Academic Aesthetic

SLR Lounge has a decent article on why and how someone should use a mood board. It makes some good points, even if I have historically refused to use it for my own work.

TL;DR version: It boils down to copyright theft ruining things, but nuance gets boiled off to get it to a soundbite as simple as that.

My first degree is in Art Ed, but to get one of those my university required so many Level 1 courses that specialization just wasn’t a thing, and even then a lot of stuff was left out. (I took a ceramics course, for example, but never got to load a kiln until I was student teaching.) Anything involving graphic design or even taking a class that expected me to set foot in a computer lab was unheard of.

(Granted, this was the ’90s. Things have likely changed.)

So the first time I encountered anything like a mood board was when Pintrest was new.

My experience was … disappointing.

I went in thinking Pintrest would be an artist tool, and it had the potential for that, but with no prior training or experience I looked at it like someone seeing scissors who thinks “Yeah, I could probably use that to tighten a screw.”

I expected a site where I could share things I made. Instead it was a site where one “pinned” things that helped build inspiration and a sense of a target aesthetic.

Oh, and very little effort in regards to crediting creators. A lot of that.

Mostly that.

If Pintrest was an entirely offline tool, this wouldn’t have been as much of an issue for me. Personal use is, as stated, personal. But Pintrest was and still is public. Boards were shared and copied with no regard for who made what.

For over a decade, I’ve said Pintrest is where copyright goes to die.

I can see good uses for mood boards, just not publicly viewable online ones. Someone fills a Word (or in my case, Libre Office) doc or plasters a bulletin board with a bunch of color prints? Great, build things up! The moment it goes online, I remember the bad taste in my mouth.

There’s a thing happening with my school in partnership with a local organization. We’ve been doing things with them for years now and it’s a lot of fun. This year it’s been suggested we build some mood boards to help set expectations. (See that link in the first paragraph? It’s relevant!)

I don’t know if I’ll like the experience, but I need to find a way to have my students learn how things are done without compromising my artistic morals.

I’m sure it’s possible.

We just need to set some expectations.

The title seems counterintuitive, but it actually works.

R. Schneider’s article over on PictureCorrect gives some great advice on how to get past “photographer’s block.” The advice boils down to looking for specific things, but the examples provided could quickly be turned into a photography unit.

In fact, I might do that.

It makes me think of a specific photography exercise I was told about (but not required to do) when I took a photo class in college: “Lock yourself in a bathroom until you’ve taken 100 unique photos.”

I’m assuming the intentions for that were 100% clean, as I’m sure the bathroom would also be before the first shot was taken. In that class we were fortunately given the less claustrophobic task of agreeing to a single location on campus to go to for our photo assignment.

The point of it is to force the photographer to think more and more about interesting composition. The first 50 photos are standard, run-of-the-mill shots, probably a mirror selfie or two. That’s where the obvious options are checked off.

After that, things get more interesting. Perhaps the camera’s pointing up from inside the cabinet under the sink. Perhaps medicine cabinet items are arranged into a haphazard tower of expired medications.

The last 10-25 shots are golden.

I don’t recommend locking yourself in your bathroom, specifically, but limiting yourself to a single location for 100 shots will definitely force you to think, even if you don’t take them all in one go.

An article on PetaPixel by Jeremy Gray has introduced me to grid.photo, a project by Greg Boratyn where users are allowed to post one photo per day.

The limitation is meant to force photographers to only upload their best work, unlike most photo sharing sites where you can post hundreds of images in a day if you want. (Granted, some of them charge for certain volumes of uploads.)

The premise is neat, and though I’ve stopped uploading most of my own photos due to AI scraping nonsense I really hope grid.photo takes off. (You should really read the article, it goes into background not evident from just visiting the site.)

It makes me think about quality vs. quantity in regards to photography. Back in the day [cue old man yelling at cloud voice], if I was fortunate I’d have a roll of 36 possible shots. Not being independently wealthy, I quickly learned I needed to make each one count. I won’t say I managed that, but I spent a lot more time focusing (pun intended) on making each shot as good as possible.

