A couple of quick things before we jump into the podcast.

1. if you’re gonna be in the Seattle area on November 5, don’t forget to join me at the Photographic Center Northwest for my lecture on the landscape and language and meaning.
2. In the next week to 10 days, don’t forget to check out the latest In Conversation episode of the podcast. This one is with Greg Hatton, an amazing photographer from Los Angeles, who was kind enough to join me even though he was working hard for Leica down at the Formula One races in Austin, Texas.

In this week’s episode, we’re digging into both the need to say Happy Halloween and the blind spot that impacts how we critique photographs. When we critique and look at photographs, we often have a pattern or process that we like to follow. This process can often produce pretty good results. It also allows us to see and understand photographs quickly, and then move on to the next image. However, there might be times when we run into an image where the analysis is in our blind spot. And by the blind spot, I mean something that we don’t know that we need to know because we don’t know we need to know it to examine the photograph.

Long and short of it is that I think this is a community issue. This is something that I don’t necessarily think we solve on our own because it’s hard for us to know what we don’t know. So we need to talk to other people. We need to see how they look at photographs, talk to them about how they examine photographs, look at text for people who have written about it, and see if there are things we can incorporate into our own sense of scene to evaluate the work.

I think it’s also important for us to recognize that sometimes the things that we don’t think are important in our analysis of our work might be significant. If we start with them, we might find unique and interesting ways to critique photographs. I believe this is really important because, as we look at the number of images of her being created, both photographically, with generative AI, or hybrid. The need for us photographers to have a better language, both visually and verbally, to talk about our work is important. It’s in these conversations that we learn how to be better photographers, how to appreciate photography and how to honor the work that other photographers have done.

So I hope in this episode, you find some interesting insights and some ideas that you could use to both help see where your blind spots are and help others maybe find new and exciting ways to avoid their blind spots.

I know for me it’s always about finding somebody in the community who can help me see what I couldn’t see by myself, so don’t be afraid to ask those people in the camera club, or some photographers you might know, or maybe it’s time to find some photographer friends 🙂

After getting the heat cranked up in the studio, I got to start recording some podcast episodes. Damn, it was cool in here today. Now that it warmed up, we are digging into episode 606 of the Perceptive Photographer, where we are looking at the choices we make about what not to include in the frame. While we focus a lot on what we put in the frame, I am starting to wonder if what we leave out is more interesting.

When I started in photography, I was focused on the frame. The composition, the point of view, the angle of view and such, but
composition isn’t random; we pick and choose what to include. What if what we don’t include tells us more about the photographer than what is in the frame?

In this context, what we exclude can alter the interpretation of an image. We actually rely on this and want viewers to fill in the blanks. This ambiguity provides curiosity and intrigue, or does it offer up a deception? For me, the more interesting question is: are we as the photographer even in on the deception?

I know for a fact that I often do the same things over and over again. I have learned that these concepts work in my images. But these habits might actually become blind spots. I don’t see what I am doing, and what I am leaving out of the frame might be the very things I need to make a more meaningful image.

Photograph a place you have photographed before, changing your position, perspective, composition (habitual actions), or framing. Go home, process them and then really spend some time comparing the image’s meaning. You might find that a simple change results in a completely different narrative.

Don’t just think about your photography as what you see and include in the frame, but also what you see that you don’t. It’s not only about what we photograph but also about what remains unseen. Maybe there is some mystery and storytelling that you can use when you open the story up a little.

I used to think I was the strangest person in the world, but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this, you know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.
— Frida Kahlo8

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.

— Joan Miro

If I already have a vision, my work is almost done. The rest is just a technical problem.
— Hiroshi Sugimoto

What do you want me to look at and notice?

It is amazing how much this concept of audience, meaning and what an audience has to know about your work comes up. This podcast is a revisit of an oft-discussed topic in our episodes, but nonetheless, the conversation about what we should tell an audience about our work and what we shouldn’t keeps coming up for me again and again.

So in this episode of the podcast, we return to look at what we should share and why we should share information about our work with our audience. I mean, I do get the point that some artist make that they don’t want to “taint” the audience into not having their own experience of the work. That idea comes with some big assumptions, like your audience has enough language to experience the work. So many times I hear photographers say that they like a photograph and can say no more than /i like it. It’s good. The reason for that feedback is that it is all they have in their language set to speak about an image.

I feel that the more we can understand how to help the viewer see the work, the better. This can lead to a different set of questions and considerations that we should make as the photographer to help the viewer. Questions like: What is this? can offer a simple entry point to an image, but by asking more complex questions when we make the work, we might open the door to more meaning.

Questions like:

• What do you want me to feel?
• What do you want me to consider?
• What are you asking me to do?

These types of more open-ended questions that go beyond what is just in the frame open up a deeper conversation between the viewer and the image. As I said, this isn’t a new topic on the podcast, but one that is always worth revisiting if you are interested in deeper connections with your work behind the camera, processing, printing and sharing the work.

Also, don’t forget: if you are in Seattle, save the date for my lecture at the Photographic Center Northwest on November 5th—more details to come.