Postcards from the Creative Journey

1219 Excavating the Photographic Archives

One of the bad things about doing photography for so many years is not being able to put one’s hands on the appropriate source file immediately. There are a number of ways to store and identify source files. I have used several and I must tell you every single one of them is wrong for what I am trying to do today. It goes without saying all of the methodologies I have employed are incompatible.

I am in the early stages of finding usable images for a mega-project, and I am on the look-out for usable images. When adding a blog post to the November issue of The Lipka Journal, I came across an image that would be absolutely perfect for the mega project. By now you will certainly be able to predict that I cannot find the source file of the image. I have a low-resolution jpeg image, but nothing that can be printed. It’s a film negative for sure, so I only have about 3,000 negatives to search through.

PS I finally found it. It’s the image in today’s blog. Not even close to where I thought it would be. But I have it and that’s what’s important. The project continues.

1218 How Long to Wait for the Decisive Moment? First Published 7/30/2017

How Long to Wait for the Decisive Moment? Ten minutes, tops.

For those of you that want a crisp, clear guideline on how long you should wait to make a photograph, there’s your answer.

For the rest of us, the correct answer is, “It depends.” Are you on vacation with a limited number of days you can devote to photography or are you on a long term assignment from a big budget client who expects “the shot” and is willing to both wait and pay for you to bring it back then you can afford to wait it out. If you’re fortunate enough to have a client with deep pockets and lots of time, you can sit down, put up your feet and wait for that cloud to move into the exact spot you need.

When on vacation, I go by the ten-minute rule because that’s enough time to figure out if something is going to happen in your scene, or I have to come back later for a better picture. I might make a record shot to remind of the place, or to help me refine the composition for later. Then again, I just might make the photograph and move that cloud into the proper position with a little nudge in photoshop. (I added this thought after the final draft. Isn’t it amazing how we sometimes don’t give up on four decades of ingrained analog photographic behavior?)

The vacationer also has a value judgement to make. Waiting on one photograph means you are depriving yourself of the opportunity to find another subject to photograph. So, it is a gamble we willingly take when we choose to wait or move on to the next opportunity. As it is with gambling, you make a choice and take a chance.

1217 You Don’t Have to Travel

Do you have to go to exotic locations to make photographs of ordinary things? No, you don’t have to travel to make photographs. A door in France is the same as a door in your hometown. If your world of photography centers on the detailed, abstract or other small portions of the world, you are very lucky. You can practice your photography all the time because you don’t have to wait for that few weeks a year when you can afford the time and money to head to an exotic landscape destination. We tend to think that the only “great” photography locations are far away. There’s usually something worth photographing close to you and available every day. Go out and find it. Photograph it. Turn it into personal art.

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And this photograph was made in the kitchen of the house we were living in. Didn't even have to go outside. 

1216 I Don’t Know Why I Made That Photograph, First Published 9/10/2017

These brooms were leaning against the wall at the Star Works, an artist incubator located near Seagrove, North Carolina. I was photographing a pair of artists creating beautiful two toned whiskey glasses. During a break in the process, I noticed these brooms, walked over and made the image before returning to photograph glass making. It’s there all by its lonesome in my LightRoom loupe view. Many photographs of a single topic on either side, it is the square peg surrounded by round holes.

This image doesn’t belong to any project, genre or much of anything else that I have done. Something about this place told my subconscious make a photograph. I did that. Eventually I will figure out how to use this image.

One of the advantages of digital photography is the ability to “take a flyer” with a photographic situation. In the days of view cameras there was a huge investment in time both (in the field and in the darkroom) and in money to make a photograph. With digital photography, the time invested is small and almost no cost to record a scene. In the past I would have ignored the muse, but now I listen to her every word.

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Well, I did figure out something about this image. About two years later, it showed up in my blog again about two years later in what later became a "Mostly True Story." Here's the text that accompanied the image in that project:

It was my first day on my first job. Mister Waddell explained my new responsibilities and what I was supposed to do. He said the first thing I had to learn about were brooms. There they were; straight straw brooms, angle brooms and push brooms. Then there is the hand brush and the dust pan.

He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and told me I was going to really clean up on my new job. He laughed and walked away. 

My career had just begun.

I guess the answer is to make the image whenever the mood strikes you. You figure out what to do with it later. 

1215 My Latest “New Work” Project

I continue to work on my latest project of “New Work,” that is the More Memories Than Dreams (aka MMTD) Project. These image suites show up in “The Lipka Journal” periodically. It’s New Work to those of you that haven’t seen these images, but to me it’s “Old Work” because the images were made way back in the past.  I must admit I have been wrong about wanting to always work on something new. That is, a recent image capture. I have not really considered that what you (my audience) haven’t seen before is New Work whereas to me, the images are ancient.

