Photographers On Photography – Q&A

Photographers - Q&A  Comment
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In Q&A
photographers share their answers to
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20 questions;
10 Core Questions
10 Optional Questions
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Answers are kept short and sweet.
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John Paul Caponigro
Phil Borges
Paul Caponigro
David DuChemin
Sean Duggan
Mac Holbert
Sean Kernan
Jay Maisel
Eric Meola
Arthur Meyerson
Chris Orwig
Chris Rainier
Seth Resnick
John Sexton
Joyce Tenneson
Vincent Versace
Huntington Witherill

 

Core Questions

What’s the best thing about photography?
What’s the worst thing about photography?

What’s the thing that interests you most about photography?
What’s the thing that interests you most about your own photographs?
What’s the thing that interests you most about other people’s photographs?

Who were your early photographic influences?
Who are your photographic influences now?
Who were your early non-photographic influences?
Who are your non-photographic influences now?
What’s the most inspiring work of art you saw recently?

What’s the best thing about gear?
What’s the worst thing about gear?

How do you know when an image doesn’t work?
How do you know when an image is good?
How do you know when an image is great?

What’s the most useful photographic mantra?

Do you practice another art form? (If so, which?)
What benefits do you get from (this/these) other art form/s?

What was the most significant visual moment in your life?
Which was the most important image to you that got away?
What failure did you learn the most from?

What accomplishment are you most proud of?
What’s the thing you most hope to accomplish?

If you had to do it all over again, what would you change?
If you had another life to live a completely different life, what would you choose to do?

What are the most important questions to you?

Optional Questions

What’s photography really all about?

How did photography change the world?
How did photography change your world?

Who were the most important photographers?
Who are the most important photographers working today?

What’s the best thing about influence?
What’s the worst thing about influence?

What’s the best thing about our times?
What’s the worst thing about our times is?

What keeps you up at night?
What gets you going in the morning?

What’s your favorite movie?
What’s your favorite book?
What’s your favorite piece of music?

What’s your idea of perfect happiness?
What is your greatest fear?
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Who is your favorite hero in fiction?
Who are your heroes in real life?
Which living person do you most admire?
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
What is your greatest extravagance?
What is your favorite journey?
On what occasion do you lie?
What do you dislike most about yourself?
What is your most marked characteristic?
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
What is your greatest regret?
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
What’s your most treasured possession?
What is your favorite occupation / past time?
What do you most value in your friends?
What’s your motto?
What other talent would you most like to have?
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
What is it that you most dislike?
How would you like to die?

 

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How To Make Color Psychology Your Own

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Texture for artwork and photography from Flypaper Textures
Studying color psychology will make you a more able and aware communicator. After you familiarize yourself with the ways other people relate to colors it’s time to make it personal.
You have specific and unique relationships with color. This relationship has many layers. It’s a product of your biology, your culture, your time, your community, your experiences, and the reactions you choose.
When you become more mindful of your relationships with color you will deepen them.
Becoming more aware of your personal relationship with colors will lead to personal discoveries, help you communicate more personal messages, and do so in a more personal way.
Begin this journey into color by spending time with color and freely associating. What sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories, associations, words and phrases arise within you when you are in the presence of a color? Ask these questions for as many different colors as you can think of. It helps to look at the color while you’re doing this.
Do this more than once. How have your relationships with colors changed over time? It’s likely you won’t know unless you develop this habit of being more mindful of color. It helps to have a journal to look back and see influences and patterns over time. Keeping a journal can be a mindful practice.
When you first try this you may draw a blank. When was the last time you tried something like this? When you were a child? Reawaken that playful spirit!
Get the process started and guide it along the way with questions. Ask a lot of questions. Instead of looking for one answer look for many responses. Write down your responses. When you write, write for yourself not others. Forget about perfection. Instead, aim for rich and deep. Later, revisit what you write and add more. Continue to use this reflective process to energize and enrich your relationships with colors.
 
Here are a few useful questions to ask.
Do you or don’t you like it? Why?
How does it feel? (Describe the sensation of it.)
When you see a color what to do you feel physically?
How do you feel about it?
When you see a color what do you feel emotionally?
Where do you find it in your environment?
Where do you find it in other environments?
Do you encounter it a certain times (of the day or year) and not others?
What things do you connect with it?
Does it bring back memories?
How often do you wear it?
How often do you use it in your images?
(Look back at all of your images. It can be very interesting to track your use of colors over time.)
 
