for Mother’s Day. This is the print he bought. The perfect Mother’s
Day present if you ask me.

MICHELLE WILSON

Went to Michelle’s one nite stand at La Petite Mort Gallery. People singing. As
usual for this star graduate of SPAO, the look and feel were a sight to behold.

The show was only up for one night so you either saw it or you didn’t. Michelle’s
off to Paris to show some work at the big Arles foto fest, as the winner of the
Concours L’univers de Christian Lacroix. She tells me she’s gonna be packing a
4×5. I can hardly wait to see what she brings back. All I can say is, baby get a
web site or at least a blog and keep us all abreast.

ADVISE

Sometimes I get asked for advice, you know……how do I become a
better photographer.

My answer is just about always the same. I say take a lot of pictures;
don’t be afraid to make mistakes, nothing’s perfect; shoot personal
projects; think about what you’ve done and what you want to do;
study the history of photography and don’t be afraid.

Take lots of pictures.

I believe that you learn more by shooting, say, 200 photos in a week than
by shooting 200 in a month. When you shoot lots there’s a certain frame
of mind that develops, a juju and a work ethic. These lead you places.

Making mistakes/seeking perfection:

You learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes. Too
often people want the first thing they do to be perfect. That’s just plain
stupid…..where’s the fun in that?

Personal projects:

I know that I learn way more doing an intense personal project for one
week than I do shooting paid assignments for a year. If you’re a pro
photog the great thing about these projects is that you can apply
what you learn to your commercial gigs.

Thinking about what you’ve done:

Once you’ve shot some film (or some files) do an edit, i’ts one of the
most interesting parts of photography. Shooting is about soul and
emotion and instinct, editing is a bit more about your intellect. Rooting
through what you’ve done allows you to see mistakes (see above) and
possibilities . It shows you threads that run through what you’ve done
and allows you to move forward with knowledge.

History:

View from the window by Nicaphore Niepce (the first photograph)

I believe that knowing the history of anything you’re interested in is totally
important. Knowing what has come before sheds light on that may come
next. At the very least it’l show you images and approaches you’ve never
seen or considered. You’l see things that might just blow your mind.

Sisley advert by Terry Richardson

Fear:

Fear just keeps you in your box. Which sucks.

A personal note about criticism/advice:

Seven or eight years ago I met with a photo editor in Toronto. That was back
when I was doing a classical kind of shooting. Looked good, was timeless in
a way but mired in the past. Well, she pointed all of this out to me. I remember
being totally steamed……what the fuck does she know? I thought to myself.

On the drive back to Ottawa I decided to set my pride, stubbornness and ego aside
and just consider what she told me. I decided that she was right. Over the next
year I drove myself craaaaaazy trying to make my work more modern while also
keeping it true to me. I didn’ want to (couldn’t) just copy what was in at the
moment. That’s just being a stylist and I knew that that wouldn’t satisfy me. So
I wracked my brain and soul, went down many dead-end paths, shot a whole bunch
of personal work and ended up (I think) figuring it out, coming to a conclusion that
worked for me. And I try to remember, always, that there’s really no such thing as
a conclusion, the target keeps shifting. Stasis = death.

Now, I’m not saying here that I’m the most original shooter around, I know that a certain
percentage of my paying gigs aren’t about me or whatever style I may have. (That’s not
the way it’s done in Ottawa). What I’m trying to say is that my conversation with that photo
editor and my decision to consider and act on what she told me have made me a much better
(and, I believe, more successful) photographer than I would have been if I had just dismissed
her observations because they rubbed me the wrong way.