This is so obvious it’s almost embarrassing.

This has also changed my mind a bit on this topic, too. I thought of MMTD as kind of a retrospective project and to allow it to take a back seat behind current images. This recent thought has changed my attitude to consider that no matter how chronologically old the images are, if they are being presented for the first time, they are “New Work” to my audience.

New is something you haven’t yet turned into art. What difference does it make if the “new” is something you haven’t looked at in years, or something you just captured last week?

1214 I Can’t Wait to See What I’m Going To Do Next, First Published 9/17/2017

I am a forward-looking person. I am more interested in the future and what is going to happen next than looking backwards at what I have done. I’m also an impatient type of person that wants to get to the future so I can enjoy it.

When I finish one of my projects, I really don’t give it too much of a thought. I want to move on to the next project on my list. (Wait, you say, “You have a list of projects you plan to create?” In response I say, “Of course I have a list of projects. I also have them prioritized.” This is the residue of an engineering education. We tend to over-organize.)

This facet of my character probably should be toned down a bit from a creative standpoint. Looking backward can be valuable because you might discover things like an unfinished project that you completely forgot about because you became infatuated with another image or two. You also might find an “undiscovered project” made up of those square peg images that might have something in common you never thought about. Mining old images might be interesting because if you are working on something subconsciously you just might need the advantage of time or distance to clearly see a new project.

1213 The Analog Revival, Part II

Part I was last week’s blog post. My first puzzlement with the analog resurrection was the propensity for non-recoverable failures due to material flaws that would kill a photograph early in the photographic process. The second problem with the analog resurrection is the issue of time.

Silver gelatin photography is time consuming. Alternative processes even more so. It would take me half an hour to get a single silver gelatin print processed (and then more time later for washing and drying). I almost never made a silver gelatin print in one try. Often it would take an entire afternoon to work through the printing process just to get one print. The one print that would not be ripped in two and deposited, still dripping into the trash would still require additional post printing manipulation with either a sharp exacto knife or brushes full of Spot Tone retouching dye.

With an inefficient process the artist must spend more time creating the artifact and less time is devoted to the creative process. The twenty silver print project is a huge commitment, whereas the twenty digital image project on the web is far less time consuming. Completing more work means more opportunities to be creative and more opportunities lead to better results. The more you do the better you become.

I don’t understand the fascination with processes that hobble your creativity.

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You want to make photography tougher? This image started out life as an 8” x 10” negative.

1212 Is There a Right Way to Learn? First Published 2/18/2018

At the two extremes, there are two particular ways to learn software. One is to learn the arcane transmutations of digital editing and then go out and look for ways to display your most recently acquired technical virtuosity. The other end of the spectrum is to learn specific skills only when they are required to realize your artistic vision. Both motivations to learn are equally valid and you probably know people that employ each method, sometimes on the same project.

Here’s the key issue that we need to identify, understand and deal with as we create art in the digital world. Purely technical achievement in this day and age is the most perishable of skills. If your artwork depends on the latest technical gimmickry, your advantage will indeed be short. Technology moves so fast that no matter which way you choose to learn, the current features will be superseded by the next generation of technology.

The only lasting advantage is what you are creating, not how you create it. Original ideas are the only long-term advantage in the world of art. That is really important. So important I will say it again. Original ideas are the only long-term advantage in the world of art.

1211 The Analog Revival, Part I

I’ve been puzzling about the (apparent) resurrection of analog photography. It seems to be a big deal at photo festivals. I’m not sure I understand this fascination with the latest legacy technology. Analog photography was how I learned a craft that was fraught with film scratches, air bubbles, light leaks and uneven development. If the negative was not usable, the print was not possible.

As I peruse the Lipka Photographic Archives I am constantly amazed by the number of negatives I never printed. Mostly, these negatives have some sort of flaw in exposure or development resulting from the approximate nature of the photo-mechanical process. These technical flaws have been eliminated by digital editing software. I can now fix the negatives’ flaws, and many more negatives have been redeemed through digital manipulation. Over exposure problems are solved with HDR processing and I wonder if those empty shadows can be populated by generative fill.

That covers only part of the story. Next week I’ll talk about the second reason I am puzzled about the analog revival.

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The original title for this blog post used the word Resurrection. I changed that to the Revival, because processes don’t die, their popularity decreases and is kept alive by a group of die-hard enthusiasts. I know about dedicated die hard enthusiasts: I hand-coated platinum printing paper for ten years.

Today’s image started life as a group of bracketed exposures on 35 mm film. After denoising, HDR and enhancement, it looks pretty good, doesn’t it?