Postcards from the Creative Journey

532 On Getting to the End of a Project

I have written before on the various stages of my project. They are; anticipation, planning, uniformed optimism, the thrill of partial completion, the realization that all that stands between you and completion are hard work and details and finally grinding out those nasty details and finally, sadness the project is over. The temptation for all is remaining in the “thrill of partial completion” stage because it is so comfortable. We talk about the progress we made, how well we’re doing and yet, we have really nothing to show for the work we’ve done so far. We have a lot of half-finished work that is “not quite ready” to show. Sometimes the reason we don’t want to go on is because we fear something new between us and completion. Sometimes it’s just that we don’t want to face down the “hard work and details” part of the project.

On my current project, one of the feared problems was flush mounting my prints on self-adhesive foam board. I put that task off for quite a while and then buckled down to get it done. It was a case of the fear being much, much greater than the actual task at hand.

I found that to be a pretty consistent thread throughout this project; the expected difficulties are not overly difficult to overcome. With even a minimal amount of preparation and study, I have learned several new skills preparing artwork for this exhibit. It’s just a question of knowing that you have to leave that comfortable world of partial completion and face down the hard work that makes it difficult to leave the comfort of partial completion.

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This photograph is from my upcoming exhibition, "After the Memories" soon to be hung in the Page Walker Arts and History Center in Cary, North Carolina. I wanted to show the changes in our town and I was able to do that by combining historical images from the Town archive with images made today. For the next few weeks I will be blogging on how this exhibit came together. 

531 The Value of Authenticity

I think authenticity is the ultimate goal of any photographic artist. So what is the goal we are to achieve? When you get to the point where people (well, at least your fellow photographers) can identify your photographs without looking at the signature, then you have an authentic photograph. In other words, the goal is to create a photographic style that makes your photographs unique. It might be a personal favorite subject matter. It might be something that many can photograph, but done in a way no one else has photographed. It might be the way you light a scene, artificially or through clever use of natural light. What do you have that makes your photographs unique? Exploit that uniqueness and make it yours.

Can you do that immediately? Maybe, if you’re lucky, but it will probably take a lot of work on your part. We all spend time learning how to mimic the look of other great photographers that have created their own look. Build on the work of others to find what is yours.

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Here’s an authentic Joe Lipka photograph. (Well, all of the photos on my blog are authentic, but…) I have a penchant for (1) strongly composed black and white photographs, (2) doors and doorways and (3) photographing on Academy Street, in Cary, North Carolina. This door from the Victorian Lady folio shows all three components of an "authentic Joe Lipka" photograph. 

530 Photographs Without Memories

I have photographs I cannot remember making. They are mine, of course, but I have no memories of how they came about. I recognize the locations, sometimes, but exactly how I came to make them I do not remember. I wonder about these photographs without memories. How can they be mine if I can’t remember making the images themselves? Could they be great images if they were made when I was in some kind of subconscious state where I had achieved enlightenment and my conscious self was not aware of the subconscious creative me?

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I had to dig this photograph out of the archives. I can’t tell you about when this was made, but I do know it was made somewhere in Eastern Oregon on one of my photo safaris with Brooks Jensen. This is the type of subject that today would be the subject of multiple photographs. But back when I was using the 5x7 view camera you had to settle for just one photograph - and light leaks, and moire patterns and uneven sky development and all those other things that went wrong when you developed sheet film.

 

529 Lightning and Lightning Bugs

Tom Kite once said the difference between professional and amateur golfers is the difference between lightning and lightning bugs. The difference is in the attention to details, dedication and the willingness to never stop practicing. As photographers we should never stop seeing, observing and wondering about what we see in the world in front of us. We should also be ready to act on those observations. 

The amateur stops practicing when he does it right once; the professional stops practicing when he can’t do it wrong. In reality, the professional never stops practicing. Professionals expect to perform at the highest level all the time because they have constantly practiced their craft. Shouldn’t it be the same for you and me when we have a camera in hand? I can remember practicing setting up my tripod, unfolding my field view camera, affixing the lens and setting the shutter and getting my focusing cloth set so I could compose on the ground glass quickly. I would do this dozens of times just so I could learn the best way to set up my view camera and create the muscle memory so camera set up would be automatic once I was in the field. We need to be ready to react when we are presented with a rapidly changing scene. Your friends and family might be the only things to wait for you to get your camera ready. The rest of the world certainly won't.  

Exercise your photographic muscles every day. Don't stop looking at the world around you. Your smart phone makes a dandy camera to capture those scenes of your life if you left your "big camera" at home. 

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Today’s photograph is a great example of thinking photographically on a daily basis and being ready to photograph when the moment presents itself. Today’s lovely landscape was made right behind the eighteenth green at Carolina Trace Golf Course in Sanford, North Carolina. I had just finished my round of golf, was closing down the rangefinder golf app on my smartphone. Then I looked up. I went to my camera app and created this lovely photograph. Look at that. Golf and photography included as text and pictures in this week's post. 

528 Return to the Days of Yesteryear (Part II)

Did you read last week’s blog post? If you didn’t scroll down and take a quick read. I’ll wait for you before we continue where I left off.

I’m caught in kind of a personal technological paradox. As the technology I use progresses, I find that I am heading backwards in terms of approaching photography. Like most photographers of my vintage, the true road to photographic salvation was increasing film size. We started hand holding our 35 mm cameras and dreamed about being able to “move up” to large format sheet film cameras. I achieved this goal and used large format film cameras for thirty years. In fact, I selected my digital cameras based on the size and flexibility of the EVF and put the camera on a tripod. I was using my digital camera as a mini-view camera. Old ways do die hard.

Today, the advances in image stabilization (both in lens and in body for my Panasonic G85) have made my tripod almost an afterthought. It’s like I’m going backward from my view camera on a tripod to hand held 35 mm cameras. The technology is pushing me forward and backward at the same time! I am back to hand holding a camera and yet the quality of the image my G85 produces is far better than any large format camera ever. To complete this backward/forward paradox, I can’t really look at my images in the field (beyond chimping the EVF) so I have made a complete circle back to the days of yesteryear when I had to develop pictures at home to see if the pictures “came out.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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 Grainger Pipe Cheer. Go back to last week's photo and look in the lower right corner and you can see where this photograph came from. After I made the Chilean Natural Soda photograph, I thought a close up of this poster would be another nice photograph.