Joanna McCarthy: Everything Under the Sun
"I don't like perfect. Perfect is boring. Personality is everything," Joanna McCarthy says of her photography.
Her image choices are driven first by observation, then by resonance. "When I was a kid I used to notice everything," she says. "I was very inquisitive. I'd walk down to the beach and look at everything and examine everything along the way." She was some ten years into her career as a photographer before she realized that photography was, in fact, the perfect thing for her to be doing. "When I thought back to the way I was as a child, how I liked to be with others but also enjoyed being alone, just observing everything, it occurred to me that photography was exactly what I should be doing."
She believes that while she has improved as a photographer over the years, some of her very first images were her best. "I think that's because all those observations, over all those years, now had an outlet. It was a natural thing for me to photograph, but I didn't know where it was coming from. Now I realize it was because of the way I was as a child."
She was, she has said, "taught to observe and see things where others looked past them. I think that helped my imagination, helped me to really look at the world....When I think back, I had that natural curiosity that I think photographers need."
After observation, there's resonance. "I don't shoot a picture unless I love it," Joanna says. "I'm not out there just taking pictures for the sake of doing it." And if what she sees doesn't mean something to her, she'll pass by. "I'll be traveling for days and not shoot a single picture, and I don't feel sad about it. I was in Paris for a week once, and I shot just one picture the whole time—but it was a beautiful image."
Joanna photographs for stock and fine-art sales, carefully selecting the subjects she chooses for both. For stock, the images are the result of her own self-assignments, or she'll choose from the stock agency's want list. "I'll look over the list to see if there's something I like to do," she has said, "something I fit in with and am good at. Once I find it, the important thing is to interpret it in my own way, to let my emotions come through in the photographs."
Her subjects range from still life to wildlife, from found images to travel portraits. The one thing she doesn't photograph is fashion, which is, at first, curious given that Joanna was a fashion model before becoming a photographer. "I did a lot of modeling and TV commercials," she says. "I even studied acting for three years, trying to figure out what to do after modeling." But she was never entirely comfortable with the modeling business or with acting. "When I picked up a camera it seemed the most natural thing in the world, but I didn't want to be a fashion photographer." Fashion, she has said, was "too arranged, too much of a fantasy," and the photographs she liked to take had more to do with what was happening naturally all around her. "From the beginning, I wanted to photograph what I found in nature and life."
Joanna began taking pictures and showing her work to publications and a stock agency. "We all come into this business in different ways," she has said. "I'm self-taught. I didn't have anyone telling me about it, I didn't become an assistant. I just had a camera and loved going out to look for pictures. No one directed me, and I liked being on my own. From the beginning, I got to do what I loved to do."
While she enjoys the freedom to photograph subjects that appeal to her, she understands that she has to be a careful evaluator of her own work. "I think about the images a lot, even before I start to edit and select them. And then I edit very slowly and very meticulously." She spoke recently of a photo she'd taken in China. "There are a few things happening in the photograph that I don't know if I like, and I haven't shown the picture to anyone yet." She describes it as an image of people entering a temple. "It was taken from behind them, and everyone is dressed in gray or dark blue clothing, except this little baby who is being carried on her father's shoulder; she's in a pink hat and coat." It's an image that speaks of cultural changes—"the children exploding in color when the parents can only wear gray," Joanna says, but there's something about it that she's not sure of, and so she's holding it back.
Which has nothing to do with the picture not being perfect. In this particular image she knows the observation was precise; it's the resonance she's still evaluating.
In the Bag
Joanna currently shoots with a D100 and an F100. "I love film, and I'm still shooting film, but about a year ago I started to shoot with a digital cameras as well. I guess it was just the excitement of digital. I wanted to learn about it and try it."
Among her favorite lenses are the 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6D AF Zoom-Nikkor and the 80-200mm f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S Zoom-Nikkor. She's recently added the 70-180mm f/4.5-5.6D AF ED Zoom Micro-Nikkor.
