The longer I specialize in professional visual art the more trouble I have talking like the average person around me. I think it's because of what I think about most of the time. Or, more to the point, how I look at the world.
You see, I can't look at the world like the rest of the world. It doesn't do me any good and, if I'm going to do this professionally, it doesn't do my clients any good either.
So it's both in my interest and it's interesting for me to think in a primarily visual fashion. Which means I don't spend as much time thinking about how to talk to people. I kinda stutter in a funky way.
I have to laugh at myself often. My clients are cool with it because they're not hiring a speech pathologist. They're hiring an artist and the more authentic and specialized quirks I have the more people feel better about hiring me.
Well, anyway...
So how does it happen? How does one look at the world differently? Well you do it in a rather literal sense.
1. Go Sideways. I cock my head to the side so I, well, look at the world sideways.
2. Go monoscopic. I close one eye.
3. Go Tunnel vision. I curl my hand up to my eye so I'm looking down a rudimentary tube.
4. Go Blind, Go Monet. I defocus my remaining eye.
We'll take this one step at a time and unpack each one slowly so hopefully you can understand why I look like a crazy person when I'm out shooting.
Going Sideways.
If you look around you you'll see that the world is made in vertical and horizontal lines. You even look at the world with your eyes level with the horizon. When your brain processes information it does so within a vertical and horizontal context. While it's great if you're in IT that you can look at information in the usual context doing that doesn't do a pro artist any good because that's how everyone else sees the world. You're an artist. You must see the world differently.
So when you cock your head to look at the world sideways you're disrupting the normal way of looking at things. It confuses the normal part of your brain that's used to looking at the world normally. When that happens something in the back of your head perks up and takes interest. I call it The Monkey. You'll start to feel nudges and subtle hints. But if you get the feeling you need to get a rifle and go to high place then please know that's not a healthy thing.
Just sayin'.
Going monoscopic.
You see the world with both eyes. You even think you see in 3 dimensions. But the truth is you don't look at the world in 3 dimensions. You look at the world stereoscopically with a pair of 2 dimensional sensors.
Further, a picture isn't a 3 dimensional image. It's just 2 dimensions. By closing one eye you begin to think about how a picture is going to look before you bring the camera to your face. Ultimately you want to be able to see a picture before you take it.
Again, I'm disrupting how I view the world.
Going Tunnel.
A picture doesn't show the world in it's context. By it's nature it only shows you what it's able: not much. So it's in my interest to, again, look at the world the way a picture would see and how it would show you. Your eyes have a super wide vision. A picture doesn't. So I can't distract myself with anything that doesn't have purpose to what I'm seeing. Too much information is distracting and, for The Monkey, boring. Boring is bad.
Going Blind, Going Monet
Claude Monet had an ocular degenerative disease that altered the way he saw the world. If you saw the paintings over the course of his life and career you'd discern a softening of lines and colors in his paintings. He was slowly going blind and was painting the world as he saw it.
When I look at the world around me I defocus my eye. Everything goes soft and feathery. It doesn't do me any good to see everything with focus and clarity. I need to see their basic shapes. Besides, why did I pay all this money to focus my camera myself? I delegate the focusing to the camera and even defocus my eye even when my camera is up to my eye.
I need to see the world in it's basic, fundamental geometric patterns. Circles. Lines. Squares. Shapes and colors. But not tacos. That's delusional. And silly.
You see, a person will only give about 500 milliseconds of their attention to a picture. Not a lot of time. I learned this when I was a commercial photographer and had to sell a product or service with a picture. Yeah. No pressure.
So the challenge is not how to take a good picture or even a great picture. That kind of photography celebrates itself. That's awesome for those shooters. But I have to do something to serve my client.
The challenge, then, is to take an *interesting* picture. Something that draws the eye and keeps giving it something for many long seconds or minutes. Something that get's a visceral and emotional reaction in the service of my client's long term needs. This isn't about the picture and it isn't about me.
It all starts even before you put a camera to your face. It's all in seeing things differently. Like a crazy person.
Want a tip? Take off your glasses or leave out your contact lenses and take pictures with your camera. You'll learn to see things disruptively and you'll learn to accept that people think you're crazy.
That's ok. Crazy people tend to be happier anyway.
Have fun. Muah.
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