It might sound strange to suggest that painters can teach us anything about photography.
I believe, though, that any creative pursuit springs from the same space within us – whether it’s photography, writing, painting or even making exquisitely beautiful cakes.
Creativity comes from a desire to express ourselves, to verbalize our experiences, thoughts, ideas and what fascinates us about the world.
The ways we express ourselves are merely our personal preferences, but the fact that we choose to create, that is a universal desire and, what I would argue, is also a need.
In keeping myself motivated as a photographer I love to look for inspiration from all across the creative spectrum.
I like to take the advice of my favourite photographer Ernst Haas in this, when he recommended to:
“refine your senses through the great masters of music, painting, and poetry. In short, try indirect inspirations, and everything will come by itself.”
Not only do I love Van Gogh’s paintings, but I love how he talks about being an artist. I feel he expresses that desire to see the world in a new way so uniquely.
I liked too how he wrote very simply of the life-giving qualities of being creative.
Today I wanted to indulge in his brilliance and see what we can draw from his life to help us with our photography.
1. We are all deeply creative
“Does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.” Van Gogh
I have met too many people who say they aren’t creative types or arty types. And yet they have a huge desire to create, to be people who make things.
That desire is enough. That fire within is enough to take you to where you need to go with your photography.
2. The strange magic of creation
“What is drawing? How does one get there? It’s working one’s way through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How can one get through that wall? — since hammering on it doesn’t help at all. In my view, one must undermine the wall and grind through it slowly and patiently.” Van Gogh
I love this quote. It shows some of that strange magic that is involved in the act of creativity, but also the grind of just doing the work.
Sometimes I don’t know where my images come from. I just know my role is to show up, push through discomfort when it arises and keep going.
3. Paying attention to your subject changes what it is
“It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.” Van Gogh
When you look deeply at a subject it starts to transform into other things.
Perhaps it becomes intertwined with your imagination, your memories, and thoughts. Your imagination transforming it from one thing to another.
Perhaps it changes because as you look, really look at something, you notice its many facets, its individual details, its many elements. It becomes less a part of a whole, and more a whole world in itself.
4. We all need to be courageous
“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Van Gogh
I need this stapled to my forehead sometimes. I feel that my life requires a lot of courage, often. I’ve chosen a different path to others, so I see what this would be. When I overcome fear and feel courageous, wow, it’s an amazing feeling. When I succumb to fear and am not courageous, then, yes, it doesn’t feel great. But the mere act of attempting courageous acts induces a lot of creative energy within me.
“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore” Van Gogh
5. Taking photos is the most important thing I can do
I wonder if it’s my age, but my desire to create photographs feels in some ways more urgent than when I was younger. Maybe urgent is the wrong word. It feels more essential than it ever has.
When I was younger taking photos was a deep pleasure, it was fun, it was adventurous! I have loved all of my work and projects and learning.
But there is something about getting older when you see with starker and starker clarity what is essential to your life and what is unnecessary filler.
I want to only fill my life now with things that are essential to my being. That makes me proud, that push me to be a better person, that help me grow and learn and help me experience the world in beautiful new dimensions.
6. Kill self-doubt with action
This connects to my last post about how we all need creative pursuits in our lives. I love this quote of Van Gogh’s:
“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
Self-doubt is the enemy of creativity, and it’s one we all face. But self-doubt only controls us if we let it. If we plough on regardless, self-doubt is eradicated by taking action.
7. When we are seeking to do what we love, life is complete
“I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.” Van Gogh
This is the true test for me of a good life – are we in it with all of our hearts? I like to think I am in mine, and like family, photography is a natural conduit to living in a wholehearted, connected way.
So I hope these are some nice thoughts for you, giving you some inspiration for your photo practice.
I’d like to leave with one last quote from the great man, one I have quoted several times before on my blog, but is always a good reminder for me:
“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” Van Gogh
So there is no reason not to do things. The time to do things is now, regardless of where you are and what you don’t know (yet.)
