The exercise should have been easy enough. Go to an environment, say a store, and take a bunch of views that tell the story of that place. Each shot should have three different takes, wide, medium and close.
I thought I was being so clever by choosing a streetcar. I wanted something more dynamic than some gift shop in Bourbon Street. And hey, I'm an experienced pro, I can do this.
Typically, it takes me some time to understand what I am photographing, and where my stance is within it. By using the camera, I find what is compelling, and I discover what else I can explore in that environment. I use my camera to deepen my relationship with a place.
Something of the same happened with me and the video camera and the streetcar. It was, however, a disastrous trajectory. My subject is moving. I can't do my three-take thing all at once, so I figure, I'll capture it eventually through the total shooting. But I lose track. I have no idea what I shot close, or wide, or anything except the moment that interests me. Those kids across from me, they're watching the scenery go by with their heads partway out the window. And one really wants to pull the cord. So I wait for that. And get it. And then I get fascinated with the patterns of the passing trees through the window, and film that awhile. And I see people's hands on the poles, and get that. I'm investigating what I'm discovering around me, and the more I look with the camera the more I want to look.
I'm getting footage that is completely beside the point.
It seems that acquiring footage is about acquiring the raw materials for the creative act that will occur later, in post. Dirck uses the cooking metaphor. We're grocery shopping. We're gathering ingredients. We're being taught the skills to find the carrots and the chicken and the oregano. It requires a cold hearted discipline that is in complete opposition to my relationship with the photographic process as I know it.
I'm at that stage of learning where every day I feel like I know less than the day before.
Poor Doug,
Actually, beginner's mind is a great place to be. You just need to remember that you've moved from unconscious incompetency to conscious incompetency. You're 1/2 way there. The next steps are conscious competency, in which you learn to stay focused with your whole mind on what you're doing; then unconscious incompetency, when it all goes subterranean, but you're doing it right anyway.
The cat is lashing my fingers on the keyboard with her tail. She wants me to say good night. Good night! R
Posted by: Robin Shapiro | February 25, 2008 at 12:15 AM