Sunday 14 February 2010

Creating the wowless factor!

I have a vision of someone I envy, I have no evidence but I’m sure this person, exists… This person, a photographer, lives in a world which isn’t governed by the internet, they make photos for the love of the art, hopefully they sell prints and their art is appreciatively hung on many a wall.

Unfortunately I’m not that soldier. When I set out on the path to become a landscape photographer I started uploading my photos to Flickr in the hope to gain some recognition from my fellow photographers. This can be an addictive practice, collecting “wow” comments and icons of waving kittens can certainly boost the ego of the budding photographer.

Thankfully, as I’ve developed as a landscape photographer I’ve kicked the Flickr habit and only post there occasionally now with the aim of showing some of my Flickr friends what I’ve been up to and to get feedback on some of the photos I’m undecided about.

Last week, in a moment of weakness, I decided to join 1x.com which for those of you who don’t know, is a similar site as Flickr except for the fact that all the photos that are submitted are judged for worthiness by the site’s moderators. Other 1x.com members can also vote on whether a photo is worthy of inclusion.

At first inspection this does make for a website with generally impressive photos (I only looked at the landscape section but I’m sure this is also true of the other portfolios). But, and it’s a big but – the body of work there suffers from the same problem as all the other online social networking photo sites, its pretty much full of photos with an instant hit of ‘wow’. It’s the photography equivalent of eating bag after bag of your favourite flavoured crisps – great to begin with but sooner or later you’re going to get sick of them (perhaps not the best analogy, I can eat A LOT of crisps before I get sick of them!).

So this brings me to Mr(s) Internetless, a photographer who doesn’t seek recognision from social networking sites, someone who has enough self conviction to believe in their own creative skill, someone who doesn’t feel the need to churn out endless dynamic clichés to please the eye of the internet gallery visitor. The problem for me is that these internet ready images only really work on the internet, do people actually put these things on their walls? I for one, wouldn’t want an instant hit photo in my lounge, shouting at me every time I walked in the room.

I would much rather have a piece of work that operates on a subtle level, a quiet image that portrays a mood and has feeling, something I want to keep coming back to – something wowless! That’s what I aim to do with my own photography, I aim for a subtle pallet, tone and balanced graphic compositions (I’m not of course saying that I always achieve it!). My desire to find my own set of rules means I often ignore the obvious – golden hours, thirds, digital aspect ratios. This does mean that I stand less chance of being accepted by the moderators as 1x.com but so what!

I urge any photographer to seek out their own way of seeing, develop their own style and photograph what they find interesting, if that isn’t starburst suns kissing the horizon over a time blurred sea that’s all good – embrace the wowless! And if your more subtle photos don’t attract waving kitten awards on Flickr, don’t be disheartened, sooner or later your work is going to start to attract the attention from people who appreciate the considered subtleties of your work.