We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Herschel Mair a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Herschel, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
I’ve had this question from a student who wanted to know how I stuck with making my living in photography, when, surely there must be easier and more tempting ways to make more money…. I told her the answer is quite simple really. I just never learned to do anything else very well.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Coming to a new place with nothing but my cameras and starting fresh is a daunting task. Getting my portfolio seen and starting to get work is always a struggle in the beginning. But I’m very lucky to have learned photography from a technical perspective rather that from an artistic perspective…. I’m not sure you can teach creativity anyway. The way you see is unique and if you understand the medium… Optics, chemistry, technology, light in all its forms and colors etc, you can use that knowledge to capture what you see, the way you see it.
But more importantly it enables you to solve problems that other photographers may not be able to solve or even be aware of… How to get a line of light or shadow around a bottle or make th contents of a cocktail glow against a dark background. To create contrast or mood etc. And if I can consistently do stuff that other photographers can’t, then I’m going to get jobs that other photographers aren’t… And discerning image buyers will know the difference….
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Without a doubt, the skill which sets me apart and which I am most proud of is my ability to work with light…. Not just studio lighting but even daylight and ambient room light… reflecting it, blocking it, diffusing it and manipulating it to get the image I desire. The second valuable skill is my ability to create mood. Using light, color texture, form and shape. And finally, story telling I feel that a successful photo will have more than one storyline running through it… And the stories which the images conjure up actually come from the viewer. The photograph is simple a spark that ignites the stories which lie dormant in the viewer.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
There are several important books that have guided and formed who I have become as a photographer…. The most important by far is “Light, Science and Magic by Fuqua, Biver and Hunter.
Suzanne Sontag’s “On Photography” give such inside into the effects that images have on society and the way society sees photography… Then All Minor White’s writing is mind blowing. Henri Cartier Bresson taught me about spontaneity in a two dimensional work And Ansel Adams. His images and his “ZONE SYSTEM” of exposure a set of books which clearly codifies exposure and tonality. Lastly the work of Munsell His book “A color Notation” and his color tree breaking color down into Hue, Value and Chroma. It does for color what Adams did for black and white
Contact Info:
- Website: https://herschelmair.com
- Instagram: herschel_commercial_photgo
Image Credits
Herschel Mair
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