Postcards from the Creative Journey

Well, This Is Going to Be a Big One

From "By The River"

The good folks over at the Green Hill Center for NC Arts are hosting an exhibit entitled, “Light on China” in June, 2014. I was invited to be one of the four photographers to participate in this endeavor. (The other three photographers are Bill McAllister, David M. Spears and Barbara Tyroler.) The plan for the exhibit is to show about thirty photographs from each photographer.

I will be showing photographs from the Hong Kong Bird and Flower Markets, “Sandscapes” from Xiang Sha Wan and scenes from the Lvzu temple. The Hong Kong photographs are on my website and photographs from my trip to Mongolia start here.

It’s been a year or two since I mounted a show this diverse (in both subject and materials) so I will have lots of decisions and issues to deal with in the next twelve months. A creative journey that long will probably warrant more than few postcards.

I am excited about the possibilities of this show.

More Learning From Snapshots

From atop the Biltmore House

After wondering why I didn’t buy one of those cords for my eyeglasses while I was on vacation, I related that to a recent round of golf. My level of play on the links is directly attributable to how quickly and accurately I can find and fix my mistakes. I find that I can almost always accurately figure out what was wrong with my golf swing the day following the round. That’s not a real big help. As I play more rounds of golf each season I can reduce the time from mistake to correction from the next day to before the next shot. Being able to correct mistakes on the fly is the key to not having the same mistake hurt you over and over again.

So it is with the photography. When you can figure out what you are doing wrong quickly and make sure you eliminate, or keep from repeating that same mistake your photography will get much better. That’s why I think that digital photography is a grand improvement over the analog type I practiced for decades. The results are immediately visible and corrections can be made immediately. Some that decry “chimping” as the mark of a rank amateur, but I am happy for instantaneous feedback and use it as much as I can.

(I still haven’t purchased extra cords for my eyeglasses.)

Learning From Snapshots

The Biltmore House

I went on a trip to visit the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. Since the primary purpose of the trip was vacation, I took the noisy cricket (Lumix LX-3) as the happy snap camera for the event. Turned out I had more time on my hands and more opportunities to photograph the outside of the great house and grounds than I thought. That’s when I learned that I needed to have something more than a battery charger in my teeny tiny hang on my belt camera bag. The most annoying accessory missing from the trip was the cord that I use to hang my eyeglasses around my neck when I need to focus on the back of the camera. (For you young ‘uns out there, some old folks have trouble with their vision at very close distances. They will take their glasses off, push them back on their foreheads or hang their glasses from a cord around their neck. I’m sure you’ve seen your grandparents do this.) I made a note to myself to purchase another pair of them for the small camera bag.

Here’s the second annoying thing. While I’m writing this, I just wondered why I didn’t buy one of those cords while I was on vacation.

Stalking Trophy Photographs

Check Out

The Carpenter Folio

What is a trophy photograph? It’s your version of a photograph made from iconic viewpoint. Usually this is the province of large format photographers that dutifully line up to photograph at Point Lobos, or nature photographers standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. I cannot take credit for coming up with that great appellation, but I think it does clearly define the early levels in photographic evolution – making a photograph from the same vantage point one that is admired by many photographers. It’s one that you will print (or have printed) big, frame and hang proudly on the wall.

There’s nothing wrong with cloning the masters. The activity has its purpose; to provide practice with the technical aspects of photography, to “knock the rust off” your photographic wheels when you’re in a creative slump, or to provide the visual proof that you had great views when you were out photographing. I like to think of it as “warm up” photographs you make until you’re ready to “get serious” about photography.

I have a bunch of large format clone classics at home in a “memory box.” That’s where they belong. As much fun as they are to make, they are not the photographs that will make you a better photographer or a better person.

 

Same Place, Different Vision

Greenhead Slough

(The way I saw it.)

The Way Brooks saw it

Part Two of this post from a few weeks ago. (Sorry to make you work for this post.)

Even if you put two photographers in the same place, it doesn’t mean they will make the same photographs. While I hate to use myself as an example, I will do so because,…well, …because, …well because it’s my blog and I can write what I want. Harrumph.

Brooks Jensen (Editor of LensWork) and I have photographed together for about thirty years. We’ve been up and down the West Coast of both the United States and Canada and to such remote locations as Mongolia and North Dakota. We have photographed together in the very same spots. We are convinced each other has completely missed the artistic merit of the location we are photographing. The only thing we have both succeeded in is being wrong about that. Our photographs from the same place are not remotely similar.

The sum and substance of it is we photograph the same thing differently. Not just a little bit differently, but a whole bunch differently. Our approaches to the subject, composition of the image, the post capture processing (or for you traditional types, darkroom techniques and practices) are very different. I think the basis is that we just don’t see the same photograph when we look at the same thing. That’s how I feel about it and I bet Brooks will disagree with that, too.