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Eddie Soloway has always followed his own path. Rather than photograph objects and things, he prefers to capture the essence of place and the magic of moment. For him, that means developing a natural eye first, and then bringing a camera and its technical skills up to that eye.
He’s done quite well following that path. In 1998, he was the first recipient of The Santa Fe Center for Visual Arts’ Excellence in Photographic Teaching Award, and in the summer of 2004, he published his first book, One Thousand Moons.
Today Soloway divides his time between making fine-art prints, teaching, speaking on creativity and the photographic life, furthering photographic publishing projects — and like many photographers these days — writing a blog.
However, unlike many photographers’ blogs, Soloway’s blog has little to do with technique. In fact, at the top is the declaration: “I want to tell stories — Stories about art and making art. Stories of my own about the nature of experience, and experiencing nature.”
We found this statement very intriguing, and asked him to elaborate. While we were talking with him, we also wanted to get his thoughts on new KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTAR Film.
Read on as he does what he does best: teach, illuminate, and inspire us all.
Emphasis on Story
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Let’s start with that quote. Elaborate on that a little.
I feel that blogs are a good way to communicate with people. But I found that so many blogs were focused on technical things. What drives my photography is both seeing and my imagination. I think stories are absolutely wonderful to pass down. When well told, and well thought through, they can make important points. A lot of what I do, both in terms of making pictures, and also when teaching, is try to pull people away from only focusing on the technical tools, to think more about the experiences, the places, the memories. My challenge was to set up a blog that had different kinds of stories, be they visual or written, from myself or other people, and see if I could drive it with that, instead of “how to.”
On your blog you say many of your images aim to convey a sense of place. What are the things you do to ensure you accomplish that?
It’s difficult. It’s a very slippery idea in some ways, but what I try and do is spend time in the place without thinking about the photography, without running out with a camera and just, “snap, snap, snap.” For me, it’s a contemplative approach, where I go in and try to figure out what the place is. Many of the images I like best have come from a place I have been to repeatedly. I think about what the place is to me — it has to do with the feeling, and the moods. Are there iconic elements in it? Perhaps the reeds, the fog, something of that sort. But I think the key step for me is to take a slow approach. Even though in the moment of making pictures I may be a mad man running around, there’s a contemplative sphere to finding what it is that’s there. In a workshop week, I’ll talk about this idea, this essence of place and I’ll say to everyone, “I’d like you to go out and find a little spot in the canyon, and for half an hour, just sit, be still. Like an empty vessel, waiting to be filled up with it.” Then I’ll say, “but watch your fellow classmates. See how many of them start taking pictures 30 seconds after I stop talking.” And they all laugh, but sure enough, there’s always a handful who just start taking pictures, carelessly. They’re just snap, snap, snap, without knowing what’s there.
Do you think if your students were only shooting film, they’d be so quick to snap, snap, snap?
I think that’s a good question. Years ago, people would turn in, at the end of the workshop day, maybe one to three rolls of 35 mm film — that’s under 100 images. Now they’ll come back from a day with 300 images, 350, 400! And it’s like, yikes! Someone has to look at that. I try to spin it back. What’s the one picture you’re going to take? Try to do it much more thoughtfully.
You teach a lot. What do you get out of it?
A lot of different things. When I teach, I really don’t focus on my photography, I try not to photograph at all, unless it’s to show something, make a point. Otherwise, they wouldn’t see me again! But what I get out of it are ideas. I get a good feeling that you’re opening up doors of perception to people. Whether they’ve just picked up a camera, or they’ve been doing it for 20 years. And they very often have a narrow idea of where they can go with their photography, so a lot of my job is to blow that open, to show them all the possibilities.
One of the themes in your workshops and your blog is reconnecting to instinct — relying on visceral impulse rather than technique. Let’s talk a little bit about that.
I see that as being huge right now. There are a lot of lessons I’ve learned from past experience. I’ve got to be a craftsman. I have to know the tools, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s first-hand experience in the natural world. It’s all the years of wandering and seeing. And the tools themselves become an extension of your hands.
Speaking of tools, what do you primarily shoot?
I shoot both film and digital. I tease people and say, I’m bi-photographic — or I tease myself! I find it’s an interesting time because I see benefits in both. As for which film I shoot, I’ve pretty much switched to KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTAR Film.
A Beautiful Film
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What do you like about it?
It’s a beautiful film. You just don’t notice grain. The saturation is like that of a color transparency film, but it’s not biased toward heavy yellows or heavy greens or anything like that. It’s just a beautiful, thoughtfully saturated film with almost no grain. Plus, shooting a negative film, I get a greater tonal range than I would if I shot transparency. Even though I’m used to looking at slides, the honest truth is that EKTAR Film is the one for me right now. I’ve taken this giant plunge. It’s my go-to film right now.
What’s your favorite thing to shoot?
Well, I love color. I have a series of black-and-white images I printed as very old photogravures, so I do venture into black-and-white at times, but I’m a sucker for color. I just love it. That said, one of my favorite times of year is autumn. I have been making a pilgrimage to Northern Maine for the last dozen years. I love it.
Why do you love it?
I love it because there’s a crispness, a freshness in the air. And the land is full of colors. There’s water— there are lakes and bogs and marshes and running streams and creeks and different kinds of forests. It’s like there’s no end. There are really bright reds and oranges and yellows.
Talk about your Forest and Water Abstracts series. How were those captured?
Almost all of those are on film. My thought process is that what I’m trying to do is distill the forest down from all its details into shape, color, and light. In a lot of them, I’m moving the camera during the exposure, and in some of them, the camera is on a tripod, and it’s wind and water moving. But the colors, those are all from the natural world. Everyone has assumed they were digital because they look different, and they also assume that digital is the only way you could do them.
