Is your Technique in Service to Your Artistry?
“Waves on Agave” Chicago Botanic Garden August 2025
I am a huge Rush fan. (If you don’t know Rush, they were a Canadian rock trio who produced some of the most amazing music from the early 1970’s to about 2015.) I was watching some YouTube videos with people reacting to their work, when I ran across a comment that had me thing about photography and art.
“So, many ‘technical’ players lose the art. With Rush, every note is technically perfect, yet the technique is always in service of the artistry.”
Photography is so often considered a more “technical” art form. But really all art has some amount of technical to it. I have heard painters talk about different brushes and paint brands. And potters about the best consistency of clay for what they do. But all that lasts for is mere moments, then it’s on to what they are making and saying with their art or a new technique they are working on.
“Wall at Enabling Garden” Chicago Botanic Garden August 2025
But with photography it’s so much easier to get lost in the megapixels, focal lengths, sharpness, ISO and other surface technical issues and the art is forgotten. I have, like all of us, made sure my image was exposed correctly, sharp where I wanted it to be and composted in a way I thought was pleasing, only to look at it later and see a soulless photo.
Back to Rush as a role model. I am not a musician, and know almost nothing about music theory, but I have been gaining some great insights into the technical prowess of each of the musicians as I listen to some of these reactions. Many of these YouTubers are trained musicians (link below to some of my favorites), so they are able to breakdown the different – and often conflicting – musical elements that make Rush’s songs so powerful. Though, the real power of their technique is, as the comment above states, it’s all “in service of the artistry”. And to me, that artistry was really shown because they were always experimenting and trying new things. I also ran across drummer and lyricist Neil Peart’s “Top 10 Rule for Success”. Two of his rules that fit here were: “Get out of your comfort zone” and “Never stop experimenting.”
“Flowers in the Sensory Garden” Chicago Botanic Garden August 2025
As artists, and photographers in particular, we find our technical comfort zone and don’t stray too far from it. Part of that might be the vast possibilities of all the bells and whistles on a camera. Just learning to photograph on manual can be challenge, let along learning about lenes, the specs of your camera, multiple exposures and even what all the different buttons on all the different menus do. It can all be overwhelming. So, I can understand when photographers latch onto one or two techniques and don’t stray much.
Through, by constructing our own “technical boxes” around ourselves, how much growth are we missing as artists? Are we worried we will look foolish? That every image we produce won’t be perfect? (A whole other post) But if we don’t experiment with new ideas and techniques, how will we know if that next idea around the corner won’t be the one that ignites a new fire in us? That pushes us to make those images that are truly our own?
“Dreaming of Fall in Carolina Bay” Aiken November 2025
A little challenge for all of us. Let’s pick up our cameras in a new way next time. Let’s try a new way of photographing a similar scene in some different way. Let’s explore that area in the menus that we haven’t looked at before. And ask ourselves, “What will happen if I try this…? Who cares what the results might look like? Maybe you won’t like it, but you tried. And maybe it might send you onto a whole new artistic path. Either way, you will be more in service to your own artistry because of it.
Thank you, and keep creating what you do.
Patrick Krohn
January 2026
About the photos: This summer I was able to attend the Out of Chicago Botanic conference at the Chicago Botanic Garden. There, with the help of Stephanie Johnson and Charles Needle, I finally figured out how to get my camera to do multiple exposures. The first is some decay on an agave leaf that is four exposures at four different focal points to make one image. The next two multiple exposures are from the Enabling and Sensory Gardens respectively. The last is me trying out multiple exposure this fall in the Carolina Bay here at home.
The Charismatic Voice is my favorite for Rush reaction videos. Elizabeth Zharoff has five Rush songs she dives into. Please check her out. I am learning a lot about music from watching her insights.
“Spirt of Radio”, “Tom Sawyer”, “2112” (More then 1 hour!), “Limelight”, and “Xanadu”
As a bonus: A reaction to a Neil Peart drum solo