I'm continuing, where I can, to plough my lone furrow in pursuit of photographs that can be fairly described as a bit boring but with, hopefully, "something about them". And, bloody hell, is it hard work. It is supremely easy to take genuinely boring photographs as a ten minute ramble through Flickr will reveal. There are some marvellous exponents of this non-art on that website and some photographers have a real gift for it. We're all guilty of it, even the best of us - have you seen Ansel Adams's portraits?
I like to imagine, though, that my own attempts to capture the mundane in a slightly engaging way might escape that kind of categorisation although it's possible my old talent for self-delusion is just flourishing under the lockdown. Whatever the realities of the situation, I can't say I'm finding it too easy.
Some efforts have strayed from the "boring, but I can see where you're going..." camp - what I'm aiming for, basically - into just plain minimalism. I love minimalism but it's not what I'm trying to achieve here. Here’s one of my recent minimalist efforts:
That, to me, is too interesting to be a boring photo. Here are another couple of minimalist images:
Again, there's not a huge amount happening within the frame but it's still too much. Having thought about it a bit more, it's possible that what I'm describing as boring photos are pictures that are devoid of atmosphere or are in any way exciting or stimulating. Put like that, I'm starting to ask myself why I'm doing it! You've maybe been asking yourself the same thing since I started on this odyssey.
Compare the two pics above with the boring shot at the top of the page. I feel that the two square photos make me think. Does the first image on this post raise any questions? Can’t say it does for me. It just “is”. And yet, I quite enjoy looking at it. It’s peaceful, pleasant, balanced and well-ordered, to me at least.
Below is my latest boring shot (I really need to come up with another term for them). It took careful composition on my recently repaired Olympus OM2. The camera, as I wrote about back here, was suffering from a slipping film advance mechanism. it needed two strokes of the wind-on lever to advance the film. Turns out the fix was quite easy - at least if you have access to a friendly Rick Oleson, a name that will be familiar to some readers.
Rick has a website where he shows how to do a lot of repair work to cameras. I found an old post of his on a photo forum where someone had an OM2 with the same symptoms as mine and Rick provided the solution. I emailed Rick and he sent me a couple of drawings showing what needed to be done. The fix - just a couple of drops of lighter fluid on two sticky clutch pawls - was quick and straightforward, et voila! This particular OM2 had been serviced, believe it nor not, before I bought it for £35 with a 35mm Zuiko a few years ago, and it feels so smooth in use. A real gem.
The careful composition I mentioned (in the pic below) involved things such as where to put the higher up bench in relation to the horizon, how high to have the horizon itself and where to place the white, plastic fork in the foreground. It was in the frame but further over to the left when I came across this scene but it got a little bit of assistance to make the best of it. I don't think photographers are supposed to admit things like that, are we? Think of it as "real life Photoshop" and we'll be OK.
But the pic - do you agree that it’s boring and not minimalist? Or do you think it fits into the minimalism genre? Is it too interesting to be boring? Or should it just be filed under "crap"? As ever, your feedback is welcome, good, bad or indifferent.
I have only recently discovered your blog and have spent many happy hours reading through it. Thank you for your efforts. Regarding your recent work I doubt if you can actually take a "boring photo" you have just too good an eye for that...perhaps maybe blindfolded!!
ReplyDeleteYou're too kind, Tom. Glad you're enjoying the site, though.
DeleteI rather like them actually Bruce. When I was at school, a teacher said if you really want to minimalise stuff, partly close your eyes and look at the scene - it's always worked for me.
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I can see how that would help, Phil. I've always liked minimalism. There just seems to be so much happening in the world and within a lot of pics that it can make your head hurt.
DeleteWell now, the first one could be either an example of how to place telegraph poles on The Thirds, or how not to place the horizon in the middle. Perhaps it falls between other stools too. Is it about poles or cows?
ReplyDeleteI like the others. The two square ones reinforce each other by being the same composition (more-or-less) using different bits of the (real) world.
Keep looking for an other word. Martin Parr has already stolen "boring" from you. However did he know what you were going to do?
The first one could be about poles and cows: they needn't be mutually exclusive. Or it could be about man's intrusion into a pastoral landscape - one that really only exists because of man's intrusion. I was attracted to this one for the same reason as the other boring shots - the challenge of arranging a few spare elements in a harmonious fashion within a 3:2 frame. Taken individually, I don't think the "boring" images work too well but I think they would work as a set or as a self-published book. They would certainly get me off to sleep at night.
DeleteIf your photos were paintings, an "arty farty" person would be giving it some, " if you are not seeing "it", you know nothing about art", whatever "it" is. What is it? Please answer using less than 10,000 words.
ReplyDeleteDon’t go there, Norm! I’m not a great one for trying to explain things like photographs in words so I can’t help you. Maybe David N (above) could help. Thanks, by the way, for the tip about the Paterson grain screen. I decided just to keep doing what I’m doing at the moment. I sometimes have fanciful ideas and I’m usually glad that I didn’t carry them through.
ReplyDeleteModern way of speaking in the UK, "it's like boring, like minimalist it's like photography, you use like a camera". So you could describe your project as, Like Boring, except that it would be as annoying as the misuse of the word like :-).
ReplyDeleteIt could be about cows and poles together, certainly. They don't seem to be taking much notice of each other.
ReplyDeleteThe picture doesn't seem to be able to make up its own mind, so why should we? Is it Cows with Poles or Poles with Cows? It has ended up as Some Poles and Some Cows with Some Horizon. I suspect the next frame, the one you didn't take, would have been cracker.
I'm trying to explain why we might think it's boring but I think I'm only pushing the envelope of writing boring text.
This is what happens when you're waiting for a timed delivery and can't go out of earshot of the doorbell.
The thing that gets me is,when I look at minimalist photographs my attention is engaged. I look at them for longer than I intend, sometimes I conclude that a photograph is boring, sometimes I see things That have a deeper meaning. Minimalist or boring, only the viewer can decide.
ReplyDeleteHello?
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