Postcards from the Creative Journey

845 Cloudscapes

As a landscape photographer I rejoice in the sky full of big puffy clouds. It doesn't matter (well, almost) what occupies the foreground, because the star of the show are those great clouds. Thus, the title of this post. If the land is not a key component of the image, then the Clouds dominate the composition and that is the whole photograph. Landscape photography required the weather knowledge, the ability to move distances to get to the right weather and a certain amount of luck to get those great clouds in your photograph.

Well, Adobe has made getting those clouds to behave and obey your orders a whole bunch easier. With the sky replacement tool, you can slip any clouds you want into your own photographs. They can be stock clouds supplied by Adobe or you can get one of those lucky days and “stock up” on cloudscapes to use on some unsuspecting foreground. Ah, the wonders of technology.

While I am sure other curmudgeonly photographers will (again) bemoan the death of photography as we know it, it is worth noting this practice has been going on since the inception of our art.

In the days of blue sensitive emulsions, landscape photographers made two images of a scene. One plate was exposed for the blue sky and had a woefully underexposed foreground. The second plate was exposed for the foreground and had a completely blasted out sky. Combination printing of the two plates made a complete photograph. Good cloud negatives were sold or traded among photographers who had no qualms about using someone else's sky in their photograph.

Combination printing has been around for a long time. Adobe has now made it impossibly easy. I wait with trepidation to see how badly this new tool will be abused.

844 - Which Way to Look? First Published 7/10/2011

I am a forward-looking person. Past work is history. It may or may not be relevant to my current project. I also don’t like to go back and look at old projects. Once I do that, I will pick them apart and judge them by my current standards. I wind up making myself feel like a fraud for passing off less than stellar work. They were the best I had at the time, but as I grow as an artist, fewer and fewer of my old photographs pass muster when I look at them now. My old photos do not interest me.

I want to get on to the next photograph, the next project, the next portfolio and make it technically better and emotionally deeper than the last one. It’s the quest to do something new, to push your creative self to make something better. It’s having the courage to let go of the last good photograph and move on to the next challenge.

I can’t wait to see what I do next.

843 Success as An Impediment To Creativity

Online judging of images employs the artistic equivalent of the Roman Emperor giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to a Gladiator. We are accepted or rejected. Yes or No. Accept or Reject. Right or Wrong. There is no middle ground, no “Well it was really good except for…,” or “ that could be improved if the next time you were in that situation you could…” helpful critiques that could be great help to the photographer.

The critique is a binary system and not a helpful method for the evaluation of images.

Relying on this style of feedback on photographic image and style your creativity is stifled in two ways. First, you do not know the level of photographic knowledge and competence of the people rating your work. They could be completely misguided and ignorant of the precepts of good photography. In the worst case, you could be getting reviews from people who cannot tell you what a good image looks like. Secondly, chasing those “thumbs up ratings” to achieve  “success,”  the temptation is to photograph to meet popular expectations. When crowd pleasing is the measure of success, the temptation is to play to that audience and not explore more creative approaches to your images.

842 - Craft and Art, First Published 6/3/2011

Yes, this is a homage.

A friend of mine saw a tribute (cover) band a while back. He said they were very good at impersonating the real band. They had the playlist in the right order, hit all the notes and did the moves. But they didn’t do it first. That to me is the separation between art and craft. It’s the ability to use the craft to convey your thoughts or feelings about a subject. Playing someone else’s song note for note is not high art, but high craft. These guys had the skill, craft and technical proficiency, to reproduce tone for tone other’s original work. Tone for tone, eh? That’s my cue translate this into photography speak.

We have tribute photographers, too. All of us, at certain phases of our lives can’t go by a photogenic green pepper (me, too!), or a torn poster on a wall or just drive on through the Wawona Tunnel in Yosemite without pulling out a camera and making a photograph. We all make or remake our version of the classic images. The suggestion (again) is, if you are not the first, do it better, or do it differently to let us (your audience) know either the subject or yourself better. When you look in your viewfinder or ground glass and see a photograph that you have already seen before, then please don’t waste either your time or our time on that image.

Craft is important. But it is a tool in service of your art. You can duplicate the masters if you choose. We all do, just remember, it’s a stop along the way to developing your own art.

It doesn’t take much effort to make a photograph. It takes a lot of effort to make a really good photograph.

841 When Things Go Wrong, Life Gets Interesting

In a career of creating computer systems there was one experience that everyone I worked with agreed about. It a nutshell, it was simply, “You don’t learn a thing until you ______ it up.” (Feel free to fill the blank with a word of your choice.) Learning comes from making mistakes and trying to figure out what you did wrong in the first place. No matter how clear the instructions, procedures and check lists, mistakes will be made and then life gets interesting.

Interesting in that you need a way to recover and then return to your selected path. Such detours are filled with information and new ways to look at things.

We recently were photographing the Grand Canyon on a smoky, hazy day. The images before processing in Lightroom were ugly (see the above initial digital capture) and looked worthless. But with judiciously use of the Dehaze filter, interesting results occurred for some images, but not others. With investigation, it turns out that images that were borderline overexposures were fine candidates for the dehaze process. Imperfect atmosphere and an almost technical failure taught us something new about making images work.

There. Isn't that better?

Upon further reflection, it is worthwhile to note that in the olden film days, we would have used either a yellow or orange filter in an attempt to thwart the negative effects of the smoke and haze. For the most part the film photographers of old would simply lament the loss of a "good day" and spend the day playing cards instead of photographing. 

