Postcards from the Creative Journey

428 - It’s All About the Edges

1935 Bugatti Type 57S Aerolithe

I think I blogged about photographs of others’ work a few years back. The basic thought was making photographs of something that other people created meant that you were just the last person in the chain of creativity and craftsmanship. It was the photographer’s responsibility not to mess up all the work done before him. My current project with the Art Deco Automobiles is just that. I didn’t design the automobiles, I didn’t build the automobiles and finally, I didn’t arrange for the exhibition of the automobiles. I am just an admirer of these incredibly beautiful (and quite valuable) machines.

As an engineer, I am predisposed to admire technology and as a photographer, the beauty of their form. To honor all the hard work of the designers, engineers and craftsmen, my primary aesthetic is figuring out where to put the Edges of the Photograph to show the innate beauty of these machines. In polite terms, the goal is to showcase the talent and work of those that came before me. In less polite terms, I'm trying not to screw up the great work done before I got there.

I have no real deep philosophical or psychological reason to make these photographs. They are beautiful machines and I love the way they look when I photograph them.

Here is a link to the new folio on my website. Stop by and ogle some beautiful machinery.

427 – Finally Got Around to It

Thrift Store, Idaho City, Idaho

Almost (exactly) a year ago I posted about a photograph that I would “maybe someday” try to fix with photoshop. (You may read about it here. ) Well, I finally got around to that a few weeks ago and as you can see, it turned out pretty well. The offending branches on the left of the photograph were removed with a combination of photoshop’s content aware fill feature (a function I consider magical) and a good old fashioned cloning stamp. It doesn’t look too bad and it didn’t take a whole lot of time. Sadly, the kerosene lantern in the uppermost left pane disappeared, a casualty of the technological fix.

So the question is how much time should you spend hunting for old photographs to “fix” with photoshop? With the limited amount of time any of us have to pursue photography, is it a good use of time to delve back into the archives to see what can benefit from being “photoshopped?” Should marginal photographs be rescued or should good photographs be improved to better or maybe even great photographs. Or would it be a much better use of one’s time and resources to move forward rather than visiting work from the past?

426 - Storage

Mono Lake, Afternoon

Storage of finished art work for a photographer is pretty convenient. Hard drives don’t take up much space. Cloud storage is even more efficient. But, if you are a photographer that makes prints, you probably have a whole host of archival print storage boxes stacked up in some corner of your house. If you’ve ever exhibited in a gallery, I’ll wager you have stacks of empty frames in at least one room of your house.

Compare this to a sculptor who probably needs (a) a big barn out back, (b) a rented warehouse, or (c) a network of understanding friends and relatives who have artwork “on loan” or some combination of all three. I’m having a slight twinge of recognition for the sculptor’s problem as it relates to one of my photographs.

Last fall I created a panoramic photograph of Mono Lake (above). In the blogosphere it’s 960 pixels wide. In real life the framed image is almost 56 inches wide and almost 30 inches tall. We have no real place in the house where a picture this big can be stored. It doesn’t even look good over the couch. (An artiste’s work doesn’t belong over the couch and I’m an artiste, you know.)

My magnum opus leans against the living room wall, mocking me every time I walk by. It’s the genie I can’t put back in the bottle.

And I still love it.

425 Looking Backward For a Change

Old School, Eastern Montana 2003*

What will you find when you go back to look at photographs you made decades ago? When Edward Weston looked at some of his old photographs, he remembered how young he was at the time and was almost kind of embarrassed to look at the images. I know my standards for what constitutes a “good” image have risen considerably since I began making photographs. The technical standards for excellence have increased with the ability of digital cameras to focus and expose perfectly every time. More importantly, my aesthetic standards have risen, too. The important question is, “How many of your old photographs can live up to your current standards?”

If the answer is “not many,” then I think that’s a good thing. Continued improvement is what you want to have not only for your photography, but for your life. With the advanced tools available in software, you should be able to “fix” just about any technical problem in a film negative. Of course, the only thing you really “can’t fix in post” is content. And isn’t content the thing that separates the good from the great photographers?

* A digital file. The original is all of 666kB. I wonder if there is something significant about the file size.

424 – A Thank You Post

The Hispano Suiza H6B Xenia

From the Rolling Sculpture Exhibit

Thanks for stopping by to read the text and look at this week’s photograph. The big thing this week is to thank you for your readership. The First Post on this blog was published on January 3, 2010 which makes this blog seven years old. I started blogging to share some thoughts and photographs without thinking about what would happen next. It was the functional equivalent of starting out on a journey with neither route nor destination in mind. As the wise men say, it is the journey, not the destination that matters. My creative journey is still in progress and I will continue sending out these weekly postcards from my creative journey with the hope they will help you with your creative efforts.

I would like to wish you and yours a wonderful new year filled with adventures, photographs and many successful (completed) projects.

Thanks again for stopping by and visiting over these last seven years. I hope my thoughts and photographs will continue to amuse you and give you thoughts to help you on your creative journey. Hope to see you further down the path of your creative journey.