[Kombisaurus]

The sports and event shooting I've been doing over the last year or so has been a fantastic experience for me. I love doing it and I continue to learn a lot from it, and I'm happy that it has finally begun to pay for my gear. I'm not about to quit my day job, but it's nice to be able to buy a lens guilt-free knowing it was paid for by my photography rather than my 9-5 job.

The skills, habits and workflow I've been developing through this sports and event shooting has influenced all my other photography too. This is mostly for the better, but also a little for the worse.
I am more efficient and disciplined in my approach to photography now. The camera feels like an extension of my body and I can operate it blindfolded with confidence. I'm more aware of action around me. I'm beginning to think ahead and anticipate people's actions rather than responding to things after they happen. I also look not just for the action, but for reactions of other people moments after which often make the best photos. These are just a few of the many useful skills that get practiced every time I shoot sports or events. I've certainly still got a lot to learn, but compared to 12 months ago I feel I'm making progress.

I spent a lot of time streamlining my workflow at the end of last year and have cut my post-processing time by well over half while easily doubling my yield of keepers which I'm very happy with. These days I feel I can get the shot I'm after with much less time and fuss than I ever used to. The shots might still be lousy, but I get those lousy shots easier than ever!

But all that comes at a cost.
I miss the slow relaxed style of exploration I used to really enjoy, and a streamlined workflow means I no longer get many "lucky mistakes" that lead me somewhere completely new. I have certain expectations of myself now, and that worries me. I feel like I'm painting myself into a corner.

A suitable traffic metaphor might be that I've replaced a slow windy road with a freeway... It's great to be able to get from A to B more quickly than ever, but when I'm not in a hurry I no longer sit back and enjoy the journey. Progress is great, except when it isn't.

So one of the reasons I ordered some photography books recently was to inspire me to slow down and get back to basics a bit and re-open my mind to all the infinite possibilities. To get off the freeway and back on the slow windy road and enjoy the ride.

But now I've been doing nothing but thinking and reading about photography for a few weeks and done very little actual shooting. It's time I got off my butt and out the door with my camera in hand! The ideas are all out there waiting for me to come to them.

I'd be interested to hear how are other people are feeling their own photography is going?
Are you full of enthusiasm? Bored? Making steady progress? Where do you see yourself going?

[Pavel]

Kombi, do you ask yourself why did you get into photography in the first place? Why are you still at it? What would you like to do with it, but may not yet be able to do it? May be this is in part what you meant when you talked about going back to basics. To me, these are the questions I would ask myself about photography and othe things in my life. I was struck while reading what you wrote that you talked about new skills and new ability to see things. These are very important as tools and being more aware of your surroundings does enrich your life. What I did not hear you writing about is that this was a march in a direction in which you feel compelled to go. Is there something about photography that you have a need to do? Are you doing it? If you are not, what is standing in the way?

I love nature and I would like to capture its essence. It is of course not an attainable goal. As my skills as a photographer improve, my skills as reviewer improve more and I find myself further and further from my goal, even as I recognize the progress I am making. I am not despairing - it is a challenge measured in how far you get, rather than by far you miss the target. To me capturing nature is not necessarily creating exact likeness of nature, but rather something of its spirit. 6 monhs ago, my chief limitation was inability to see things. Some of the books you are getting are great and should help you get there. I was for a while a member of a critique site and I looked at thousands of photos ranging widely in quality and insight and that experience helped me improve in my ability to see things and in composition, as well perhaps in other areas. I sill have miles to go in the are of seing things, and my ideas are very derivative, but I see my greatest limitation right now as post-processing. I am just not able to process image to look like I see it in my head. Consequently my immediate objective is to improve in using CS3, as Lightroom was not sufficient to get me where I want to get. Eventually, I will come back to my limited ability to see things around me, but it will be on a higher technical level. Through this process, my ultimate goal remains the same - to capture the essence of nature.

I got a sense that may be you are trying to renew yourself and that you have all these skills, but thatmay be your ultimate goal has changed or is not well defined. It will help you, I think if you come back and answer the question about the goal to yourself.

Please do not feel offended by my preaching (a perfect profession for me, I despair). I am in part talking to myself and I am writting the thoughts that your interesting posting triggered in me.

