I’m delighted to welcome David duChemin back to the blog for his second guest article.

Photographers talk a lot about “inspiration” and yet it’s a difficult thing to define. Even more difficult to produce to order but that’s the topic of our exchanged posts. You can read my article on the same subject over at David’s pixelatedimage blog.

Whilst we’re talking about David, he’s just announced a book deal and anyone who reads his blog regularly will know that this isn’t likely to be your usual run-of-the-mill guide to “travel photography”. I’m guessing that there’ll be little discussion about the best way to back up your memory cards on location but lots of gems on how to achieve your personal photographic vision. I for one have already made space on my bookshelf.

Inspiration - A Beginner’s guide by David duChemin

“Photographic technique is no secret and, provided the interest is there, easily assimilated. But inspiration comes from the soul and when the Muse isn't around even the best exposure meter is very little help. In their biographies, artists like Michelangelo, da Vinci and Bach said that their most valuable technique was their ability to inspire themselves. This is true of all artists; the moment there is something to say, there becomes a way to say it.” Ralph Gibson

The creative muse is a bit of a mystery to me. In fact, were the truth be known, I often fear her the same way I feared girls in the seventh-grade. I worry that just as I get my hopes up about a romantic interlude I'll discover her giving more attention to someone else, leaving me with nothing to do but wander aimlessly with sad Charlie Brown music in my head.

I've often gone on assignment without vision, without direction, thinking, "what if I've shot my last good image? What if the muse is off inspiring someone else - like Gavin - right now, and all I come back with is a harddrive full of failure?"

Of course, it doesn't happen, and if you spend enough time with your muse you'll come to realize a few things and begin to trust them as a constant. We fear what we don't understand and the more you understand the process of inspiration, the more comfortable you can be with her seeming inconsistencies.

The first is that the creative process is not so simple that it can be reduced to a formula - go here, wait for muse, shoot brilliant image. It's not a reactive process dependant on a magic fairy appearing and beating you with an inspiration stick. Creativity is something you can actively work at, and the more closely you know your own process, the more reliably the muse appears. Having said that, I think we all know that somedays just don't go the way we want, and sometimes that's chalked-up to being uninspired. Or bored. Or lazy. Probably the latter two.

I really believe that the more you understand what you get inspired by, the more readily you can put yourself in her path. I know what gets my creative juices going. For me the low-hanging fruit is great light, interesting people, and exotic places where the homogeny of the west hasn't replaced the beauty of human uniqueness with a strip mall, a starbucks, and the fashion of the day. Some people love shooting that, I don't. So putting myself in a place I connect and resonate with, getting out early and staying until late in the evening, wandering aimlessly - that inspires me. As Joe McNally would say, put yourself in front of more interesting stuff.

But that's the low-hanging fruit - the easy stuff. What about when you're asked to shoot something that doesn't inspire you? Going back to Gibson's quote: "the moment there is something to say, there becomes a way to say it." Ask yourself how you feel, how you think, about this thing about which you are so uninspired. Find an opinion, find something in there that you ARE passionate about. Maybe it's just a passion for great light, or tones, or lines - shoot that.

I have a client that does custom upholstery for custom cars. Seats and cars provide precisely zero inspiration for me, but great lines and textures, those do. So I don't shoot them as seats, I shoot them as a playground of line and texture. I forget the label "car seat" and just look for sweeping line and the contrast of stitch on leather. I play with the light and I shoot images that my client loves because he doesn't see his work as just a "car seat" either. He sees it as art and the way I shoot them reflects that.

And then there's the times when your inspiration is just a general malaise preventing you from getting out there and discovering your muse. Sometimes you have to chase it down, hunt for it. Sometimes, pardon my frankness, we just need to stop making excuses and get out there and start seeing. Make a conscious effort not to see things as "a bicycle" or "a tree" but to see the shapes, the shadows, the lines, textures, and just play until it all comes together. Creativity is about receptivity and that doesn't happen until we let go of ourselves for a while. Nothing kills creativity, inspiration, or motivation like self-pity, self-doubt, and self-preoccupation.

