For Photographers. The difference between action and activity. Originally published by Michael Johnston on his "The Online Photographer" blog. Cira 2011.

 I wrote this for Michael Johnston's blog back in December of 2011. That's 14 years ago. I re-read it today and found my old advice useful today for my older self. I thought you might like it as well. If you want to see the original format and the appended comments from MJ's site you can read it here: https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/12/kirks-take-kirk-tuck-2.html#more  I think some of what I wrote about is beneficial to photographers who feel "stuck." 

Kirk's Take (Kirk Tuck #2)

Photographer, photo book author, and photography bloggerKirk Tuck's monthly column on TOP was planned to appear on the last Saturday of every month, but he was on deadline for his next book on lighting last Saturday. A week late is better than never, I think you'll agree.

I'll be travelling Sunday and Monday so unfortunately the comments to this post will go up late, but I'll be back shackled to the leg of the desk again by Tuesday. —Mike

Action vs. Activity. One makes you an artist,
the other makes you tired.

By Kirk Tuck

Action and activity are two very different things and it's important for an artist to know which one they're focusing on. Action derives from need or reaction. You are hungry so you eat. You need to get somewhere quickly so you walk faster. You need to get warm so you head for shelter. You have a vision you want to interpret as a photograph so you do the process of making that photograph. You are pushed to eat from necessity and you are pushed to create the photograph by necessity. One driver is physical while the other pursuit is driven by passion. Both are pretty unencumbered pathways and both have an immediate aim. Eating gives you the fuel to go on while creating art gives you the emotional fuel to enjoy life.

Compare honest hunger with a more common variation: Eating because you are bored. Eating because the food is in front of you. Eating because you want to keep your hands busy. And, eating because the taste of whatever you’re eating entertains you. In this sense eating becomes an activity instead of an action. And activities are the biggest time wasters in our lives.

As photographers our focus should be on the making of images. But that's hard work. Even if you are hungry to make an image, there are all kinds of impediments. You might have to find models or subjects that truly resonate with the vision you have in your head, and you'll have to find locations and you might even have to get permission from a property owner to make your image on their property. But if you are really driven to make the image and express your art you'll find a way to channel the resources and the energy. If you are committed to expressing yourself and sharing your interpretation of the world around you then you'll punch through the mental and rationally-based "resistance" to actually creating art, and you'll get your project done. That's action. It comes from a need: the need to express your art. The action fulfills the need.

And if you practice your art with a focus on the action you'll find that it becomes less and less scary to pick up the tools of your art and head out the door to just do the process. But...some of us get trapped by one or more of the insidious spider webs immobilizing us from taking the right action. We get stuck in one of the levels of hell that I call "Endless Preparation." It's also known far and wide as "Research."

For photographers endless preparation begins with the selection of camera gear. As rational, educated and affluent adults we move in a world of bountiful information but we’re not always good at asking the right questions or divining the right answers. In fact, we focus so narrowly on some parameters and not at all on others. We've been taught that good preparation is paramount for any successful mission and we’ve taken that to heart. And so we begin the first part of the journey into the sticky spider webs of rampant indecision and quantitative ambiguity.... I’ve been doing it all month. I would be better served inviting my quirky and interesting friends into my little studio and making their portraits with whatever camera and lights I already have, but...shamefully, I've allowed my subconscious resistance to getting that project started push me into the un-winnable endless loop of trying to decide which little mirrorless, compact camera deserves my true affection. Will it be the Nikon V1 or the Olympus EP3? And, of course, it doesn't matter which decision I make because I'll end up using it for casual work and not the work that really motivates me to create my own personal art. But I've already wasted plenty of time shooting with both cameras and then writing down and sharing my observations. In a sense I'm also guilty of enabling other would be artists' progress by inferring that the issue of picking the ultimate "little camera" from a "moving-target" list of camera is an important and valuable consideration. Which, of course, it's not.

And even though my mercurial and unstable selection processes are becoming (sad) legend among fellow photographers, I find it hard to resist. Just like everyone with a facile and functioning mind, I've found that my subconscious can rationalize the hell out of just about any equipment "research" and acquisition. The latest is a little voice that says, "The art of photography is getting more fluid and fluent. We’re capturing sequences and interlacing it with video and all the presentations are going to the web. We need small cameras that can capture both quickly and easily. The small cameras with fast processors are the equivalent magnitude of destructive innovation engendered by the screwmount Leica cameras of the 1940s and early 1950s." Hell, given time I'm sure I could rationalize selling my car and buying all the small camera models.