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I’m from California, but I now live in Andalucia, Spain with my beautiful family. I came to Europe to shoot London twenty years ago for my first book, London at Dawn, and stayed to create a series of books and exhibitions on Cities at Dawn. I run my business with my wife Diana who is a writer and marketing genius. My projects and work have been featured on The Guardian, BBC World, French Photo Magazine, The Economist, CNN, Atlas Obscura and Digital Photographer. As well as sharing my knowledge and passion for photography in regular articles + videos I also run photo workshops around the world and inspiring live online classes.
Today I am still driving around the fairy-world-like landscapes of Ha Giang, it’s a breathtaking experience.
I am unashamedly a colourphotographer. I have always loved colour in my photography, even when I was at photography school, emerging as an artist and black and white dominated the art scene.
I stuck to what I was most passionate about – and that was a life in full colour.
My own journey with colour has been one of experimentation, fun and pushing the boundaries.
I spent many years developing a solarisation process for my film colour photos, leading to the kinds of surreal photos that you might imagine coming from dreams:
I have also relished capturing the pure colours of nature:
And also the hyper-real colours that come from HDR photography:
And of course the fun colours that humans bring to the world:
As well as the results of colour work in processing:
The point for me with colour is to enjoy the process and go where my imagination takes me.
Because imagination is such an important part of photography for me.
Imagination helps you see beyond your immediate environment, and creates something that weaves in your ideas, your experiences and your passions.
“When I’m ready to make a photograph… I quite obviously see in my mind’s eye something that is not literally there… I’m interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.” Ansel Adams
Today I want to share with you some ideas that I teach about colour – and how they can be used to evoke emotion in your photographs.
I also have a photo challenge that I am setting for you at the end of this post – because I know so many of you love to experiment with these ideas.
And I have a free eBook for you too – that brings many of these ideas together into a nice and simple explanation.
I’ve talked a lot in the past about my love of light. Light to me is mesmerising. I want to feel it, to capture it, to show it in all its glory.
But colour to me is an equally beautiful thing, and totally connected to, and affected by, light. And because:
“Colour is joy. One does not think joy. One is carried by it.” Ernst Haas
I love that thought – carried by colour and joy! Haas for me is king of capturing the feeling of colour and light.
“I paint because colour is a significant language to me.” Georgia O’Keeffe.
I want to celebrate some of the sheer vibrancy that colour brings to our lives and how we capture that as photographers, as artists, as people who are paying attention to this wild and beautiful world.
I want this to inspire you to look at how you capture colour in your photos too.
Colour is deeply affecting to us as humans. Think of all those colour charts – red signals danger, blue signals cold etc.
For me colour is a way to bring emotion into your photographsin a very simple, powerful way.
The artist Wassily Kandinsky developed a colour theory that stated that colours made people feel certain ways.
“Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.” Wassily Kandinsky
Let’s look at some colours – and the emotions they induce.
Yellow
Warm, exciting, happy
In the photo above look at the contrast between the red and the yellow. What does the yellow bring to the photo?
I would say this is a happy yellow – would you agree?
A more muted yellow – how do the textures of the lemons and the lines affect how you think about the colour?
Blue
Deep, peaceful, supernatural
I find the blue in the photo above very soothing; what do you say?
A much bolder blue – does it feel cold to you? Striking? Deep?
Another light blue with very soothing peaceful qualities. Also expansive?
Here is a lovely little film animating Kandinsky’s colour theory. Plus an article about the artist that brings in the sound and musical elements of his work, as well as the feeling of colour.
Now do you agree with Kandinksy’s ideas about colour? Do they evoke those emotions within you?
The key for me in creating emotion by using colour is to capture the essence of that colour.
For example – the happiness of yellow, the peacefulness of blue, the boldness of red. You can use the characteristics of the colours and find objects that encapsulate these characteristics, or the essence of that colour.
