Ten Top Photographer Tips - from a top session guitarist

Bill Frisell - Copyright 2019 Monica Jane Frisell

Wait.. what? How can a guitar player offer tips for photographers?

Let me help. Music and photography are creative arts. Each as some fixed constraints and while there are guidelines, there are no laws that one must obey. Both have a serious risk of GAS, where otherwise sane people get hooked on gear before creativity and some fall so far as to believe that gear makes a difference by itself. We know that’s a pile of dung, but even stable folks think first about megapixels and dots per inch before they think about the making of an image. This is similar to a guitarist worrying more about what tube is in the preamp stage, than what they are playing. Dung. Plain and simple.

The guitarist, whose top tips for musical performance I will gently modify to fit photography is Bill Frisell. Mr. Frisell is often painted as a jazz guitarist, and while he is a superb player of jazz, he is not limited to that one space, just as a great photographer can do many different styles of work. If you would like to read the article from where these tips are drawn, consult the September 2022 of Guitar Player magazine.

I don’t know Mr. Frisell. We’ve never met and he would not know that I exist. What I do know of him, comes from his records. That’s good enough for me.

Now the Tips

Where appropriate I modify the tip from an audio focus to a visual one, but that’s all I am changing.

See

Seeing is different from looking. Seeing requires engagement and action on our parts. It takes attention away from you, and the dreck running through your mind and reveals opportunities that just looking around will never reveal. It sounds simple, but it is a life long pursuit.

Don’t Judge Yourself

What we think we are doing when photographing has nearly nothing to do with what gets stored on the memory card. You could be thinking, this is the most awesome shot that I have ever made when you squeeze the shutter, yet when you open it in your editor, you consider checking yourself into an insane asylum because you cannot even guess what you were thinking. It can go the other way too. You may be making shots, and spending your time kicking yourself in the butt and slamming yourself saying internally that you are terrible and should sell all your gear and get some crayons. Later you open the images and find magic. Dump all that and stay immersed in the seeing and visioning and work not to attach yourself mentally or emotionally to whatever just happened.

Be Present

If you have a really great shoot, don’t go saying “that was awesome, I’m going to do exactly the same things on my next shoot and it will also be awesome.” It won’t because you won’t be the same because you were seeing and responding to what was present at that time. That time is gone. Be in the current moment, not the past nor the future.

Embrace Mistakes

Mistakes are the greatest thing so long as you don’t freak out about making them. If you make a mistake, you have a learning opportunity and how you recover is where the magic comes from. If shooting with a friend or small group, remember that this is not a contest, and toss any thoughts of “i’m right, you’re wrong” into the trash bin.

Practice is Great Only So Far

You must of course practice properly, but it will never take you to perfection all the time. You will never get there. Instead just do what you can in the moment and keep pushing ahead. There’s a weird mental thing that happens when people think about practicing as an alternative to doing, and it’s not always positive.

Don’t Think For Others

The only person who knows your success is you. If you are worrying about what someone else will think or opine somewhere, that just gets in the way of you doing. If you like the work you are doing and are getting pleasure from doing it, that is the ONLY thing that matters. Funny enough, that work tends to be the stuff that other folks like too. And if they don’t like it, oh well, there’s nothing that you can do about that. The only perspective of any tangible value is your own.

Be Yourself

As photographers we are influenced by other photographers. This could be a style, a technique, a genre or a type of subject. This is a good thing because you build your skills on the shoulders of giants. However if you fall into the trap of trying to BE like another person, you are in deep doodoo. The only path to growth is about being yourself and being honest with yourself. If you are doing work that is just a copy of something else, you will not be fulfilled because you are not the person that you are emulating and you are intentionally burying your own persona. If you get this, I just saved you thousands of dollars on therapy.

Destroy Competition

The idea that photography is about competition doesn’t make sense. How can a creative process with no laws, where the final product is the outcome of your intent, your goals and your persona be judged competitively. Photographic competitions are for egomaniacs who think that winning a ribbon or medal validates themselves. The worthwhile struggle is the internal one, in besting your own ignorance and clumsiness. There is no winner or loser in art, it’s about finding your truth.

Take Chances

If you feel safe in what you are doing, you have the opportunity to take a chance, to try something new and different. Don’t put yourself in an endless loop where nothing changes, because that is not human. Just go for it. It may not work out the first time, or it may be transformative, but we will never develop without taking chances.

Learn to Forget

We understand the need to practice our skills. But don’t let the practice impact the time that you are not practicing. On a real shoot, which might just be a walk in the park, don’t clutter your mind trying to remember everything you practiced. That kills innovative thought. The great Sonny Rollins said “music is happening too fast to be thinking about it while you are playing”. So also is photography.

Wrapping It Up

I’m really grateful to the folks at Guitar Player for publishing the article from which this post is drawn. The author Rod Brakes made the effort to interview Bill Frisell and put it together. It reaffirms to me what I have believed for a long time. Photography, musicianship, painting, sculpting and such are life affirming because while there are always some limitations in everything, there are no laws that require you to do things in a particular way. I might look at or listen to a piece of work and decide that I really like it, or I may decide that I really don’t like it. In either case, I am right for me and the importance of my opinion to the original creator should always be a null value.

Thanks for reading, and until next time peace. If you like what you see here, please consider subscribing to the articles and the podcast to be notified when something new gets posted.