Have Pentax, Will Travel » hypothesis

Take risks. Get a bloody nose. Scars are character.

charles — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:22:35 +0000

I think style generally develops as a way of dealing with problems in an efficient way. It’s not random, it’s a system or predetermined choices that you develop when you’re overwhelmed. To develop style you have to be challenged. Sustained originality almost always comes from a crucible passage. You need to create images that scare you. Transcending the difficulty will bring out who you are, and that’s where real style comes from in art.

Primal Hunting Instinct and The Lens

charles — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 04:31:37 +0000

I’m going through a lot of old magazines ripping out the photos I like and tossing the other 99.5% of the paper.

One thing I noticed in the stack of what I’ve kept, the models don’t look at the camera very often. I sometimes tell new models “don’t look at the camera unless you mean it.”

I look at all of these thousands of images in the magazines I’m tossing out, and I have a visceral reaction to compelling lighting, compositions, dances of color on the page. When I look at a photo in which the model is just standing there deer in headlights waiting for the shutter to click, supremely unconfident, no matter what is going on in the rest of the image, I have a strong dislike for the whole. If it is an interesting setting, I am even angry at the photographer for wasting it on an uncompelling subject.

To me, photography is only a rush when it feels challenging, and if the model just stands there looking at the lens, waiting to have their picture taken, it is uninteresting. I don’t like when they submit to the process, when they are having their picture taken rather than being interesting.

Unless you have the confidence to stare down the lens or tell a story, don’t go near it, the lens will know you are weak. The lens is predatory. To use it is always to be hunting for something. When the prey is immediately submissive, the hunt is dull.

Sampling In Music

charles — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:23:05 +0000

I think the vehement defense of sampling for commercial music without paying for copyright licenses is just an excuse to be lazy from people who aren’t creative or skilled enough to spoof the sounds they want to reference.

thinking about arts and crafts

charles — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:53:00 +0000

Decoration is a craft. Art is an anti-science. The pinnacle height of achievement in a craft is the perfect modification of a material into a vision. The pinnacle height of achievement in an art is the perfect modification of a vision into a metaphor. Some things can be both. Art cannot exist without craft. Craft cannot exist without art. Yet there is a vast difference from the goals of artists and craftspeople. Craft has a finite goal, the production of something tangible. Art has an infinite goal, the induction of something intangible. Craft relaxes. Art excites.

art and science are the same?

charles — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:15:00 +0000

All art, like science, is hypothesis. There is an innate desire in humans to understand the world around them. Art is one attempt at an answer. Just as science seeks to find explanations through observation and experimentation, so does art.

It could be argued that science is an art. It could also be argued that art is a science. Whatever they are, they both involve testing ideas and looking for answers. They both involve curiosity.

Science is an art, in that creative leaps of faith are required to hypothesize. Science is nothing if not creative problem solving and a way of working to understand the universe.

Art is a science, in that when one is creating, one applies rules to carry out an experiment which might produce a result. In the process of the creation of a work, one tests these rules. Each choice is a rule. Are you going to use light blue for the sky? That’s a choice, a rule. You or someone else can later try another color and compare the results. Each work of art one starts is an experiment testing some hypothesis. The outcome is always uncertain. There are always unplanned results in complex rule systems. When the work is complete, both the final product and the memory of the process add to our knowledge of how things work.

Science and art are both linked at fundamental levels.