Court jester or social conscience? You’ll find successful artists whose work falls into both these categories. For example, Jeff Koons is an intellectual light-weight who subcontracts out the actual construction of his work, and whose work exists as jokes to tillitate the ruling classes.

On the other hand, The Disasters of War by Goya show us, and leads us to deplore, the horrors of war. Diego Rivera’s murals speak of his radical political beliefs, while Sebastian Salgado’s photos show us exploited workers in places we will likely never visit—with the unspoken moral that this exploitation is a consequence of lifestyle choices made by those of us fortunate enough to live in a wealthy society.

Tomales Bay © Harold Davis

Artists can also side-step the idea of contextual meaning. It’s possible to create work that is neither self-referential and joking trivia nor imbued with the gravitas of political tragedy.

Art has a middle space between buffoonery and finger-wagging morality.

There’s no social content or post-modernist wink-and-nod in the paintings of Vincent van Gogh or the photos of Edward Weston. These images are about beauty, line, form, shape and light—pure and simple. They may have been revolutionary in technique or the subject depicted—van Gogh’s brush strokes and Weston’s elegant images of toilets—but there’s absolutely no hint of social commentary or art world post-modernist games in the work of these great artists.

Real artists are not always social critics, nor are they twits.

Drakes Bay by Moonlight © Harold Davis

Another question related to the role of the artist is where the artist fits into society. While early 21rst century United States is not the most rigidly class-bound society the world has ever seen—by any stretch of the imagination—it is clearly becoming more stratified into “haves” and “have nots.”

This is the basis for the rhetorical statements about the 1% (the haves) and the 99% (the have nots).

More realistically, this division should be between the .01% and the 99.99% rest of us.

In any case, for many people in many professions it is clear where they fit into the class heirarchy. Not so, for the artist who is even moderately successful.

I find that what goes with the territory is an ability to find value on a shoestring, and at the same time to be able to converse with successful professionals and top executives.

In other words, the artist is outside the normal class system, and perhaps can see the world more clearly than people who are stuck within it.

I reject utterly the role of court jester, working to enrich the art establishment and for the amusement of a few of the 1%. I also don’t feel the need to put my art in the service of my social conscience—unless by doing so I am creating better art.

But this doesn’t mean I can ignore the circumstances of the world anymore than anyone else. It’s really nothing to do with art or one’s profession. As best I can I need to live my life to help exemplify and promote the world I would like to see.

About the images: I shot these two images during a recent workshop I conducted at the Point Reyes Field Institute, in Point Reyes National Seashore, California. In both cases, my idea was to press the boundaries of photography—in Tomales Bay by creating an image that looks like a drypoint etching, and in Drakes Bay by Moonlight by echoing a 19th century seascape painting—without leaving the formal boundaries of digital photography.

Tomales Bay is toned as a conventional monochromatic photo. In other words, the color information in this image is no longer relevant. Drakes Bay by Moonlight is a subdued color image—and I resisted the temptation to add varnish and impasto painting effects to it in post-production.

I’m often asked in workshops I lead where I get my inspiration and ideas for photography. I like to respond that “inspiration is not a tame lion.”

This is a reference to the lion Aslan in the famous Narnia series of books by C.S. Lewis. Aslan, we are told repeatedly, is not a tame lion: you never can tell when he’ll appear, and when he’ll disappear again.

My point is that it is possible to chase inspiration too hard. Sometimes the best photographic ideas happen when you are not trying to come up with an idea.

I spend a great deal of time around my kids, and they come up with all kinds of wonderful and creative ideas. They are not trying to come up with ideas, and they are not worrying about inspiration. They are playing. I like to play, too.

The other day I was looking at a beautiful Japanese maple tree near our house with leaves that had started to change in the autumn. I wasn’t thinking about photography at all—just meditating on the beauty of the tree, the leaves, and our world—a world that is magical and wonderful, sometimes fierce and cruel, and always ephemeral.

All of a sudden I wondered, “How would a branch of this tree look on a black background?”

As I said, I had not been thinking about photography, and this idea seemed to come from nowhere. But once it occurred to me, I had to create the image the idea suggested—and technique was just an implementation detail.

Japanese Maple Inversion © Harold Davis

My oldest son Julian once asked me whether—if I had to choose and could only have one—I would prefer to be somewhere, or to photograph it. My answer was that I would choose to “be there.” Of course, this is not a real-world choice since it is hard to photograph a location without also being there. But the point is that the visual appreciation comes before photographic realization.

I like to give myself assignments. An assignment can be along the lines of going out and photographing the first red thing I see, or going someplace special with photography in mind. But these self-assignments need to be taken in the spirit of a knight errant’s quest: the assignment is the quest, and then I take the adventure that is given to me, which might be very different than the idea I started out with. I need to stay open to the possibility of the unexpected adventure and an unforeseen path along the way.

When a path is right, it feels right. Does one choose the path, or does the path choose one? It is a bit of both—the path feels right when it is right—and your intuition will tell you when your choice of path is sound and the path has chosen you.

It is good to learn to listen to one’s intuition. From an artistic viewpoint, intuition trumps logic any time. Intuition can be a very small voice, but if you grant it space it will claim its own volume over time.

It is important to me to look at photos, and I do get ideas from looking at what other photographers have done. This can range from browsing Flickr to studying the work of “old masters” such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.

I think it is important for landscape and nature photographers not to limit themselves to the work of photographers. I enjoy studying the work of great painters who have worked in these genres, such as Monet, Cezanne, and the German expressionist Emil Nolde, who painted wonderful, delicate watercolors of flowers. My visual interests go well beyond these genres to include the great works of surrealist painters such as Escher and Magritte.

For more about the surrealist influence on my work, check out (among other stories) Impossible Images and Portal.

If you are looking for inspiration, you should seek out the artists that matter to you. Collect a reference library of imagery. Try and understand why you care about these particular images.

I teach my workshops to recognize the many self-imposed reasons we all find to not take photos and block our own creativity. It is important to recognize these blocks so that we can overcome them. A common example is when one is driving along and sees a photo, but one knows one has to be somewhere. I advise stopping anyhow.

For example, the other day I was visiting a Zen Buddhist monastery. I left because I had to be somewhere. On the way out the road I looked back and saw what I thought might be an interesting composition of a fork in the road. One road was well used, and the other less travelled.

Since I had an appointment I almost drove on. But I made myself pull over and park the car, and shot the image shown below that I call Road Less Travelled (follow the link for more of the backstory behind this image). It would have been easy to drive on without stopping, but I find that taking the time to stop and to really look around me is what leads to my best images.

Road Less Travelled © Harold Davis

Photographers should remember that the world has three dimensions and can be seen in 360 degrees. In other words, don’t just look straight ahead. Look up, down, from side-to-side and behind you as well as in front.

Sometimes I like to play with an image and add an element, or take one way, even after I thought I was done. Does it look better in color, or in black & white? This line of thought explains how the color version of Road Less Travelled became the monochromatic Choosing the Path. Both versions are pleasing, and each has something the other does not. Not being complacent let me be open to the possibility of continuing work after I had thought I was done.

Whether in photography or post-production, keep experimenting! It’s important to make mistakes, and then move on. Any photographer who doesn’t make mistakes hasn’t tried hard enough. You should be reaching for the stars—and forgiving yourself and accepting of those times that you miss your celestial goal. Move on, and use what you have learned as “scouting” information for future creative voyages of discovery.