Being ecstatic.

Learning to draw is a long and painful process. The good thing is, it’s quite easy to see the progress, maybe not to measure it, but to see things getting better and better.

You begin by drawing, excuse me, trying to draw visually simple things – usually the teacher in whatever class you happen to take will set up a still life from apples, bottles, cup and other objects of similar nature. You are clumsy, proportions are all wrong, perspective is just a word, your objects have no texture, no mass, but you  continue to buy more chalk and paper. After a while, you take your last drawing and compare it to the one from a month ago – and oh my, what a difference. Proud of yourself, you fail miserably at your next sketch, and begin humble everyday work again. Few years later, when no face, no body, no landscape is a challenge anymore, you realise, the challenge begins only now. I can draw, I got the skills, it’s time to get serious, time to find my own place, my own path, my own universe, explore it, and bring back the goods to show others.

When you take up a camera, challenges are different, but in a funny way, similar as well. Technique comes first, all those blurry shots are inevitable, and trust me, people see when you try to cover up by turning them to black and white… Moriyama and Frank use blur knowing what they are doing, not by having no understanding what ISO does. Blur, noise, under or over exposure are tools, but you need to know how and why to use them first…

You got your images sharp, some basic realism is here, and you start doing all those horrible things you will hate yourself for later. Some, like me, to make up for lack of direction, will catch on to a device, and protect it with their life – for some it’s those forbidden deadly techniques like HDR, for me it was the square crop. Oh, and making everything yellow – and I hear some of my friends went through that phase as well, so I guess it’s not that original after all.

Most people will stay in their chosen gimmick for a very long time, if not forever. That is the nature of art, not  everyone will get to any reasonable place, even if they work on it every day. And not a lot of people treat is seriously enough to work on it every day. Probably the high technology involved in modern photography makes people think they don’t need to work as hard, I don’t really know, and don’t really care. Better for me, there is already way too many intelligent and interesting photographers out there anyway…