Pavel

[Kombisaurus]

Hi Pavel,

Thanks for your very considered response (and not at all preachy). Those are excellent questions you ask and it has really got me thinking. To be honest I don't think I can provide good answers at the moment.

I'm actually not sure what my photographic goals are. I just know I get a lot of satisfaction from creating a photograph I'm happy with and I have a desire to constantly improve.
I grew up in an environment that was very encouraging towards art and creative expression and although I mostly had other interests during childhood I always felt that any kind of art was just a natural way to express, much like talking or listening to music. It isn't something that needs a reason, it just makes me feel good when I do it. Just as I pick and choose my favourites among many genres of music, so too I find myself loving all kinds of photography. I really don't want to specialise in any particular genre; variety is one of the things I love most about photographs.

I see photographs I admire and think to myself "wow, I wish I could've thought of that". I want ideas of that calibre to pop into my head and have the skill to then capture them.
I feel lately I've been slowly working on improving my ability to capture such photos, but in the process have restricted my ability to think up the good ideas in the first place. This is what I want to address.

There are also a few other things in my life at the moment which are not related to photography but are having a strong influence on things, making it more difficult to pin down exactly where I want my photography to go.
I need to have a bit more of a think about these goals I think...

[matthew]

I am more efficient and disciplined in my approach to photography now. The camera feels like an extension of my body and I can operate it blindfolded with confidence. I'm more aware of action around me.

The biggest thing that's changed in my photography is that I've conned my way into a job at a camera store. This has quite effectively extinguished my interest in cameras-as-toys, which is distinct from cameras-as-tools, and unfortunately was a big part of why I enjoyed taking pictures. Added to that is the fact that I'll spend more time handling various Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Sony cameras than I do my own and I've actually unlearned much of the automatic responses that I'd developed with my own camera(s).

So one of the reasons I ordered some photography books recently was to inspire me to slow down and get back to basics a bit and re-open my mind to all the infinite possibilities. ... Are you full of enthusiasm? Bored? Making steady progress? Where do you see yourself going?

I've recently picked up the book Tao of Photography, and am winding my way through it at a suitably relaxed speed. It's reminding me a lot of what I already know, and telling me some new things that might try to incorporate into my shooting. Since so much of my photography involves tension, it has been an interesting change of speed. One of the interesting points that it makes is the interpretation that Cartier-Bresson's much-endorsed 'decisive moment' isn't a moment of peak action - he wasn't a sports photographer - but rather it was the idea of one particular moment in which the elements of the frame fall naturally into place. That's something I can relate to, and it's the sort of thing that I'd like to be more attuned to.

[wulinka]

Kombi, great thoughts here.
I feel you, sometimes I get a similar feeling that I have got too stuck on one idea and am less creative than I used to be.
So well, I am shooting RAW now and I learned a lot about post processing, composition, a bit about lighting, and yes, my pictures are more predictable,
which used to be something I longed for. But having got to this point I sometimes miss what you called lucky mistakes, or lucky incidents I could say.
I look at some of my older pictures and think, wow, I haven't done this kind of shooting in a long time.

In China it was, I guess, that fact that I was constantly surrounded by things shouting for me to take a picture of them, so that I did not find the time
to do any abstracts or try something new. The small world stuff was my first step away from very jounalistic work in a long time.

As for what you said, Pavel, I think you contributed some great thoughts! For myself though, I would not say that there should be one single important goal to reach. I rather think that at different stages of our lives we might have various goals and wishes. If, like you seem to do, one has one big goal, it can certainly help you to motivate yourself, but not necessarily everybody needs to have one.

Kombi, I see great progress in your sports photography and it must be great to make some money off it.
You have learned a lot from doing it, I would think you can apply these new assets to other fields of photography.
When was the last time you went out with your cam to "just look around", look at the world through the lens?
when you did not think of having to get a shot right? There should be time for this kind of shooting, where you can put away some
of what you have learned and just trust you intuition. And then maybe you will be surprised about the shots you take,
and without a need to obey any rules they could be great stuff. Because you still are a photographer in you heart,
not just in your brain.

