Thomas Hawk
Thomas Hawk has an unusual goal: To publish 1 million photos. He's chipping away at that number quite quickly, yet doesn't sacrifice quality for quantity. Always exploring and always uploading, Hawk has built up a significant account on Flickr with over 52,000 images. Check out some of them, as well as find out more about what's behind this goal, his process and inspirations, and more.
You have a huge goal: to publish 1 million finished photos before you die. What made you decide this goal, and where do you stand now on meeting it?
At present I've uploaded a little over 52,000 photos to Flickr. I've got another 21,000 or so processed and ready to go in a "to be uploaded" folder at home. So that's about 73,000 photos processed. You might say I'm about 7.3% of the way towards my goal. I have a long way to get to a million. Presently I'm uploading 50 photos a day to Flickr. At this rate it would take me about 52 more years to get to a million. Since I'm 42 now and unlikely to live to 94, I'll need to pick up the pace at some point. I think I'll be able to do more in the future for a number of reasons. Right now I have 4 young children and a day job. In the future my kids will be grown and off to college and (hopefully) someday I'll be able to retire. I think this will allow me to work even harder on this project and more full time.
Also I think the technology will continue to get better. I think you'll see geotagging in camera (for instance) in the future. I think you'll see computers and software get faster and faster. This should cut down on the actual time it takes to process photos. So I'm hopeful that I'll be able to pick up my pace in the future and make it to a million.
In terms of "why," I think it has less to do with the actual number and more to do with establishing a lifestyle where one lives photography almost 24/7. A million published photos is a massive accomplishment but requires a massive commitment to the craft of photography. in order to do this you can rarely rest and must constantly be working at it. I like the fact that a big vision goal like this can hold me accountable to this sort of lifestyle.
Have you found that taking huge numbers of photos keeps your vision inspired, or do you find yourself needing to stretch yourself to stay creative and original?
Change is the photographer's friend. The more things change, the better the chances that you'll have an interesting photograph someday. I believe that much of what makes a great photograph is age and time. Even things change sometimes over 20 minutes. The light, the sun, the people. Change is constant and the more change the better. You constantly need to push yourself to stay creative and fresh. I'm constantly inventing new shots (for me at least), new ways to photograph a subject. New ways to capture light. Rethinking things with focus, with motion, all that. I think taking a huge number of photographs helps to keep me on my game.
I'd say that the act of shooting the image and processing/developing the image are equal in stature.
What do you love about the process of taking a photograph? Do you find it as important as the end result?
I'd say, for me, about 50% of photography is actually taking the picture and capturing the image and about 50% of it is in the processing. I think this is actually pretty consistent with the history of photography. Ansel Adams' genius (for example) is frequently seen as more the work he did in the dark room than the actual taking of the photo. I'd say that the act of shooting the image and processing/developing the image are equal in stature.
What I love about taking a photograph mostly is just being out on the street. Walking around or driving around or whatever. Just being out and ready to encounter the next thing that may come my way. I shoot a lot of frames and it makes me feel alive.
I tend to think of my photography as beat photography in a way. I get into a rhythm when I shoot: click, click, click, click. Step, get low, click, click. It's like the tapping away of keys on a typewriter.
What is some of your post-processing strategy? What software do you prefer, and what are some of the techniques you use most often to create a polished image?
95% of my post processing work today is done in Adobe Lightroom 3. Maybe 5% of my photos also go through Adobe Photoshop, but really Lightroom is my work horse. All of my images are processed individually by hand. I might start out with a plug in that either I've created myself or gotten somewhere off the web or from a friend, but each image individually is worked with until I get the image that I want. Some photos involve very little post production work, others are processed pretty heavily. Frequently I'll adjust temperature, contrast, noise reduction and sharpness, vignetting, saturation, etc. I'm probably not very different from most digital photographers in this.
You state on your Flickr profile, "My work is less about individual images and instead more about the power of a massive amount of excessive and disjointed images where stories, characters and places sometimes stay and other times reappear or disappear entirely for no good reason at all." This is such an intriguing position, and one very different from the majority of the photography community, where the rule of "edit, edit, edit" to only your best work reigns supreme. Can you elaborate more on your philosophy of more?
I'd say the majority of the photographic community, or at least the fine art photographic community, has bought off on this idea of scarcity. Much of this is driven by the money side of art photography. Even with prolific shooters like Winogrand or Eggleston the vast majority of their work is held back. It's not shown.
Our attention span has diminished significantly with the advent of the web. Photos get a fleeting look and then are passed by. Even the Masters.
I don't care about the money side of all this. At least not today. I'd rather people see my frenetic pace. That to me is part of the art. A massive river of photographs. I plan on doing future work with large scale collage installations and other different ways of showing my work, but for now I just want to get it all out there -- disjointed, imperfect, but real.
Our attention span has diminished significantly with the advent of the web. Photos get a fleeting look and then are passed by. Even the Masters. Go to an art museum and watch how long people look at one photograph. Watch how many they skip over entirely. The web even moreso. For me photography has changed from being something static to being something alive and active.
Who have been some of the artists (or philosophers) who influence your work and vision?
Eggleston probably most of all.
Winogrand, Shore, Robert Adams, Larry Sultan, Lee Friedlander, Bruce Gilden, Walker Evans, Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Banksy, Shepard Fairey. Tom Waits, John Prine, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Nietzsche, Camus.
And an amazing number of photographers on Flickr. Too many to name actually. Eggleston used to go down to the drugstore and watch the photos come out of the photo developing machine to study the snapshot aesthetic. Flickr feels very similar to me. I like watching what people come up with. Thinking about what the notion of "Popular Photography" means today, at least as far as the web is concerned.
You travel a lot with your camera -- do you have any favorite locations? Is there any particular type of place or subject that keeps pulling you in?
My favorite location is probably America. And more specifically the American City. Which City doesn't really matter. I'm as happy shooting the ruins of Detroit as I am shooting street photography in South Beach Miami or shooting a Rodeo in Fort Worth. Every American City seems to have it's own particular photographic flavor. I'm an equal opportunity shooter. No one thing really has a particular pull for me. I love shooting abandoned stuff, but I also love shooting neon signs, or street, or macro shots, or live music or whatever. Makes no difference to me what I shoot, just as long as I'm out shooting.
And of course, a favorite question: What gear do you use?
I shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II, I have four main workhorse lenses, the 135 f/2, 50 f/1.2, 24 f/1.4 and the 14 f/2.8. I also have a 100mm macro that gets used occasionally as well as a 70-200 f/4 zoom. I have a couple of tripods, a 1.4 extender, a speedlite flash, 4 Sandisk memory cards (64GB, 32GB, 16GB, 8GB).
I process on a 17inch MacBook Pro and a 27 inch Apple Cinema Display Monitor. All my stuff is backed up on 5 Drobos. Like I said before I use Adobe's Lightroom and Photoshop products to process.
More Profiles
