Verisimilitude, But Not Actual Verity

I started as a writer-turned-journalist-turned-photojournalist and have spent the last year immersing myself in non-journalistic photography. Specifically, the art of portraiture and all the technical elements that go into the art form. But when I'm shooting it doesn't feel technical. It feels familiar.

In the past, I've seen what I used to do as very separate from posed photography. But I have since refined the way I think about and execute these images and have found myself reaching for the tools from my previous life.

As a writer I control time. Real time is linear, elapsing quite orderly from the hour we are born until the moment we die. Occasionally it feels slow or fast, but it's always ticking away at the same pace.

On the page, everything is different. A writer with no sense of timing is quickly lost in a sea of quotations and plot devices. Masterful writers extend and contract, bend and twist time until they achieve what all artists are trying to achieve: not simply to tell a story, but to evoke emotions in their audience. Writers do this by creating the illusion of reality. How much of an illusion depends on where one lies between journalist and poet.

As a photographer I control what you see and seek to use these elements to create the same illusion of reality. It's a mixed media process, really, combining constructs that are visually evocative (light, color, backdrops, positioning) with real people and their own evocations (laughter, love, excitement, youth) to create art that looks effortlessly real.

I was thinking about this process while watching Gabe Askew's glorious fan video of Grizzly Bear's Two Weeks:

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

The video is computer generated but uses photographic elements to create a mixed media film that marries the realistic and the fanciful. We see what seems to be real dioramas mingling with animated fishes and birds creating a more beautiful image than either media would create alone. Then, what gives the video emotional output is the appearance that we really are traveling via film across box after box of cardboard cut-outs and the fantastical notion (and sight) of such a dramatic endeavor. (Read more about how the video was made here.)

Whereas I began my career as a photographer trying to capture what I see, even in portraiture, I am now working more and more to create, instead, an artistic rendering of reality. I'm utilizing all the things lay observers and amateur writers take for granted as so-real-there-is-no-need-to-contemplate-their-explanation — things like intensity and color of light, the tilting of heads and subtle expressions — to create verisimilitude, but not actual verity, in my images.

Whereas I once sought strict fidelity to a collective reality, I am now courting photographs that reflect a world containing all those natural elements but appearing much more beautiful. I'm now making art.

Flight (words)

Have you ever noticed that there is a point right before a bird takes off in flight where they pause, glancing upward, then bend and push off on their pointy bird-feet to get the leverage to fly? Watching that quiet moment outside my window gave me the kind of deep recognition you only get from seeing someone do something you've actually done before.

We all try to gauge how well something will go before we jump into it for the first time, but flight seems so intrinsic to being a bird, I assumed they could do it with their eyes closed.

Now that I have the time to think and notice these kinds of things I've been amazed by the sheer effort it takes to accomplish most of the tasks we take for granted — mental and physical. That is, until we can no longer do them easily. I've been resolving to take with me into my everyday life the kind of mindful-appreciation it takes to wonder at the magnitude of each moment without dwelling so that I can actually live in the moment. Just as difficult to do as it was to say.

Do I wish I had a picture of the bird crouched just before take-off? Perhaps. Do I wish I had photographs to stand as place markers for the millions of poetic moments my prose-speaking-mind fails to capture metrically? Sure.

But all of these moments live somewhere in my mind waiting to be recalled and used as fodder for a future creative endeavor. And sometimes it's nice to write without pictures in order to remind you all where I started. Sometimes its nice to diversify my creative energy even if just for a moment before I plunge back into the world of shutter speed and light.

Utah

I've been digging through old pictures this evening. This one was taken in Utah on our honeymoon. Every time I look at this picture I feel relaxed and happy. I remember the warm, dry air and the cool silk shirt I was wearing when I took it. I remember the crunching of coarse sand and pebbles under my tennis shoes and the story I heard several years before when I first visited Zion about how amazed Victorian-era Americans were when they first set eyes on the red rocks in Southern Utah but how it's not quite as amazing to us because by the time a modern-era child is four they've seen thousands of images of the rocks in the backgrounds of advertisements.

Regardless, it's still always breathtaking to me, even in photographs on chilly spring evenings that are far removed from a summer sunset in the southwest.

Then I remember the state of mind I was in then and the person I was. It makes me feel old in a good way. It makes me realize how much I have grown as a person and as photographer since then.

For these reasons, and others, I love this photograph.

Ludovician Bait

We spend our lives trying to make sense of an infiltration of information. From birth, we're assaulted with sounds, sights, smells, tastes and emotions. Then later, thoughts, theories, stories and complex explanations. A big chunk of what makes us who we are is how we put together these pieces, creating our outlook of the world and the way in which we reverberate back what we see.

This reverberation is an artist's work. Some concepts can be manifested simply — love, laughter, friendship, marriage, joy, the kinds of ideas that bind us together on a basic emotional level — through symbolic images or even simple phrases. We can do this with everyday language both verbal and non-verbal. Doing so allows us to create order among the chaos of bombardment.