I guess this is a good time to say that this spring I applied at four German universities for programs in photography, and
I was not accepted at any of them. they won't give you an explanation of their refusal. But part of me thinks that maybe they saw
my stuff and felt like I has already to stuck with one style, not intuitive and creative enough.. (of course I don't know if this is really the reason, but
anyway it is very sad)

To some extend I think it happens to all of us, we find our preferences, shape our style, our pictures become recognizable as a "Kombi" or an "Uli" shot and we might feel like we have lost something. But I think it is all still there and if your brain sometimes dominates the heart , as long as we
realise it, I think we can still find our intuitive creativeness.

Hope I make sense...

Greetings!

Uli

[Kombisaurus]

One of the interesting points that it makes is the interpretation that Cartier-Bresson's much-endorsed 'decisive moment' isn't a moment of peak action - he wasn't a sports photographer - but rather it was the idea of one particular moment in which the elements of the frame fall naturally into place. That's something I can relate to, and it's the sort of thing that I'd like to be more attuned to.

That's interesting to hear you say that Matthew because I believe one of the great misconceptions about good sports photography is that it needs to be about the "big moment" of peak action as you say, which is not the same as the "decisive moment".
The "big moments" in sports are certainly some of the best times to be a spectator... scoring a goal, crossing the finish line, the feeling when the final siren goes, etc... they can all be great moments to experience in the crowd. But more often than not they make lousy photos.
The "decisive moment" on the other hand might be the moment that compresses an entire story into a single image, and it can be contained in something as simple as the expression of a player sitting on the bench, the way the light falls on a player walking back into position, the reaction of a player after a big moment has happened, or indeed the tension in a shot where the viewer knows something is about to happen. They are often small moments. Looking for a Cartier-Bresson "decisive moment" in sport is exactly what we should be doing.
I think it's more about capturing the emotion than the action. The faces can tell the story and the action can be implied. But I find it very difficult as a photographer to look for the best photo in amongst the best action. It is hard to look past the action but not ignore it. By it's nature sport is usually fast moving and constantly changing, requiring very quick and decisive thinking and the ability to think on one's feet. It's a great way to lean to shoot instinctively. That's where the skill comes in, and where I have a long long way to go.

The tradional sports photos that have been gracing the back pages of our newspapers for decades have a lot to answer for IMHO. They are often full of lazy, boring, safe images of action with little thought and even less creativity. No wonder it doesn't get much recognition. It is only in the last decade that some amazingly good photographers have realised shooting sports is not an excuse to be lazy, but rather an opportunity to get some amazing shots in a unique setting. And finally the rest of the sports photography world is beginning to cotton on to that and we're more commonly seeing a bit of creativity and emotion in sports photos.

I can't wait to see some of the photos that will surface after the Olympics next month. Unfortunately the ones that will come out during the games will likely be all flashy and commercial and all much the same, but when the games have finished and the dust has settled, I'm sure there will be some breathtaking stuff rise to the surface. I remember some truly truly amazing images coming out of Athens, and to a lesser extent Sydney.

Sorry for the rant but it is something that rarely seems to be discussed.

[Kombisaurus]

Thanks Uli.. I'm glad it's not just me who thinks this way.
I'm sorry to hear about your experiences with your Uni applications, especially if they give you no explanation. How are you supposed to better address their requirements if you don't know what they are looking for? I feel for you.

...we find our preferences, shape our style, our pictures become recognizable as a "Kombi" or an "Uli" shot and we might feel like we have lost something.

I find it ironic that we all spend so long "searching for our own style" only to find that we end up a prisoner to it.
I really admire your small world series because you were trying to break out of what had become the norm for you. It is what I need to do as well.

I do have an idea for a series that will really challenge me and I think has the potential to be great if I can pull it off. Unfortunately it also has the potential to fall flat on its face! But this is good because I need to take more risks. I've been playing it too safe lately.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts on this. It is really helpful.

[Zig]

Excellent thread and responses.
I'm rather surprised at myself that I'm not taking photography seriously...yet I'm not really sure what I mean by seriously. I seem to be "working through stuff", so that even the creative things I do seem to be icing that not's woth a bean unless the cake's ingredients are right. Pavel, mate, you'll have to forgive me, I do speak pictorially by nature:/...
If it makes sense my saying this, I'm finding the musical side of my, er, output to fulfill my visual needs...I tend to "see" via music more skillfully than with a camera, and I confess to being not "hungry enough" to want to change this at present. At any rate, my creativity(or desire to yabber away in a language other than words in order to get some kind of homeostasis), tends to shift about, or really to block and unblock, and I'm maybe not as single-minded about it at the mo.
Actually, the weather has been, and is, complete pants, which doesn't help.
Mind you, one thing I must get round to, is "pretending" I've only got 10 exposures to play with, as I was really miserly and thoughtful when using the Pentax67...my metering has gone a bit sloppy too(aw, I'll rescue it at conversion). I've also developed a taste for Oatibix recently...and I'm sure there's some kind of holistic outworking there.
That last bit was not serious.