Lack of inspiration is not an excuse for bad photography or no photography; it's a reason to get up in the morning, grab a camera, and go shake the cobwebs off your mind, your eyes, your spirit. Forget the absence of the muse, head out without her. Wander until your eyes open, then you'll find the muse is already there waiting.

David duChemin - June 2008

Tags: david duchemin, guest post

I'm really chuffed about this. I've swapped blogs with David duChemin and we've each written an article entitled "Standing on the shoulders of giants" where we discuss other photographers who have inspired us.

You can read my article on David's excellent pixelatedimage blog and if you're not already a regular reader then I recommend that you subscribe to his RSS feed or bookmark the blog home page whilst you're there.

David's a Humanitarian Photographer and boasts a rare talent. Take a look at his portfolio and especially his work for World Vision to see what I mean. He also runs photo tours to Kashmir with Matt Brandon and I see from the Lumen Dei web site that there's only one place remaining on this year's expedition so if you fancy it, and why on earth wouldn't you, I'd book your place pretty smartish. You'll regret it if you don't.

As if all that weren't enough to make him a very welcome guest writer, David's also a thoroughly decent bloke. Yes, I know, makes you sick doesn't it.

I'm delighted to introduce you to David and know that you'll get along famously.

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Standing on the shoulders of giants

Sir Isaac Newton once wrote. "if I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants." For photographers this means the influence of other photographers - artists who've created images that so strongly resonate with us that they've determined not only our career paths but also what we shoot and how.

For me these giants have been Steve McCurry, Yousuf Karsh and Freeman Patterson - three men who couldn't be more  divergent in their styles if they tried. But as a teenager I poured over their books, their photographs. I soaked up their images, and where I could find them, their words.

Steve McCurry needs no introduction to most of us. I'd wager a great many of the photographers reading this were also influenced in some way by him. His stark portrait of the afghan refugee girl was pinned to my wall for years, staring holes in me. It was her unguardedness, the revelation of her soul through her eyes that drew me, made me want to photograph in a way that was compelling, revealing. His focus on texture and soft light were also influences on me, and I think it shows. The passion it stirred in me for the homeless and the excluded remains undiluted to this day.

Yousef Karsh was a master portraitist, in residence at the Chateaux Laurier in Ottawa where I was a teenager, for years. His work was formal, black and white, but it shared with McCurry a focus on photographs that revealed the character of the subject and exquisite texture. Monochrome images have a way of focussing us on fewer elements, they allow texture, light, gesture to play more powerfully for the absence of colour. I often wonder why I stopped shooting black and white, but I've never tired of photographing people.

Freeman Patterson drew me too. I'm not sure you'd ever know it to look at my portfolio. I rarely shoot the natural world anymore. Probably too many hours sitting in swamps with big lenses photographing mallards. What Patterson gave me was an eye for detail, a love for bringing the chaos into order through the discipline of the frame. He gave me my love for colour, natural light, and the play of lines.
 
Other influences, probably equally important, continue to make me the photographer I am. Tom Stoddart, Ami Vitale, Olivier Follmi, among them. I'm standing on the shoulders of a great many giants. But at a certain point, if one is to be a giant oneself we need to get off these shoulders and forge a direction of our own. This isn't at all to imply we become "better than" just "other than." We develop our own voice about the things that we are passionate about. Giants can take us a long way there, and I'm not sure there is ever a point in our growth as artists that there are no longer giants on whose shoulders we stand. But if we're really lucky, all this standing and learning to see from such heights makes us tall enough that others coming after us will gain their footing on our shoulders, and give us a chance to give back to the craft that's given us so much.

Find some giants and don't be afraid to enjoy the view, soak it up as long as you can balance there, but eventually you need to climb down and take your place among them.

David duChemin
May 2008

Tags: guest post, david duchemin