Postcards from the Creative Journey

692 Dropping Something

When photographing in the field, we try to make sure that we can do as much as possible by rote, using muscle memory and feel to free up our mind for more creative tasks. At one time, I could unpack my field camera set it up, add a lens and set maximum aperture to focus on the subject all by feel. Those days are gone. I have a new routine for using my digital camera and part of that routine is to take off my glasses to view the flip out touch screen.

The one thing that makes this possible is to have a croakie that attaches to my glasses to keep them from falling on the ground. It’s really important to remember to put those guys on my glasses as part of my daily photographic preparation.

One morning I was getting ready to make the first photograph from the edge of a bridge over the Teal Slough and I absentmindedly took off my glasses and was about to drop them when I felt something wrong. I didn’t have the croakie cord attached to my glasses.

It would have been a costly mistake to drop my glasses into the slough because I didn’t have a back-up pair of glasses with me.

The need for some back up eyeglasses is another story for another time.

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Yup, that mess above might have been the final resting place for the only pair of glasses I had with me. 

691 Old Dog, Old Tricks First Published 1/25/2015

When does a style stop being a style and start being repetitive?

Am I repeating what I have done before? Have I stopped trying to explore new artistic areas and approaches? Am I happy doing the same thing I have been doing for, um, well, since forever? Does happiness and self-satisfaction really mean that I’ve gone all formulaic and repetitive? A few months ago I mentioned that even though I am using a digital camera my aesthetic is still grounded in the view camera. I still pretty much work the same way I have worked for the past thirty years. (How many photographers do you know that bolt their digital camera to a tripod? Besides me, of course.) I seem to see the same way I always have seen and record my vision with a much newer and sophisticated camera.

In terms of finished artwork, the end product has changed tremendously. I used to have single prints, mounted, matted and framed hanging on a wall. Now my prints occur in groups, properly sequenced and presented as folios, be they on the web or as a physical artifacts. Multiple photographs have superseded the individual print and I take the time to write an introduction to the work. The art seems to have pushed the photography into the background and it is now a component of a finished piece of art. Is this current method of work a way to enhance the photographic artifact or is it pushing it into the background? Should the photography change to keep up with the presentation?

I don’t have any answers for these questions today, but I do need to keep thinking about what I want to photograph and how to present it.

690 The Other Foot in the Future

The difference between the work required for a virtual exhibition on a website or a gallery show are significant. There is far less work required to produce the images for a show. No artifacts are created which eliminates printing, mounting, matting, framing and installation chores. With no artifacts projects can be completed quicker and one can create more projects. Creating more projects means one can learn more from more projects being completed. If you handle all the artifact creation yourself, the time spent printing, mounting, matting, framing and installing the prints is time saved for more creative tasks. Not having to create the artifacts also avoids the significant costs associated with creating a physical exhibition whether you pay for all the production services or buy the printing and framing supplies yourself. The costs of a physical exhibition are so great I tell my photographic friends, “I can only afford an exhibition once every year or two.”

Are there disadvantages to the website exhibition? Yes, there are. There is a lack of social feedback on the work presented. One can look at web site tracking data and see how many visits were made to the website and how many people looked at the files. There is no personal feedback on the work. Permanence of the exhibit invites comparison to earlier or later work and lays bare progress (or the lack of it) with your art.

Yes, one of the advantages of a physical exhibit is the excitement of an opening reception. Being able to see people appreciate the artifacts hanging on the walls of a gallery is exciting and gratifying. That is, if the expected number of people show up and they like our photographs. There is always the possibility that the public does not show up and the reviewers are harsh. A sparsely attended opening is an ego shattering experience, where a decline in website traffic is privately endured.

689 One Foot in the Past First Published 3/17/2019

Gallery shows are wonderful, a lot of work and tough to come by. The competition for gallery space is intense and the reward is fleeting and very often not financially rewarding. Yet, we still pursue this as a venue to display our art. There is prestige and honor to have our works shown in a gallery.

