Postcards from the Creative Journey

There’s No App for That

Post Apocalyptic Play Ground, #2
Xiang Sha Wan

I’ve got all this great technology to help me with my photographs. I have used photoshop for almost 15 years. I love Lightroom. I am adept at using all this software to bend, push and pull and polish pixels to meet my every desire. It is a wonderfully efficient, fast and convenient way to process images. Could someone tell me why I still have RAW files that are over two years old? In the pre-digital age I always had a (light tight) box of year old (undeveloped) negatives. I just accepted that years were a typical length of time it would take for me to get film negatives developed so I could determine if the negative was worthy of a full blown “Fine Art Print.” In those days, there was a lot more work to do to get to a print via the wet darkroom than through my computer. Being an engineer by training, I have come to the obvious conclusion taking more time to do less work is really not an improvement in the process.

In true engineering fashion, I analyzed my project process. One of the surest ways to flounder and is to not define what the end of your project looks like. I really don’t like to move forward with a project until I know what the project will look like when it is finished. When I was making single photographs to hang on the wall, this wasn’t an issue because a single photograph hanging on the wall was the end of the project. Now, the project is the project is much more complex; a dozen photographs on a single theme with a written introduction. It takes a lot more time to come to realize an aesthetically complex vision.

Even though we have great technology, it still comes down to how fast we can get inspiration from our mind to the final image. I think the creative part of the art process stubbornly remains detached from the technology. The decision on how to approach the art still must come from the heart and from the mind, not from an integrated circuit or a hunk of software. The tools have changed significantly, but the inspiration and thought still come from the heart. Happily, there's no App for that.

With Great Power, etc., etc.

Hangin' with the Camel Drivers, Xiang Sha Wan

Photoshop is a very powerful tool. You can do almost anything to an image. BUT SHOULD YOU? Unleashing your creativity by using 1,000 new amazing Photoshop filters is not the path to artistic success. In the olden days (when we had to make prints in the darkroom), Fred Picker opined time and again that you didn’t know how much manipulation was just right until you went too far. When you went too far it was easy to throw that print away and know for sure you had the best image you could make. We still have that ability but we now call it “Ctrl+Z” and we can undo any change that may have taken us one step too far down the wrong path. Sadly, many don’t take that last step backward.

We have an amazing amount of technology available to us and knowing when to leave it well enough alone is now a defining mark of a good photographer. I wonder sometimes if this overabundance of photographic technology has made us lazy because the “we can fix it in photoshop” attitude. All that is necessary is to click over the Photoshop Disaster web site to see a daily example of images that weren’t “fixed” in photoshop.

The more technology we have available to us the more knowledge we have to have to know when NOT to use it. Great photographs have been made for over 150 years without photoshop or digital editing. There is no real reason that cannot continue because the true source of creativity is not embedded in a microchip, or residing in the source code of some program. It is the mind of the photographer holding the camera.

Another Contemporary Thought

Church, Oysterville, Washington

Contemporary Art comes in a bunch of flavors. One flavor is Decorative Art, the art that winds up over the sofa, goes with the drapes and is something we regular folks want to see every day. The value of this Art is defined by the desire of people to part with their hard earned money because they want to identify with the sentiment of the art. (Fine Art’s value is defined by the auction houses, art collectors and museums.) Most people are willing to spend their money on Art they want to enjoy, not because an artist is “important” or “collectable.” They want to purchase a part of world they would like to live in. That’s why Robert Kincaid reproductions hang on a lot of living room walls. His sentimental view of what a “perfect life” would be is a world that many people want to live in. That’s why they spend their money to have that vision of the perfect world in their home.

There’s much to that sentiment. One of the best contemporary landscape photographers told me his pictures sell because people want to be a part of the world as he sees it. People want the experience of “being there” when the photograph was made. They want to be in a world that is beautiful, serene and peaceful. We can see the ugliness and evil in the world writ large and every evening on the news.

Contemporary or Classic?

Greenshead Slough

All Art starts out as Contemporary Art. Whether it lasts long enough to become classic, or is consigned to long term storage and forgotten about is a judgment only time will tell. As I wrote that, I wondered, is there a section in every museum warehouse filled with artwork that the curators are embarrassed to exhibit? Does MOMA have a secret cache of Thomas Kincade paintings they really don’t want anyone to know about? (Yes, they do – right between the originals of the Poker Playing dogs and velvet Elvis paintings. You read this on the internet, so you know it must be true.)

But I digress.

How do we decide what is going to “last” in terms of art? To me, what makes art timeless is the ability to transcend the current trendy topic and speak to the soul of humanity. Too often we see a contemporary problem or topic presented in a very specific situation. The artist’s point can be made and we can be manipulated to respond to the contemporary concern. Will the response last? Possibly, but I think the art that will make a long term impact addresses the contemporary problem in a timeless manner. Our subjects are contemporary, but the way we interpret the subject must be timeless. The present representation of the timeless questions that face humanity will last beyond this gallery season.

Start of Year Three in the Weekly Photo Blog!

Chewuch River, Washington

The first blog post was done on my web site on January 3, 2010. Over 125 posts and more than 200 photographs later, I’m still here and still musing on photography.  Last week, I said Art was not a spectator sport and concluded if you can’t work at your primary art, then a secondary art form is good thing to keep you in the creative groove. I guess this blog and the occasional (sometime) random snap is a good way to keep me working. Actually, I think it’s a pretty good idea because I know that the toughest part of folio creation is writing about photographs. Putting together a blog is a pretty good way to keep me writing about photography.

Photographically, 2011 was a great year. I started the year photographing the Singing Sands of Inner Mongolia and it just got better and better. (For sure, at least it got much warmer.) We’ll have to see what this New Year brings, but I know I will be here every week writing and hope you stop by and see what’s going on.