We want to feel the innate qualities of the colour, we want to have a deep emotional response to that colour in the photo.
So it isn’t a matter of just going around and looking at colours and snapping away at them. It’s finding colours that provoke an emotion within you, and working to capture that feeling.
Let’s look at some more photos and see…
It doesn’t have to be vibrant colours. The depth and subtle variations of any colour is a mesmerising world of its own.
In this photo above can you feel the coldness of the white frost and the earthiness of brown? This to me is capturing the essence of a colour.
In the photo below I love to bring out the richness of the more muted subtle colours. Which I have to really be good at as winters are long in London, lol!
The feeling of the photo is made by these muted colours.
Capturing colour as the main subject of your photo is often easiest to start doing when you break down the elements, photographing parts of the subject and turning it into an abstraction:
“Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colours.” John Ruskin
I would love to know – how does colour affect you and your photography? Let me know by commenting below.
Photo challenge
It’s time for a photo challenge! I would love to see your photos of colour in your photography. Post them in my photo sharing group Light Monkeys on Facebook or email them to me.
Free Colour as Emotion Photo eBook
I have a free 31 page eBook, if you’d like to get a free copy of this, email us on info@anthonyepes.com.
I like to use the leading lines technique because the world is just chock full of lines and so it just can’t be helped – but I also like to think it’s because it makes me feel that my photo is going to take you somewhere. Sometimes the destination is not so important, it’s the journey that counts. And don’t we all like that feeling like we are actuallygoing somewhere? So, be it a road, or a dotted line, or the sweep of an arc, a line will take you places.
A lot of photographers do reject these rules though. Ansel Adams, for example, (who I would actually argue was more of a master in printing than a master in composition) said: “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
Or how about another non-fan of the rules:
“To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.” Edward Weston
I suppose the point of putting these quotes up front, apart from the fact that they make me laugh, is everyone has their own path, what they love to shoot and their way of pursuing excellence. I like to pepper all of my teaching with the idea that there is always another way of thinking and doing things.
There are always new (and old) ideas to challenge yourself with and take your photography further. So follow what feels right for you – learning photography should never be a dogmatic experience. Practising, exploring and committing to developing your photography is really what is most important.
As a slight deviation, but not really, this is a great 2 minute video from Jason Silva about Creative Flow states and how when you are in the creative zone or the creative flow state the part of your brain responsible for self-editing goes dim. That’s when pushing past rules or bending them can really pay off. Perfection is not just about control, says Silva, but also about letting go.
So now let’s get totally into those lines…
What’s exciting about leading lines is that even though I’ve been using it for twenty years, it has developed with my work over the years so that I have been able to become much more sophisticated in my use of the technique. It’s like the idea that in order to express simplicity you need to practice and practise and practise.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci
So – I don’t want to just use the most obvious examples of leading lines in this guide. Subtly using composition techniques is a great way to enhance your photos, although when you start out you’ll probably be making really obvious uses of these techniques as you get familiar with them.
Leading lines has given me some really awesome photos that I am very proud of. With rules I suggest:
Learn them
Embed them into your photography by practising them madly
They will become an automatic way of seeing for you which then helps you to:
Bend and develop them into your own practise and then finally
Break them at will, when it’s right for the photo
I think Picasso sums it up really well (as usual):
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Photographs are not just a collection of elements that are flat and are easily read. Photography has a myriad of ways to tell stories, to express multiple ideas and to take you places both physically and into your imagination. It does this with as much as you include in the photo as what you leave out.
Leading lines can:
Take your eye on a journey – either through the photo or out of it completely (and with roads and paths, often to infinity)
Direct your eye to the main subject of the photo
Direct your eye in a specific order through various elements of a photo
Lines create depth in a photo – and this is a really fun idea to play with
All compositional techniques help you tell a story
Think of lines as a tool to help you tell a story in your photograph. When you find your subject, ask yourself – are there any ways that a narrative can be created by enhancing it with lines? Usually when I find something I want to shoot I will move around it looking for angles and lines and a secondary element to support it. Take time to really look and see all the elements in your composition. Make every element matter.
