Postcards from the Creative Journey

All My Projects Are Long Term Projects

Xiang Sha Wan, Inner Mongolia, PRC

I am deeply into the production of my project for my upcoming Group Show, Light on China for the Green Hill Arts Center. The photographs were made over three years ago. Both of the projects for this show will have between ten and fifteen photographs from Mongolia. There was not much time taken in the pure photographic work involved in creating the images, but there has been a great deal of time in getting to the final realization of the project. There is no doubt in my mind that the reason for (what some may think) is a long time between photography and completion is due to the way I work. I rarely make a single photograph, but choose to work in terms of multiple image projects. There is a lot more work to create a project because it takes time to develop the thoughts behind the project and writing about photography is a very time consuming and difficult task.

I have already completed one small project (Desert Snow) from this “once in a lifetime” trip For the rest of the Mongolia photographs it will be at least three and a half years between the time I made the photographs and the time they are fully realized into a completed project.

Eventually You Are Going To Own Something

Cottage Porch, Academy Street, Cary, North Carolina

(This is a subject that I "own")

If you photograph for a long enough time you will discover subject matter that is just yours alone. You will wind up doing it so much better than everyone else that everyone will know you by the photographs of this single subject. You will be so good in this one area no other photographer will attempt to tread on your photographic turf. In practical terms, how many people have photographed Peppers since Edward Weston? Many people have photographed Yosemite, but few have survived a comparison to Ansel Adams. Want to do cowboy portraits? You’ll have to do them better than Jay Dusard. These photographers owned their respective subjects. They earned the ownership through hard work and dedication to the subject matter.

Eventually you will find a photographic subject that loves you as much as you love it. Something that will be very easy for you to photograph very well once you figure it out. And there’s the rub. Figuring it out takes hard work and time to discover what you photograph best. Very rarely are wonderful things just dropped in your lap. Good photography takes a lot of hard work, trial and error and maybe a little bit of suffering for art to achieve the goal.

Dimensionless Photography

Sand and Snow, Xiang Sha Wan, Inner Mongolia, PRC

In my world of science and engineering there are values called dimensionless numbers. These numbers are used to denominate a physical phenomenon. The most widely known dimensionless number is the Mach number, a comparison to the speed of sound. I thought about this a few nights ago when I viewed some “dimensionless photographs.” These photographs were abstract landscapes that provided no clue to the viewer as to the scale of the subject.

What these dimensionless photographs did to me was to remove the distraction of scale and allow me to focus more closely on the composition, tone and texture of each image. They transcended the pretty picture landscape genre to become something far more than the subject originally photographed.

Playing the Photo Lotto

Rock and Tree, Capitol Gorge, Utah

From zero to Hero (The Juror's Award)

I hit the photo lotto big time last week. Photo lotto? Not the Powerball or Mega Millions, but one of the local juried shows with ca$h awards. Usually these are promoted by local arts organizations as fund raisers (and they do a wonderful job at that). If I like the organization, I will support them by entering some photographs and paying the entry fee. One of my photos earned a juror’s award that will keep me in inks and paper for quite a while. (Used to be film, paper and chemicals, but the photo world has changed, hasn’t it?) My other entry sold the day of the opening. Hooray. It’s wonderful to receive monetary award in one’s own lifetime.

I’m not quitting my day job.

The amusing part of the entire process was my image selection for this event. I prepared three images for a similar event last fall. Two of the images were rejected by the juror and one was accepted. (Art is all about rejection and failure, right?) At the end of the fall event, all three images remained leaning against the living room wall until they were called upon to be judged in the latest exhibit. One of the rejected images earned a Juror’s Award and the previously accepted image was sold at the opening.

Rock and Tree, Capitol Gorge, Utah

This one was sold.

That’s why I call this type of exhibition the “photo lotto.” You never know how a juror will respond to your photographs. At the very worst you have made a contribution to a local arts organization, maybe your work gets hung on the wall, maybe you take home a prize.

You pays your money, you takes your chances.

 

Am I Missing Something?

Basement, Cary Elementary School

Is not paying attention to contemporary photography a good or bad thing? There’s not much out there in the world that excites me about contemporary photography. There is some good stuff out there, but I can’t get really excited about what’s out there in galleries. Unless, of course, it’s one of those West Coast Galleries that is willing to sell you a classic photograph from some dead guy for twenty five thousand dollars. Then, I just get excited because I know that I can’t afford to buy one of those images.

Contemporary photography that I have seen seems to be deeply invested in asking questions and trying to answer the questions with imagery. This is a valid pursuit of course, but it’s just that I am not really interested in either the questions being asked or the answers being offered. It seems to me the questions being asked are those I have already answered, so I am not terribly excited about the end result.