Postcards from the Creative Journey

“Do overs”

From Elements of Change

(This one (and 59 others) require a "Do over")

I goofed up big time last year. I printed four folios, (about sixty prints) and discovered a flaw that looked like banding or misaligned print heads. This defect was visible only with a very critical (i.e., your nose is about two inches from the print, with glasses perched atop your head) inspection. I took my printer to the local Epson fix it shop where they proclaimed my printer to be in tip top mechanical shape. Eventually, I discovered inDesign works differently when fitting photographs to the frame and fitting the frame to the photographs. When fitting work to the frame, the effective pixels per inch in the horizontal and vertical direction can be different. The print drivers barf on this inconsistency and produce an artifact that looks like misaligned printer heads.

With the root cause discovered and remedied, the next step was to reprint the defective images. It was “obvious” that the fix was “minor” and only a few tweaks here and there would save the day. (You know what is coming next.) That didn’t work. The minor tweaks and fixes made the prints looked significantly worse than when they just had the banding.

Oh, well.

Finally, we get to the title of this post. I get a “do over” on these four folios. I would almost rather take a whuppin’ than have to go back and re-do these four projects. However, I have invented an excuse to make this almost palatable. I am (allegedly) much smarter now. I have made several changes to my work process and now make much more efficient use of Lightroom, inDesign and Acrobat. It will be interesting to see how much less time it will take rework those folios.

 

Is Forgiveness Actually Better than Permission?

Shoshone Building, Wallace, Idaho

(Yes, we got permission.)

Brooks Jensen tells me he sees lots of photographs of old, empty buildings when reviewing submissions to LensWork. I would imagine the reason old empty buildings are popular is because photographers don’t have to ask permission to photograph these places. Having photographed an old building or two in my time, I know that asking permission to enter an old building is a real pain. I also know that asking permission to photograph an old building may open many more doors (literally). The more doors you get opened for you, the better your chances are to make exclusive photographs. Making a photograph in places no one else has access to is a big deal. If you can make great pictures in that same place it’s a double bonus.

When you do have to ask permission, there are a few things that you have to have thought out. Here are some things that helped me:

• “The elevator speech.” A thirty second spiel on who you are, what you do and how you can help the person you are talking to.
• Quid pro quo. Remember, it’s not about you making photographs. It’s about helping the other person with your photographs.
• Business Card. Yeah, silly, but having something with your name on it shows a willingness to be exposed to the person who controls the access. Of course, your website and email address are on the card, aren’t they? You are not serious if you don’t have a website.

Access is the foundation of location photography. If you have access to the people, places or things you have the ability to make photographs that no one else can make. That gives you an advantage that is tough to beat. The only thing better than access, is “guilt free access” where you don’t have to worry about someone coming along and throwing you out of your great location.

Blog Convergence

St. Ignatius  in the Cataldo Mission, Idaho

A week or so ago, Brooks Jensen sent me a pdf file of a project with photographs made during our trip to the Long Beach Peninsula early in September. He was very excited as he was photographing Teal Slough and proclaimed the photographs as the best ever and predicted a fabulous project resulting from these photographs. (See the blog, lesson learned #8.)

He did the project and it was as fabulous as he predicted. Now here’s the interesting part. He didn’t have much fun completing the project. It was basically just a bunch of grunt work to get it done. He was kind of bummed out about that, but I know that’s what happens. I blogged about that a few months back.

There comes a point in every project where you reach maximum satisfaction, have that “Aha!” moment, or know what you have is a winner. From that point on, the project is nothing but working the details to get the job finished to the level of perfection you know it deserves. Working out the details is just that – work. And work is not fun. Sometimes that moment of insight comes early in the project and it’s a long, tough slog to the finish. Other times it comes at the end and the travail is minimized.

It always happens and I am happy that other folks have the same experience I do when completing a project.

It’s About Communication

Shoshone Building, Wallace, Idaho

I attended the opening of the Alan Cohen Exhibition at the Gregg Gallery at North Carolina State University a few weeks ago. I understood the photographs at that exhibition and found it to be a very enjoyable event. The folks at the Gregg, bless their hearts, served both egg salad and Pimento spread finger sandwiches. They also served a decorated cake and lemonade worthy of the best Church picnic ever.

Here’s a link to Alan’s web site so you may look at the photographs.

After viewing the exhibition, I was conversing with another fellow photographer who fretted that his photographs were not being exhibited because they were not in vogue. I think it was the combination of Allen’s photographs and the pimento spread that piqued my curiosity on this topic.

Thinking this over for a couple of days, the issue for me is fundamental to most any type of communication. The goal is to communicate so the audience understands your message.

My friend’s photographs deal with a mature topic. It’s a topic those of us of a certain age find relevant to society as a whole. It’s something that’s important to us as mature adults. A concept and message was communicated and understood by me. Mission completed.

But the work has not garnered the anticipated reaction in the gallery world. I’m at a loss to explain the lack of a positive reaction to such good work. I will have to continue to ponder this mystery.

Keeping Everything Up to Date

Afternoon, Long Beach, Washington

I wanted to use one of the new files from my latest photo safari to illustrate my blog topic for September 25^th. I opened up Lightroom (3.4.1) and selected three bracketed images (something I learned from the camera manual) and tried to merge them via HDR. Lightroom opened Photoshop and it promptly sent me an error message. After some internet research I discovered my new camera (a Panasonic GH2 Lumix) requires Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) V6.3. That version of ACR is not compatible with Photoshop CS4.

So much for progress. My hardware and software belong to different generations and cannot communicate at all. (My father had the same problem with me.) The alternatives are simple. I can shell out hundreds of dollars to upgrade from CS4 to CS5 or devise a work around. For the time being, thrift and cleverness hold sway.

It’s not quite possible to buy just a camera anymore. Your camera is one component of a complex (and dynamic) system of hardware, firmware, software plug ins and add ons that must be perfectly aligned to function smoothly. This is not something photographers worried about for decades. We bought a camera, we pushed the button and Kodak did the rest.

It’s now the most exciting time ever to be a photographer. We have access to every photographic process ever created and we can combine them with the ongoing digital revolution to make a photograph any way we choose. The down side of that is we have so many more (and often expensive) components to maintain. I used to think that maintaining a large format photography kit was an expensive undertaking. Then I converted to digital photography.