Where I stop to take the photo all depends on what I am trying to say. Diagonal lines, horizontal lines, vertical lines all convey different feelings.
Diagonal lines
Are great for bringing energy and movement into an image. They can express a variety of messages. These neatly stacked diagonals are juxtaposed with the energy of the trees. Perhaps the rigidity and force of man next to nature’s wild beauty? Nature has a uniformity that is totally different from man’s, perhaps?
Horizontal lines
For a sense of calm and peace. Our eyes seem to find this direction the most reassuring. This one is obvious:
But how about this one? Horizontal lines still, but a very different subject – urban, a bit grimy and messy. Still calming? I would say yes. I think the eye likes a bit of order.
Curvy lines
Are pleasing to the eye – they can create dynamic look and convey energy. Here I think the curved lines are more subtly leading the eye through the photo. I love the strength the lines convey next the luxuriously light and ethereal sky.
Another curvy line, this time, a road!
Look up!
Vertical lines
Portray structure and strength. And power?! Both in the man made world:
And in nature (at one of the worlds greatest forests in my opinion, The Lady Bird Johnson trail in the Redwood National Park in my home state of California) :
Or how about a bit of both – horizon and vertical? This was shot at La Defense in Paris. If you love playing with reflections and the hard lines of new buildings it’s an awesome place to shoot.
Here’s another from my La Defense phase:
Implied lines
Some lines are just implied– but they can still be impactful. See here too how the space is what creates the impact, the story of the photo?
Some other ideas of lines…
Lines of chaos?
I’m not sure what to call this one, or even if anyone would classify it as leading lines. But I think it is, because at first you just see the chaos of the tree branches. And then your eye is lead up the tree towards the two people. (I think I invented that term lines of chaos, so can someone enter it into the great canon of photo vocabulary please? :))
Fading or incomplete lines
Lines don’t always have to be clear or complete to communicate a feeling. I like the fact here that you can’t see the end of the track; it enhances how nature has taken over. Nature will always win in the end, won’t it!
Using motion or light to create lines
Lines don’t have to be found, they can be created by using long exposures on motion and lights. This can create a sense of power and speed as it has below. And I like in this image that I have a stationary motorbike as a contrast. I love using contrast or juxtaposition with lines.
Portraits
I love a nice simple, but strong background for portraits. Something that is going to say something about the person, their expression, perhaps their stance. I think this is a good combo:
Lines at your feet
I have an obsession with photographing things on the street. Like chewing gum trodden into the tar or lines and arrows doing strange things. You can call it my Ernst Haas phase. I think particularly with things on the road and street you’ve got a great opportunity to practise this technique and learn to really play with lines. Remove the lines, arrows and directions painted onto our streets from their context and they become really fun and interesting to look at.
Mix of line types for added complexity
So ask yourself – what’s the feeling the lines are provoking?
I find many photographers are more interested in composition elements than thinking about what the story or feeling the photo they are taking is communicating. OK – I don’t want to load too much onto your shoulders here, but the feeling that the photo is evoking in the viewer is extremely important. If it evokes no feeling, no interest, curiosity, nostalgia, desire, whatever it may be, no matter how well composed, then that photo will be flicked over and forgotten.
“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” Don McCullin.
Compositional techniques are a means to an end, not the end in itself. So think about how the lines in the photo are making you feel. In this image below, which I particularly love because when my family and I were staying in Paris for several months working on my book my son was going through his train obsession era. So I spent many, many, many hours at Parisian stations watching trains with him (and talking about them, filming them, looking them up etc.) This image is in my book and really, it’s for him. I should call it, Ode to my son, age 7.
