PODCAST
Dear friends, to promote my upcoming Seoul South Korea street photography workshop experience, I wanted to share some thoughts on discovering your own personal soul in photography:
1. What is your soul?
The first question which comes to mind is what is your soul? What is the significance of it?
I don’t really think about the soul in a New Age spiritual way. I see it as very pragmatic. Basically your soul is a combination of your personality, ego, self consciousness, your memories, and your personality.
Basically, your soul is you.
2. What does the soul mean in the context of photography?
My thought is in the context of photography, your soul is imputing your own personality into your photos. In another way, you could think of your soul in photography as your own personal style, your style being like your own personal paintbrush. To show your own brushstrokes in your photos is your photographic style, and your soul.
3. Aesthetics
When it comes to aesthetics, everyone is drawn in a different way. For myself, I see black-and-white as the most sublime form of aesthetic and photography and also art. I have a very deep and strong connection with calligraphy, and abstract black-and-white paintings.
In photography, you choose your own paintbrush in your own aesthetics. For example, you make the conscious decision whether to shoot film or digital, which format to use, and what “look” you want.
For example if you shoot film, you have an array of choices. For example, you could choose whether to shoot 35 mm, medium format, large format. You could shoot color film or black-and-white film. You could push your film or pull your film.
In digital, you could shoot digital medium format, full frame, APS-C, etc. Also you can shoot JPEG or RAW. And also if you should JPEG, you could decide what filter to use. In raw, you could create a preset to create a certain process look, in which your aesthetic suits your artistic taste.
The aesthetic you choose is very important.
4. Consistency?
My personal thought is philosophically, your soul is always changing. Even Heraclitus says, “you never step in to the same river twice”. This means that your environment is always changing, and you are always changing. Therefore your experience will always be different.
Therefore in the context of photography, we should take the same approach. This means allow your photographic style to change. Shoot different subject matter, process your photos differently, and choose different processing techniques. Consistency is for suckers.
But why is there the bias that one must always be consistent in the artwork? I think it is a marketing thing. It is easier to market yourself if you are consistent, difficult to market yourself if you are always changing and evolving.
However, if you think about great artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, etc., their style and subject matter is always in a sense of flux, they just followed their curiosity.
5. You are always re-discovering your soul
Discovery, and reddiscovery. Even if you travel to the same place again, you will reddiscover something new. Either in yourself or the environment, or the people there.
And this is why nostalgia is such a bad thing. When it comes to nostalgia and romanticism of the past, we seek refuge in the consistent. We don’t like change. Yet, the reality is things are always changing. And this is what makes life so beautiful.
Therefore in your photography, and your soul, allow yourself to always discover it, and rediscover it anew.
ERIC
EXPERIENCE SOMETHING NEW
If this gave you deeper insight about your photography, and some interesting pragmatic ideas on the soul, feel free to re-publish or share with a friend!
