LIVING IN THE FAST LANE

Warning: Old school rants ahead!

Why do you suppose we’ve become so obsessed with speed and instant gratification?

Got my first ATM card when I was in graduate school, so that’ll give you a sense of my era. Fax machines appeared after I started my first job. We began carrying a computer - the size of a beer cooler - into the field after I’d been working a couple of years. Legitimately portable cellphones made their appearance 12-13 years into my career. Amazon started as a bookseller online and didn’t begin to offer…well, damn near everything…maybe ten years ago? Fifteen? When I was a kid we actually went inside McDonald’s, and not just to order but to eat!

These developments were supposed to make our lives easier, and they did! What used to require a staff - like, say, word processing - can now be done by individuals. Massive multi-column and multi-row spreadsheets were done by hand, in pencil, and could take days, but with the advent of Excel can be completed in hours, maybe even minutes. You want a book, socks, a fishing pole AND a drone? Amazon can have that to you tomorrow, maybe even today.

And aside from Starbucks, we can have our comestibles and beverages delivered into our hands from a drive-up window in minutes and quickly be on our way. Even Starbucks only takes a little longer than that.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

But something more nefarious snuck in alongside these otherwise magnificent developments.

Because we can get those spreadsheets and documents done so quickly, employers began to expect more from us, expectations that lengthened our workdays and gave us even more to do. Because of wireless communications capabilities built on top of those expectations, our availability essentially moved from 8-9 hours a day to dang near 24/7.

We even became personally afflicted by this ruthless compression of time and expectation. There’s an old saying about stopping to smell the roses, and another about how nothing worthwhile comes easy. A more recent variant: Chill out, bro. But I don’t believe we think in those terms anymore. So when we don’t get what we want - hell, what we deserve - then life just flat out sucks and somebody’s head, by God, needs to roll.

I’m probably not the only one to suffer from a bit of cognitive dissonance over all of this.

DON’T DRINK THE SNAKE OIL…

These trends have elbowed their way into creative pursuits too. I don’t know if photography is particularly vulnerable because we work with a machine and we process images on computers, but this obsession with speed, like a virus, has absolutely infected our ecosystem.

First it came for the camera. Who needs a “real” camera when you can do so much with your phone? Aperture, shutter speed? Don’t bother me with details, my cellphone handles all of that.

Came for the processing too, with offers of instant photographic gratification, likely driven in part by social media and the likes it doles out to us, and certainly the winners crowned as influencers. We all want that brass ring.

It usually goes something like this: Why waste precious time processing pictures, stop spending so much time in front of your computer editing and redirect that time to getting behind your camera doing what you love (i.e. taking, not making, photos and, yes, there is a difference). Then, the sales pitch: Buy this software, or these presets, or those profiles, and you can instantly, damn near magically, transform your photography and get your life back at the same time. And, oh yeah, your friends will be amazed.

It’s like a get-rich-quick scheme or a weight loss plan requiring no alteration to your diet.

There’s another old saying about things sounding too good to be true. And while I won’t suggest there’s zero value to presets, profiles, and the latest AI-powered photo editing software, I am going to suggest you might be selling yourself short by taking these admittedly easy to use shortcuts instead of actually learning how to process images.

It’s kind of like the difference between buying a lottery ticket and crossing your fingers, and actually earning a living and establishing a long-term financial plan.

GUILTY AS CHARGED

Did I use these tools when I started. I did…guilty. Why? Because they were easy! And there were some great looks because, make no mistake, the pros who create these things know what they’re doing. The picture above is a great example, an HDR image made of three merged exposures and edited with one click. They know how to create a “signature look” because they’ve taken the time to learn how to process their imagery. When you buy a preset or a profile you’re paying the creator for the knowledge they’ve developed.

You’re also paying them for their style or their look. Ruminate on that for just a moment.

