Blue Planet Photography

As artists, our creativity comes from many sources. One important source is influence. But, what is influence?

Influence (related to people) is the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force, directly or indirectly, to produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others. Influence is present in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. Psychologist Herbert Kelman defined three broad categories of social influence:

Compliance: when people appear to agree with others but actually keep their dissenting opinions private

Identification: when people are influenced by someone who is liked and respected, such as a famous celebrity or favorite uncle

Internalization: when people accept a belief or behavior and agree both publicly and privately.

Although artists are affected by all types of social influence, and their artwork is the result of that influence, the influence category I’d like to address here is identification. Influencers can exert a weak or strong compelling force, shaping the way we think or act, guiding our philosophy and beliefs, and putting us on a life/career path with or without our being conscious of it. It could be an event or series of events, a single person or a group of people who influence us; friends, teachers, family, lovers, mentors, colleagues, employers, strangers, students, enemies, and rivals are all contributors to who we are as people and artists.

Creating art is, by its very nature, an internal process. But, the processes we use, the emotions we expend and reveal, the way we view our surroundings, are shaped by external sources. Influencers can have (or have had) a powerful positive or negative effect on our lives to varying degrees. They may cause us to create more positive works or drive us to explore the darker sides of life, as well as, to strive harder to create the work we want to do. However, if we identify too strongly with an influencer it could lead us down a path we’re not suited for, distract us into creating artwork that is not really ours, or compel us to stop creating art altogether.

We tend to identify with influencers within our own sphere of experience, and the more knowledgable a person or group is perceived to be the more we identify with them and the more influential they are likely to be. When we lack knowledge, we look to experts for answers. However, experts are not always right. But if they exert enough influence believers will often internalize that information (thus believing it privately and publicly). The experiences of interacting with influencers are specific to the individual. As noted above, we can be totally unaware of the influence someone or some group has/had on our life until many years later. The art you make is “irrevocably bound to the times and places of your life” (Bayles and Orland).

An interesting exercise would be to sit in a quiet place and write down all the people and events you can remember that influenced your thinking, behavior, opinions, conformity, leadership, actions, and your artwork. Evaluate who and what played more important and lesser roles in your development as an artist (and person). Use this new found knowledge to understand where you came from (how you were formed as an individual and an artist), and what forces influence the work you do and the processes you use. Maybe there’s something you’ve forgotten that can be used to boost your creativity, or something you can drop or change that is having a negative impact on your success.

Influencers throughout our life play an important role in shaping who we are and what we do. I don’t think there would be much disagreement with that statement, except it hints that our individuality may not be as individual as we might like to think. How much of what we do is actually the result of our own action and not the influence of someone else? Now that we’ve identified this source of change and can take steps to recognize specific influencers and their effect on our lives, we can use that knowledge to help ourselves and our art.

“I came to realize that it’s actually irrelevant how anybody else does it [photography] if you’re looking for a formula to apply to yourself. The truth is, everyone’s journey is different, everyone’s personality is different, and everyone’s talent or weaknesses are different. It’s more important to really get to know yourself and understand who you are, understand your Achilles’ Heel and your strengths, which can often be completely unrecognized in the beginning.”
– Platon

References
Bayles, David and Ted Orland. 1993. Art & Fear: Observations on the perils (and rewards) of artmaking. Image Continuum Press.

Orland, Ted. 2006. The View from the Studio Door: How artists find their way in an uncertain world. Image Continuum Press.

An interesting, introspective, insightful video of Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama.

Great video from www.dontscrewus.org. It speaks for itself.

Back in July I posted a list of iPhone Apps for Photographers and my initial review of those apps. Now, after a couple months using them and finding a couple more, here’s an update on what I think of those applications now.

MotionX GPS: This is a good application with lots of features. However, its downfall is it appears to rely on having cell service to be able to work. When I was in Africa without cell service or internet access this application just took up space. It didn’t work at all. Reading some of the reviews after returning seems to have confirmed the suspicions I had, that the app triangulates cell towers and needs to be on network to work. Why doesn’t it just use the GPS in the iPhone? I don’t know. It’s usefulness, then, is very limited even for people who venture into the mountains or wilderness areas where there is no cell service. If you’re a biker or hiker or driver in the city, then this application will be well worth it. Otherwise, you’re still better off with a stand alone GPS unit.

Ayetides: $9.99. Tide tables for nearly 10,000 tide or current stations worldwide. The bonus is Ayetides does not require internet access to work. Worth the money and I use it along with TideGraph (which does need the internet).

Focalware: I’m really pleased with this app. A new graphic interface makes this application look sharp. Calculate sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, elevation, azimuth, and shadow length for any date or location.

PS Mobile: Free. Adobe enters the iPhone app arena with this post-processing application that also allows uploads to www.photoshop.com. I like it, but I expected more. Adjust exposure, saturation, tint, convert to black & white, add special effects of sketch or soft focus, vibrant color, pop (”andy warhol-ish” four-frame multi-colored rendition), square white border, vignette blur, warm vintage, rainbow, white glow, and soft black & white. You can also crop, rotate and flip your iPhone images. Then, save them to the camera library and/or upload them to a free photoshop.com account where you can make further changes online and display your photos in a gallery. I hope future versions will add more features, like curves adjustment and sharpening, but I don’t think the iPhone needs a version of Photoshop.