840 - Love at First Sight First Published 12/9/2012

I was checking around for images to use for the weekly blog and I figured I might use some of the images from my latest project, “Time and Tide.” Last week’s image is from that folio and for the next few weeks you will see some more images from Greenhead Slough on the Long Beach Peninsula. To avoid using photos twice, I went back to check on the images I posted while I was on Photosafari 2011.  I wanted to make sure that I did not post the same image twice. Did I ever get a surprise.

There was only one image previously posted on the blog that made the “Time and Tide” folio. The images that were love at first sight didn’t make it to the final portfolio. It wasn’t love; it was a fleeting infatuation, a photographic one-night stand.

I really need to figure out how this happened. It was really a complete surprise to me.

839 The Experience Was Better Than the Photograph

We make photographs as part of our life experience. We go to scenic place, we have a family event, we want to commemorate a special occasion. We have our camera (or more likely our smartphone) and make images.

Therein lies the conflict. We want to participate and remember the experience and we try to record the moments for our audience, be it family, friends or those other wonderful people that stop by our blog or website. Handling the conflict between the photographic self and the “civilian” self is a conflict to be resolved on the spot.

Sometimes we forget to be photographers and we enjoy the experience for what it is. That is a good thing because, while maybe not accurate, sometimes memories are better than photographs.

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It's a new month so that means there is a new issue of The Lipka Journal over at my website. Click on the link at the top of the page and download the free PDF Journal for this month.

838 - Your Mileage May Differ… First Published 1/13/2013

Two weeks ago I mentioned that you would get surprised when you made photographs that required developing. That post got me to reminiscing about the “good old days (which, were highly overrated, I think). I would often postpone developing negatives because developing sheet film negatives was a huge pain in the rear. I was very good at developing sheet film in mass quantities (think twenty sheets of 4x5 sheet film per batch) because I just hated developing film. By postponing the inevitable development I had more time to fantasize about how great my photographs would really be. Then when I had to confront the reality of my negatives and prints I was depressed. This type of behavior effectively throttled my photographic output. Dreading the arduous task of film developing kept me from completing work.

We know that the only way to produce more is to do more, so when I converted (evolved?) to digital photography from large format film photography I saw a huge increase in the amount of photography I was completing. I think this is because I no longer have to wait to see results. There are no more surprises. I have done a lot more photography in the past four or five years than I have in the previous thirty five. I also think I have done much better photography in the past five years than in the previous thirty five.

I am not sure if the improvement in photographic quality and quantity can be attributed to the digital domain, the increased number of photographs I have made or the experience I have accumulated in forty years of photography. At this point I don’t think it is possible to experimentally determine which of the three reasons is responsible for improvement, but at least I can have some fun with thought experiments on the topic.

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It's a new month so that means there is a new issue of The Lipka Journal over at my website. Click on the link at the top of the page and download the free PDF Journal for this month.

837 Lessons Learned from Photo Safari XXXVI

After Photo Safari XXXVI there are lessons to be learned. Here are the things I learned this year.

It’s not a road, but people drive there. If there’s a gap in the fence and we see tire tracks, we’re taking it. Getting inside the fence to see what’s beyond the edge of the road can lead to something great. Remember, when the pavement ends the photography begins.

To separate out what I want it to be from what it looks like takes a lot of skill. One day at the Grand Canyon it was very hazy. We figured out how to use the dehaze tool and life got better. The final images (after a bunch of manipulation in LightRoom) looked far different (and much better) that what was captured by our cameras.

Photography changes every time you go out the door. It’s about figuring out which gear and which skills you need to bring to bear so when you go out the door you can figure out how best to capture the images. It is never the same set of circumstances. Ever. What worked yesterday may not work today. Very few people ever consider the improvisational nature of  photography.

Planning, execution, and attention to detail are not just for newbies. Paying attention eliminates stupid errors that can limit the end use of the photograph. Especially things like making sure your lenses don’t have thumbprints on them and your camera' settings are what you want them to be for the day's photographic assignment.

Cui Bono - Not like a murder investigation by Harry Bosch, but the thought relates to the sale of artwork. Successfully selling artwork depends on fulfilling the need of the ultimate purchaser as well as the gallery owner or other third party that would benefit from the sale of artwork. It is the third party that is the real key to making photographs well known. If the third party doesn’t want to sell your work, it probably won’t get sold.

Tourist destinations do not mean tourist photographs. We may have to stand at the same spot behind the same fence but that does not mean we need to see the same way. We photograph the same things. The differentiation between artist and tourist is how we interpret the scene in front of us and what deeper meaning we can bring to the image through the addition of ideas and text.

If your camera doesn’t have a GPS function, make sure you photograph a sign or something at the location so you know where you made that photograph. Yes, I know there are apps that will coordinate your smartphone GPS with an image file, but what’s the fun in that? You are making art. Who else will have a project of all the signs of the places you have been? If you remember to do it when you are “on location,” you have a “free” project!

And remember, no matter how carefully you pack, about one third of the clothes you bring will not be a good match for the weather. You will leave at home something that is on your list and very necessary. You will find another use for something you brought that will "save the day." Life is like that.

On the last Photo Safari I brought my full size carbon fiber tripod. I think I might have used it one time. To save room on this Safari, I decided to bring a much smaller carbon fiber "travel" tripod. I didn’t use it one time. Next Safari, I don’t think I will bring a tripod. For a guy that spent thirty plus years under the dark cloth of a view camera, letting go of a tripod is truly a monumental change in making photographs. Thanks to the folks at Panasonic that figured out image stabilization for cameras and lenses.

It should be known that trailer hitches stick out much farther than you think they should. My shins reminded me to add this to the list of lessons learned on the latest Photo Safari. 

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It's a new month so that means there is a new issue of The Lipka Journal over at my website. Click on the link at the top of the page and download the free PDF Journal for this month.