Postcards from the Creative Journey

941 Following Through

Easy photographs are the crashing waves but the water draining off the rocks is also visually interesting. That is if we keep our eyes on the viewfinder and continue to observed the scene. Following through the scene after the big event is also very important.

We are all interested in life's big events. We plan, prepare, scout, imagine, visualize, and spend a lot of time in preparation. We look at the big events and enjoy them as much as we enjoyed the preparation. What about after the event? The moments that occur after the big event. We watch the flight of the golf ball but don’t notice the follow through. We watch the batted ball head out of the park and only notice the batter when he rounds second base. We don’t pay any attention to the party after the balloon drop.

Life is about continuation. Life continues after the big event whether we notice it or not. Paying attention to the after events, following the moment after is filled with its own observations on life. The return to the “normal,” that is non exceptional in life, is something we don’t pay enough attention to.

940 - Looking Around the Corner first published 1/23/2011

Along the way to making art, there are lots of opportunities to make art. We just don’t recognize it at the time. When driving long distances, it’s usually a good idea to stop and stretch your legs. You can do this both physically and artistically. We pulled off Route 20 at one of those many little canyons alongside the road that have been formed by water. I started walking back the little creek and made a few “warm up photographs” just to get started. The creek turned to the left and there was this scene. I took a few more steps and faced a steep waterfall. It was beautiful. But this sign was as far as I got. I turned off my camera and walked back to the truck. There are times to make a photograph and there are times to just stretch your legs.

Rest in Peace, Angie.

939 More Memories than Dreams

This morning I've gone back to the More Memories than Dreams (MMTD) project making sure that I have everything I want right now (right now? Hmmm there's a thought) to continue with (trying) to find the best images from the first ten years of my photography.

I opened the archival tupperware bread container that is filled with my 35 mm negatives and was hit with the heady (and nostalgic) aroma of (mostly) stop bath, fixer and the aroma of old 35 mm film. The review of old negatives (or images) is always filled with a jumble of emotions. There are the memories of people and places from earlier in our life, the search for memories that we forgot but the film didn’t, the incredulity of horrible images and the joy of finding those little islands of beauty in a vast sea of bad images.

It is tough to remember just why I’m going through these stacks of negatives, but I’m just gathering assets for an upcoming project. 

I’ve said it earlier, “I went looking for old photographs and kept finding memories.”

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More Memories than Dreams is my version of the "Fifty Years of Photography" book. It's quite a popular thing to do among photographers of a certain age. Rather than a book, my version will be published as part of The Lipka Journal on my website. Click on the link at the top of the page to visit my web site. 

Today's photograph was made in the mid 1970's at the Mission at Goliad, Texas. 

938 An End to Avoid First Published 8/24/2011

Last week I talked about starting a project by figuring out the end point. Here is an end point that should be avoided at all costs. It’s the point called “printing for the box.”

One of my photo buddies asked me about the goal of my current photo project. “Are you printing for the box?” The implication is that the work would never see the light of day or any exhibition venue but would be resigned to spend its entire existence in one of those archival storage boxes. (Under the bed, of course. Isn’t that where your archival storage boxes are stored?) Now, you must ask yourself the question, “What is the goal of your current photographic project?” Printing for the box? Printing for an exhibition? Printing for a book or something in between? If you are going to keep a final goal in mind, it is best to start with a goal that is much, much better than an archival storage box under your bed.

937 Defining Skills

We were discussing skills required to be a successful photographer in the twenty-first century. I proposed that the skills required included knowledge of HTML and CSS3 (or at least the current versions of these languages) as a necessary part of a photographer’s skill set. When the prime method of image display is online, one needs to know and use the language to facilitate communication with your audience. I was taken to task on this view because one might consider the knowledge of coding skills is not required in the photographic world.

In the last century one of the skills a complete photographer needed was the ability to trim, dry mount, cut a cover mount and frame the result to display in a gallery. Those were skills we needed to complete the presentation of our work to our audience. These skills had nothing to do with photography, but were necessary if the goal was to hang on a gallery wall

There were (and are) photographers who didn’t and (don’t) want to learn or perform the tasks required to take that final step in preparing their images for presentation to their audience. That’s fine. They can pay for those skills to be performed by those who specialize in those tasks. There’s nothing wrong with that. None the less, we need to be aware that displaying the work we have completed is the most critical part of the artistic process.

Art does not exist unless there is an audience to see and be moved by our efforts. Otherwise, all is for naught.

936 Boundaries and Restrictions First Published 3/18/2012

Large Format Fine Art Photographers make photographs of traditional subjects with traditional films, developers and paper. I spent thirty years under a dark cloth with a view camera so you can trust me on this. Very few Large Format Fine Art Photographers deviate from this formula simply because of the limitations of the hardware and film. And that is just fine. The challenge of Large Format Photography is to make art fresh and original when faced with restrictions imposed by the process of large format analog photography.

I loved the challenge imposed by the world of large format photography. Getting your story told with the various constraints imposed by the equipment and film required a considerable amount of creativity. Photographers are not alone by being limited to specific restrictions. There are many other forms of artistic expression that require adherence to a specific restrictive artistic formula. Consider the haiku. Seventeen syllables to convey a thought. There is a vast reservoir of bad haiku. But great haiku is a joy. Poetry, in its many forms has restrictions with rhyme and length. Musical arts also have specific structure as evidenced by such musical forms as fugues, minuets, and an eight bar blues.

All of these forms have restrictions and I do not view them as an infringement, but as structure and foundation required to build a great piece of art.

935 On the Level

I have always noted that my landscape photographs seem to tilt in one direction. I never gave it much thought and always wound up straightening the images in Lightroom to get the horizon level. When setting up my camera for this safari, I wound up leaving the automatic level indicator as part of my viewfinder set up. I paid attention to the level and photographed when the line was green.

When I got to process the RAW files in Lightroom, I didn’t have to fix any tilted photographs. After about three days of not leveling images in Lightroom, I finally figured out I had been holding the camera at an angle all these years. I am not sure why I did this, but since that time I have tried to break years of bad technique.

I wonder what else I have been doing wrong either through faulty set up or my actions that might be limiting my image captures.

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Overlook of the dunes just north of Florence, Oregon.

934 Dimensionless Photography First Published 3/16/2014

In my world of science and engineering there are values called dimensionless numbers. These numbers are used to denominate a physical phenomenon. The most widely known dimensionless number is the Mach number, a comparison to the speed of sound. I thought about this a few nights ago when I viewed some “dimensionless photographs.” These photographs were abstract landscapes that provided no clue to the viewer as to the scale of the subject.

What these dimensionless photographs did to me was to remove the distraction of scale and allow me to focus more closely on the composition, tone and texture of each image. They transcended the pretty picture landscape genre to become something far more than the subject originally photographed.

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It's now August and that means a new issue of The Lipka Journal is posted on my website. Surf on over to my website (link at the top of the page) and download a copy of the August Journal.