But there’s a depth to that series not commonly associated with digital.
That’s what is fascinating to me. I was at an international gathering of photographers who went to have their work looked at by curators and gallery owners, and the first person I met was a well-regarded curator. He looked at the prints from that series, and said, “These are shot on film, aren’t they?” And I said, “Yes, how did you know?” And he said the same thing you just said. There’s a depth.
The Aha! Moments
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Tell us about the aha! moments you’ve experienced.
If I were to break it out into moments of seeing and perception, versus moments of understanding and craft, a lot of epiphanies happened in younger years. In college years, being out in the wilderness, out in the outdoors, where you get an understanding of how something might work, get a sense of the lay of the land. Those moments were numerous, and were opened up by a lot of mentors and professors, and ecology and science. But in terms of specific things for photography, there were aha! moments all the way back to high school. I remember a mentor who made me learn basic technical skills. I remember, they seem simple to me now, but he made me understand how to read light, how a meter works. He made me understand how to control focus, the salt and pepper shakers on the table, both sharp or one sharp, and vice versa. I remember the aha! moments when I was working in an incredible dye transfer lab in San Francisco and one day struggling tremendously. I was printing on my own and in the evening, the owner let me stay late if I wanted to and close up. I couldn’t make a blue sky blue. I was going nuts with it. At one point I had been in there too long, and I just stopped. Then next morning, he came in and looked at it and said, “Oh, add magenta!” There were those kind of moments of understanding how I could add and take away color in a darkroom to make things perfect. All along the way, there are times when you feel like you’re getting nowhere but then, like a salmon trying to jump up to the next rung on the ladder, and you get there. You get to the next pool. Sometimes the leaps seem really high, but sure enough, you get there if you just keep pushing and working and hanging in there. I guess in terms of aha! moments in the natural world, getting to know the lay of the land, getting to know a place, and also the epiphanies on the technical side. They’re all crucial to photography. That’s the interesting dance we have to play.
You’ve said you have learned to let go of expectations when you set out to see and possibly make a photograph.
Yes, it’s a very different mindset than I used to have. I remember working in the photo lab in San Francisco, and a friend worked for a small magazine for the state and national parks in California.
You could go into your lodge, you’d find one of these magazines about what was available — trails, lodging, restaurants, and so on. She said, “Hey, we could use some photographs of the desert wild flowers. And the desert right now is just going nuts with blooms.” So I went down there expecting I could see the images in my mind, and I remember I completely failed.
I have learned not to go in thinking “picture,” but thinking “place.” Whether it’s a first-time place, or a place I’ve been back to 10 or 15 times. The successes for me come when I fall into the zone of seeing. I’m almost like a happy detective looking for cool things, or looking for magic. I might come in with ideas about abstractions or impressionist ideas. But I’m open and seeing, then things show up. If I expect a picture of a mushroom, or I need a picture of a mushroom, somehow I fail. If I just fall into this zone of seeing, then I’m open to anything that might happen.
What’s your work process like?
The reality is I don’t do commercial work. So my photographic path is really one of working on different projects, different bodies of work, then trying to get them into the world through prints and shows. Mixing that together with teaching and a little bit of stock work. I’m a big fan of having time between when you make the picture, and when you really look at it carefully. Let’s say you go out and you’re having this amazing day. You’re having fun with friends, or you’re in love, or you saw an eagle, whatever it may be — all these different things wrap up in this wonderful day. If you look at the images instantly, there’s often an initial disappointment, I think it’s because you take all these expectations from this wonderful trip and cram them into a little piece of film. Yet, if you wait, and go through them with a different kind of eye, one that has let go of the emotion of the experience, you can be a real careful critic of the work. I think the skill of being a photographer in the field is different from looking at the work. And what we’re doing now is pushing those two things together, almost in the same moment. People edit off the back of their cameras now, or they’ll edit back in the hotel or cabin or whatever, with their laptops. I think that’s a mistake. At least for me.
You have a series that is a bit of a departure from your nature work. The “On the Road” series on your website. What was that printed on?
I used KODAK PROFESSAL ENDURA Metallic Paper. We special ordered to get it into our printing process. It was really fun because I wanted it to look like chrome, because it was about driving. The body of work was whimsical, and a lot of fun. At the time I was doing a lot of driving. Using the metallic paper made such great sense because it had a shiny surface to it. I’m actually being pushed to consider doing a book on the subject, so it might expand.
What are you currently working on?
I’m working on two things right now: One is a set of inspirational photo cards. It’s a set of 100 cards that on one side have a photograph, and other side has a little tip on how to get the creative juices going or a different way to see the world, just a bite-sized thought. I’m also working on a DVD series on photographing in the natural world, trying to make it fresh and fun and informative at the same time. And there are always book ideas that I want to do. I’d love to do another series like One Thousand Moons, with more essays and images in them. If I had time!
One Thousand Moons was self-published. Any advice in that regard?
Well, things have changed a lot since I published that book. Print-on-demand books have risen in quality. Right now there several great options, like KODAK NEXPRESS System Technology that lets you do the whole thing on your own. But what I did was a little different. I put together a small group of people, including a book broker, a graphic designer, a proofreader, and someone to help me with the RGB to CMYK conversions.
How did you handle distribution?
I see lots of people, so I have a large mailing list of people who have bought prints over the years, and people I see through workshops and geographic seminars and outdoor art shows. I knew I could sell the book that way. What I’ve been bad about is distributing it in mainstream channels. In the future, I would really work hard on distribution. One Thousand Moons has sold very well. A couple thousand copies over the years. And it’s mostly me, person to person.
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