Inspiration from the obituary of Robert Rauschenberg
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under inspiration, quotes
The thing I love about life is that inspiration can be pulled from anywhere.
Like this obituary of Robert Rauschenberg:
Messing up is alright:
Screwing things up is a virtue. Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.
Don’t fear change:
John Cage said that fear in life is the fear of change. If I may add to that: nothing can avoid changing. It’s the only thing you can count on. Because life doesn’t have any other possibility, everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.
Be careful of what you know:
Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics. I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.
Inspiration can be found everywhere:
I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly. Because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.
A piece by Rauschenberg:
Tags: inspiration, quotes
Thoughts from Larry Towell
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under quotes
Quotes from Larry Towell:
Black and white is still the poetic form of photography, he says. Digital is for the moment; black and white is an investment of time and love.
The ordinary becomes distinct, the way poetry transforms words. This handling of the ordinary is the life of photography itself. In this ordinariness, photography lives and breathes.
There is a meditation to the still image however, that comes from stopping to look at the geometry of the world with all of our senses in order to capture a bit of it and confine it to one small space in recognition of a personal point of view. Photography casts aside the clutter, the commotion, and the noise of the world, in order to keep its form, shape and substance true to itself and in one complete thought.
Read the article here.
The Newspaper Disease
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under journalism
Roger Black on The Newspaper Disease:
As with the federal government, it won’t help to keep doing more of the things that aren’t working. It won’t work to keep cheapening the product. To use Gordon Bethune’s line about a similar problem in the airline business: “You can take so much cheese off the pizza that nobody will eat it.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Tags: journalism, newspapers, quotes, state of newspapers
Playing with photography
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under inspiration
Joachim Ladefoged on his bodybuilding project states:
For me it was more like playing with photography. It was about telling a story in a photographic way, not about saving the world
Photo by: Joachim Ladefoged
Tags: inspiration, quotes
You remember 100% of what you feel
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under inspiration
I gave a brief talk the other night to a photojournalism class at my undergrad and was in search of a quote I love on my old blog, but couldn’t find it so thought it was worth repeating here on my new blog.
One of my professors at OU, Bruce Strong, was a huge advocate for making images that made you feel. A notion I believe in strongly myself.
This quote is from a Business 2.0 article:
You remember 1/3 of what you read, 1/2 of what people tell you, but 100 percent of what you feel.
Who doesn’t love images that invite your heart and soul into a two-dimensional plane and bring a level of rawness and life to what is an otherwise static medium?
My cousin’s first dance as a new bride. Congratulations Tina and Ryan.
Tags: inspiration, ou, quotes
Achieving greatness with limited resources
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under inspiration
“Sometimes greatness comes from not having resources.” - Doug Liman
As always a great idea/story will always trump the tools we use.
To illustrate his point, he recalled a commercial he was shooting for Nike in the late 1990s starring golfer Tiger Woods. Liman noticed Woods bouncing a ball on the edge of a club during breaks from shooting. Liman grabbed a shoulder-held camera and, away from the crew, asked Woods to bounce the balls while being filmed.
The shot, which became a classic, was natural, unrehearsed, and driven by imagination rather than millions of studio dollars, Liman said.
From News.com
Tags: inspiration, liman, multimedia, quotes, tools, video
What makes a prize winning photo?
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
In the spirit of the contest season here are a few quotes to get you through the sleepless nights of editing.
Found this on the WHNPA website. They asked past contest judges what they look for in a prize winning photograph.
Here are a few of the responses:
Here’s what I look for in a picture: I want to see a picture that resonates on several levels. One that has to have solid content, good composition, and a moment that takes the view to another level. - Bill Luster of The Courier-Journal
Some judges were swayed by the event and would choose pictures made at major news events over superior images from less important occurrences. - Arnold Drapkin, retired picture editor at Time
A winning photograph should have compelling and engrossing subject matter contained in an aesthetic composition. - OU’s very own Marcy Nighswander
In search of the intangible: Beyond immediate, visceral impact and the “layering” of secondary meaning so often seen these days, a memorable photograph also has heart. -John Kaplan, Professor of Journalism and Communications at The University of Florida
And my favorite of the bunch comes from Cheryl Diaz Meyer at The Dallas Morning News.
A good image use the elements of light, composition and moment - a great image goes beyond - it is made in the gut and it reaches out the viewer viscerally.
Find the PDF of the article here.
