Postcards from the Creative Journey

780 The Concept Of Constant Thinking

A few years back I wrote about how my professional and artistic life complemented each other in writing. At that time my career involved a lot of writing and I found it very easy to create blog posts, project statements and other photographic texts because I was used to expressing my thoughts in written words.

Now that I have evolved into a “post career lifestyle” I no longer have a professional requirement to create a lot of text. My blog requires new content on a weekly basis, plus a reach back to earlier posts on each Thursday. It is getting more difficult to push the rock because I don’t have the convenience (?) of a career to exercise my writing skills.

Over the next couple of months I will be out and about and as a result I had to “get ahead” of the blogging requirements by preparing a month or two of new material. It was not as daunting a task as I originally thought because once I began “thinking photographically” the new topics miraculously appeared.

Momentum is important in just about all aspects of life we try to take seriously. Continual effort does pay off with results. The lesson learned is to keep thinking and the topics and ideas will appear. 

779 Creek, Oregon Caves, First Published 4/12/2015

It was my first trip to the southern Oregon Coast. We made it into the Redwood forests of Northern California. I found it most difficult to photograph because of the extreme verticality (is that a word?) of the Redwoods. On the return trip to Portland, we made an afternoon stop at Oregon Caves and took the tour to take a breather from our photographic adventures. We were able to “camp” in the parking lot overnight. The next morning, I awoke to the usual cloudy, foggy damp morning associated with the Oregon Coast. There was a little creek flowing through the parking lot right next to the camper. I unlimbered the venerable Conley 5 x 7 camera and made this exposure with all three tripod feet securely planted in the parking spot next to the camper. One would like to have a much more adventuresome story about making a photograph, but sometimes the best photographs are discovered because we take the time to look closely at what is in front of us.

This photograph is a sentimental favorite of mine. It was the last photograph I made with the Conley 5 x 7 view camera. Conley cameras were the working man’s camera, sold by Sears and Roebuck over a hundred years ago. The camera was of uncertain age and unknown pedigree and it served me well for the few years it was part of my photographic life.

778 Time To Check Out The Mental Checklist

I’ve trying to get myself back into photographic shape so I will be ready to begin photographing as soon as we leave the vestiges of civilization behind us. Our (that would be Brooks Jensen and myself) Photo Safaris have been going on annually for about thirty five years and we still learn from the many mistakes we have made in the past. Part of my preparation is to review some of the “Lessons Learned” from previous Safaris.

Here are some of the lessons we’ve accumulated along the way.

708 Lessons Learned: Photo Safari XXXIV November 22, 2020

Apparently we learned nothing in 2019. Puzzling, yet true.

553 Lessons Learned from Photo Safari XXXII October 28, 2018

476 Sixth Annual Lessons Learned From The Latest Photo Safari

411 Ten Lessons Learned from Photo Safari 2016 October 2, 2016

359 - Ten Lessons Learned on Photo Safari 2015

305 - Photo Safari XXVII: Lessons Learned

246 - Lessons Learned from the 2013 Photo Safari October 27, 2013

160 - Lessons Learned from this Photo Safari

098 - A Dozen Lessons Learned (9 through 12)

097 - A Dozen Lessons Learned (5 through 8)

096 - A Dozen Lessons Learned (1 through 4)

As my father used to tell me, "Good Judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgement." Here is a catalog of poor judgement. Profit from it.

777 Lightning and Lightning Bugs, First Published 8/12/2018

Tom Kite once said the difference between profession and amateur golfers is the difference between lightning and lightning bugs. The difference is in the attention to details, dedication and the willingness to never stop working. As photographers we should never stop seeing, observing and wondering about what we see in the world in front of us. We should also be ready to act on those observations when we are in the right place at the right time.

The amateur stops practicing when he does it right once; the professional stops practicing when he can’t do it wrong. In reality, the professional never stops practicing. They expect to perform at the highest level all the time because they have constantly practiced their craft. Shouldn’t it be the same for you and me when we have a camera in hand? Photography can happen any time and any place where we are. We need to be ready to react when we are in that situation. 

Exercise your photographic muscles every day. Don't stop looking at the world around you. Your smart phone makes a dandy camera to capture those scenes of your life if you left your "big camera" at home.

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Today’s photograph is a great example of thinking photographically on a daily basis and being ready to photograph when the moment presents itself. Today’s lovely landscape was made right behind the eighteenth green at Carolina Trace Golf Course in Sanford, North Carolina. I had just finished my round of golf, was closing down rangefinder golf app on my smartphone. Then I looked up. I went to my camera app and created this lovely photograph. Look at that. Golf and photography included in both text and pictures in this week's post.

