On Style: part one

Shooting some self assigned projects lately have given me a chance to approach image making from a purely personal POV. I am both happy and unhappy with the results. Spending so much time on teaching technique and working with techniques for my upcoming DVD series, I wonder if I need a new shot in the arm for vision.

How does one create a style that is as pure as possible without contrivance. I like Dave Hill but I don't want to shoot like him. Geof Kern is an iconoclastic shooter with few peers, and while I enjoy his vision, I am not inclined to be a bad parody of same.

I want my images to look like a stolen moment, a glimpse into a place in time where the woman is being and reveling in herself. It is tricky to pull off, but when I get it, I know it is right for me.

The thing about working so hard on the technical stuff lately is that it seems as though it is getting in the way of the look that I am trying to achieve. Natural light and slightly modified has always seemed the right way to go. I have been adding more and more technicality and now the images seem more contrived. Not bad, just a little contrived.

Another reason for this navel-gazing is that recently I viewed this wonderful work by Jake Chessum, and then right after it I stumbled on Andrew Hetherington. I don't get his work at all. I am not making a value judgment for anyone but me, but I don't get it.

I asked my bro to take a look at it and he didn't get it either. Is the style so oblique that I can't see around it? It is anti-style? Jimi's response was in part: "Officially, its post-modern because it is self awareness and deliberate lack of subject matter that draws the viewer into a non-photograph -- its bad-Ornette Coleman or Salvador Dali done wrong." He then pointed me to the work of Nathaniel Welch.

Welch seems to have that great blend of style and technique that is drawn on to fit the shot at hand. I like his work, but alas, I am still looking for that elusive 'glimpse and moment" thing that I started with so many years ago then seemed to slowly lose through the large studio 'commercial' thing that put food on the table and paid the mortgage.

I will just keep shooting and refining, what else can one do?