When I was in Indiana, I took dozens of snapshots of a slide. This slide.
It was out in a field with a whole collection of elderly playground equipment, and I found it visually interesting. So I did a study of it.
In painting, a “study” is a sketch (or multiple sketches) done in preparation for the final painting. It’s an exploration of a subject, with attention to the problems you’ll likely encounter while rendering it. If you’re drawn to the way an article of clothing drapes, for example, but you’re not familiar with the fabric, maybe you try a few ways of painting the fabric, to see what happens. You also experiment with design elements like like color, lighting, and composition. You might learn that to illuminate the flower you want to feature, you’ll need the light to come in at a different angle than you first imagined.
The idea is the same in photography, but the execution’s different. In photography, you can’t use a brush stroke to change the shape of the subject. There are filters and focus tricks and so forth, but film is more like a mirror than a canvas. What you see is what you get. If you want a different picture of the same subject, you’ll have to find a new way of seeing it.
I’m not sure how the professionals do it, but my study of the slide was pretty methodical, at least at first.
I began at a distance. I chose a starting position that filled my frame with the subject, focused, and took a picture. Then I moved a few steps to the left, focused, and took another picture. I did this until I’d moved 360 degrees around the slide.
Then I repeated the same procedure, but from my knees instead of my feet, and I started moving closer.
Next I began to explore the visual experiences of playing on the slide. Walking under it, climbing on it, sliding down it.
By the time I was done with that part, my state of mind had shifted considerably. I felt much less like “I want to take a good picture of a slide”, and more like “I want to know this object’s every mode of being”. It was almost like I was in love with the slide.
I started to take photos that had nothing to do with my concept of slides, and everything to do with this particular slide. Photos from unlikely angles, photos of details that don’t suggest a slide at all, photos of unique opportunities this slide presents for perceiving the environment.
I did a few photo studies on my trip, and they all felt to me like a gradual spiraling inward. They always began with a concept called “slide” (or whatever) and a vague interest. They ended with a fountain of fascination, intimacy, and love for something that meant almost nothing to me before I started.
And I bring this up because the approach I take to photo studies seems like the very same approach I take to solving vague problems, or training new skills when there’s nobody to tell me how to do it.
I think the photo study is a ritual for inducing Original Seeing. It can work with any sort of medium, including introspective. The trick is to build the right kind of camera.
