Postcards from the Creative Journey

481 Artist With A Camera

Dakota Creek Shipyard

It used to be that just making a photograph was a tough thing to do on a technical basis. Now, with auto-everything and digital captures, just about everyone can create a technically great image with everything from a smartphone to a ridiculously expensive digital camera. When everyone can make a technically acceptable photograph the photograph is no longer the end game. Whether we like it or not, if your artmaking includes a camera, the stakes have risen.

We may still be photographers, but we need to think of ourselves as an Artist with a Camera. Artists with a Camera to no longer look for the single photograph, but use multiple photographs, virtual exhibitions, text with images, sound with images and video capture, using all the software we can lay our hands on to communicate in the most creative manner to our audience. A few weeks ago I heard an artist say he didn't think he could consider himself an artist if he just made photographs. He felt his creative life needed to encompass more than one form of expression. He did photography for sure, but he also composed music, made drawings and sculpted. He felt that he needed multiple skills to fully express his art. 

Photography is now the beginning point for the art we create. 

480 Projects and Themes

Here's where the tools were left at the end of the day.

While preparing a talk on my photographs I came up with a thought that has some pretty big implications. It’s simply this, “Projects end, Themes continue.” As an Engineer and Project Manager by education, I was taught that projects end. That is the nature of projects. What you set out to do is completed, be it a hand built table, a software release or a multi-million dollar chemical plant. The task is completed and  you move on to the next project.

I do that with my photographic projects, too. Capture images, process them, create a web folios, a print folios and maybe an exhibition print or two and move on to the next project.

What I have failed to consider is there might be a theme, or common thread running through all my projects that I might be able use. (See the post on Hidden Projects.) I wonder how many projects I have out there that I can create from the images I already have stored on various hard drives, files and boxes?

479 Well, It Was A Good Photo - Last Week

I like this photograph - today.

I support local arts organization by submitting photographs to their calls for work. The entry fee paid helps support the organization and at the very least, that’s a good thing. If my work is selected for the exhibit, that’s wonderful. Should my photograph earn an award, that is something special.

Recently, I responded to two different requests. I forgot about the first request when I was doing the second one. Curiously enough, I used the same body of work for both requests. Surprisingly, only one photograph wound up being included in both requests.

All were good photographs, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why some photographs I was in love with didn’t get the requisite love a week later. I’ve been thinking on this for a couple of weeks and I am no closer to an answer on this than when I noticed this.

478 The Hidden Project

I'll be right back to put these away (It could be a theme, you know.)

The last few posts have been about looking forward and discovering that image that you can’t remember making. Those are two good things to think about when considering what your next project should be. But what if you go back and start wandering through your photographic past? Lightroom makes that a very easy thing to do, so that’s not all that difficult. You could review your old contact sheets? Contact Sheets? Okay, for you young ‘uns out there a quick education about the olden days of film.

Contact Sheet

The temptation is that this task could turn into a trip down memory lane, (which is not necessarily a bad thing) while you are looking for photographs that are still good both technically and aesthetically while sharing a theme you can use for your next project. You might find types of photographs here and there that can add up to a new project based on a theme rather than a location.

Remember, the standards for what constitutes a “good” negative are now different than they were when you made the negative. What was once unprintable when you were sloshing prints through trays of chemicals may be quite useable today. With scanners, digital editing, high dynamic range and a host of other digital editing tools the film negative you couldn’t use might become a necessary part of a Hidden Project.

You won’t know until you start looking.

477 The Future in the Rear View Mirror

Looking Backward, Southern Utah

This is the corollary to blog 475. (Go ahead and read that post, I’ll wait here until you’re done.) You future projects could be in photographs you made in your past. We all have those photographs we see only when we get home. You know the one. It’s the one that you can’t remember making. We’re not talking about the bad photographs. You want to forget the ones you don't want to remember making. There's a vast difference between those type of photographs. 

What I’m talking about is the great photograph you can’t remember making. The single image we can’t explain. The image we don’t recognize as one of our own. I call them square pegs because they don’t fit in the round holes of my photographic genres.

We all have them. They spring from our subconscious and come from that place that is close to our soul. These are photographs that are felt rather than thought out. They could be your future if you open your mind and heart and listen to them.