[by Sean Kernan]
Assisting is a step toward being a photographer, a way of learning how things are done, how they work.
That’s all very important, but you really need to keep your creative work going. That’s what will really make you a photographer. That’s where you learn what no one can teach you. That’s where your career will ultimately come from.
Knowing workflow and procedures is important, but not more important than doing the actual work.
[by Sean Kernan]
The reasons to do it are obvious. The best way expand your thinking is to just do something. I suggest going to Paris.
Not that you’ll think more there. You might even think less, but your thoughts will all be new, fresh. With the micro-gravities (shopping, picking up the cleaning, all that stuff) removed from your life there’ll be room for a whole new set of experiences. Give your mind a little time and it will be thrilled to spend hours forming your new thoughts into a new you. Call it Traveler’s Rapture.
Can’t swing Paris this year? So take the afternoon and head for some place half an hour beyond your usual circuit. Park your car, leave the camera in the trunk (this is important), and start walking. Walk until you’re bored. Slow down. Sit. Listen to sounds. Make up stories about things you see. Use your imagination. Don’t go home for dinner. Stay until dark.
What do you remember in life? All those times when everything went just as planned? Of course not. So take this little trip right now and you can have an afternoon that you’ll remember all your life. And when you come home, you won’t be quite the same person that left.
[by Sean Kernan]
I’ve been riding a long slow curve from the activity of making photographs through the question of why I pursue it so hard, visiting the question of how we create, and winding up (for now) at the question of why we create in life-size our versions of how everything should be, using photos, movies, novels, art of all kinds, and also our life stories and beliefs.
So my reading list includes:
First, The Making of a Midsummer Night’s Dream, a diary of the rehearsal of the landmark Peter Brook production of Shakespeare’s play. The rehearsal process was a culmination of many inventions in the way theater discovered a play and what was in it, and people who saw the play say it changed their lives. It certainly changed the way theater was done. But the fascinating thing to me was that whole rehearsal was extremely uncomfortable for those involved. No one really had any sense of the scope of what they were doing or how it would influence things going forward. The experience was sometimes exhilarating and more often frightening at the time, and often seemed doomed…until the play opened and the amazed responses began to come in. I usually feel insecure in the middle of projects too, so this book reminds me that that is what I’m supposed to feel if things are going as they should.
Also, Laurie Robertson-Lorant‘s biography, Herman Melville, whose a vision so great and so far advanced, and his insistence on it so complete, that he gradually cut himself off from those around him. Of course, he didn’t know he was writing the Great American Monumental Novel, and that might not have been a compensation? Did he even have a choice?
And Son of the Morning Star, Evan Connell’s reading of the national psyche’s that led up to Custer’s demise and the exploitive mythmaking that followed. I read it as another kind of insistence, that of a young nation forming its identity by pursuing a belief in its own “manifest destiny” and remaining blind to the consequences on others and on itself. (This is something Melville was particular critical of, as he witnessed missionaries and diplomats taking it on themselves to “civilize” the cultures of the Pacific.)
The thread that I have followed through all of these is that there is often—or always—something behind what we’re aware of that is bigger than anything we have in mind, that leads to a much fuller outcome. It can be for good or ill, but it is there. Can a wider awareness harness it? That’s the next question, isn’t it? Anyone know any good books on the topic?
But I have all of Stieg Larsson series in front of me too. Maybe I’ll run a little sidetrack into that next, lest things get too serious. On the other hand, knowing new stuff is fun too.
[by Sean Kernan]
If you’re not busy enough with work and also too busy trying to find some, try this: volunteer. Take some of that time and give it away.
Be a Big Brother or Sister, coach a kid’s team, mentor a child. take your charming dog to a nursing home every week. There are so many people in this world who need help, and it shouldn’t be hard to reach out and find a few of them. It’s probably best to do something that involves real human connection, though working at some kind of wider-ranging effort like fundraising would be fine too.
When I’m busy at a job I feel energized, but there’s often a little ambiguity in the mix, and I find myself asking if the world needs me to urge it buy another thing. But I know that the volunteering I do is unambiguously right and good. And having one clearly good thing in my life seems to re-balance everything else.
In his book, The Gift, Lewis Hyde talks about the huge importance of the things we pass around our society as gifts with no compensation. We can’t sell love or hope or compassion or so many of the other things that make us human. But giving them away brings enormous returns.
[by Sean Kernan]
Remember this game? It stands for The Exciting Game Without Any Rules, and it’s a card game that is played by a number of sharps and one patsy.
The way it works is that a few basic poker-like rules are put out and the game starts. At some point the patsy thinks he has won a hand. But then it is explained to him that there is actually an exception to the rule by which he thinks he won.
So if he comes up with two pair and goes to claim the pot, it is pointed out that if three of the cards are black and one is red, then the two-colored pair doesn’t count and it also negates the other pair. That kind of thing.
The fun—if you think that tormenting innocents is fun—lies in the making up of increasingly baroque rules and watching the growing confusion of the patsy player. The most successful outcome is when the patsy never gets what is happening. The worst would be if they did get it and went postal.
You get the idea, Now tell me, doesn’t this feel like some of the projects we do for clients? I’ve certainly had jobs in which I feel I’m being gamed in this way. But when it happens, none of the other players are actually in on it. In fact, they are as confused as I am but they don’t want to admit it.
So it becomes a special skill to get people to be definitive, to fix their positions—for them as well as for you—and to collate all the different and often conflicting agendas and put something out there that everyone can sign off on.
It can feel like you’re in a special corner of hell when this happens, but really it is part of the job. And by being the one with feet on the ground, you serve your clients by just getting them clear enough to get work done. You can’t bill for it, but the clarity you bring to a situation can be one of the reasons that people come back to you.