776 A Disturbing Thought, Part II

In discussing last week’s post with a friend (please go back and read it because we’re continuing with that topic this week) pointed out another variable that comes into play. Quite simply it is the experience level of the photographer. While I sought to explain the change in content based on equipment a friend suggested that personal aesthetic development also has a much larger role in the creation of images than a piece of hardware. It is certain technical boundaries influence the creation of images, but that is only a part of the whole.

It is the person operating the equipment that decides the subject matter, the point of view and when to press the shutter release as well as making myriad decisions on processing and display. I think this is the far more important factor in deciding artistic and personal growth. With the advanced technology available to all photographers today it is sometimes difficult to remember these machines are tools used by a person who makes the decision on how they are used.

In short, it’s the photographer who is responsible for the success (or failure) of an image, not the camera. Good or bad, it is the photographer who makes or breaks the image.

775 - Through an iPhone Darkly, First Posted 8/7/2016

My wife and I attended a concert recently. We enjoyed the experience and we had a great time people watching, too. One of the things that we noticed was the number of people (of all ages, surprisingly) viewing the concert on the back of their cell phones. It was odd. The spectacle of the live performance was just in front of them, yet they were satisfied to avoid the experience and concentrate on the screen of their smart phone.

While I shake my head at the younger generation, I thought as photographers, we are guilty of the same thing. We look at the world on the external viewing screen of our DSLR rather than actually experiencing the world if front of our cameras. How often have we looked at a digital file, admired the photograph we made and failed to remember the experience? If we go out into a beautiful world to photograph, we should make sure that we spend some time to just enjoy the experience of the location. There are times it is more important to experience the real world before we capture the vision on the back of our camera. I think that is an important thing for people of all ages to remember that a real experience is much better than a digital capture.

I feel too young to be this damn old.

774 A Disturbing Thought…

In excavating the Lipka photographic archives I have made a meta observation about my photographs. As I progressed from the world of 35 millimeter film to view cameras and 4x5 (and larger) film I have noticed both a decline in the number of images and the variety of photographic compositions.

Not a great surprise, because the difference between 35 mm and sheet film is huge. The view camera requires a lot of time to set up, compose, focus and make an exposure. The process is slow and much more expensive than roll film. They are two entirely different styles of photography.

Now here’s the troubling part. It is obvious that I underwent a massive photographic change and looking back I wonder if it was for the better. The variety of image types and willingness to push creative boundaries disappeared when I switched to the large format camera. I now wonder if changing to a large format camera was a good creative idea.

773 - Long Lost and Now Found, First Posted 10/16/2016

The photograph in today’s blog was made on September 10, 2006 at 7:27:33 PM according to the EXIF data. I found it last week when I was trying to figure out what projects needed to be moved from my primary to secondary hard drive. Multiple exposures of this scene indicated I was trying to use High Dynamic Range techniques. Ten years ago HDR was difficult and required so much work I never bothered to perfect the image. HDR techniques are now ridiculously simple and wonderful so a couple of selections, a left click, a right click and voila, a perfect HDR image.

There are a couple of lessons here. The first thing that comes to mind Storage is cheap, so there is no reason not to make the picture when you see it. My oft repeated advice to make the photograph and worry about how to deal with it technically later is the second. Just because you don’t know how to deal with it now doesn’t mean that you can’t in the future. Technology constantly improves and (we all hope) we will also improve technically and aesthetically.

This photograph could have been part of a project that was completed a long time ago, but it missed its’ chance. This image doesn’t really have a home other than on this blog. I’m fine with that because it’s finally going to be seen by an audience. I’m happy to finally share my interpretation of this place and time with you these ten years later.

How many more of these lost digital files will I find if I keep looking? What if I start looking through contact sheets from the long ago days of film photography?

 

772 Getting Back in Shape

That would be photograph shape, as in getting ready to make some images. In about a month, I’m heading out for s Spring photo safari with Brooks Jensen. We’re heading back to the southern Oregon Coast for two weeks of photography and creating art. An event of such cosmic proportions cannot be entered into without some major preparations.

I really need to get my head wrapped around creating photographs, because for the past seven or eight months I have been busy creating art (as in the Journal) with very little (if any) effort place in actually being “out there” creating images. As with any skill, facility comes with practice and I have not been practicing. The weather is better, the days are longer, I’m not worried about that mask fogging up my eyeglasses and so it’s time to put a camera in my hands and get out there to create images.

I need to be ready when I see scenes like this.