Postcards from the Creative Journey

896 - What Is Necessary to Understand a Photograph? First Published 1/11/2015

“I was inspired to make these photographs by the poetry of seventh century hermit/mystics living in Remote-a-stan.” If your introduction or artist’s statement starts out like that, you probably lost just about everyone in your audience except the curator and the other five or six people that were similarly inspired by the poetry of hermit/mystic monks that lived in Remote-a-stan fourteen centuries ago. For the rest of us, we’ll just stroll around and look at the photographs. We can enjoy and understand the technical aspects and compositions of the images, but we will have an incomplete understanding of the art because the artist created a barrier to our enjoyment of the work.

One thing that makes art “universal” is a common experience between the artist and the audience. The cultural homogeneity of the audiences in the past insured that visual clues and themes would be understood and appreciated by the masses. The increasing diversity of western culture and the desire to specialize results in art being relevant a small group of viewers. Outsiders need not apply.

895 Am I Still In Charge?

I really think the cameras these days are just so darn smart we, as photographers, are “just along for the ride.” I almost fear the day when cameras (or whatever they’re going to be called in the future) carry onboard Artificial Intelligence. OK, hang on for second. I just typed “Artificial,” and Word just auto filled “Intelligence” right after it. See what I mean? How does it know that?

Our cameras may be technically smart by focusing and setting the correct exposure. Be we, as photographers, still have the important role of deciding on what we point the camera at and what is included in the frame. That is still the most important part of the process.

894 - Maintaining Enthusiasm for the Long Term Project, First Published 1/18/ 2015

In 2014 I wrote that all my projects were long term projects because it takes me such a long time to go from photography in the field to a finished project in the form of (a) web folio, (b) print folio and (c) exhibition print. In fact, the only time in recent memory that I have been “up to date” with my projects is that year and a half when I was “in transition” between my two last jobs. There is hope that when I retire and stop ”Workin’ for The Man” I will be able keep current with photographic projects. It can take from a weekend to two years to get from start to a completed project. It’s not unusual to take a year to do a project.

At any time, I have about six projects in various stages of completion. Some are just ideas, some have the artist statement completed, some are being edited, others have partially completed software work, and some are waiting to be printed or added to my web site.

The big question for those of us that work on projects is how to maintain enthusiasm throughout a very long project cycle. People “of a certain age” do remember being told that “stick-to-it-iveness” was a virtue that allowed you to accomplish great things. I think that the key element of enthusiasm is not for the project itself, but for photography. How I feel about each project changes as I go through the project. Some I like, some I like more than others, but each project is fueled by my enthusiasm for photography. The project is the manifestation of your love and commitment to the photographic process.

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This photograph is one of the Academy Street Photographs, a project that has been ongoing for over thirty-five years. 

Now that I have a "post career lifestyle" I am now farther behind completing projects than I was when I was working. The ever increasing backlog of projects to be completed is the result of me having a lot more time to devote to finding new projects among the images I have in my Lightroom database. The enthusiasm has not waned. 

893 Art Is Complete When It Doesn’t Need Me Anymore.

After looking at what we’ve created there is that nagging question, “Have I completed this work?” It could be a single image, an image suite, a book or one of these blog posts. We answer this question by making that one “last” change that we think will make it a bit better. Then we ask that question once again. If the work doesn’t look appreciably better, then we know we have gone too far. We back up one step and say we’re done because the work can stand by itself.

We learn this lesson through experience and the feedback from our photo buddies. It’s an important lesson to learn because if we don’t finish our work, then we can never really move on to the next project. There is nothing worse than having a bunch of incomplete projects getting in the way of progress.

When the work is complete it doesn’t need you anymore, but you need that complete work to show you what a finished project looks like. That knowledge is necessary to help you understand how to end your next project.

892 - Advantage: Low Tech, First Published 3/22/2015

A GPS gives you directions. The little red triangle keeps you focused on the road right in front of you making sure you do not stray from the computer calculated route to your destination. A calm, synthetic voice warns you well in advance of any turns you need to make. You will get to your destination precisely and exactly as calculated by the computer. Your attention does not need to move much beyond the dashboard and the little red triangle.

A map lets you dream of alternatives. That paper map forces you to look at your surroundings and become aware of the land and scenery around you. Lakes have real shapes; road types are different colors. You are looking for landmarks outside of your vehicle to match with the marks on the map. Awareness of what is around you makes you concentrate on your surroundings, not a little red arrow on your dashboard. The land, not the road is the center of your attention.

The red triangle gives way to your imagination plotting alternate routes to wherever you might wish to go. You can take secondary roads, gravel roads and if you get far enough away from civilization, Forest Service Roads. Paying attention to what is around you is one of the joys of using a paper map. Technology takes away the possibility of serendipity.

Getting lost is a great way to find things you were never looking for.

891 A Matter of Orientation

In my world there are vertical places and horizontal places. In some places my camera automagically flips itself ninety degrees and wants to turn an image into “portrait” orientation. I just created a new Blurb Book, “Passages and Portals” where just about every image is in portrait orientation.

When I am photographing in the American West, it seems my camera automatically flips itself to the vertical orientation and moves to the left. Instinctively, the camera says, “Here’s where you make a panoramic image.” So I make one. I like panoramic images. It allows me to create a horizontal image using vertical images. Feels like a "win win" to me. 

My camera already knows where to focus and calculate the perfect exposure, so why shouldn’t it tell me the best orientation for my next photograph?

Having cameras select your next image via Artificial Intelligence is probably already here, I just don’t know about it. Maybe I really don’t want to know about it, either.

890 – A Little Book, First Published 11/15/2015

(Yes, it's Lake Tenaya)

During the 2015 photo safari to Yosemite National Park, Brooks Jensen and I were discussing if the Masters of West Coast Photography had made any memorable photographs of Lake Tenaya. Later that year, at Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library I spent some time looking for an Edward Weston photograph of Tenaya Lake. I found the photograph as well as an Ansel Adams photograph of Weston photographing at Tenaya Lake in the Aperture book, “The Flame of Recognition.”

Walking out of the Hesburgh Library this thought struck me. The book I held in 2015 was the same book I read and re-read in 1972. That copy of “The Flame of Recognition” was the exact same book that inspired me to consider photography as an art. So much of our current digital life is ephemeral and disposable and the catalyst that began my lifelong affair with photography was still on the library shelf. Has this slim volume ever inspired another person to make a life-long commitment to photography? I don’t know, but I bet that somehow that little book does.

889 There’s Always Something New

A reclaimed salvage store has that tag line as part of its advertising. Your Lightroom Catalog has the same tag line. There are always new images in store for you. All you have to do is spend some time looking through the Catalog. We can now create hundreds of digital images every time we go out to photograph. We can’t possibly remember each one. In prehistoric times (when I was using my view camera), I could visualize every image and remember each sheet of film exposed. That was easy to do when you made eight or ten images a day. We can’t do that anymore. Between the massive quantities of images we make and our (my) aging brain, it’s information overload.

The other day I was going back to find one of “those” images, (one that I remembered making but not when or where) and I stumbled into several projects I had no idea I started. I discovered a couple of memes I could build into projects and eventually found the image I was looking for.

This image was a not included in the “Little Creek” project in The Lipka Journal this month (April, 2022). It got me remembering similar images from photo safaris. This and the other ones like it will show up in a future issue of The Lipka Journal.