Newsletter - Layers are everywhere...

Hello,

Photography.

It's complicated.

In fact the more you learn about photography, the less you know about photography. It's one of those things.

Why? Because you start to appreciate the complexities of how great photographs are made.

Anyone can point their camera at something and push the button. In fact, I have a portrait of my oldest son taken by his younger brother when he was just 18 months old. It's one of my favourite portraits of my oldest, but we can all agree that my 18-month old son probably didn't make it with much intention. Or maybe he did, the minds of children are another fascinating topic.

Back to why. The more we learn about photography the more we understand what it actually took to make a great photo. Let's talk about Alex Webb. His layering is not only very good, it is also sometimes incredible. To be able to see the world in sections, and to understand the wait for that one crucial moment when all the sections merge into each other so the photograph can inform you of the story, it is nothing short of mind boggling.

However, if I had looked at Alex Webb's photographs 20+ years ago I may have said: "What's the big deal, I could make that picture." The brilliance lies in the matter-of-fact-ness that carries through his work. It looks like how we think about the world when we see it. Only we don't see all the things at once, we just merge situations together late because in our minds we can. Doing that while the light falls just so, when the people are mid action, with enough separation to not merge on top of each other, now that is a very special skill that photographers all over the world strive for on a daily basis.

When I think about layers I like to think about music. If you take Vivaldi's Four Season's as an example, listen to the first movement of Winter with your eyes closed. It builds, builds and builds while we wait. We can feel something coming. It has some power parts in the middle, and we're left thinking, hey, maybe this is it. This is the big crescendo. But no, it keeps going and going and going until we get a few minutes in, where everything comes together and it's the perfect storm of sounds layered into something that has made people emotional for 300 years. Good job, Vivaldi.

When I go out in search of photographs I like to think of classical music. How composers layered and layered and layered to take us through a story from start to finish. To enable us to use our senses and our minds so that if we really listened we could picture, smell and feel the story they were trying to convey. The story would not be the same with just the first violin playing on its own. Sure you can make a story with just a single instrument, but not a single sound. The power of the story in music lies in all the pieces fitting together in a perfect concoction of sound that often ends in some kind of giant crescendo and explosion of emotion. 

I want to make photographs that goes beyond the single sense of seeing. I'm not sure it's even possible, but the idea of this is why I still photograph daily, why I still want to learn more, why I assign myself tasks to improve how I see and tell stories. I think it's my forever project; to learn about photography. 

This fall I have been toiling away at figuring out how I can best create something useful for other people who want to improve on their seeing, on their storytelling abilities, on their work in general. I believe quite strongly that in order to improve on something one needs practice so I made a new workshop, one that focuses specifically on putting abilities into practice. More to come...

I'd love to know what you are missing in the educational arena, what are the top two things you'd like to know more about in the future?

All for now,

Kristine