Can you see how in this image the lines give a different sensation because they don’t start within the photo? Leading lines often don’t end within a photo, creating a feeling of endlessness or infinity, but the eye is always looking for somewhere to at least begin its journey.
And a few final thoughts / ideas / inspirations / links:
Strong subjects: If you have a strong subject there is no need to worry that lines will overpower it. Lines are strongest in a supporting role but rarely have the power to take over an image.
Arrows: your eyes will naturally follow the point of an arrow. And there is something quite interesting about arrows competing for your attention by pointing in different directions.
Opposition: Using lines to create opposition/juxtaposition is always interesting.
Angle and perspective: If you find some interesting lines but it’s not working in your composition try playing around with your angle and perspective. Get high, get low, move around. As the master Haas says: “Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’.”
An aid to simplicity: leading lines helps you focus on simplicity – most photographers are too complex in their expectations. simplicity and strength.
“What’s really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer. ” William Albert Allard
Last very important point In this post you’re seeing my photos, my style and how I’ve brought leading lines into my work. You’re style of shooting, what you choose to look at and shoot will mean it will look totally different in your work.
So play with it. Have fun.
I’d love to know what you think of leading lines – do you use it in your photography? Will you start now? Please post your thoughts below. I love hearing from you and it’s great to know what you think.
Do you know someone who loves taking photos? It would be amazingly awesome if you could send them my blog. Sharing is caring as I keep saying to my fierce toddler daughter 🙂 I’ve been getting amazing feedback on it so far so if you think it might benefit or inspire a friend /loved one / colleague / neighbour I’d love it if you could pass it on.
As always get in touch with me if you have any burning photo questions or you need anything at all.
Greetings from a balmy Rome. Today I wanted to take a look at Ernst Haas, my favourite photographer and, hands down, the biggest photographic influence on my work. When I discovered his books in the 80’s I was blown away by the beauty he discovered in the most mundane views or objects: lines on a street, a shaft of light, a burst of vivid colour. Haas was a prolific photographer, working across multiple genres, but much of his photography involved creating very simple but stunningly compelling photographs, ones that are heavy with texture, beautiful light, sumptuous colour and most importantly, intense feeling.
Haas’s passions and way of seeing the world felt very similar to what I was naturally drawn to, and though my work isn’t particularly akin to his, there is definitely a strong influence. I cannot encourage you enough to look at his work.
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself” Henry Miller
Haas’s simple photos of lines on the street and reflections completely opened up my view of photography. To see that mundane things like this could be considered interesting powerfully struck me. I know we see this in abundance now but to create something beautiful from mundane objects is actually pretty hard.
Of course it’s harder to take simple photos. To begin you need to find things that fascinate you and pay close attention to them. Examining what they are, what elements they are made up of. Taking things down to their simplest elements is very difficult. But that is what makes it interesting. It then comes down to feeling, how you feel about what you are looking at, what textures, colours you can draw out of what you’re photographing. What is the light doing? Every part of the photograph communicates something, and the less there is in a photograph, the more weight and meaning each element has.
2) How to dream with open eyes
“You become things, you become an atmosphere, and if you become it, which means you incorporate it within you, you can also give it back. You can put this feeling into a picture. A painter can do it. And a musician can do it and I think a photographer can do that too and that I would call the dreaming with open eyes.” – Ernst Haas
When you are looking around you and are taking photographs, you are entering a different state of mind. You are detaching yourself from being absorbed with your own mind and thoughts, and you are doing what Haas suggests, ‘dreaming with open eyes’. Haas was then able to see the beauty and feelings of things outside of himself – here of lights and lines.
For me it’s almost like remembering the best moments in my life, like time has slowed down. I remember the sunlight filtering through the trees onto my face as I lay looking up at the sky as a small child in Greece – the feeling of looking at the early morning sunlight coming into my bedroom and the texture of a cotton cover on my skin, as I lay in bed with my new girlfriend; the lines of shadow created by the blinds on the floor as I sat exhausted with my wife as she was in labour with our first child.
