Postcards from the Creative Journey

562 There Is No Perfection In Addition; More From Harvey Penick.

Another thought from Mr. Penick that has stayed with me for decades. It’s the title; perfection is achieved by subtraction, not addition. Removing the superfluous is the route to perfection. I guess in the most elemental form, a stone sculptor personifies this. Stone is removed until the sculpture is revealed. Haiku uses only seventeen syllables. There is no room for clutter there, too. Only the essential words to convey the poet’s message.

So the same should be for a photograph. Simple is always better. Visual clutter gets in the way of the message you are sending. Strive for simplicity in composition, restraint in editing and brevity in writing.

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Another partial wreath from Duke of Gloucester Street, in Williamsburg, Virginia. In keeping with the blog theme, this is only a quarter wreath. 

561 Concentrating or Thinking?

When I go out to photograph there is no other motivation than to capture the beauty that appears before me. There is incredible joy and happiness that comes from finding something beautiful and capturing its image with my camera.

There is no deep, thoughtful preparation and mystical revelation in this act. It is purely satisfaction of the desire to be in the presence of and record my reaction to this situation.

There is no intellectual rigor in this activity. In fact, nothing could be further from that. It is strictly instinctual, moving around, setting the edges of the photograph and making sure I don’t “muck it up.”

A long time ago I read Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book of Golf Instruction. A sage bit of advice from Harvey was that while on the golf course, “concentration is good, thinking is disastrous.” The same goes for photography. Think about what you want to do before you pick up the camera, once you pick up the camera, concentrate on what is in front of you.

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Christmas decorations on Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg. No neon, lasers, on giant snow globes. Natural items that would have been available in the 1770s.

560 How Quickly We Acclimate

As part of a photo workshop I used my iPad mini’s camera as a teaching aid to illustrate suggested compositions during field sessions. That part worked very well.

Well, here’s what didn’t work well. Some of my teaching examples were actually recorded on the iPad’s camera roll. Holy Moley did those exposures get deleted quickly once I got home. I don’t think I ever saw as much camera shake, blurs and out of focus images since I had my Kodak Instamatic almost fifty years ago. It was readily apparent I have become dependent on my Panasonic’s dual image stabilization.

Something I didn’t have a few years ago is now a necessity. We acclimate quickly to the new technology and the changing looks of photographs. Earlier this year, the Ansel Adams gelatin silver prints at the NCMA looked soft and flat because we are now used to the sharpness and contrast of digital prints. Now I have to have dual image stabilization to keep my hand held photographs sharp.

I’m now a participant in a battle between advancing technology and aging. As long as the technology can advance faster than my aging I should be OK.

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Cloud Chamber, NCMA Museum Park. This is a functioning camera obscura created in the NCMA Museum Park, created by artist Chris Drury.

559 The Second Hurdle

Photographers have two hurdles to overcome when making a photograph. The first is technical. Can one make a technically competent photograph? With the sophisticated camera  and lens technology available to us, technically perfect photographic images are almost guaranteed every time we press the shutter release. We see a scene that captivates us and we respond viscerally, subconsciously and without a lot of examination record what we saw. The camera handles the technical details of focus, exposure and stabilization automagically.

The second (and sometimes insurmountable) second hurdle is to persuade the audience to be reminded of an experience of their own by looking at a group of photographs and  reading some words. This is the tough part of creating art. Trying to connect to the audience's experiences or thoughts to establish a common bond through the photographs and text.

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Back to my roots with the Grand Landscape, this time it’s Smith Rocks in Central Oregon. A very popular place for rock climbing there are usually lots of climbers on the rock faces. One of the things we noticed during this year’s Photo Safari is scenes of natural wonder are now much more regulated (that means fenced off or paved over) than they were thirty years ago.

558 Wish I Had Thought of That Sooner

Thinking a bit before photographing is a really good thing. Not just about a single photograph, but about a single situation. The thought to be thunk was “What am I going to do with the photographs of what is front of me?” Knowing what you are supposed to do before you do it makes life so much easier when you actually wind up doing something with your photographs.

Here’s the inspiration for this thought (or lack of thought), when Brooks Jensen and I began photographing the Erickson Airplane Collection, Brooks had a project in mind and after a few minutes of thought knew exactly what he was going to do. He then went out and did it. His little project using the airplanes was a unique view of the airplanes and the women who riveted them together.

I was in love with the visual experience of the airplanes and began photographing the airplanes, making portraits, capturing details, looking for the abstract details and trying my best to isolate each airplane in a crowded airplane hangar. I was worried about individual images, not an overall theme.

While putting a project together after the fact, I discovered I didn’t have all the images I really wanted to complete my story.

The lesson learned is to begin thinking before beginning to photograph.

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On the outskirts of Madras, Oregon we passed a sign for the Erickson Airplane Collection. The following day we decided to stop in and take a look. We spent the day photographing there. This abstract design is the underside of a North American P-51 Mustang.