urban ku # 50
Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 08:19AM 
A nostalgic look at yesterday • click to embiggenLast evening a soft warm light enveloped the area. It looked a lot like Spring. However, the 4-day forcast calls for up to 12 inches of snow.
IMO, there's a lesson to be gleaned from Aaron's Cinemascapes, especially for all those who are struggling with what to photograph/how to photograph and how to create pictures with meaning (or, at least with the power to grab the observer's attention with something more than the 'wow' factor).
It's simple really - as the sportswriter "Red' Smith opined about writing, "All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
Aaron is simply doing the equivalent, photography-wise. Just as 'Red' Smith wasn't thinking about his typewriter, Aaron really isn't thinking about 'photography' or things photographic. His photo 'knowledge' runs about as deep as an Adirondack creek during a summer drought, and, he keeps his 'kit' very simple - camera, 1 lens, tripod and a pano head. To keep the Adirondack metaphor going, he's picturing with the photographic equivalent of backcountry minimalist survival gear.
That said, Aaron knows enough and has enough stuff to get the job done - very well, IMO.
What I find almost humorous is his lunch-hour-madness approach to making his pictures. He can pull this off simply because he has 'opened a vein' well before he goes forth, camera in hand, to turn his ideas into pictures. The vein which he is bleeding for his creative life-blood is not a photographic 'how-to' book, rather, it is his life and life-experience upon which he draws - that certain something which resides 'inside' that one needs to address in order to foster that other thing called 'vision' which leads one along the path of meaningful expression.
I bring this up because one of the excuses I most often hear from 'newbies' (and a surprising number of those who should know better) is the 'I-am-not-accomplished-enough-to-make-good-pictures' or 'my-equipment-isn't-good-enough' or 'I'm-not-very-good-with-PhotoShop' etc.-etc. whines. Bulls--t.
Give it up. Get over it. Stop looking to the 'experts' (myself excluded, of course) for advice on how to make good pictures. Forget about gear and technique. Because, if you start leaning how to see inside yourself, unless you are the shallowest of assholes, you'll find something worth-while just waiting to get out. Then, the stuff you need to know/have in order to express it will become like mere child's play.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: Mary Dennis wrote. "So what do we have here? A new sub-genre of art that we can call Lunchbucket Photography? or How we learn to squeeze out every ounce of creativity we have in the moments that Modern Life allows us? I love it!"
Mary also wrote, "I feel a song coming on and I'm calling it "The Shallowest of Assholes." ;-) That will be with me all day..."
publisher's response: Mary, I think the song you're thinking of is Assholes on Parade by Timbuk 3. If you want something to stick with you all day, give it a listen.
The lyrics:
It's an asshole celebration
and they're all out on the street
see them on the sidewalk
hear them shuffling feet
there's 20,000 assholes
in an asshole promenade
step aside good people
there's the assholes on parade
We got assholes for freedom
the assholes for fun
the assholes for jesus
the assholes for guns
assholes for justice
assholes for crime
assholes for assholes
assholes for all time
We got assholes making money
they're making all the rules
taking all our jobs
filling up our schools
Assholes on the water
assholes in the sky
sign that says help wanted,
only assholes need apply
Oh teacher won't you tell me
have I really made the grade
am I head of my class
or am I just another
asshole on parade?
Assholes give the orders,
and assholes row the boat
assholes get elected
cause assholes get to vote
I once heard it said
that old assholes never die
they just lay in bed and multiply
assholes in the morning
assholes every night
assholes to the left and
assholes to the right
There's 20,000 assholes
in an asshole promenade
step aside good people
there's the assholes on parade
Reader Comments (4)
I feel a song coming on and I'm calling it "The Shallowest of Assholes." ;-) That will be with me all day Mark. Thank you...and I mean that sincerely. By the way, that's not the only words of wisdom I gleamed from this post, just so you know.
“Look, I'm not an intellectual - I just take pictures.”
- Helmut Newton
And again...I thank you Mark. I guess it'a an assholy kinda day. ;-)
So this lunchbucket photography--maybe it's the working man/woman's approach to self-expression and all that that connotes huh? Your quote by Helmut Newton seems appropo Aaron.
Don't mean to insinuate that working men/women aren't intellectual; just that the way they conduct their creative life might be a little different than the way a professional artist might, by nature or by neccessity.