Postcards from the Creative Journey

623 “Can you just stop being a photographer?” From 6/3/12

“I have to wait until this car gets out of the way so I can make a nice photograph from this exact spot.” I say.

“Would you please let me know when you stop to make photographs, otherwise I am going to continue walking,” says the Missus.

I think this is how you know you’re a photographer because you just can’t turn it off. Even on the family vacation with a little happy snap camera it’s something that you just can’t give up. Ted Orland has a great quote, “Photograph is a verb.” Photographers are always photographing, even if they don’t have a camera. You are having a conversation with somebody and you change your position so you can see them in front of an uncluttered background. Items in your house are arranged as if they were a still life photograph. You walk down the street looking for compositions. You’re critiquing the photographs in billboard advertisements. You spy fellow photographers and do a quick gear critique. Do they have a good camera bag? Are there any accessories you would find useful? And then, if they’re making a photograph, your critique extends to their photographic form and the visualization of their selected composition.

You never tire of looking, composing, arranging, wondering if changing your position may improve your composition. Visual thinking and communicating are your stock in trade, so you really can’t stop being a photographer. Even when you are on vacation.

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622 Just Stuff

The sign on the front of the building said “Just Stuff.” And that’s what was inside. Stuff. Lots of stuff, stacked on shelves, tables and on the floor. The larger stuff was outside, leaning against the side of the building. If you need some stuff, this was the place to find it and buy it.

I didn't buy any stuff, because I already have too much stuff I've carried around for years, well, make that decades. We still have unopened moving boxes with multiple tags on them. It's pretty obvious we don't need what's in the boxes because they haven't been opened for decades. But we still have our stuff. 

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621 Always More Questions than Answers, From 2/5/11

Photographing abandoned buildings is an enjoyable experience for me. I am comfortable working in an environment that most people would not consider the least bit attractive. When photographing abandoned buildings I often find puzzling arrangements. I wonder, “How did this happen to be this way?” On the second floor of the Shoshone building in Wallace, Idaho there is a sink tipped up in the corner, plumbing on the floor and a stove in the middle of the room. A sketch is on top of the stove. Judging from the style of illustration, it has been there for decades. Why? Who left it there? What was it going to be? Why did the artist stop at the point they did? Who put it on top of the stove? There’s an answer there, and a story that is probably makes it even better, but this is all I can see through my viewfinder. I want to know more, but I never will.

I think the best photographs ask questions and give you the opportunity to make up the answers.

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620 Working at the Store

Little Jeb couldn’t understand how Old Levi organized the shelves in the store. As far as the young man could figure, Old Levi’s arrangement of his products seemed to be based on what could fit on each shelf, or how he could hang it from the rafters. None of it made sense to Little Jeb, but Levi always knew what and how much he had of everything in the store. When a customer asked for a particular item, Old Levi would close his eyes, wiggle a raised index finger and would glide directly to whatever the customer wanted. He never missed a request.

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619 Compulsories, From 5/8/11

Compulsories. I came up with this description of a type of photograph many years ago. I appropriated this term from the world of figure skating. Compulsory events are never shown on TV. This is the technical judging of the skater. Can the skater do a figure eight, skate a perfect circle and other tests to determine if the skater is competent? We photographers have these compulsory photographs, too. They are especially prevalent in the world of large format photographers.

So you know what the compulsory photographs are:

• Pepper in a tin funnel.
• Sand dune at dawn or dusk. Strong shadows and S shapes
• Nude on Sand Dune
• Zone VIII Church or house
• Zone VI barn
• Tunnel View (I should not have to tell you where this is located.)
• Abstract Rock photograph
• Any long exposure that makes water look like cotton candy.
• Kitchen utensil still life.
• Nautilus Shells or bleached bones.
• Calla Lillies

True confessions time; the first thing I did after I set up my large format camera was run to the refrigerator for a green pepper. I will admit this. If you are smiling now, you know you did it too. I don't know if it is more disturbing that I can tell you this story, or that you just saw this photograph, or that as a polaroid it's still in great condition.

Photographers exist in a continuum of existence and progress. There are those that started before us and have achieved more. We seek them for guidance and inspiration. There are our fellow photographers whose evolution mirrors our own. We seek them for their company and to discuss mutual problems. There are those that have started after us. We can inspire and guide their efforts.

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618 Lennie and the Buck

Lennie’s Brother in Law has a nice spread in the country. The deer love the place and you can see them all the time. Lennie’s sister hates them because they are a huge bother what with their eat “anything on a stem or a branch” diet and spreading lots of ticks and fleas and whatnot. They are really bold and they won’t budge an inch even when you walk right up to them. At least until hunting season; then they all disappear. The deer know when hunting season begins and then they get to be pretty hard to find. That’s why Lennie has never had a lot of luck. The deer kept outsmarting him.

He hunted on his Brother-in-Law’s land for a couple of decades and had never even seen a “wall worthy” buck until that one Saturday morning in September. Lennie finally got his big buck. That year there was a lot of venison on the table. But harvesting that big buck gave him an even bigger problem. His house didn’t have a wall big enough for that mounted head.

Lucky for Lennie his boss (like just about everyone else in the shop) was a deer hunter. Understanding Lennie’s problem, the boss let him bring it in to the shop. The entire crew was happy to have that buck hanging in the shop.

Every time Lennie walked to the tool bin he smiled and remembered that day in September.

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617 Bodie, Washington, From 10/24/10

Wow! Let’s photograph Bodie! There are many iconic photographic destinations for photographers of the American West and Bodie, California is one of them. Landscape photographers flock to them and photograph them until they become clichés. We have seen lots of photographs of Yosemite, Point Lobos, slot canyons, Mono Lake, Zabriskie Point and Bodie.

Well, you probably haven’t seen a photograph from Bodie, Washington. Or what’s left of it. So, here it is. When I was getting this photo ready I thought, “Hmmm. Didn’t Wynn Bullock make a photograph that looked like this?” Mine isn’t as good as his, but I think that just about every one of my photographs isn’t as good as a Wynn Bullock photograph.

You can’t make a good photograph until you start making photographs.

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616 Ten Years of Blogging

Thank you very much for stopping by to see my photographs and read my thoughts on photography for the past ten years.

For the first nine years the contents were my thoughts on photography and what I was doing as I made the Creative Journey in the world of photographic art. It was a story of my photographs, interests, progress and activities in creating art. Last year, I shook that formula up by creating more fanciful postcards with a single photograph and a (very) short story.

Each Thursday (starting January 9, 2020) we’ll open the archives and bring back a post from years gone by. That will make a second post and another photograph for you. New Postcards from the Creative Journey will have a greater variety of content, too. Look for stories with multiple images and a return of my comments on photography, life and the creative process. More images, more thoughts, more stories and a blast from the past. (That’s more, more, more!)

As they say on the late night infomercials, “Wait, There’s even more! The even more is a new blog, The Daily Photograph. While doing some Light Room consolidation and clean up last month, I found photographs that have never been exhibited. Now is their chance to be seen. The new blog starts tomorrow, January 6, 2020. Stop by tomorrow, set up the RSS feed to receive a new photograph to every day.

Again, thank you so much for stopping by. I hope to see you soon.

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This photograph was created during last year's Photo Safari. We spent one day on the Fraser River near Hope, BC. The week's forecast for 100% chance of rain drove us out of British Columbia and out to the Oregon Desert for what turned out to be an absolutely wonderful week of photography.