Wayne, you said it better than I ever could.
Nubar's work is beyond anything I could achieve in regards to his specific
subject matter. Certain styles of photography I have severely struggled
with and his approach and success point to a mindset and skillset greatly
different than my own. However, can it be learned? Absolutely. But not
everything learnable is applicable to a specific person's ability to use
it. I look at Nubar's photographs and I'm stunned. Could I take those
photographs? Many, yes. But is it my vision? No. Just because I can do
something doesn't mean that it is my personal vision--I'd just be
channelling him.
Every artist wants to create his/her own "style". The holy grail for an
artist is for his/her work to be recognized at a glance. This is where I am
at now as a photographer. I want for people to see one of my photographs
and say "That's a Norton". It's NOT the fame or glory, but I want to leave
something for the world, something new and unique which pushed the art,
craft and technology forward. I have no illusions of being another HCB, AA,
etc., but I'm tired of producing "me too" work. I've been at this long
enough that I'm tired of copying others and getting my ideas from cruising
online galleries or buying photo books. Worse of all, I'm copying MYSELF!
How many times have I returned to a specific place and taken the same exact
photograph that I took the previous dozen times I was there? How many times
have I applied the same tired, yet successful compositional formulas?
This however, is in stark contrast to the normal "pay the bills" photography
which is a commodity. The rules for commodity photography are completely
different. There are only so many things you can do uniquely in a wedding
shoot. Wedding photographers are a very conservative lot--we have to be!
The pictures may seem boring to us, but they are very special to the
customers.
Bill Barber (NSURIT) has been a tremendous inspiration to me. He ventured
into taking technically aweful pictures. Gut wrench blurry, or as my wife
so succinctly puts it "offensively fuzzy." Well, I had NEVER in my life
taken a blurry picture on purpose, but in all honesty, I don't think I ever
took as compelling of a picture as what he was producing. I am happy to say
that I am a proud owner of a "Barber". Thanks to his inspiration, I have
actually experimented with pinhole photography a bit, however, it isn't me.
I'm not "getting it". It's like math, there are certain equations which I'm
never going to understand. But what he has done is opened my creative eyes
to see a world of photography which I was blinded to. Again, we're not
talking commodity bread-and-butter photography, though
For the past month, now, I've been working on a new photography project. One
which is COMPLETLY new to me. I've never done anything like it before, and
a bit of web surfing yielded little evidence that others have rolled in this
direction either. It's actually very exciting and I'm feeling inspiration
which I've never experienced before. Unfortunately, the project is highly
dependant upon film and my non-existant darkroom, so full execution of the
project is slow. Shooting digital and hitting photoshop would be very easy
and quick, but it would obviously be photoshopped.
AG
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