Searching for the Un-Iconic

I remember hearing about a photographer who led workshops in Yosemite Valley. She had many folks sign up, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to collect the iconic Ansel Adams images of El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, and so on.

Well, imagine their chagrin when this photographer led them off to some obscure no-name side canyon and told them to go after it. At first, she said, the workshop attendees would sigh, slump their camera bag-draped shoulders, and express their disappointment and dissatisfaction at the location. Pretty soon, though, they would resign themselves to the wagging of the flying fickle finger of fate, and start–grudgingly–looking for images.

Obscurity was the key.

Had the group simply planted their tripods into the same holes left behind by Saint Ansel, they wouldn’t have done anything to develop their “seeing”. They would have simply collected yet another Iconic Trophy for their digital files. And, as I have heard it oft-quoted: “No one is going to do Ansel better than Ansel.” (In case you wonder why he is considered an artistic genius, you have to see the prints themselves–the “performance”. Internet links don’t even come close.)

This particular workshop photographer, by having her group go to work in an unfamiliar location, forced them to peel open their droopy eyelids and start looking–really looking–at the landscape around them. Sometimes they would just sit like Gump on a log and look around for many minutes, doing nothing. Eventually, though, the creative side of their brains would kick in and new and exciting images would start to appear, like shimmering ghosts, out of the scene before them. She said it was amazing to see the work they came up with–really original stuff.

Here is a personal example, using Garden of the Gods, in Colorado Springs.

At first, you might be tempted to simply go to the high point on the loop road, use the pull out, and make this image from your car window:

Garden of the Gods, #972. Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2015 (#972,000, more like it.)

The problem is that a million others have made the same image–and probably much better, unless you have a lot of skill and the luck to find highly unusual weather and light conditions. (Go HERE to see how many photographs were captured at this very same spot.)

Instead, why not take a slow walk through the Garden pathways. Stop and sit on a rock. Observe. Let your mental focus drift off to old Star Trek episodes, then drift back to the scene at hand. Look at the larger scape, then at the micro scape. Do you see patterns, lines, shapes? Odd formations or juxtapositions of structures? How about faces or creatures in the rock? Unusual color patterns? Wildlife? Birds? Rabbits? Pigeons? Can you see any interesting layered compositions with the grasses, plants, and scrub oak? What about cloudscapes? How would things look with various lenses…a super wide angle…a super telephoto…a macro? “Street shots” of the tourists even?

Let your mind wander. Bring it back into focus. Then wander away again somewhere else. Eventually, your creativity receptors will start warming up and crawling out of their hibernation dens.

When you do this, you just might come up with something completely different, like this:

The Greek Oracle. Garden of the Gods, Colorado, 2015

This particular image I have never seen in any presentation of the Garden of the Gods. I have never seen it on a postcard rack. I wonder how many photographers have walked right by it without noticing it? (It is right along one of the paved trails.) I like it because–at least IMHO–it is uniquely mine. It is certainly UN-iconic.

That is the idea, then: search for something you can call your own…something very personal. Go for the un-iconic.