Yet, I see gallery shows as a thing of the past. We just don’t go out to galleries and museums as much as in the past. It is so much more convenient to see photographic images just about any time we want by visiting a website (or a blog). We are not required to go to a certain place at a specified time to see photographs. We can do so from the comfort and convenience of wherever we have our smartphone, tablet or computer. We see more photographs online than in galleries or museums by a factor of, what, a Billion or so? With the internet and a smartphone, we don’t have to make a special trip to see photographs. Photographic images are with us all the time, just a click or so away.

Instagram, Facebook and whatever the latest image sharing site is the latest rage are where photographs are going to be seen in the future. We will still have museums, but my guess is that museums will have photographs as more of a curiosity or historical artifact than anything else.

The transition from physical to virtual world should be a strategic effort for photographers. Participating in the virtual world is more effective in showing work to more people, more times and done with less work than having a gallery show.

688 The Accidental Project

I didn’t mean to start a new project, but it just sort of happened. While searching for images for the Daily Photograph Blog (see the link at the top of the page), I started seeing some interesting images. A theme developed right in front of me. I saw a recurring subject in many places over many years. I had no idea that particular subject kept showing up over and over again. I had no particular vision of this theme happening, it just did.

I have no idea why it happened, but now I just have to finish the project. I don’t know how it really started, but I do know that I will have to finish it.

687 It’s All About the Edges First Publishes 1/29/2017

I think I blogged about photographs of others’ work a few years back. The basic thought was making photographs of something that other people created meant that you were just the last person in the chain of creativity and craftsmanship. It was the photographer’s responsibility not to mess up all the work done before him. My current project with the Art Deco Automobiles is just that. I didn’t design the automobiles, I didn’t build the automobiles and finally, I didn’t arrange for the exhibition of the automobiles. I am just an admirer of these incredibly beautiful (and quite valuable) machines.

As an engineer, I am predisposed to admire technology and as a photographer, the beauty of their form. To honor all the hard work of the designers, engineers and craftsmen, my primary aesthetic is figuring out where to put the Edges of the Photograph to show the innate beauty of these machines.

I have no real deep philosophical or psychological reason to make these photographs. They are beautiful machines and I love the way they look when I photograph them.

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The automobile is the absolutely beautiful 1935 Bugatti Type 57S Aerolithe. It was one of the stars of the Rolling Sculpture exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2016. My folio, Rolling Sculpture is on my web site. Going back to find the name of this beauty, I think that there just might be enough great photographs to make into an article for my Personal Journal Publication in the next month or two.

686 My Other Photographs of China

No, not China the country, but china as in plates, bowls and cups. My friend Brooks Jensen (of LensWork fame) always said they would reject submissions that did not have a completed theme. He and Maureen referred to these submissions as “Teacup, teacup, plate submissions” meaning the project started out in one direction and then veered off into something completely different in order to meet the “quota of images for submission.”

I decided to create a project based on photographs of (you guessed it) teacups and plates. I thought it would be an amusing winter project and had some fun coming up with an appropriate number of compositions.

LensWork rejected my submission because (I suppose) it was truly teacup, teacup plate. I should have known better. At the time, I judged the project a complete failure. I took solace in the fact I learned how to do a few neat things in Lightroom, used reflectors for fill lighting and I had a good time. So it wasn’t a complete loss.

While failures never make us happy, once we have proceeded a significant distance from the failure, we can learn from the experience.

685 “Being Photographic” First Published 6/6/2014

The thing about photography is that you can approach it from many different points and enjoy many different aspects of photography. You can be an active photographer using a camera for many different things: self-expression, story-telling, journalism, or the perfect excuse to take travels to many different locations.

Then there are the folks that enjoy “being photographic.” Among the many different types of “photographic” people are those that enjoy going to photographic exhibits because they like cheese cubes, box wine and hobnobbing with the local arts crowd. Or, they collect photographs to keep in a fire proof safe, or to hang on their walls. Some folks collect cameras, tripods, old chemical cans and various other forms of photographic ephemera. Other folks collect books of photographs, books of photographs on a specific subject, or books of pictures of cameras.

I write this blog, sharing my thoughts about photography because I can’t get myself behind a camera and produce photographs as often as I would like. So, I have this outlet to make sure that I keep thinking about photographs, what they mean and the next photographic project I need to do. Until I conjure up some free time to complete my latest photographic project, I can write these blog posts and keep on “being photographic” when I can’t photograph.