It Might Get Loud - Inspiration From Guitarists

Sometimes inspiration comes out of left field and smacks you in the face so hard you don't know what happened. Inspiration like this can speak to you, it can scare you, it can motivate you and it can paralyze you. You know it when it happens, but since you're not ready for it, you never know how you're going to react.

Imagine my surprise when I'm sitting on my couch watching the documentary "It Might Get Loud" when out of nowhere I realize that I've just been smacked by some wicked inspiration with a dash of insight! First, how about a little background on the movie...

"It Might Get Loud" is a documentary about the electric guitar. It is basically a discussion with three amazing guitarists from three different eras of music: Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin, The Edge from U2, and Jack White from The White Stripes. They all talk about how they came to play guitar, who their influences were and other topics you'd expect from a documentary. The twist is that it's not about the people, or even their bands, but about the electric guitar. This is where it gets interesting.

Because it's about the guitar, you hear these guys who are masters at playing the guitar talking about how it's all about passion, creativity and soul. Then, because it's about the electric guitar, you hear them talk about how they've been able to use all these different effects pedals and processors to get just the sound they're looking for. The Edge said that he'll spend hours getting the sound that's in his head to come out of the speakers, that the sound you're hearing his guitar make is really his voice. Jimmy Page mentioned that because of distortion, you could push the guitar to do things it had never done before. Jack White said that he likes to take guitars and modify them so that they produce a sound that they're not supposed to make.

Once it occurred to me that the electric guitar is different, not because of the way it sounds, but because of what you can do to the sound, it hit me. This is like the digital era of photography! It's not the fact that it's digital instead of film that makes it so amazing, it's what you can do to the digital files that has really changed everything.

If you take all of the tools in Photoshop and try to relate them to a traditional darkroom technique, you'll quickly find that many of them just did not exist before digital photography came around. Once you step outside of Photoshop into the world of plugins and other programs, you realize that we're not just on a different page, we're in a different book in a library across town!

Photographers now have the ability to take what's in their head and make it a reality. Through the use of different programs and plugins, coupled with patience and skill, previously unheard voices can now be heard. As with anything, though, there is a catch. You have to have mastery over your camera before you can fully take advantage of everything digital has to offer.

Let's take The Edge for example. In the movie he talks about how everyone plays an E-chord. He didn't want to play it like everyone else, so he found a new way to play it. It's still the same chord, but it's more raw and open. That, in my opinion, is the most important lesson here... not only knowing the basics of your craft, but knowing enough about the mechanics and theory behind it that you can manipulate the basics to create different outcomes to suit your needs. We're not even in electric guitar territory yet. Next, he wanted to take that chord and make it sound a certain way by manipulating the sound with various effects, which is only possible with an electric guitar. By combining effects pedals, processors, different pickups and even different amplifiers he is able to get exactly the sound he's looking for.

It's not much different with cameras. Having a basic mastery with a camera is important if you want to go on and create photographs with a specific look and feel. Sure, you can go into Photoshop and mess with settings and sliders until you get lucky and create something that looks cool. That's not a bad thing. It's called experimenting. You start running into problems when it's not repeatable and your results are seemingly random.

I've always loved playing around with the different develop presets in Lightroom and seeing the different results they produce, but I usually end up choosing a more traditional look for my photos. You know what? Traditional is no longer the only option! All of those plugins are just like different effects pedals for electric guitars! Distortion might sound great in one song but sound horrible in another song. Similarly, a model might look great with high-contrast light, super-saturated colors and orange skin. Try the same thing with grandma? Maybe not...

As with guitar, photography is not only a skill but an art. Anyone can pick up a guitar, a paintbrush, a pencil or a camera and create something. With a paintbrush or a pencil, it's pretty obvious if you don't have any skill. With a guitar or a camera, it's a little harder to tell. So you know a few chords and have some cool effects pedals for your guitar? Go ahead, start a band. Best of luck to you. Oh, you've also got a fancy camera and a copy of Photoshop? You can press a few buttons in Photoshop and make your photos have cool vignettes? Go ahead, put an ad on Craigslist. Best of luck to you with that as well.

I'm not saying I'm The Edge of the camera world. I'm not. In the grand scheme of things I'm much closer to the Craigslist guy than The Edge. But that doesn't mean I don't know the difference! Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you're good at it. And even if you're good at it, it doesn't mean that you can't get better. And even if you get better, it doesn't mean that you can't tweak it just a little bit more. And even if you tweak it just a little bit more and you've finally created exactly what you wanted, it doesn't mean that it was easy. It just means that you had the knowledge and skills to know what you wanted and take the necessary steps to achieve it.

So, where's this inspiration I was talking about? Why am I just ranting about technology and pushing buttons and plugins? My real inspiration came when The Edge said this: "Jumping off, into the unknown... you hope and have faith that the next chord or the next few notes will come to you... on occasions you get nothing and you come out feeling like a complete idiot, like you don't know anything and you can't play guitar and you can't write songs..." If The Edge can feel like that, then I can feel like that. The catch is that you've got to jump, to take the chance, not knowing if you are going to fail or succeed. I think it's fitting that The Edge helped push me over the edge...