"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." —Emerson1
"I have always been of opinion that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." —Wilde2
Despite taking socks or slugs in the mouth from both Emerson and Wilde, I've always been concerned with consistency. The reason is simple: Photography is different. In photography we build up a body of work bit by bit, because the fish do not always bite. No one has ever had a hit-rate of 100%. Instead, we photograph, and every now and then we "get one." And when you put all the hits up together, it becomes a "body of work" with, one hopes, a through-line that indicates something specific to you in terms of your own style, vision, or concerns.
It has to do with the idea of "consistent dissonance" I've written about several times over the years. Consistent dissonance can be explained as follows: if you're hanging a show of your work, or making a book mockup, everything needs to be either consistent, or consistently different. So if all of your pictures are impressionistic street snapshots in black-and-white printed full-frame, then one color square-ratio commercial-style wedding picture will stick out like a sore thumb. It doesn't belong. But if all the pictures in a show are equally different from each other as a those two types of picture, then you might get away with it: cf. some famous collections of found photographs such as Mike Mandel's Evidence.3
Simple concept. You get it.
Anyway, I go to events regularly at the Catholic Parish Hall in Penn Yan, and coming out the front door you see the back of the Catholic Church across the street past its parking lot, and I've tried several times to get a completely satisfactory picture of it. I've deleted several failures and almost-successes (almost-successes as as bad, or maybe even a little worse than, failures) already. Here's another try that I also like, in a street-documentary sort of way. So the other day I happened to be presented with this and took one iPhone snap of it:
And there it is. Its hulking geometric shapes, the sun glittering off its new slate roof, its cluttered backside-ness, its brute mass, its striking presence, all of it adding up to a peculiar quirky dignity.
Only trouble is, wrong camera.
I hasten to add that yes, you can do a perfectly fine project with an iPhone. But I don't. The work I'm try to add to is my B&W work made with my Sigma monochrome. But I didn't have it with me that day.
[To be continued....]
Mike
1 "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," First Series, 1841 (Every English-speaking lifelong student should grapple with "Self-Reliance" at least once in their transit on Earth.)
2 "I have always been of opinion that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative: but have we not all seen, and most of us admired, a picture from [Whistler's] hand of exquisite English girls strolling by an opal sea in the fantastic dresses of Japan? Has not Tite Street been thrilled with the tidings that the models of Chelsea were posing to the master, in peplums, for pastels? Whatever comes from Mr. Whistler's brush is far too perfect in its loveliness to stand or fall by any intellectual dogmas on art, even by his own: for Beauty is justified of all her children, and cares nothing for explanations...." — Oscar Wilde, "The Relation of Dress to Art: A Note in Black and White on Mr. Whistler's Lecture," Pall Mall Gazette, February 28, 1885.
Both quotes come from this tart little essay in the Wikipedia Project Pages, where Wikipedia authors converse amongst themselves. "Pages of a WikiProject are the central place for editor collaboration and organization on a particular topic area. Many WikiProjects compose 'advice essays' about how to apply Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to their specific subject area."
3A book every photographer should grapple with at least once in their lives, no matter what they think of it.
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Featured Comments from:
Glenn Allenspach: "You’ve just articulated an idea that I believe to be true, and it stands in opposition to that old saw that the best camera is the one you have with you. I believe that, more often than not, the worst camera is the one you have with you, if it’s not suited for the job at hand. Especially when the best camera for the job is the one you spent all that money on and then left at home because you couldn’t be bothered to carry it along when you had that nice, convenient cell phone with a camera in your pocket."
