Postcards from the Creative Journey

“It’s Just Gonna be a Big Surprise!”

Kitchen, Ansorge Hotel

One of my fellow workers was talking about her mother’s preference for disposal film cameras over her nice digital camera. Her son said that if you used film you wouldn’t know what the pictures looked like until you got them back from the film processor. Mom’s response, “That’s how it is with film, you don’t know what you’re going to get, it’s just gonna be a big surprise!”

I don’t like surprises any more. With film, you did have surprises and sometimes the surprises weren’t very good at all. With new cameras, surprises no longer exist. You know immediately if you’ve made a good picture. The advances in camera automation (exposure and focus) make everything so easy there is no reason to do anything other let the camera do those things it does best. Certainty is better than waiting for the surprise prints to come back from the film processor

But I Worked So Hard on It…

Stairwell in the Shoshone Building

Wallace, Idaho

"The Shoshone Building" Folio

People often (and wrongly) assume that the amount of effort put into creating a photograph should be appreciated by the viewer. This is not the case. Most folks don’t know enough about the fine details of photography to appreciate the effort that may have gone into creating a photograph. They just want to look at the image and be happy. The only people that could possibly be impressed with the amount of effort put into making a photograph are other photographers. They just might endure the impassioned description of your travails in creating a work of art.

The rest of the world just looks at the destination, not the journey. It may not be fair, but that’s the way life is sometimes.

The other side of this coin is equally as puzzling. Somewhere in one of my earlier blog posts I write, “it doesn’t feel like I did enough work to merit such a nice image.” Yes, there are serendipitous times when you, your camera, subject and the light are all magically arranged when you make the photograph. There is no struggle and with very little work you create a masterful photograph. It’s f/8, 1/60 and you are there at the perfect time and place.

So there it is. You work hard and nothing comes of it and sometimes good things happen with no effort. I don’t have an explanation for it. I just roll with it and try to work my way into the right place at the right time with my camera.

Your Mileage May Differ...

Shoshone Building

Two weeks ago I mentioned that you would get surprised when you made photographs that required developing. That post got me to reminiscing about the “good old days (which, were highly overrated, I think). I would often postpone developing negatives because developing sheet film negatives was a huge pain in the rear. I was very good at developing sheet film in mass quantities (think twenty sheets at a time) because I just hated developing film. By postponing the inevitable development I had more time to fantasize about how great my photographs would really be. Then when I had to confront the reality of my negatives and prints I was depressed. This type of behavior effectively throttled my photographic output. Dreading the arduous task of film developing kept me from completing work.

We know that the only way to produce more is to do more, so when I converted (evolved?) to digital photography from large format film photography I saw a huge increase in the amount of photography I was completing. I think this is because I no longer have to wait to see results. There are no more surprises. I have done a lot more photography in the past four or five years than I have in the previous thirty five. I also think I have done much better photography in the past five years than in the previous thirty five.

I am not sure if the improvement in photographic quality and quantity can be attributed to the digital domain, the increased number of photographs I have made or the experience I have accumulated in forty years of photography. At this point I don’t think it is possible to experimentally determine which of the three reasons is responsible for improvement, but at least I can have some fun with thought experiments on the topic.

Three Years of Blogging. Wow

The Stairs at Fort Stevens

from The Fifty Project

And now to start year number four. Sometime this coming year I will make my 200^th post and I consider that to be another significant event. Most folks begin blogging with high hopes and little appreciation for how much creative work is involved in producing new content on a routine basis. It’s much tougher than I thought it would be, but after three years it’s become such a part of my personal growth (both artistic and intellectual) that I can’t see myself not writing these little weekly essays and posting a photograph or two.

For those of you that stop by from time to time to gather what thoughts and images I have committed to pixels, thanks for stopping by. I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing and hope you enjoy my ideas and photographs enough to keep you coming back.