Excellent read! I am glad you found your way out of your block/struggles with photography! It can be challenging to find new photos in familiar places, but if you do it is such a great feeling. Your photos are amazing as always!
It's amazing how experimenting with an art form or medium new to us can do to the one art form we feel at home with. And it goes way beyond graphic arts! Join an acting group and you'll become a better guitar player. Take drawing classes and you'll incorporate new things to your dancing. It's almost like rewiring new paths in your brain.
it's very much like rewiring your brain haha. And It's great. We all need a little shot from time to time to get back on track and mixing up your expression seems a good way to do this.
Had to think about this a bit before replying. I won't lie, I think you're very tangled up in the intellectual aspects and the abstractions (and ideas about things rather than the actual things) and some of that maybe is with more focus on documentary you need those abstractions to have a framework around your work. You need the idea of winnipeg being different than edmonton to sort of give structure.
I think though, my point wasn't abstraction is bad, its critically important. It can just lead to getting stuck. Forget it is a fence, or a house, or a tree, or a street in edmonton, or banal, or in the architecture style you prefer. Look at the actual things in detail. the shapes. the colors. the patterns. the details of lines and cracks and shifts in tones. Nowhere is truly better than anywhere else. The magic of light and texture and pattern are everywhere. Just we have ideas about the things in a place or other, and preferences for things (which are just abstractions). And at the very heart of what I'm saying is when you're stuck in edmonton, hating it, the solution is to forget its edmonton. forget you know the street and realize the space you're in is a vibrant organic thing with constantly changing parts, light, textures, etc. Doing so can free you up mentally and transform a space you think you know.
When you name a thing you're no longer looking at the thing you're looking at the model of the thing you named. A fence is no longer a repeating pattern of whites against darks, its a fence, with all the history of our ideas and experiences tied up with it.
I think what I was trying to say is going to far in either direction is not helpful. It seems like from the words you used you're very literally shooting the ideas of things moreso than the things. Their intellectual and human terms. Which is valid and needed too. But when you get feeling bored, or turned off, maybe try to just look at the spot your in in more detail, letting go of some of the ideas you have and see if it doesn't fire something in you.
Excellent read! I am glad you found your way out of your block/struggles with photography! It can be challenging to find new photos in familiar places, but if you do it is such a great feeling. Your photos are amazing as always!
Thanks susanne! I didn't touch on it much in the post, but i really fell in love again this summer with my prairie.
I have been in love with the prairies of the US and Canada since my first visit in 2011. I totally get it!
It's amazing how experimenting with an art form or medium new to us can do to the one art form we feel at home with. And it goes way beyond graphic arts! Join an acting group and you'll become a better guitar player. Take drawing classes and you'll incorporate new things to your dancing. It's almost like rewiring new paths in your brain.
it's very much like rewiring your brain haha. And It's great. We all need a little shot from time to time to get back on track and mixing up your expression seems a good way to do this.
Fascinating read. I hadn’t thought about our approach to familiar places in that way before so thank you. I love the atmosphere of your photos too.
Thanks andrew, nor had I before I saw that quote. If it helps anyone think about things a bit different and get unstuck, I'm all for it.
Had to think about this a bit before replying. I won't lie, I think you're very tangled up in the intellectual aspects and the abstractions (and ideas about things rather than the actual things) and some of that maybe is with more focus on documentary you need those abstractions to have a framework around your work. You need the idea of winnipeg being different than edmonton to sort of give structure.
I think though, my point wasn't abstraction is bad, its critically important. It can just lead to getting stuck. Forget it is a fence, or a house, or a tree, or a street in edmonton, or banal, or in the architecture style you prefer. Look at the actual things in detail. the shapes. the colors. the patterns. the details of lines and cracks and shifts in tones. Nowhere is truly better than anywhere else. The magic of light and texture and pattern are everywhere. Just we have ideas about the things in a place or other, and preferences for things (which are just abstractions). And at the very heart of what I'm saying is when you're stuck in edmonton, hating it, the solution is to forget its edmonton. forget you know the street and realize the space you're in is a vibrant organic thing with constantly changing parts, light, textures, etc. Doing so can free you up mentally and transform a space you think you know.
When you name a thing you're no longer looking at the thing you're looking at the model of the thing you named. A fence is no longer a repeating pattern of whites against darks, its a fence, with all the history of our ideas and experiences tied up with it.
I think what I was trying to say is going to far in either direction is not helpful. It seems like from the words you used you're very literally shooting the ideas of things moreso than the things. Their intellectual and human terms. Which is valid and needed too. But when you get feeling bored, or turned off, maybe try to just look at the spot your in in more detail, letting go of some of the ideas you have and see if it doesn't fire something in you.