Photography is capturing moments of feeling, for yourself but also for others. And what the best photography does for me is create a sense of a memory, perhaps of something you might have experienced, or a connection with the photographer, of their memories, their experiences, their moments.
3) The world is just a jumble of….. interesting shapes, lines and more shapes
“Bored with obvious reality, I find my fascination in transforming it into a subjective point of view. Without touching my subject I want to come to the moment when, through pure concentration of seeing, the composed picture becomes more made than taken. Without a descriptive caption to justify its existence, it will speak for itself – less descriptive, more creative; less informative, more suggestive; less prose, more poetry.” Ernst Haas from ‘About Color Photography’
This is one of my favourite Haas photos. In so much of his work you can see an interest in lines and shapes. And that interplay of lines and shapes, combined with colour and light, are what make them so intriguing.
When you get into looking at things, you start to see them more individually, less as a whole view and more as singular objects almost floating around in space. Here Haas was using many interesting shapes and lines – pulling the scene together and contrasting them creates a slightly disorientating, but ultimately pleasing, collection of shapes for the eye to see, and therefore a great photo. This comes from the discipline of careful looking.
4) Feeling of colour
Before I saw Haas’s work I didn’t realise that you could feel colour so intensely from a photo. Just like you can feel in your body the emotion behind a dramatic expression on a photo of someone’s face, you can also feel everything else in the photo – and colour is no exception. I suppose it’s like how struck we are by a beautiful red flower or the pinks and oranges of sunrise in nature. Everything that we see, and so everything that we photograph, has the power to make us feel.
Light for me is the number one consideration for photos. Most photographers are obsessed with light, it just comes down to priorities. Perhaps growing up in Southern California has made me more obsessed with colourful, dramatic light. Usually I vere towards wanting amazing light, but it can also be looking for an absence of light, looking for shadows, looking for what is happening, and the sensations that are created in low light. I talk more about light here and here.
6) Reality is subjective
“The camera only facilitates the taking. The photographer must do the giving in order to transform and transcend ordinary reality.” Ernst Haas
This is another of Haas’ interesting compositions, a seemingly disjointed photo, with various shapes and colours and different light sources (the ambient light, the light from the bar, the reflected lights on the car)
To take this photo you have to be looking and waiting and watching. Breaking down the world into different parts, finding shapes or colours or views that interest you and waiting for other elements to come together into the frame. If I find one interesting element I stop and look around, if I find two or three I am definitely waiting around for something else to happen – perhaps for the light to change, or someone to walk into shot. You won’t always get it, but start with looking for one interesting element and work from there.
“In every artist there is poetry. In every human being there is the poetic element. We know, we feel, we believe.” Ernst Haas
7) The fun you can have with a reflection
Haas did some pretty epic reflections. I love reflections and I love how Haas took it to a whole new level. He’s using shapes again, interesting shapes to contrast and place and change the view. Because that’s how we see the world, isn’t it? Not as one straight forward view but by multiple angles, layered and busy. Haas had a great ability to reflect in his work some of the chaos that our eyes see, before our brain has worked on it and made it easier to understand.
Haas warned against seeking too much direct inspiration as it “leads too quickly to repetitions of what inspired you,” and instead recommends you to “refine your senses through the great masters of music, painting, and poetry. In short, try indirect inspirations, and everything will come by itself.”
I think of it like the roots of a tree drawing water and nutrients from a wide area. Bring multiple sources into your own creative filtering system. I go through phases of looking at other people’s work, but I don’t feel bad if I go months without looking at another photographer’s work, because sometimes other photographs are interesting and inspiring but other times it’s confusing and not helpful for me in creating something distinct and original. Of course that’s not the only way to be – this is just what works for me. So I read, listen to music, walk, talk to people. Live, basically. That’s what does it for me.