You may laugh at my personal quagmire but I see variations in and among my friends and colleagues and all over the web. You may be the kind of person who finds the activity of researching and testing small cameras lacking in restraint, but your "activity" might be endlessly profiling your printer, your monitor, your camera, your wall, your light stands and so on. While my wasted time is spent comparing reviews and specifications of delightful neckwear bling, your wasted time is spent scanning and shooting Greytag MacBeth color targets and "mapping" them to some new paper from Croatia. It’s really the same thing. It's a preparatory activity that's powered by the rationalization of mastery, but it's really just a strategy to procrastinate from dipping a toe into the unknown.

I also have a friend who is really a good photographer who has been on a relentless workshop circuit. If someone's offered a workshop somewhere on the web he's probably been there and taken it. And yet what each workshop offers is a new set of technical skills that he feels he must master before he heads out to do his "real work." But since there's an endless supply of workshops, and a nearly endless reiteration and repackaging of techniques, he's mostly ensured that, without some effective catharsis, he will never really get around to doing the work he envisioned when he first became entangled in the sticky webs of photography.

If the activity that fills your nervous void is something like eating or smoking, chances are you will either become very large or very sick. But if your activity is the research and mastery of every corner of our craft, you will become an expert in arcane lore and analysis and a pauper in creating and sharing finished art. And there's is no law that says you can't make that choice. But so many of us are so well trained in debate and rationalization that we suppress a reality that we should at least give a passing nod to. In some ways my own blog tends to enable the endless search for endless things for which to search. But it sounds preachy if I tell everyone to stop reading and contemplate what it is they really want to say with images.

So, what am I getting at? Well, I'm trying to become a "recovering" researcher in my own work and I've made myself a little checklist to work with. I’ve set some ground rules to keep myself within the design tolerances of sanity. We'll see how well this works out....

Kirk’s Rules of choosing Action over Activity:

1. It's okay to buy a new camera, but I am required to go out and shoot fun images with it for more time then I spend writing about it or measuring its results.
2. It's better to shoot images that are fun, make you laugh and make your friends happy than images you think will impress other photographers. Even better if the images can work in both camps.
3. If there's no reason for me to be out shooting I can default to a nap on the couch to replenish my body and spirit. Sometimes pushing myself out the door is just the wrong move.
4. If I catch myself shooting test charts I stop immediately and head out the door with a good book. Or a camera.
5. The feel of a camera in my hand should always trump someone else's written evaluation. No one really knows how I want things to look.
6. I have a post card sized white card pinned to the wall behind my computer that says, "Making Portraits is my Art. Anything else I do is not-art."
7. Quiet contemplation is more conducive to having fun ideas than relentless study.
8. All the things I really need to know to create are already locked away in my brain, I just need to be still and quiet enough to open that door. Sitting quietly beats looking at DxO results for thinking about creativity.
9. Inspiration comes to those who leave space for it to come in. A busy mind usually lacks the space.
10. I have a smaller card tacky waxed to the bottom edge of my monitor that says, "To stop suffering stop thinking."

And therein lies the real secret roadblock to all creativity...at least for me. We spend far too much more time thinking about our art than just doing our art. Being smart is highly overrated because it requires us to do too many mental exercises to prove to ourselves that we should be doing what we already know we want to be doing. And the process of rationalizing and the desire to master each step is the process of not doing the final step. The "going out and shooting."

The photographic process (in a holistic sense) works best for me when it works like this: My brain comes up with an idea for a visual image. (Not the overlay of techniques but the image itself ). I quickly decide how I will do the image. I go into action and book a model or call a likely subject. We get together and I try to make my vision work. Within the boundaries of the original idea we play around with variations and iterations. Finally, the photo session hits a crescendo, and the subject and I know we've gone as far as we can, and are spent.

My years spent as an engineering student taught to be logical and linear, but have been my biggest impediment to doing creative work. Because there's always a subroutine running that says, "This is the step-by-step approach to doing X." And I'm always trying to approach things logically. But to get to X is hardly ever a straightforward process and being able to step outside routine and to stretch past logic creates the time when fun stuff happens.

Beyond my ten steps to choose action over activity is the realization that I already know enough technical stuff to last a lifetime. And, if we admit it to ourselves, the technical stuff it the easiest part to learn because there are no immediate consequences to learning or not learning the material. Really. You might waste a bit of time and money but for most of us that's about it. The hard part is being brave enough to stake out a vision and work on it. The hardest part for most of us is to continually engage the people around us that we want to photograph and convince them to collaborate in the realization of our vision. But it's only through doing it again and again that our styles emerge and our art gets stronger. The technical stuff is so secondary.

