Using Your Subconcious as a Photography ToolPosted by drfl on May 19th, 2010

Today’s post isn’t about filters or teleconverters.  It isn’t about pixel densities or panning techniques.  Today is about something much less tangible, our psyche, or more precisely, our subconscious.  Everyone has a subconscious, we are normally are not aware of this level of thought – thus the prefix “sub” or “just below”.  Most of our days are concerned with conscious items: paying bills, making to the dentist, washing the car.  Most of us rarely stop to reflect upon our inner self, we simply we do what we do because we do.

Sigmund Freud believed that the subconscious is the place were we hold our desires, our memories, and our emotions, effects to events that occurred long ago.  It is the vehicle that motivates us through an unseen force, the instincts and “gut feelings” that we do may not fully understand.  For many of us, we are driven to photography through this unseen motivator.  Perhaps as a young child you looked at Aunt Maude’s dusty old photo album or maybe your father always took your photograph on those wonderful family vacations, whatever the experiences, these are the events and emotions that are retained in our subconscious even if you do not remember the exact instances.  As we create art we access bits of these memories, pieces of these feelings.  If we allow these scattered and disjointed fragments to permeate our consciousness, the result can be powerfully persuasive. 

For the last couple of decades, I have studied photographs from various sources, books, magazines, websites.  Some images I study for a time, others flash by quickly.  A few of these photos evoke strong emotions but regardless of the impact, all these images and feelings become stored in my unconscious mind.  Out in the field, I may have a fleeting flash of a previous composition, an abstraction of my previous encounters with art.  In my early days, I stoically dismissed these subconscious thoughts and attempted to force my conscious ideas.  Now, I allow these intuitions to mix with these ideas, hopefully leading me to something new and unique and wholly my own. 

Tuning oneself into this immersion may not come easily, but I believe it is there for all.  We are all motivated by something intangible, most are driven to photography through this force, and if we can recognize its effect on us I believe it can make us better artists.  True, the subconscious may be a much harder tool to hone than a polarizing filter, but it is always with us and doesn’t require a special holder.  Besides, some may disagree, but I frankly think that the path to understanding our subconscious is easier than figuring out a multi-flash strobe setup, and it costs much less.

Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 17-40 f/4l @ 22mm, f/9, 1/160 sec.
Gateway Arch at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri