Stock pictures

 I had a look at George's photography. (I wasn't asked to, but I looked anyway.)

http://www.georgeclerk.com/

Adam Elder, the photojournalist who set up Scottish stock agency, Scottish Viewpoint made a remark that if you use a camera to photograph your life, photography can pay for your life, and this seems to be what George is doing here, which is a neat trick if you can manage it.

Being able to shoot sellable stock photographs, which must be slick, bright, colourful, technically adept and usable for a range of purposes is a significant professional skill, and George is obviously in control of the equipment to be able to do it.

One of the repeated remarks made by participants in this course was the desire to produce pictures that are more than picturesque, or more creative. Oddly enough, being in full control can work against you in this aim. In the book 'Camera Lucida', the French philosopher Roland Barthes coined the term 'punctum' which is sometimes given the simpler term, the third meaning. He was trying to articulate the unique manner in which photography can communicate: there is the intended and controlled content - the 'studium'. Some photographs have an ability to reach out and touch the viewer, or perhaps more accurately an element or detail of the image strikes the viewer personally - to puncture them in some way. This is the punctum.

Some professional pictures, such as stock or advertising, are so slick and controlled and have an intrinsic selling message that does not allow any other message to get through. There is no chance for happy accidents, or for the details and paraphernalia of real life or real locations to reach out and engage with the viewer emotionally. Everything is smoothed over.

Documentary photographers, in particular, who photograph real life in uncontrolled circumstances have more opportunity for incorporating details and visual information that may have additional meaning to the viewer.

I first encountered Bruce Davidson's picture from his circus documentary when I was still at school, where it illustrated a poem that I can no longer remember. The rain falling in the mud in the background really hit me. Now, I would analyse this as the textural quality of the rain in the mud creating a disquieting contrast with the painted face and flowers of the clown who would normally be expected to be jolly and happy. At the time I didn't think like that, but just felt the rain as the very essence of misery (and not just because I was a teenager.) The photographer probably felt this intuitively too and made quick and spontaneous use of the opportunity to present a very down-beat and off-kilter image.
Many photographers seek out places or events that have an element of disjointedness, or tension, or lack of control that can reach out and prick the viewer.
In Luke's Monday night talk on Taryn Simon he quoted David Levi Strauss as saying, "To be compelling there must be tension; if everything has been decided beforehand there will be no tension, and no compulsion."
So in the context of landscape, really slick, professional photographers who are in total control often lack that compelling quality. I'm thinking of people like Charlie Waite, Lee Frost, Colin Prior.  Whereas people like Fay Godwin, Don McCullin, John Davies, Titarenko and almost anything at Lensculture do have a more compelling, but often disquieting quality.
Unfortunately I cannot teach people how to become creative, but I can point you in the direction of some thought-provoking photographers, and share some ideas with you.