But there are tons of ideas that bombard us that can't be ordered using conventional methods. It's these ideas — and a longing inside myself to find a way to order them — that drive me to create. And I think that is why art exists — to create an order to the pieces of our lives that seem impossible to order using conventional methods.

Both Joe and I are heavily engrossed in The Raw Shark Texts , which fits right between magical realism and science fiction along a book shelf organized by genre. It's a sort of text-obsessed psychological thriller that evolves by unraveling the mystery of the main character's identity, which was lost along with his memories and personal contacts before the book begins.

The book seems heavily engrossed in trying to create order from the fragments of reality that exist outside of order. It spurred these thoughts in me and is inspiring me to write more.

Black and Whites

I've been growing increasingly fond of black and whites recently. I love vibrant color so much that I am always looking for it when I take photographs. In that way, I'm usually shooting to produce color images. But I love the way black and whites turn the focus of the photograph back to how it is lit. And, in cases where the lighting is nearly divine there is something much more beautiful about black and white photograhs. They look almost instantly classic.

Part of me thinks this is just a trick our minds play on us because old photographs have no choice but to be in black and white. Therefore, a black and white image is "classic." But I think there is something more to the medium that forces the modern photographer, with all the technology in the world at their fingertips, to pause and take notice of the fact that sometimes it's not technology, or even color, that improves an image. Black and white photography takes you back to the basics — back to lighting, back to focusing on the moment.

Although I posted this photograph of my son and his aunt in color on my baby blog, I couldn't resist sharing it in black and white, as well.

Recognition

I made this picture during the tricycle and scooter races at Rambling River Days, the town festival in Farmington, MN. The photographer from our competitor newspaper was shooting the same event and I remember watching and wondering what he was seeing and thinking of what I wanted to see.

It seemed the glory for these kids was at the finish line, so I put on my long lens and hoped for the best. Lo and behold, I'd read the situation right and the above photo is what emerged. I love the drama and whimsy of the image. It's clearly a simple event — the trike tells us this. Yet the emotion, the attempt to capture it for all time on video and the juxtaposition of the teenager in the left corner, inattentively and talking on her cell phone make this image very real for me.

This year, I took second place in our company-wide editorial contests for Best Feature Photo for this shot. It was nice to be recognized, especially for such a fun shot.

I was also excited to win a few writing awards, including a first place for Best Social Issues story for a piece I wrote about Oral Cancer. It's gratifying to win the award, though I'd already been heavily rewarded through feedback I'd received from people who were helped or enlightened by the article.

In both cases, I felt the award winning work was created because I had the ability to recognize the possibility in situations that evolved on their own. That's the beauty in journalism and photojournalism — using knowledge, skill and intuition, not to create, but to capture what has already been created and represent it in such a way that others are able to access its message.

And the Winner is ...

Last night I photographed the Miss Farmington Pageant. Although I took many photos of individual contestants, something about this one struck me. Something about the simultaneous anonymity and specificity of the photograph thrills me. Though you cannot see their faces, the iconic image of pageant contestants holding hands lets the mind decide what they look like. I tried to accomplish something similar with the Rosemount graduation photos I took a few weeks ago — create images that are iconic of a moment in the subject's life, not simply snapshots from an event.

To be able to make images like this, that communicate more than just the sum of the event at which they were captured, without interfering with the subject is the most exciting thing I accomplish as a photojournalist.

To see more pictures of the pageant, head here.

Tonight, I'll photograph Big Wheel Races, Bed Races and other things that happen at city festivals. It's going to be an exciting, but tiring couple of days.

p.s. Let me know what you think of the MyCapture website.

Portrait Story: Planting the Garden

A lot of people think of portraits very traditionally — as head shots and photos with every member of the family facing the camera. These types of pictures have an important place in a family's photographic history because they tell the story of a person, or group of people, capturing their likeness so that in the future you can recognize family traits and see that your youngest child looks exactly like his great-great-grandfather. In fact, these are probably the type of photos you have of your ancestors.

But there is also another kind of portrait session that can tell a more complete story of your family. Many people call these lifestyle portraits or photojournalism style portraits; what is important about them is that they strive to capture more than just the likeness of person or group, but the dynamic interaction that occurs between a person and the world or a person and their family. These types of portraits can be shot in a traditional way — everyone placed or guided into position, as they might be in a traditional portrait, and allowed to talk an interact while the photographer captures those moments — or they can be done in a photojournalistic way — with limited or no posing, while a photographer observes and captures the story without interfering with the action of it.

I shoot portraits in a photojournalistic style because I feel these types of portraits tell more of the story of what it's like to be in a family; and, as a photojournalist, it is what I am best at.

Beyond just "portraits" these sessions can be a photographic story of an event — a birthday, a barbecue or planting the garden. These sessions lend themselves well to slide shows, storyboards, books and photo wall montages. These are the kind of photographs of my family that I cherish most because they remind me of not just who people are, but of what it is like to be with them.