Postcards from the Creative Journey

490 A Confluence of Blogging Topics

The Administration Building (Detail)

Notre Dame, Indiana

Year Seven of Postcards from the Creative Journey starts in a few days. Thank you so much for stopping by and reading these little comments and viewing a photographs. I may not know you by name, or how often you stop by, but you are out there and I thank you very much for your support. When I started this project seven years ago I had no idea how it would play out. Your readership confirms this was a good idea.

I would much rather write and talk about photography than myself, but if you can forgive me for a self-centered post for one week, we can get back to the good stuff next week.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve blogged about looking backward, new projects, re-doing projects, hidden projects and the like. It’s time to actually do what I’ve been blogging about for the last few months.

It’s a fact the world changes constantly (and now, quicker than before) and so must I. My web stats show that more than half of the visitors to my web site come from mobile platforms so I think my art should now be created to be best enjoyed from a mobile platform. This blog became mobile friendly about a year ago and I have decided to make my web site more mobile friendly too. While thinking about that, it dawned on me that I should also make my web content (folios) mobile friendly, too.

In the New Year, (oh boy, a New Year's resolution!) I will create a new web design, with newly formatted iPad friendly folios to peruse and a few more surprises that are in development.

Thank you again for stopping by. I wish you and yours nothing but the best for New Year.

489 What Story Are You Telling?

Well, it is Christmas Eve

Basilica of the Sacred Heart

Your audience looks at a photograph. They are more concerned with what they see (the actual photograph) rather than the journey (the processing) it took to get there. As a photographer, you are very much aware of the effort you put into making a photograph and you might wish to tell the world all about your version of the journey. Resist the temptation to tell the audience your story.

It is more important to tell your audience a story about the subject of the photograph, not about how the digital file was processed. The number of people that can be entertained with a story about what they see is far, far greater than the number of people that could possibly be entertained by stories about you setting levels, curves, sliders, layers, masks and sharpening.

488 Well, If It Looks Photoshopped…

North Bay, Fog and Clouds

We’ve all seen those photographs. Over sharpened, over saturated and over just about everythinged; photographs that actually hurt your eyes when you look at them. Sometimes people get carried away and just pummel their pixels far more than necessary. We cringe and move along. A short public service announcement: If your photograph looks like you’ve put a huge amount of effort into it, you probably have put too much into it.

I will not wax poetic about the good old days (the "good old days" never were. Has anything in photographic technology become worse?) because the consequences of a failed negative were pretty harsh; we threw the offending negative in the trash and then picked up our camera with a firm resolve not to make the same mistake again. If we wanted to fix a bad negative, we could have intensified, reduced, or if the negative was big enough and the changes small enough we could have used retouching pencils. If the negative was worthy of printing we could have bleached or intensified a print. Exacto knives could be used to remove dark spots by scraping away the emulsion. And then there was spot tone to remove the white spots on your prints. I was amazed to find that spot tone is still available. Crude, of course, but it was all we had. Until now.

With all the digital tools available to photographers today, there is the temptation to go too far to salvage an image that should not see the light of day. When it comes to perfecting your images, less is better.

487 Formal Portraits

Resting, Sun Yat Sen Garden

Making portraits with a large format camera is much different than making portraits with a smartphone. The process of setting up a large camera and the attendant tasks required to make a photograph convey to the subject the importance of the action you are undertaking. The effort demonstrates to the subject they are an important part of a joint effort between the subject and the photographer.

An informal grab shot portrait made with your smartphone seems to place the emphasis on the convenience of the photographer rather than the subject of the portrait.

486 A Beautiful Moment

A Moment in Seattle's Japanese Garden

There is something magic about beauty that calms the mind and soul. One would think that we should have no shortage of beauty in art these days. If one is to believe the prophets of doom and apocalypse (also known as the nightly newscast), society teeters upon the brink of total collapse. As a respite from this countdown to the apocalypse shouldn’t we be creating beautiful things as an antidote to the dreadful things that enter into our homes via television?

I continue to think the beauty that surrounds us is being shortchanged because we are so fixated on seeing what is wrong, we don’t give beauty the time it deserves.

I don’t think there can be a shortage of images of beauty that calm us, make us stop and appreciate the world around us. Find something beautiful and create some art from that beautiful moment.