When digital came around, my photos became effectively free. I could take hundreds, maybe thousands (OK, usually only hundreds) of shots in a single outing, deleting all of the superfluous ones.

Or, frequently, sharing 20 shots of the same thing because the photos were near-identical and I couldn’t decide which was “best.”

My father, who bought the first digital camera I ever got to use (a Sony Mavica, if you must know…), occasionally complains about this. He’s certain the way he and I learned photography is better, because of the thought we had to put into each shutter press.

I disagree.

The thought needs to be there, yes, but from the time I pressed the shutter to when I got to see the prints, I often forgot the tiny details I needed to know to make the lesson valuable. Sure, I could have spent my time with the camera taking detailed notes about the aperture, shutter speed, ambient light, and how I was holding the camera, but instead i was spending my time actively taking photos.

My ADHD brain was not going to stand for note taking on a photo excursion when there were pictures that needed taking.

Sure, I sped up the process when I had access to the campus dark room, but that was still enough of a delay for my brain to reset and wipe short term memory.

With most digital cameras (I see you, Camp Snap, and love you for what you are), you get instant gratification, yes, but also instant data.

That shutter speed is too slow.

This image is too dark.

My depth of field isn’t deep (or shallow) enough.

Oh, look, a histogram.

Getting this information instantly helps me learn immediately if what I’m doing is a correct choice or off base, so I can make adjustments and (hopefully) score better results.

It means I can have students internalizing key photography elements in one day instead of a week or more.

There’s a couple downsides, of course.

When you enable instant gratification you enable an instant pause on taking more shots. It’s easy for a beginner to overthink settings and stare at that little LCD, wondering what needs tinkering until they’re out of time.

When you enable infinite (or close enough) capacity you enable a surplus of identical shots, making weeding through them a more difficult process.

You’d think these two problems would cancel each other out, and sometimes they do. Most times, the pendulum swings hard in one direction or another.

And then, of course, there’s the student who’s told to hand in their “best 10 shots” so they take exactly 10 shots and call it a day. It’s OK, I get it. They don’t actually want to be a photographer, they just picked the lesson they thought was easy.

I still grade it like they took 100 and picked the best 10, though, so they’d better have a very good eye for composition.

DIY Photography has a decent article on why Photography is art. It should be of no surprise that I agree.

I’ve fallen a bit behind on my RSS feeds, so I only encountered the article AFTER seeing Ewen Bell’s video on how every photo is a lie. (And even then, I watched the video after hearing the same episode in his podcast.)

My own take on why photography is art is similar to what’s linked above, but it boils down to this: I’m making creative choices, so it’s art.

I’m choosing what to crop, what angle to use, and if I have a fancier model in my hands I’m adjusting focal lengths, shutter speeds, apertures, and even occasionally the ISO from one shot to the next.

But even if all I’m doing is deciding what should be within the frame and when I should press the button, it’s art.

Now things get fuzzier when someone else’s choices start getting involved.

During the school year, the vast majority of my photos are of school events – in particular, our student performances.

I’ve taken thousands of photos of our band, orchestra, chorus, piano, and theater students doing amazing things on stage.

There’s a lot of shots where I’m incredibly proud to be the one who captured THAT image.

I don’t keep them. Not a single one is on a personal hard drive of mine. They aren’t even printed out and hung on a wall, or kept in an album.

I don’t really think of them as mine.

Our performances are planned by amazing people, including but not limited to the students. Someone decides where everyone will be, how they should move, and which lights will be pointing in which direction.

That’s a lot of creative choices. That’s art.

I’m happy to do the work I do during those shows, but I’m not there to make art. I’m there to document THEIR art. My hard work exists to show off what they’re doing. After each show, I hand the photos over to the teacher(s) in charge of the performance and let them decide what to do next. At that point, I’ve removed myself from the process.

I could probably argue that my photos are a collaborative effort, and many do. I make that assertion for my students who are doing the same thing during performances, as I want them credited for their efforts.

I don’t know why I prefer to not be treated the same, but that’s the case. The art is theirs.

I count myself fortunate to have the privilege of documenting it.