Zonda`s Quest

Recently some friends and I started a small photo challenge. As I was organizing it with another friend, we tried to let the trivial themes in the first three photos and then we`d put a theme a bit more complex or requiring a specific technique, like “Order in Chaos”, or “Light Painting”. The first one, as usual in this kind of challenge, was a simple, trivial, self-portrait. First time I did one, I used a large silver spoon to reflect my image in its back and made it a very grainy and high contrast B&W. It was a nice idea that worked just fine! This time, the only thing I could figure out was an eye macro also B&W. Kind of a combination of two things I`ve already done.

Then it struck me.

That`s not about my style. That`s just me being lazy and trying to do things I know are going to work. It`s not that style is not important. It is, a lot. The thing I hear the most about photography (or art as a whole) is that one must develop its own style as soon as possible. I do have, nevertheless, the impression the word “style” is being held captive somewhere and the expression “creative inertia” has taken its place. When I sent the first image, my cousin Elisa (who has taught me a lot, even if she doesn’t fully know it) told me: “you`re already good in the technical part, it`s not about that, it`s about getting out of the comfort zone”.

Elisa was right.

It`s like making the trip backwards, from photography to subjectivity. As I`ve already stated before, I`m not a very creative person. Even tough, I`m still able to differentiate creative style and its inertia. It`s very common in photographers (mainly those who work with some specific kind of photography, like weddings) to learn a technique and then use it like there`s no tomorrow, HDR being the famous one right now.

It is a good sensation to master some kind of photography. The bad thing is that every new picture you make using something you already know it`s one opportunity to learn something new you throw away. The idea is clear to me now: as photography is a hobby to me, I prefer to have a portfolio full of mistakes of different kinds than to have it full of fantastic pictures taken the same way.

It only lasts for about thirty minutes after the photo session. Right after that time I start getting protective about my clicks. As I was talking to a friend and showing him some of my photos, I noticed that my older folders had tons of pictures each, most of it errors or pictures I wouldn’t use. It was possible to tell the story of how I got to the result just by showing the “frame-by-frame” attempts. In the end, there were more than 300mb of data in each folder, and only 5% came to use.

As I`m increasingly correcting my photos using on camera resources, I`m able to see, in the screen, if I achieved the intended result or not. Even on a 3in screen it`s possible to judge light, framing, expression, color and focus. Now all I have to do is ask myself two questions:

1. Would you print a 60in version of this picture, hang on the wall and be proud of it?

2. If not, with minor corrections on Photoshop, would you then do it?

It`s all about the path you choose for your pictures. An honorable death as part of the path to acquire a perfect representation of what we dream of (even when awake), a long walk to the “limbus” when a mediocre picture gets published and the world does the work of keeping it in oblivion, or a heartless memory of an error, right there, on your hard drive.

As an amateur photographer, I honestly can`t see a point in keeping dozens of pictures for each photo I try to take, nor I see a reason to try to save an error on Photoshop. What am I, a Photo Doctor Without Borders? How about be thankful for the opportunity to learn, hit the delete, and try again?

I am not a very creative person. That statement by itself is already enough and I can end my work right here, in this black dot.

[sighs] No I can`t.

Last time I organized a photo shoot in my house my friends made me the favor to pose for me and while I took about a hundred different photos (no, I don`t like bursts because I know I`ll have to erase them one by one) only one was selected to be uploaded to 500px.

Why?

I spent a lot of time last week trying to figure out the answer. The photos looked great, the models were astonishing, and the equipment was perfectly set. What did the “Torn” picture had that the other did not?

The Emotion.

According to Wikipedia, emotion “is a subjective, conscious experience characterized primarily by psychophysiological expressions, biological reactions, and mental states”.

During the photo shoot I asked my friend (and model) Ana Paula to look upset. We tried about five different expressions and then she got fed up with it. The moment she truly felt it was enough of that (it was about four in the morning), was the moment I got the photo right. She did me a tremendous favor posing and as she is not a professional model nor I`m a professional photographer, things got a little rough on the direction part of the shoot.

This “accident” unveiled a completely new part of photography for me: direction. As I`m pursuing new ways to deal with photography the kind of picture I want to take is changing. A few years ago, I looked at a picture from a technical standpoint alone. Now, that`s the last thing I look for. I want my pictures to express something and one can`t get a model to express a feeling they don`t feel or can`t understand. The way I got good pictures until now was utterly random: my wife posed and I shot. Eventually some picture would reflect the kind of thing I wanted, or not. And I would be frustrated for not understanding what went wrong.

While taking some time during the week trying to learn some techniques, I arranged a new shoot for the weekend. The idea was pretty simple: there was a theme, and based on that I would direct poses, clothing and makeup. What usually was my wife choosing her makeup and outfit was about to become a broader (and potentially disastrous) experiment.

When they got to my house, I was scared to let them down. One does not simply asks two women to wear full make up and fails them. While I usually don`t drink, I thought about the possibility of easing off a bit and took some doses with them. Suddenly I was on the floor, seated, talking to my friend about the impact the hand and fingers lying on the face would have on the final expression. Would it represent desperation, sadness or guilt? Camera in one hand, glass on the other, we debated about the truthfulness of the expression and the unconscious need for shelter that makes people seat on corners when feeling bad. That`s what I wanted. No matter if the pictures were going to be great. They would, surely, be the representation of what we were trying to do that night. While shooting I remember thinking, “oh, the photos are great! Or, maybe, they suck and I`m drunk”. The expressions on their faces looked real. When we started talking about the kind of emotion I was trying to get, it took only some time until I could get it to look like they were really feeling it. The Desperation, The Guilt and The Lust are the result of an honest work of emotions crafted for that moment and, therefore, real in their essence. Let us have truth in wine, and let us have water the day after.