Postcards from the Creative Journey

Digital vs Analog

Jones House, Academy Street, Cary, NC

As part of the “Light on China” exhibition, I was on a panel discussion with some accomplished photographers. Could we not talk about digital versus film photography? When asked, Bill McAllister said that he took better photographs with film than digital cameras. The thought process was he could see the immediate results with a digital camera and as soon as he got a “good” photograph, he stopped because he made a “good” photograph. With a film camera, he had no idea if he had made a “good” photograph, so he kept on photographing. He felt the upside for great photographs was higher for film precisely because he did not know what he made at the time the photographs were made.

I experienced this for years as a film photographer. I have also experienced the opposite of this when a film negative did not even come close to my memory of the situation or my expectation for the negative. I always considered this negative outcome solely a defect with the film. Or maybe the developer. Or maybe the fixer. Or maybe anything but me.

But I digress. We don’t know if we have hit the right spot with a photograph until we go past the good photograph. When we go past the good photograph we find out if we can make it better, or if we have ruined the photograph. If we ruin the photograph, then we know the last photograph we made is as good as it can get. If we make it better we know it wasn’t the best. Somewhere among these blogs I must have said we back into great photographs by knowing we’ve gone too far. That’s still true, whether you're holding a film or digital camera.

Call Your Shot

Pond in Dry Wash, Utah

from "Luck of the Draw"

Being able to explain your photographs is a good thing. Having your photographs agreeing with what your explanation for them is a really good thing. Some people can make a nice photograph and cannot verbalize its significance. Some people can eloquently rhapsodize about their images. After you see such an image, you wonder just what in the world would cause a photographer to write so much about so little.

There should be a general agreement in the level of your photographic effort and the writing you do about your photographs. This is a much more difficult thing to do than it appears. I make this observation because photographers are visual and not verbal communicators. Photographers that can succinctly explain their art are very few and far between.

Photo Safari Planning (Testing...Testing...)

For the past six or seven years, I’ve taken a laptop along to back-up files and write blog posts. This year, I’m going to try an iPad mini, photoshop touch and blogsy. While I won’t have the ability to "back-up" files daily, I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Should I fill up my memory cards, I think buying memory cards along the way would be much easier than trying to purchase some 8" x 10" Double X film from a small town drugstore.

Digital photographers feel downloading files in the field is really important. That seems to me to be a very modern notion. (I am of the vintage where downloading was taking film out of the holders and putting it back in the properly marked "exposed film" box.) For decades I photographed with film and the only backing up I did was to occasionally make an extra exposure on the off chance I needed to go with a plus or minus development. I shall return to the classical method of backing up files for this year’s safari – keeping them in a light tight SD card carrier.

This is a photo blog extra because I am practicing creating a blog entry with blogsy. Next step will be to try a blog post with a photograph. I will really need to learn how to do that because why have a photo blog without some photographs?

Stay tuned for pending photographic excitement!

Posted with Blogsy

The Habitual Photographer

Rocks at Low Tide, Maui, Hawai'i

I always have been a photographer. That’s not like I was born a photographer, it’s just that I can’t think about the time I wasn’t involved in photography. It’s a forty plus year habit I acquired and (happily) I have been unable to break it. It has caused both joy and heartache in my life and because the former has outweighed the latter, I have continued this dalliance with the love child of science and art. It’s part of my life that I can’t see myself not doing.

If you are a regular reader of my posts, I’ll wager you feel the same way about photography.  If you are a regular, long-time and attentive reader of my blog, you might wonder, “Are Joe and Brooks going on their annual photo safari?” Why yes, dear reader we are continuing this habit for, well, much longer than I really want to recall. Okay, I recall. We are soon to be embarking on PhotoSafari XXVII. Almost daily blogs (depending on internet accessibility) will definitely follow.

Where To Stand?

Rocks at Low Tide, Maui, Hawai'i

Where to stand is one of my two rules about photography. (When to press the shutter button is my other rule.) If you know where to stand and when to press the shutter, you have increased the chances of making a nice photograph. I thought about this the other day because one of my co-workers is an aspiring wedding photographer. Her viewpoint will be unique because she is not even five feet tall.

Cameras must be moved left or right, forward or back and lastly, (and maybe most importantly), up or down. Most photographers ignore the up and down component of camera placement and the eye-level camera position is responsible for 99.99% of all boring photographs ever made.

I learned about camera height a long time ago photographing my children’s swim meets. I quickly figured out unless I got the camera down to the children’s eye level the photographs looked terrible. I spent a lot of time over several summers on my knees and sitting on the ground to make sure my photographs were from the children’s point of view. When I was photographing the Alkabo School as part of “A Sense of the Seasons,” my first photographs taken at adult height weren’t very good. Once I remembered to lower the camera to a child’s height, the compositions looked “right”.

Where to stand also includes height above the ground, a very important component of camera placement.