Postcards from the Creative Journey

454 - How Long to Wait for the Decisive Moment?

A Decisive Moment at Capitol Reef

How Long to Wait for the Decisive Moment? Ten minutes, tops.

For those of you that want a crisp, clear and semi-serious guideline on how long you should wait to make a photograph, ten minutes is your answer.

For the rest of us, the correct answer is, “It depends.” Are you on vacation with a limited number of days you can devote to photography, or are you on a long term assignment from a big budget client who expects “the shot” and is willing to both wait and pay for you to bring it back then you can afford to wait it out. If you’re fortunate enough to have a client with deep pockets and lots of time, you can sit down, put up your feet and wait for that cloud to move into the exact spot you need.

When on vacation, I go by the ten minute rule because that’s enough time to figure out if something is going to happen in your scene, or I have to come back later for a better picture. I might make a record shot to remind of the place, or to help me refine the composition when I return at a more advantageous time.

The vacationer also has a value judgement to make. Waiting on one photograph means you are depriving yourself of the opportunity to find another subject to photograph. So it is a gamble we willingly take when we choose to wait or move on to the next opportunity. As it is with gambling, you make a choice and take a chance.

Please stop by The FENCE website and "like" My photographs of the Labyrinth. You do need to be facebook enabled to like my photographs. Hope that works for you.

Thanks for your support. 

453 - Photography Is Easy. Presentation Is Hard

204 Academy Street,  January 2001

Platinum Print

I’m working on a re-photographic project entitled “After the Memories.”  It is part of my Long Term Project photographing Academy Street in Cary, North Carolina. We’ve lived in Cary for thirty years. When we moved in, the population was 38,000. Today’s population is about 160,000. A lot of farmland became subdivisions to accommodate the new residents. Many places I photographed thirty years ago look much different today.

Showing this change photographically is fairly easy. Go back and find your footprints and make a photograph from that spot. That’s easy.

204 Academy Street (Now at 115 East Park Street), March, 2017

Digital Capture

The difficult part is how to frame (literally and figuratively) the changes and explaining to the audience what happened before they moved to our town. Galleries want artifacts to hang on the walls. The approach to that display is one alternative. The second approach to project feels like a magazine article, because there is text and images. With the immediacy and impatience of today’s audience, I also have video of the locations. Could this be a short movie in the making?

With the number of options available today, choosing the most effective method of display to communicate a story to the audience is not a simple task anymore. That’s the Digital Conundrum I blogged about last week.

Please stop by The FENCE website and "like" My photographs of the Labyrinth. You do need to be facebook enabled to like my photographs. Hope that works for you.

Thanks for your support. 

 

452 - The Digital Conundrum

Dwight's Reading Chair, Seagrove, North Carolina

When using sheet film to make a photograph we wondered about how much it would cost in both time and money to make an exposure. With a digital camera there is no thought at all; the answer is, “Fire Away.” Digital files have no cost. That is a huge difference between the two styles of photography and that huge difference makes a world of difference.

Film photographers could spend their entire career aspiring to create a technically beautiful print. Many photographers trod this path throughout their life, satisfied with a journey to technical competence. While technical proficiency in digital photography is less arduous to achieve, the only thing we have left to differentiate us is what and how we present our photograph.

This now places a premium on creativity, expression of thought and presentation. Photography is now much more difficult because the ideas and messages to be communicated to the audience are much more complex than presentation of a matted print in a frame. I find it interesting that something that can make photography easier now makes it more difficult to create artwork.

The varieties of presentations, the venues we can take to share our work and the speed with which we can create our art makes it much more challenging that just hanging a print on the wall. Facing and successfully dealing with these creative challenges is what makes photography fun.

I just added a new Project to my Website. The Folio "Temporary Landscapes: Mono Lake" (photographs of Mono Lake, California) is just exactly what it sounds like. Stop by and take a look at the new work. 

For the next couple of weeks I will leave a permanent request to stop by The FENCE website and "like" My photographs of the Labyrinth. You do need to be facebook enabled to like my photographs. Hope that works for you.

Thanks for your support. 

451 - The FENCE and the Labyrinth

The Labyrinth # 002

If you will be kind enough to allow me to break from my usual lofty thoughts on photography to indulge in a bit of shameless self-promotion I would be grateful.

I support several local arts organizations by submitting work to their juried exhibits. I may not always have my photographs juried into the show, but I do consider the entry fees to be a contribution to the organization. Contributions to local arts organizations are a responsibility of  a good artist/citizen.

Recently, I submitted some of my photographs to an art exhibit called “The FENCE.” Five of my photographs from the Labyrinth Folio were accepted for exhibition. My images and those of eight other photographers will be printed (very large) on vinyl and hung on a fence in downtown Durham, North Carolina. The images will be exhibited this August through November. The official opening will be on the evening of October 5, 2017 as part of the Click! Photography Festival. Of course, you are invited to the opening.  I will undoubtedly have some more information as the date approaches. I would love to meet you. 

Here’s a link to My photographs on The FENCE website.

Don’t forget to like my photographs if you are Facebook enabled! 

Here’s a link to The entire Labyrinth Project on my website.

Next week we shall return to our regularly scheduled blog.

450 - How to Finish a Long Term Project (LTP)

Cottage, Academy Street

Photograph looking for a project

Last week I introduced you to “Portals and Passages,” the LTP I have been working on for several decades without realizing it. Just before posting time I changed a word or two. I changed “finished” to “reaching a milestone.” My LTP will end when I stop photographing or the world does away with doors. The former will occur long before the latter. How do we approach the LTP that appears to be huge and endless?

I have come to think of the LTP as a serialized novel. Completing a chapter is an accomplishment that can motivate you to move on to the next chapter, or maybe a different project. Breaking the LTP down into smaller tasks helps because completion gives you a sense of achievement and accomplishment. Starting the next chapter with recent success on your mind makes starting another project much easier.

Another LTP is photographing Academy Street in Cary, North Carolina. Should you go to my web site (and I hope you do), the various chapters of the LTP of Academy Street (from newest to oldest) are:

A Winter Day and a Summer Morning

Victorian Lady

Southern Gothic

Transformation: The Cary Arts Center (A time lapse web project)

An Icon Transformed: The Metamorphosis of an Old Cary School into a New Arts Center

A Change of Pace

Academy Street

I have two more Chapters of the Academy Street LTP in various stages of completion. One has a working title of “Inside Straight” because it’s a collection of images roaming around inside my head looking for a unifying thread. The other has a working title of “After the Memories,” a re-photographic project showing changes on Academy Street over a thirty year period. This chapter is close to being finished.

In short, you probably won’t finish an LTP because the inspiration is a life-long love affair with a subject that you cannot stop photographing. If you have such a project, hooray for you, don’t stop photographing. In the meantime, think of writing chapters and sharing it with the rest of us as soon as you complete it.

Work never shared is unfinished work.