For me, it came as a realization that my images looked just like those presented by the guy who’d built the presets. At first I thought, “Hey, that’s cool.” But then I started to think, “Hang on…do I really want my stuff to look like his stuff?” I began to wonder why I was using his style and not creating my own. I don’t know, maybe we all have to go through this process. But I started wondering why I should allow my photographs, captured with my eyes, my brain and my heart, to be made in a style that he’d created to realize the vision he’d built for images he’d captured with his own eyes, brain, and heart.

Again, not saying the images didn’t look good; they did. But I began to feel like they weren’t really mine, they didn’t reflect whatever the heck my vision was. That’s when I decided to truly learn how to evaluate and edit my work.

ANSEL…AGAIN

I mentioned this concept previously so I need to give attribution where it’s due: it was Ansel Adams who said you don’t just take a photograph, you make one. I think what he meant by that, at least in part, is that it’s not just the field work that counts. Yes, absolutely, what you do in the field is important; you wouldn’t have an image otherwise. But that’s just capturing the data, if you will, in the best form possible to allow you to work on it - process it - later. And it’s the processing where the tools of the darkroom - analog or digital - are used to turn that photo into something special, transforming that data into art.

Simply put, an unedited image is an incomplete image. So any suggestion that time spent processing is wasted is, at best, disingenuous, or, more likely, just lousy advice.

ON MICHELANGELO AND INEFFICIENCY

This is where I say, “Slow the heck down"!” Really, why are we so hellbent on rushing through the process? I’m pretty sure Instagram and Facebook will be there tomorrow. And I bet even the day after that.

Why are so sold on blowing through the editing instead of embracing what should be a slow, rewarding process of transforming what we captured into something artistic? I don’t think art can be rushed, at least not without compromising it somehow.

I’m sure there was a Church administrator (or more probably an accountant) that kept bugging Michelangelo to finish up his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “Mike, come on, you been at this for three years. Starting to think you’re milking us here.” Took four years altogether. And “The Last Judgement”, painted behind the altar there, took five. But look at the results.

I’m going to assume Michelangelo had a vision for those works and it was more important to get that right than to satisfy the short-term perspective of those who just wanted him to be done already.

Now, are we Michelangelo? Of course not. But shouldn’t we strive to be as good as we can be, the way he did? Shouldn’t we feel the same way about what we create? Shouldn’t we expend the time and energy necessary, however long that might be, to make sure a photograph reflects the emotional impact we felt when we initially captured it?

IT WAS YOUR MOMENT…SO MAKE IT YOURS

And this sort of encapsulates the real issue I have with the purveyors of all these “miraculous” tools. They promise a wonderful, impactful, final image - a work of art - with just a few clicks and the movement of a few sliders. BAM! You’re done. And, hey, you’re an artist! Look how amazing that is, and with hardly any effort on your part. What a wonderful thing.

Except…aren’t you still just using somebody else’s recipe? Won’t your image look just like those created by others who purchased the same product, and by those who created the product in the first place? Is that really what we want? As high tech as that AI-powered software is, it’s not prescient, and it certainly can’t plumb your emotional being.

None of those engineers, software coders, brand ambassadors, salespeople and photographers affiliated with that product stood with you the day you captured a glorious sunrise or a rainbow that suddenly popped from beneath a mass of storm clouds filtering dappled light over the landscape. Remember how you felt when that happened? And when you looked at the back of your camera and whispered, “Holy cow, did I really just get that?”

That was your emotional experience. And it was so amazing you wanted to share it, so others could see and feel at least some sense of what you saw and felt. That’s what artists do. I worked on the above image for a couple of weeks, including quits and restarts, to get the details and the light and the colors and the clouds “right” - to mirror what my experience of that chapel was in the moment and the excitement I felt.

So make that image for yourself. Work it as long as it takes to reflect what you experienced that day. Yes, that means processing time. It might also mean taking the time to learn something you don’t currently know how to do.

But there are rewards to those efforts, and isn’t your art worth that expenditure?

And for crying out loud, can’t we all just slow down a little and begin to appreciate the life we have? I mean…chill out, bro.