What other questions can you think of to ask of color?
Write them down.
Find more answers.
Continue your personal journey into color.
 
Read more on Color Psychology here.
Learn more in my digital printing and digital photography workshops.
 

18 Quotes On Questions

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Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on questions.
“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” – Nancy Willard
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” – Decouvertes
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers”  – Voltaire
“Asking the right questions takes as much skill as giving the right answers.” – Robert Half
“To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.” – John Ruskin
“If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer.” – Edward Hodnett
“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” – Tony Robbins
“For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?” – James Allen
“Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.” – Francis Bacon
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” – James Thurber
“I found I wasn’t asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.” – Alan Alda
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.” – Anthony Jay
“We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.” – Bono
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” – Thomas Pynchon
“There are no right answers to wrong questions.” – Ursula K Le Guin
“The one who asks questions doesn’t lose his way.” – African Proverb
“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.” – Engineer’s Motto
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
Discover more quotes daily in my Twitter and Facebook streams.

The Benefits Of Not Knowing

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Sounding I, Wiscassett, Maine, 2001 

What I don’t know makes this image more interesting.
Several years after making this image, I couldn’t remember whether I had captured the snow photographically or rendered it digitally or if the appearance of snow was created with a combination of both. It was one of the few times where I felt my experience of my images was closer to the experience others have of them. In this instance, I no longer suffered from the curse of knowledge. I was confronted with a mystery. Rather than quickly rushing to open the file and settle the question, as only I could, I chose to cultivate the question and see what useful insights I could find in doing so.
I looked very closely at the image and saw more than I had seen before. I looked more closely at other people’s images of snow and saw more than I had seen before. I looked more closely at snow and saw more than I had seen before. Because of what I didn’t know, I knew more. Because I questioned what I learned (and the ways I learned), I learned more. Not knowing, can be wonderful! You may be pleasantly surprised by what you don’t know.
Many people look to photographs to confirm what they already know or think they know. I prefer to look to photographs to challenge, expand, and enrich what I know. In works of art, sometimes the things that remain unanswered and remain open become more valuable than the things that are answered and closed. The life of a good photograph extends far beyond itself and our initial experience(s) of it.
How do you know what you know?
How many ways can you challenge what you know in order to experience more?
Find out more about this image here.
View more related images here.
Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.
 

Seeing With New Eyes

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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscape but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust

 

Increasingly, we all find ourselves photographing at locations where many have photographed before us. When I encounter this I ask myself many questions. Here are a few.

What’s been done before?
What made it work?
How could it be improved?
What hasn’t been done before?
How have things changed since that work was done?
What could be done to reflect that change?
What’s unique about this moment?
What’s special about my perspective?

How many ways could these things be made clear and/or strongly felt?

The right set of questions can help generate many ideas as well as guide and focus work.

I usually have so many thoughts and feelings that I need to make notes to catch them all. Trying to find the best words to express them with makes my understanding of them clearer.

Next time you find yourself in familiar territory, I recommend you start asking many useful questions.

Find more ways to boost your creativity using words.
Learn more creative techniques in my workshops.

Seek Feedback

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One of the most valuable aspects of a workshop is getting feedback on your work. You get it from a respected authority. You also get if from diverse participants. The combination of both is powerful. You’ll see your work more clearly, see it through others eyes, and find new ways of looking at your work.
One helpful approach is to ask a lot of questions.
Polls quickly give consensus on key issues. Which image is most memorable? Which image is strongest? Is it a 3, 4, or 5 star image?
How good is an image? First, identify the best thing about it. Then, to rate it, compare it to other images (your best or a respected artist’s) with same strengths.
Compare images. How do different images work together? Find formal echoes. Find thematic consistencies. Find shared stylistic traits. Sometimes, two images paired together are stronger than either one alone.
Identify outliers. Which image doesn’t fit with the others?
What could be done now to make it better? Crop? Adjust color? Dodge and burn?
What could be done in the future to make similar images better? Reframe? Return at a special time? Introduce a new element?
Read more in my Creativity Lessons here.
Learn more in my digital photography workshops.