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The memory is so clear I can still see it and feel it like it happened yesterday. Turning tight and steeply banked I was pushed down and back into my seat and I could see the freighter through the top of the canopy. The plane shook as we opened fire. I can remember no more.
I have this memory in my mind. I don’t know why because it happened eight years before I was born.
A photograph from the Erickson Aircraft Collection. Other images from the Erickson Collection are included in A Boy's Dream.
When I was very young, it was a special treat to go to the General Store. Right there on the shelf was a toy tractor. We didn’t have much and Daddy couldn’t buy it for me, but right then and there I decided that someday I would own myself a General Store and I would have so many toy tractors that I couldn’t play with them all. I would just leave them in their boxes and I would be the richest person in the world.
This photograph is part of the Carpenter Portfolio, one of the first folio projects I created. The entire project is at this link.
One early autumn morning some birds flew over the surface of Lake Abert, in Oregon. I was in the right spot, with the right lens and I clicked off a couple of shots as the birds flew by. I’m going to claim the image as my own and show it off proudly on my blog.
Yes, it’s a lucky photograph and being lucky never hurt when making one good photograph. I have many more photographs where I worked really, really hard in composing, figuring exposure and sweated out numerous technical details only to create something truly…forgettable.
Like all photographers we will proudly display our images to as many people as we can and tell stories to other photographers about the photographic failures.
After critically reading my blog posts for the last few months, (football coaches call that “self-scouting”) I am lost on my Creative Journey, straying a bit from what I really like doing. I figured this out because what should be fun was starting to be like work. So, it’s time to remember why I started this.
Postcards have a picture on one side and a little bit of writing on the other. So, starting next Sunday morning (and every Sunday morning after that), I will be posting a picture with a story. The blog will be less about photography and more about life, memories (both real and imagined), dreams and stories suggested by the images. If I do happen to come up with some photographic observations, those will appear on some other day.
I hope to see you next week on the next phase of the Creative Journey.
A seemingly long time ago, (or more recently, depending on how you view the passage of time these days) I had the temerity to assemble a photographic project entitled Fifty, a collection of my fifty best photographs – up until that point in my life. The motivation was the celebration of my fiftieth birthday. As I assembled the project I thought a lot about the selection process. Here’s what I came up with.
How rare is a great photograph? With the almost limitless number of factors that influence the outcome of a photograph, it is a wonder that good photographs exist. Consider the variables involved in making any photograph (especially the film and prints that made up Fifty). Timing is everything – remember f/8 and be there? In the real world, everything happens only once (and often too quickly). There is no instant replay in life. This is even true in photographing the landscape. Despite protestations from the uninitiated, the decisive moment also exists in landscape photography.
The answer to the question “How rare is a good photograph?” finally came to me. I look back on the work included for the collection of fifty images and cumulatively, they account for no more than ten seconds exposed film over thirty years. Good photographs are that rare.
While great photographs are rare, that should not be a cause for despair or lack of motivation. You can never tell when the next great photograph will be made. It very well might be the next time to pick up your camera to photograph.
The front porch of a house on Fort Vancouver's Officer's Row. This photograph showed up in two projects, The Pattern of Shadows and as a photograph in the Fifty Project. I had not included the Fifty Project in the original updated design of my website because it was set up as a web gallery using software that was fifteen years old. I am still undecided if I get a "do-over" on this project because of the effort required to re-digitize and process the original negatives. The philosophical/practical question to be answered is whether I would rather spend my time working on something very old, or working on something new. The jury has yet to render a verdict.
