Charles Maring | Photographer
The Camera Taught Me How to See
For more than three decades, photography has shaped the way I see people, places, light and moments that will never happen exactly the same way again.
Where It All Began
I grew up developing photographs in a darkroom my father built at home. Long before I understood that a camera could become a career, it had already become a way of paying attention.
Through a viewfinder, I learned to study light. To recognize composition. To anticipate human behavior. To notice relationships between shapes, people and spaces. Perhaps most importantly, I learned that the world is constantly offering us moments that will never happen in exactly the same way again.
More than three decades later, photography remains the foundation of my creative life.
It has taken me around the world. It has placed me inside extraordinary celebrations and quiet human moments. It has introduced me to remarkable people. It has become fine art, supplied the raw material for digital art, influenced my paintings and ultimately changed the way I experience the world even when there is not a camera in my hands.
The technology has changed enormously.
The desire to see has not.
A Life in photographs
A long photographic career eventually becomes something larger than a portfolio.
It becomes an archive of a life.
A fraction of a second before the kiss. First dance at The Plaza Hotel, New York City.
A Career of Moments
I have photographed enormous celebrations in grand New York ballrooms and intimate ceremonies beneath live oaks in Savannah. I have worked with Presidents, celebrities, artists, executives, families and people who had never stood in front of a professional camera before.
I have photographed in studios and on city streets, along coastlines and across landscapes, backstage and in front of thousands of people.
Some photographs were carefully constructed.
Others existed for only a fraction of a second.
Both require attention.
Photography taught me early that we cannot always control what happens in front of us. We can only become better at recognizing what matters when it does.
People & Stories
The Moment Between the Moments
People have always fascinated me.
Much of my professional life has been devoted to photographing moments that cannot be repeated.
A glance across a room. An unexpected laugh. A hand reaching for another. A performer about to walk onstage. A bride entering a ceremony. An expression that appears for a second and disappears.
These are often the photographs I remember most.
My approach has always leaned toward observation. I prefer to anticipate rather than interrupt, working quietly whenever possible and allowing people to remain present in their own experience.
There is certainly a place for direction. Portraits sometimes need to be composed. Light sometimes needs to be created. A photograph may need to be deliberately constructed.
But I never want the process of making a photograph to become more important than the person standing in front of the camera.
The Moment Between the Moments
Light changes. A gesture appears.
The photograph happens.
Tony Bennett, photographed by Charles Maring
Weddings & Celebrations
Photographing What It Felt Like
Some have filled grand hotels and ballrooms with hundreds of guests. Others have involved only a handful of people standing together beneath a tree.
Scale has very little to do with meaning.
My goal has always been to create photographs that are beautiful today, but become increasingly valuable as time passes.
Eventually the flowers disappear. The music stops. The room becomes empty.
The photographs remain.
VIEW COMMISSIONED PHOTOGRAPHY & FILM
An environmental executive portrait outside the New York Stock Exchange, combining architecture, location and portraiture.
Portraits & Editorial
The Person Beyond the Pose
Portraiture is a collaboration.
Whether I am photographing an artist, executive, celebrity, musician, family or someone who simply does not enjoy being photographed, I am looking for the moment when something genuine begins to appear.
My career has given me opportunities to photograph recognizable personalities, create magazine and editorial work, produce commercial assignments and work in sophisticated studio environments.
But celebrity has never made someone inherently more interesting to photograph.
People are interesting.
A gesture can tell a story. So can posture, clothing, environment, expression or simply the way someone occupies a room.
Lighting matters.
Composition matters.
Technique matters.
But eventually the camera has to get past the surface.
That is where the portrait begins.
Fine Art Photography
Finding the Composition
Water, sand and light transform the shoreline into an unexpected composition, discovered at the edge of the sea.
The Art of Paying Attention
Not every photograph begins with an assignment.
Sometimes I am simply walking, traveling or exploring when something makes me stop.
A landscape divided unexpectedly by light. Reflections on water. The repetition of trees. Architecture interacting with sky. Shadows creating geometry. Texture, movement or scale transforming something familiar into something almost abstract.
In those moments, I am not trying to invent the artwork.
I am trying to recognize it.
My fine art photography is largely about landscapes, natural abstractions and unusual compositions discovered in the world around me.
Sometimes the subject remains immediately recognizable. Other times scale and context begin to disappear and the photograph approaches abstraction without fundamentally changing what existed in front of the camera.
Move a few feet and the composition may disappear.
Wait several minutes and the light may change.
The photograph existed.
I simply happened to notice it.
That is one of the things photography continues to teach me.
Extraordinary compositions are everywhere.
Seeing them requires us to pay attention.
Digital Art
When the Photograph Is Only the Beginning
From Observation to Imagination
Photography does not always end with a photograph.
My digital artwork begins with the camera as well, but the relationship is fundamentally different.
I photograph fragments of the real world. Architecture, landscapes, reflections, textures, graffiti, weathered surfaces, movement and details that catch my attention.
Sometimes I know exactly why I am making the photograph.
Sometimes I do not.
Later, certain images ask for something more.
I begin layering, mirroring, reshaping and manipulating the original photography. Familiar places become unfamiliar. Architecture becomes geometry. Texture becomes landscape. New forms appear where none existed before.
The photograph stops being simply a record of something I saw.
It becomes raw material for imagination.
That is the distinction I find fascinating.
In my fine art photography, I am often searching for an artwork that already exists in front of me.
In my digital art, the camera gives me the material to create something that did not exist at all.
Both begin by looking.
They simply travel in different directions.
Camera based imagery transformed through color, abstraction and digital manipulation into a large scale finished work of art.
Still Looking
A Lifetime Behind the Camera. A Future Still Unwritten.
What we learn becomes more valuable when we share it.
Curiosity Has No Finish Line
After more than three decades behind a camera, I do not feel as though I have finished learning photography.
If anything, I am more curious about it.
I began with film, darkrooms and the anticipation of watching an image appear in a tray of developer. Since then, I have watched photography reinvent itself again and again.
The tools changed.
The reason I picked up the camera did not.
Photography taught me to notice. Light moving across a face. A gesture lasting for a fraction of a second. The geometry of a building against the sky. Water moving across sand. Two people forgetting that a camera is in the room.
It also taught me something else.
What we learn becomes more valuable when we share it.
Over the years, photography carried me from behind the camera onto conference stages and trade show floors, where I began teaching, demonstrating, speaking and sharing ideas with other photographers and creative professionals.
Those experiences eventually grew beyond photography itself. Today, my keynote speeches explore creativity, storytelling, reinvention and what it means to remain human and curious as technology continues to change the way we work and create.
In many ways, I am still teaching the same lesson photography taught me.
Pay attention. Stay curious. Keep learning.
Awards, magazine covers, exhibitions, extraordinary assignments and recognition have all been meaningful markers along the way.
But they were never the reason to pick up the camera.
The photograph was.
It still is.
There is always another person. Another place. Another change in the light. Another idea worth exploring.
After all these years, I am still looking.
Commissioned Photography & Filmmaking
Photography remains both an artistic practice and my profession. I continue to accept commissioned assignments through Maring Visuals, from weddings and portraiture to corporate events, editorial work and filmmaking.
Charles Maring, Savannah, Georgia
Photography remains where my creative life began and the way I continue to explore, learn and see the world.