Minimalism, Exclusion and Simplicity

www.dennismook.com


Tree on Hillside, Custer State Park, South Dakota

Frankly, life has gotten too complicated for me.  I don't like it.  There are just too many choices.  I find that too much technology, too many things, too many options and too many choices actually degrades the quality of my life.  It is much easier to make an educated choice when I can pick from a few, rather than a hundred.  More choices and greater variety doesn't improve my life.  Whenever there are many, many choices, even after conducting exhausting research, I find myself second guessing my decision and worried I made the wrong choice.  With fewer choices, I feel confident I have made the best decision for the circumstances. 

Now, I'm not ready to live off the land in remote Alaska, but how many cable channels does one need?  I must have 300 but I only regularly watch about 10 of them.  I like the comforts of life, but I think I would like the comforts of life better if I didn't have to choose among millions of options.

Gull & Rocks, James River, Virginia

For several years, I have been trying, to no avail, to simplify my life.  I can't seem to get there.  There are too many external factors that play into the equation that prevent me from simplification.  When I go to the grocery store, I find 160 kinds of breakfast cereal and 45 different kinds of bread.  Heck, there are about 5 different kinds of tomatoes!  Used to be one.  I find 450 kinds of shirts in the clothing store.  I find about a 1000 options and option packages on a car when trying to buy one.  Too many choices. Give me the basics, please.  Life would be so much better.  Less is more.

I often find myself resisting.  I resist adopting a new model of something.  I resist buying the new and discarding the old.  For the most part, I am perfectly happy with what I have as it serves me well and I don't need to immediately toss it to get something newer, with more features and, usually, more expensive.  Just let me keep what I have as it is working fine.  Too many people think something becomes obsolete just because a new model has arrived.  If it met your needs yesterday, then it will meet your needs tomorrow, even though there is a newer model available.

The same thing can be said about photography.  Photography is an exercise in exclusion.  When we go out to make photographs, we have the whole world before us from which to choose a pleasing composition.  When we see something that evokes an emotion, we have to start narrowing down what will actually be in the photograph--excluding much more than we include.  Again, choices.  Minimalism.  Getting to the heart of it all.

Maple Tree, My Front Yard

All too often, photographers include way too much in their photographs.  Not being sure about what to include, more often than not, too much is in the image that the viewer may ask him or herself, what is the subject of this photograph?  Get closer, zoom in, put on a longer lens, but narrow your photograph down to its essence.  What are you trying to say and leave everything else out.

I find satisfaction exercising my photographic vision in the manner of culling out the extraneous and only keeping the absolute necessary.  I have included some of my images in the vein of minimalism, exclusion, simplification. There are three types of photographic minimalism.

When I try to minimize the subject matter of my images, I find it refreshingly rewarding.  Too often, I photograph the grand landscape or other subjects of complicated compositions.  Once in a while, for a change, I like to go the other direction.  I like to look for simple subjects that please the eye and generate interest for the viewer.


Beach, Maui, Hawaii

Another aspect of photographic minimalism is in the type and amount of gear you may use to make your images.  I, for one, have way too much gear.  I have more than I need.  Sadly, a result of bad habits.  You don't have to have a lot of gear to make good images.  You don't have to have expensive gear to make good images.  You don't have to have sophisticated or top of the line gear to make good images.  I have made many good images with a simple point-and-shoot camera--fully automatic.  I have made many good images with a fully manual camera and one lens.  I have made good images with a $20 Holga camera with a single element plastic lens.  Its all in your intent, vision, how you see and what you are trying to capture. Visualization.

Barbed Wire Fence & Meadow, Columbia River Valley, OR

The third type of photographic minimalism is where you photograph.  You don't have to travel to exotic places to make excellent images.  You don't have to pay a guide, travel long distances, go to the Amazon, Mongolia, the Himalayas or, in the U.S., only go to national parks such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, etc.  You can stay close to home and find plenty of small, interesting composition of light, shadow, color, pattern, texture, perspective, motion and blur.  Everyday you pass potentially good images, if only you had seen them.  Look!  See!  Pay attention. They are all around you.

What started me thinking about this subject was a book that was recently released.  The title of the book is "The Minimalist Photographer" by Steve Johnson.  I downloaded a sample on my Kindle to read the preface and first chapter or two, I have an interest in the minimalist photographer concept.  If you think you may be interested, the book is available on Amazon.com and it is not expensive.  I didn't buy it because, according to the table of contents, a lot of it is basic photography instruction.  I'm looking for a tome more about philosophy, vision, and strategy.  There are other books and articles to be found on photographic minimalism, if you are interested.




If your life is too complicated, I suggest you try to simplify it.  Keep what you have instead of jumping on the next new thing.  Contemplate, think, see, hear and make intelligent choices about your life and photography.  I'm thinking minimalism and exclusion is kind of like operational meditation, where you remove the complications of your actions as you would remove the distracted thought process when meditating.

Enjoy!
Dennis Mook