As an exercise, when I'm out walking around with my camera I make it a point to approach a stranger each time and ask them if we can make a portrait together. If I get turned down, I approach someone else until I find someone who's willing to put a toe across the fear line and play. The image isn't always stellar. Hell, it's rarely great work. But it gives me the practice and the tools to abate my fears so that when the right muse comes along I am ready and willing to give it my best shot. Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice frees your art. Relentless activity depletes that same energy like air escaping from a balloon.

I hope you'll accept what I've written here in the spirit I've intended. We're all on a journey to amaze ourselves. The first step is to choose action over activity.

And by the way...there is no ultimate camera choice.

Kirk

Playing around again with aspect ratio. While I love the square (1:1) it's always fun and informing to experiment.

Many of us grew up in photography wedded to the 24x36mm frame. The "3:2" aspect ratio. The "standard" of the industry... But there are more formats out in the wild than most people are comfortable using. I've written here many times about the square (1:1) and I'm sure a more able and verbose writer than me could engage you for hours and hours with a discussion about how each format came into being, its historic ramifications, and even its religious symbology, but I am not here to deconstruct alternate aspect ratios, I am here to praise them. 

The 3:2 ratio is chummy and comfortable for most photographers. Some, like me, have a preference for stockier, more square forms while others appreciate the wider feel of the 16:9 format. I find portraits easier to compose in the square. Others find scene are better presented in the wider and more cinematic settings. To each their own.

After decades and decades of making images with square and 3:2 format cameras I've gotten stuck in my ways. Or at least I was until my friend and peer, James Webb decided to pursue a project in a format that was entirely alien to me. He was working, I think, in the 21:9 aspect ratio which, I believe, is similar to CinemaScope or a standard, wide format used for movies. It's what I've used here for all the included samples except for one. I stuck in a 3:2 image just to work as a contrast to the much wider bounds of the other frames. 

James worked for over a year in the way I expect a real artist to work. He went out every day, after work, before work (he's been working on the staff of a high tech company for the past few years years as a video producer. A good day job!) and at lunch time. He never varied from his chosen, wide, horizontal frame configuration and instead looked for images that worked for his formalist structure. At first I was a bit dismissive of the idea. But thankfully James ignored my input entirely and we didn't speak of the project for over a year. This Winter we worked together on a project. He was the videographer and I was the still photographer on a daylong project. At the end of the day he handed me his printed book of wide images and... to be frank...I was blown away with not only how much I loved the way he handled the capture of the various scenes but also the dynamism of the format. It just worked. And the book amazingly fun to look through. It's also impressive. 

I was playing around with cameras today, procrastinating finishing my tax preparation, and I started to look through the menu in my five year old Sigma fp camera. It's the original 24 megapixel one and not the fpL. When I went into the aspect ratio settings I noticed that there was one I had never tried; never even noticed before. In fact, that camera has the 21:9 format available. You can set that ratio and shoot in DNG but when you open the files up in Lightroom Classic they open up to show the full 3:2 frame. You'll need to re-crop them to get back to your original, wide shooting intention. Or... you can be brave and shoot all the wide frames as Jpegs. That's what I did. 

The one camera/one lens kit I worked with this afternoon included the fp and the Sigma 45mm f2.8 lens. That one is a favorite because it's small and light and when used correctly (not at the close focus limits while at a wide open aperture!!!) it's sharp and contrasty. It's actually just right. A Goldilocks of a lens.

I found working with the tighter frame (especially from top to bottom...) was much more difficult than I expected. I needed to move back nearly every time I started photographing something. The next time I go out to shoot in a super wide, cinematic aspect ratio I'll follow James's lead and use a medium zoom instead. Something like a 24-70mm. That way I can more easily get things to fit into the frame. 

I've never been a big fan of composing on the rear screen of the camera but I'm not particularly excited about using the enormous Sigma Loupe that's made for the camera ---even though I've had one for years. And I'm even less excited about buying the EVF that was introduced with the fpL because it makes the camera bigger, less svelte, more kludgy. So, I bit the bullet and went for the naked screen shooting process. 

To really make that work I have to turn up the screen brightness to maximum and make sure to wear my latest eyeglasses prescription to see detail on the 3 inch screen. On a cloudy day like today it works pretty well, and I do find that I compose better on the rear screen than I do in a more immersive optical finder or EVF. Something about the way the images are rendered flat across the glass is more or less like looking into the waist level finder of a Hasselblad 500 C/M or the ground class of my old view camera. You look more. You pay more attention to the edges. Whatever. I did find myself making more compositional adjustments than I usually do and I was happier with some of the frames as a result. 