Photogene: Pretty much my go-to app for final post processing; sharpening, levels, saturation (except now I use Mill Colour for saturation and fine levels adjustments), and photo frames (though I only use the square with inside shadow, and maybe the Polaroid now and then. Somebody needs to build an app with useful, not cheesy frames).

Mill Colour: Free. This is a new app that I like a lot. Just for adjusting saturation, lift, gamma, and gain, this app allows you to make fine adjustments to each with a well-designed interface. For these fine adjustments I’m now using Mill Colour before I take the image to Photogene.

EVCalc: deleted. This is a useful app for beginners, but for me I can use the space for more productive apps.

TackSharp: deleted. Another useful app for beginners, but I don’t need it.

CoolFX: I rarely use this app anymore and will probably delete it in the next month if I don’t use it more often.

PhotoCurves: I also rarely use this app even though it does allow curves adjustment (which none of the other post-processing apps do). I have the free version. I’ll probably keep this and try to use it more, but if I find it inconvenient to use more than a couple apps to work on a given image I’ll likely delete this one also. Hopefully, Adobe will add curves adjustment to PS Mobile.

Skype: For all the apps I have loaded on my iPhone this one has saved me the most money. Phone calls from Africa, had I been able to get cell service, would have been $4.99/minute. When I had wifi access I talked on the phone back to the U.S. for over an hour each time for free. This one’s a keeper.

Google Earth: I’ve used this both on my desktop and iPhone to find information on locations and scout locations. Also a keeper.

Weather Bug: Very useful and seems to be very accurate.

Convertbot: Useful for the more popular conversions, but limited when it comes to currency. Nice graphic interface, but I might move to Unit Calculator which has more conversions available. Seems that all the conversion apps lack comprehensive currency conversion, though.

Survival Pocket Reference: $0.99. I don’t have this one loaded, but if you’re the adventurous type it might be a lifesaver. Over 500 pages of first aid, medicinal and edible plants, basic survival skills, compass and star navigation, and more.

The way artists work is quite different to those pursuing more “capitalistic” revenue-generating opportunities. I should maybe use the term “creative” rather than “artist” to cover a broader range of practitioners. I’m sure web designers, illustrators, maybe even architects, veer from the ‘normal’ daily job routines undertaken by the rest of the world. Often, the routines I use are misinterpreted by others who think I should have a similar ‘work ethic’, which typically means an 8-hour day spent in constant action toward a specific goal.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to explain to my parents and others, art doesn’t work that way. There are certainly times when I appear to be following a more capitalist regime…you know, visibly working. Other times I can be found reading a book or magazine, browsing the web, engaging in online conversation, listening to music, watching videos, taking a walk, taking a drive, doodling, or just staring off into space. I’m partial to listening to music. These are mechanisms through which I learn, observe, contemplate, formulate, and become inspired to create what I do. To the casual observer, it might seem like I’m doing nothing but most art is internal. The physical expression of the internal resolution of an issue or emotion, a story, an idea or concept, can be equated to the tip of an iceberg; the visible portion of a much larger foundation. The distilling of a process or several processes.

For every creative the process(es) is/are a little different. We all have our idiosyncrasies, in addition to outwardly noticeable oddities. But it’s how we work, how we are able to do what we do. I’m not saying the creation of art is not a capitalistic endeavor. Creatives need to eat too. And, our work ethic is no less stringent or respectable. More often than not, creatives are “on” 24/7, working whenever the inspiration strikes. It’s not really something that can be turned on or off, like flipping burgers, driving a cab, swinging a hammer, or cooking the books reconciling a client’s account.

The rituals and conventions creatives use to stay engaged are important in the practice of staying at work. These activities are rarely observed by others, who are really only interested in the final product, anyway, and when they are observed are usually misinterpreted. Hemmingway had a practice of typing while standing up (not apparent in any of his stories), but he did like to drink, hunt, travel, and meet interesting women (all prominent themes in his work). However, these rituals do need to end up producing something. Otherwise, you really are just a lazy artist…or a lazy person trying to claim being an artist.

Artists need to produce work, lots of work, to learn for themselves what kind of art they enjoy most, what they do best, to create a vision and style of their own, and to improve. You certainly can’t do that if you’re lazy. In a pure sense, art is created by the artist because it has to be. The artist is driven to create it. It doesn’t have to be sold nor does the artist need to be successful enough to make a living from their art. It would be ideal, but that’s why there are so many artists with full or part-time jobs. Making a lot of money from your art can also lead to other problems (but that’s another discussion). Art is a personal undertaking, in most cases, for the satisfaction of the artist and nobody else. As it should be. A creative creates for him/her self first. The satisfaction of others and any revenue is gravy.