David' Space
It's Not About the
Camera
Photographer David Schroeder at the Gallo Center for the Arts
Focus On...
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As I sat watching the Academy Awards last year, bored by the winner’s speeches, which thanked all the people, unknown to us, who contributed to their success, I started to question who it would be that I might name as my collaborators in my work as a photographer. It made for an interesting daydream.
The first thing that came to mind was the obvious observation that the kind of work I do as a photographer is primarily a solitary endeavor. Actors may have hundreds of people surrounding them in creating the final image that make them a star. A photographer, unless he’s doing major commercial work, has himself. If I’m shooting landscapes, covering an event, or doing travel photography, it’s mostly just me who selects the scene, points the camera, pushes the shutter release, processes the raw data on the computer, and if doing an exhibition, prints the final images. I may consult with others regarding technical or artistic issues along the way, but in the end, it’s just me, creating my self-centered view of the world.
But then I started to think about all the people who have played a part in my becoming the photographer I am today – my teachers, mentors, and muses. People like Galen Rowell, Charles Kramer, Allen Birnbach, and the first woman who agreed to pose for my bumbling attempts at nude photography. Yet for all their influence, none played a direct role in the images that were created.
I was beginning to wonder if there were any true collaborators in my photographic leanings when a series of memories came flooding back. I could dismiss them as learning experiences, but they were instances in which someone else literally touched and took part in my photography.
The first was the most unusual and the most embarrassing. When I began to think of myself as a photographer and began to walk around the world with a camera attached to my eye, I discovered that my eye wasn’t as artistic as I thought. I could imagine what I wanted but hadn’t yet learned to think like a camera. In despair over the results that came back from the printer during the age of film, I would sometimes see a scene I wanted to capture and hand the camera to my wife to shoot it. At one point I even gave the camera to a stranger and asked for his help.
The sad, but wonderful, thing about this act of desperation was that these “other people” images were often better than mine. Some of my best early work was done by others. I didn’t attempt to pass them off as mine, but once in awhile someone would be looking through a collection of prints and remark as how a particular image was “pretty good.” It usually was one of the “others” and I would have to confess and explain why I kept them around. Happily, I soon graduated to composing and shooting my own images, although I still kept track of how other people would shoot the same scenes in a file I labeled, “pictures I wish I’d taken.
Years later, having pursued by own vision of the world, by myself, I stumbled into another situation in which someone else contributed directly to the final images in my portfolio. It occurred in Angkor, Cambodia, most commonly known as
Angkor Wat, the name of the most famous of the city/temples. I had flown to Viet Nam for my son’s wedding and at his insistence, had gone on Siem Reap to shoot the temples of Angkor. In addition to Angkor Wat, there are dozens of ancient sites which dot the region, one of which it Te Prohm, a temple left in the state in which it was discovered – overrun by the surrounding jungle – a photographers dream.
As I set up for my first shot of the day I noticed that a young Cambodian man was studying me intently. When I had finished with that location he approached me and politely asked if he might suggest something. I agreed and he said that I’d probably have a better shot if I moved my tripod to the top of a rubble heap in the far corner of the courtyard. It was such an unusual statement (I’d thought he was going to ask for money) that I decided to give it a try. Damn, he was right! As Yogi Berra once said, “It was déjà vu all over again.” I had the impulse to hand him my camera and retire my own photographic vision. However, the young man, In Yoda like tones, merely suggested that, if I desired, he could show me other places to shoot in the temple. I guess I could have refused, given him a couple of bucks, and gone on alone. But the whole situation was too serendipitous to pass up.
For the rest of the afternoon, the young man guided me from place to place within the temple, sometimes merely pointing out possible shots and sometimes telling me where to place my tripod for the best results. By the time we came to the “Indiana Jones Doorway” (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was filmed in Te Prohm) I was thoroughly confused and entranced. I asked the young man how he knew so much about photography and what kind of camera he used in his work. He quietly bowed his head and said that he wasn’t a photographer and didn’t even own a camera. He was merely leading me to places that the film crew on Temple of Doom had used.
I was still laughing to myself as I gave the young man a huge tip and recognized that if I ever got an award for my Angkor images I would have to give credit to this unnamed Cambodian man and the cinematographers from the Temple of Doom.
The result of these odd experiences is that, in spite of photography being, mostly, a solitary endeavor, I try to remain open to the influence and input of others, no matter how strange or unexpected. They have also prepared me for working with models in my current preoccupation with nudes in the landscape. As suggested by my friend/mentor/teacher, Allen Birnbach, the best models to use for this work are dancers and/or actors because they are trained to use their bodies to convey emotion and story. And with the advent of the digital camera, it’s very easy to shoot a dozen or so shots and then share them with the model to get their input as to how they might improve the desired image. My experience in working this way is that there are very few times when this type of creative collaboration does not create a better and more interesting result that if I had only worked within the confines of my own vision.