Postcards from the Creative Journey

415 Evolution of Projects

Books, Georgetown, SC

When I started pursuing Fine Art Photography, the ultimate achievement was the single image. It was made with a view camera, large format sheet film, developed and printed by hand, dry mounted, matted, framed and hung on a wall; the artistic equivalent of the mounted animal head hanging in the trophy room. There was the time when having a poster was a big deal, too. Of course the poster was actually a souvenir from your show of images matted and framed on a gallery wall, or if you were very fortunate, hung on the wall of a bookstore that sold your book.

Producing a book is my current fascination. Maybe it’s because I’ve done everything except the books and that’s one goal I have yet to achieve. Or it might be because publishing a book is the ultimate ego trip, or maybe because the book is something that can provide inspiration for future photographers. 

 

414 The Time Around a Photograph

Carpenter, North Carolina

This photo is from the Carpenter Folio. The interesting photographs surround this particular image and those memories are much better than this photograph. They are memories because I could not change film holders on my view camera quick enough.

The town I live in has been growing rapidly for over thirty years. It transformed from rural to suburban in a few short years. At the time of this photograph we experienced a confluence of disparate life styles. These life styles passed in front of me in a matter of a few moments on a Saturday morning:

• A tractor pulling a hay rake
• Bubba and Earl wearing overalls and “seed caps” driving an old pickup truck (probably following the hay rake)
• A Mercedes Benz Sedan
• A peloton of cyclists, all wearing logo covered spandex racing suits

The transition from rural to exclusive happened in a matter of minutes right in front of me. I didn’t have time to record it.

413 Long Lost and Now Found

Evening, Hell's Half Acre, Wyoming

The photograph in today’s blog was made on September 10, 2006 at 7:27:33 PM according to the EXIF data. I found it last week when I was trying to figure out what projects needed to be moved from my primary to secondary hard drive. Multiple exposures of this scene indicated I was trying to use High Dynamic Range techniques. Ten years ago HDR was difficult and required so much work I never bothered to perfect the image. HDR techniques are now ridiculously simple and wonderful so a couple of selections, a left click, a right click and voila, a perfect HDR image.

There are a couple of lessons here. The first thing that comes to mind Storage is cheap, so there is no reason not to make the picture when you see it. My oft repeated advice to make the photograph and worry about how to deal with it technically later is the second. Just because you don’t know how to deal with it now doesn’t mean that you can’t in the future. Technology constantly improves and (we all hope) we will also improve technically and aesthetically.

This photograph could have been part of a project that was completed a long time ago, but it missed its’ chance. This image doesn’t really have a home other than on this blog. I’m fine with that because it’s finally going to be seen by an audience. I’m happy to finally share my interpretation of this place and time with you these ten years later.

How many more of these lost digital files will I find if I keep looking? What if I start looking through contact sheets from the long ago days of film photography?

412 A Delicate Balance

The Side Door, St. Paul, Oregon

Occasionally I wonder how out of date my photo hardware knowledge is. When I need to make some prints for an upcoming exhibition. I stumbled across the information that Epson has a whole new line of papers. I temporarily panicked and wondered if Epson still sold the paper I prefer. (They do, thank heavens.)

This got me to thinking about the amount of effort needed to “keep current” on the latest in gear, software, printers, papers or other tech stuff that pertains to photography. Photography is different things to different people. (See “Being Photographic” July 6, 2014) I am not one to obsess over the latest offerings of technology. Golly, I used the same wooden view camera for about thirty years, so I’m definitely not an early adopter.

It’s a question of competing resources. I have only so much time to devote to photographic pursuits. I chose to spend most of my time creating photographic projects and writing this blog. I don’t spend enough time on “being photographic.”

As you might well surmise, I write many posts weeks in advance and queue them up with the "Publish On" feature created by the good folks at TypePad. It's been more than a few weeks since my trusty, loyal and much loved Epson R2400 stopped working. I have resisted taking a look at printer technology because I am not in the mood to purchase a new printer. I am continuing to wonder just what the appropriate method of sharing my artwork with others could be. I have a bunch of ideas that I will begin sharing with you in the coming weeks. 

I made some changes to my web site this weekend and you should stop by and see two new Photo Projects; “The Hughes House,” on the Oregon Coast and “Ancient Gestures,” photographs of the Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountains of California. A third project is a words and pictures project from the “Winter Day and Summer Morning Exhibit.” As part of that exhibit I provided some insight to my creative process for some of the Victorian Lady photographs. That’s now on the web site.

Stop by and take a look.

411 Ten Lessons Learned from Photo Safari 2016

Boatyard,

Port Townsend, WA

Every good project manager has an evaluation at the end of the project to figure out what worked and what didn’t work on their project. Here are what worked and what didn’t work during this year’s photo safari. While not as photographically intensive as the last three or four safaris it certainly was philosophically wonderful and we came back with almost as many thoughts as photographs.

1. Good friends and good food are better than good photography.
2. I can’t make a print because I don’t have a printer. I’m not really sure that is a handicap. I’m thinking about other ways to share my photographs. Not having an easy answer makes you more creative and isn’t that what’s important?
3. Photographic artifacts don’t seem to have the cache they used to have. Younger people (the number of which keeps growing) live in a virtual world and the possession of artistic artifacts (photographic prints if you wish) is not high on their list of things to acquire.
4. I am seriously thinking that my style of photographs is past its prime. I also wonder if chasing after the current photographic zeitgeist is a bad idea, too. I would wager the quest for suitable artistic subject matter is far more than just my problem right now. Or, maybe I should keep on doing what I do and hope that my style circles back to being in vogue sometime in the not too distant future.
5. I think I know why huge photographs are quite the thing in museums these days. It’s to get people out of their houses. If you can’t experience it at home, or on-line, you have to go to the museum to experience the spectacle of the huge artistic photograph.
6. Yes, you can go home again. Going back to Fort Worden almost ten years after the first Labyrinth photographs was very different. I have changed, my cameras have changed, how I use my photo editing software has improved and wall surfaces have changed. But most importantly, I have new, additional ideas of how to share my vision and interpretation of this place. I think that’s why I can go home again and not be tired of photographing there.
7. Just Do It. Oh, wait; someone has already used that line. Sorry. Don’t talk about it, just go out and make photographs. Brooks and I have talked about photographing the boatyard in Port Townsend for ten years. This year we finally went out and spent an afternoon making photographs of wooden boats. We might be on to something there.
8. Photograph something even if you don’t have a clue about what is in front of you. I know almost nothing about boats. But I do know about photography, and I do know what looks good on the viewfinder of my camera. Not having any preconceived notion about your subject makes an assured outcome questionable. Then again, taking the risk makes it a learning opportunity and you just might get a nice photograph or two.
9. We actually created some very nice photographs and printed them out. While the photographs were from the 2015 Photo Safari, it is the first time we’ve actually created photographic artifacts during a photo safari. And yes, the photographs were gorgeous.
10. The Cloud is a wonderful thing and the people at Adobe are really, really smart. I’m an IT type and I know about The Cloud, how it’s supposed to work and all that. But when I installed Lightroom Mobile on my iPad mini, I had no idea how powerful that Cloud connection can be for a photographer. I spent several hours on the plane ride home editing and perfecting all the images I needed for a folio on wooden boats in the Port Townsend ship yard. I was very impressed with how easy it is to use Lightroom Mobile.

Finally got around to catching up on the trip blog posts and doing some updating and clean up. Should you like to go back to mid-trip and see how the trip finished, you can pick up on the September 7 post September 7th blog post.