When I got home and played with the images I remembered why I keep the Sigma fp around even though I have more "complete" cameras I can use. It's the way that camera makes images. The color science Sigma put into the same. But it's also the fact that it's a far less serious camera. I use it in a more cavalier way than I do one of the big Leicas. 

I went out with three batteries this afternoon. I guess it's from some experience I had several years ago when it was my (impatient) perception that the camera "ate" batteries. But I needn't have been so over-prepared. The camera and I walked for two hours, shot a couple hundred frames and we still have almost half of a battery charge left. I think the camera was just showing off for me today. But I have to say that I find it adorable and fun. A nice combination for an inanimate object. It's small and sweet. Go buy one. You'll see what I mean...

Images below.

a "3:2" sample to show the differences. Also one just below.

SXSW is back. This week is the set-up week for the main show.

By Friday downtown will be packed with attendees. 

Right now it's the education component that was added

a while back. We'll have fun shooting the big show!!!

This enormous pile of dirt will be transformed into an obstacle course.

Rivian (the electric car maker without the insane CEO) will use it to demo the 

off road capabilities of their trucks. The trucks that don't rush after a brief rain shower....

If you own a CyberTruck you are probably not reading this... But if you are, you got screwed. Bad. By a psychopath. But hey, everyone makes mistakes. Don't bother leaving a comment; it will be excised. 

I guess everyone has a friend or a family member who has decided to institute an endless and ever changing list of diet restrictions which they think will make them immortal and immune to the ravages of aging. Mostly, in the long run, that just makes them more miserable than people who can actually enjoy food. Just sayin' 

opinionated artist/photographer/gadfly testing out his fp in a wider aspect ratio. 

 

I've overcome old prejudices and have come to really, really like the 35mm focal length on full frame cameras. It's fun.

 

Oh Yeah. And then there were some color images as well..... Also with an M240, a ZM 28 and a little optical finder in the hot shoe...

 

I think the writing is "on the wall." This building is slated for demolition. I'm sure the entire property will be turned into another high rise office building or condo tower. I guess that's okay but I always thought this building had a lot of character... We'll see what we get down the road...

Another "City of Austin" cooling tower. 

This is the patio at Mañana Coffee, just north of the Pfluger Pedestrian bridge over Lady Bird Lake (aka: The Colorado River). The shade structure is nice. The coffee is good and it's a nice place to practice my new, and occasional, European (and Canadian) approach to drinking coffee = Be sure to get your drink in a ceramic cup and then weld your damn ass to a chair for the duration. A very strict regimen indeed... No movement of any kind allowed before you get to the dregs at the very bottom of the cup... Sinister? Yeah.

Caution: Human in the background. 

This was the home of Nau's Pharmacy for fifty or sixty years. A neighborhood place. They also had a lunch counter and their hamburgers were beyond acceptable. They made shakes and malts. They are now closed and the property has been sold to yet another ravenous developer who will build some sort of unneeded monstrosity in its place. I took Ben there when he was a kid. He loved the swivel stools at the lunch counter and the squeeze bottles of ketchup. Or "Sauce American." 

Back in the dark ages, when Austin was a much, much smaller town, the city built a series of "Moon Towers" with lights on the very top that shined down across the whole Clarksville neighborhood. A very tall substitute for street lights on "short" poles. This is one of the last ones left. Now covered with inelegant cellphone repeaters and surrounded by power lines. I always wanted to climb one to see the view but heights and my brain don't get along well....

Kind of like a very much smaller Eiffel Tower right there on West Lynn Dr. and 10th Street. 

The area around Nau's Pharmacy is called Clarksville. It's an old neighborhood close to downtown. It was once a very poor area with tiny houses. Now it's roiled by constant upgrading to multimillion dollar homes. The small houses are bought for the land underneath them and immediately purged to make way for far too many square feet of living space....mostly for affluent, childless couples...

Now? Mostly unaffordable. And crowded. And overrun with fancy, trendy cars.

One of the last surviving, original business in Clarksville. Sledd's Nursery. Now run by a second generation. They do wonderful work and have great stuff for gardeners. Or...your gardener. Still, I love the converted Sinclair gas station. I used to live just around the corner when I was on the faculty at UT. Heady days. Little responsibility. Too much fun. Mostly just like now.

Random rock stacking. 

I have no idea. But it's fun.

I'll end my documentation of this stroll with a fantastic truck shot.

Not indicative of the majority of leased cars in the Clarksville neighborhood...

But damn. That was a fun neighborhood to live in 40 years ago. And cheap as dirt back then.