“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” Henry Miller
But also! Don’t think too hard about it or take anyone’s advice too seriously or dogmatically. No-one has the answer that’s right for you!
“Style has no formula, but it has a secret key. It is the extension of your personality. the summation of this indefinable net of your feeling, knowledge, and experience.” Ernst Haas
9) Forget about art
“One cannot photograph art’” Ernst Haas
By this I take the idea that there is no one way to create art. There is only living and feeling and looking and learning. And wrapping this all up into expressing yourself. Art is what is decided when people start looking at what you’ve done, after you’ve taken the photograph, not before.
10)“Colour is joy” Ernst Haas
I love working in colour, it’s excites me. I have said many times and will continue to bang on about this – what you should be concentrating on in your photography, or any creative medium, is the things that excite you. Haas introduced me to a vast world of colour photography – but what is so interesting about his colour work is the feelings he got from his colours. It’s like he is completely connected to what he is photographing and you feel you are there, in the picture.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci
There is something deeply cathartic about seeking out simplicity. Life is complicated enough: a strange combination of long stretches of the mundane and a mad puzzle at others. I like to seek out things that pierce the bubble of life, that remind me of simple pleasures. And Haas did that brilliantly. You don’t need to go to far flung places, or look for ‘interesting’ people or things to photograph. You could just take a drive and see what happens…..
There is a weird cycle in photography, and in the art world. Every now and again the mood seems to be to reject beauty. It is as though by celebrating what is naturally beautiful you have been taken in by something that is too easy to admire; it’s not challenging enough (as though we need more challenges in life, jeez!) But Haas rejected this, and I admire him for that. Even when his work fell out of fashion (he was a super famous photographer in the 1950’s and 60’s, but the art world fell out of love with him from the 70’s onwards. He is nowhere near as famous as he should be, and has become more of a photographer’s photographer, because I think photographers realise how amazingly hard it is to photograph is such a consistently beautiful and simple way ).
But what’s fascinating too is that it was not just straightforward beauty that he was photographing. Everything has a story, perhaps an edge or complexity that reflects beauty in real life. Life is not straightforward and neither were Haas’ photographs.
13) Photography can create movement
(Another) thing I love about Haas is how he continued to develop and push his work to explore different ideas and themes. There are many famous photographers who get known for a style and then get stuck there (and plenty of non famous ones too). It’s easy to find something you are good at and just focus on that, almost like you are holding on to it for dear life. But as Haas said:
“Don’t park. Highways will get you there, but I tell you, don’t ever try to arrive. Arrival is the death of inspiration.” Ernst Haas
Haas’s experimentation with movement in photography was a style he worked and developed over many projects. I love how the colour and the story of the photo seem to be enhanced by the movement. Again, simple, colour and shape driven. Beautiful.
So I thought I’d finish with a some ideas on how you can get into an Ernst Haas inspired photo mood. Ask yourself:
What simple things totally fascinate you? What could you go out into the world and truly and deeply examine? I love photographing lines on the road, and how they can take you somewhere, or nowhere at all (thanks Ernst!). I also go pretty crazy for reflections.
Perhaps for you it could be:
the look of bare feet in grass
street lights at night
freckles
texture of the hair of your dog
Examine these things. Thinking of them as mere objects, not what they are connected to, what their purpose is, what they are. Just think of what you see in your gaze and your imagination. And then when you are totally happy you have looked and examined closely enough, then you are ready to get out your camera and start to experiment…….
And for further inspiration, some good articles about Haas here and here. A lot of the quotes I took from Haas are from this article that he wrote about his philosophy of photography on the Ernst Haas estate website. There is also an Haas exhibition on at the Atlas Gallery in London until July 4th of an early project ‘Reconstructing London, visions of the city after World War II.’
I’d love to know what you think of Haas’s work and what you’ve learnt from him. Send me an email or comment below.