[Irma]

We share pictures all the time, and very seldom we have a comon ground just to talk about what each of us is after in terms of photography. I like to read all responses because it also let me know you all much better.

I posted some thoughts about my photography in Matthew'sAssignement #77 Vision and searching for pictures to say something I bought some books. The one by Freeman Patterson has been the one that has given me a lot of light in my searching. It is amazing what this book has done so far, specially in the sense of expression. I have found myself digging out some old picture I thought they were "useless", and see them with new "eyes", and asking again and again, why didn't I continue with the idea? it was great! Reading this book has shown me again my lack of confidence in my work, too.

Something else I am going to do is to work my pictures in little projects to complete ideas. When searching my old pictures I could see that there are unfinished works, things that might need a bit more labor and have great potential. I want to be able to create a series that all together says something, that projects my way of seeing reality.

I am someone who really cares about the response of a forum/community about my pictures as they are the only ones who see my work, not to have a positive response is ok, it always comes with feedback and all is part of the learning process, I might find great ideas to consider in further attempts, but to be ignored is just frustrating. My only thought about feeling ignored sometimes, is that probably my pictures don't suit the audience I am showing my work. That is also something I will consider in the future.

All these thoughts come when my photography will be taking a long break. I will be flying to Mexico next weekend and I will be working with my family to get some things done, so there will not be too much time for pictures. I will be there for about 6 weeks, and when I come back we will be moving to a new flat. Soon after, in November I have my exhibition in Eutin. So no time to start new projects at the moment.

What I am planning to do this time is to continue reading my books, that I have found very useful and encouraging.

I went to the cafe yesterday as they finished all renovations and they told me they want to have my pictures back. I am at the moment working in some little series (2 or 3 pictures by theme) to hang in the walls. I am very happy to see that the owners are very enthusiastic about the idea of changing my pictures every now and then so I can show more of what I am doing. I see all this as a window to the real world to show my work and get feedback too.

I know I will be missing in the following months my peace and quiet to take my pictures, and my activity in forums, but I also think that all this will bring new and different light to my photography in the future...

[aine-caitlin]

Recently, I was asked to be a second shooter for a wedding photographer. Not too long ago, I would have declined the opportunity, being too afraid that I wouldn’t do a good job or that I’d let him down, but he said he had seen my work and had complete confidence in me. I decided not to let fear stop me, so I said yes and it turned out great. I was very happy with my shots. He said we work well together, and he wants me to shoot another wedding with him in August. I’m really looking forward to it.

My main purpose in pursuing photography is simply to record life, to create images of objects, people, places, or moments that I find intriguing, or that might have meaning to someone else, but from an uncommon point of view or one that is somehow personal to me. When some of you recognized my sunflower photo as more than just a picture of a sunflower, that meant a lot to me. I want to convey in my photos that there is more to be seen than meets the eye.

I haven’t really worked toward a particular style. If I have a style, it has simply evolved. I actually like it when someone tells me they recognize my photographic style. To me that means they’re beginning to know me. I’m having fun with my photography, always learning something new and trying to improve my skills, and it doesn’t hurt that now I’m making a little money with it too.

[Zig]

The "uncommon viewpoint"....yes, that desire to see and convey but with the care to engage with and invite those who feel the journey to your viewpoint is worth sharing. Sorry, I can't put it in a better way. Another way would be: I feel no inclination, usually, to draw alongside the photographer or person who is seeing..yet every once in a while there is, in the photo, clear evidence and fingerprints of someone worth getting to know. Mind you, I'm sure we all do have our own ways of seeing...it's just that I'm attracted to some ways of seeing and feel "included"...yet in others' pics I feel as if they're actually just "using" me to sound off in some way about something I find uninteresting or shallow. Just my opinions here I guess.