Postcards from the Creative Journey

1005 Reverend Joe Dan Donny's* Home for Orphan Prints, First Published 7/4/2021

I am trying to get rid of old prints to eliminate images that don’t mean much. I’ve gone through Van Dyke prints, cyanotypes, platinotypes and the silver gelatin prints (both on fiber base and RC paper). I’ve disposed of the silver gelatin prints, but the alt process prints I’ve removed from the mat board and keeping them in some of the remaining archival storage boxes. So far, I’ve emptied five 11x14 and six 16x20 storage boxes.

I keep finding orphan prints. I don’t know why I have so many prints that do not belong to any project. They are the orphan prints that have lived here for decades. I think I have a stack of orphan digital prints several inches thick that belong to neither project nor exhibition. They are all fine photographs. I can’t imagine why I made so many photographs that have no “home” (that would be part of a project or exhibit). Out they went with their analog brethren. If I do need to make a reprint (in the near future, at least) I have the printer and paper to make another.

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*The Reverend Joe Dan Donny is one of my alter egos, the itinerant, tent show preacher and founder of the Church of the Holy Polaroids. The founding emanates from the days of developing Polaroid film on cold mornings by sandwiching the film pack between your warm hands to hasten the development of the image. It looked like prayer, and prayer was often needed to assist with the success of the photograph.

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Boy, did I goof up on this post. There are those photographers who always try to embellish their deeds in order to make them sound much more impressive than they really are. That's OK with me, self promotion is one of those necessary evils of being an artist. If you don't tell others about what you do, then how will they find out? Upon reflection, I have decided to embellish and embiggen my description of the disposal of my old photographic prints. Ahem. (Listen to this.) My vintage prints are now part of the permanent collection of the Wake County Landfill. 

This sounds so much better than saying I threw out a whole bunch of old prints. 

1004 Marinating Your Project

We marinate meat to add subtlety and richness to the meal. I have a similar process for my photographic projects. When I think I have completed the work on an issue of The Lipka Journal, a blurb book, or a blog post such as this one I walk away from it for at least a few days, or if I have the time a week or two. This absence allows the work to marinate, age and remove itself from my mind. When I return to the work after a period of absence, I see the work with “fresh eyes” to discern weaknesses and think of improvements to make the Project more successful.

Then I make the changes and let it marinate a little bit longer.

1003 The Concept Of Constant Thinking, First Published on 5/30/2021

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.

The lesson learned is to keep thinking and the topics and ideas will appear.

 

1002 A Double Lesson Learned

I wanted to assemble a specific photographic project for an issue of The Lipka Journal. I went back through my Lightroom catalog and found the images I wanted to use. I selected, edited, perfected the images and even put them into the first draft of the Journal.

Once I saw them, I was not the least bit happy with them. Something happened to the images between Lightroom and InDesign. I tried to figure out what the technical problem was, but after looking at the images I finally figured out what was wrong. What was wrong was me.

I went back to Lightroom and sought out more images and discovered that I visited that same beach twice. I stumbled upon the first set of images and used them without doing a more exhaustive search. The second set of images was much better than the first and that’s what made it into the Journal.

A lesson learned twice over. Your first visit to a place may not provide good images. A further investigation gave better images. Your first search of the Lightroom database needs to be something more than cursory. When selecting images of the same place make sure that you select the correct images.

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Double extra bonus points lesson learned. When editing this post, I thought there was something else to learn here. It is this; the more you photograph one place the better your images will be. I came back the second time and made better images. I’ll work up this idea in a future blog post.

See what I mean. The Project is entitled The Big Picture in the February Lipka Journal. Click on the link at the top of the page to reach my website where you can download the latest free PDF copy of The Lipka Journal. 

1001 The Siren’s Song First Published 7/5/2015

This is probably a repeat of a repeat, but since it fits so well with last Thursday's post "But it's not ready yet," I had to use it for this week's Throwback Thursday post. To my credit, the above photograph is a copy of a Platinum Print from the Project in question. 

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As long as we’re talking about letting that project go, I always remember this story:

Being asked to present your photographs at a workshop is a pretty high honor for the non-professional artist/photographer. This type of invitation is a real boost to the ego and the experience can needlessly boost your self-esteem to great heights. And so, it was with me. I presented my photographs at a workshop and greatly impressed the participants. They hung on every word I spoke, pored over my photographs and discussed among themselves in hushed, respectful tones my artist’s statement.

After my presentation was completed, one of the participants came to me and quietly said, “We all noticed a spelling error in your statement.” I thought I wrote the sentence, “I heeded its siren song.” My fingers typed an extra letter at the beginning of the word “its.” The consonant added at the beginning of the word “its” is already in the word - and it is not the letter “s.”

This is why I no longer rely on spell check. Proofread, proofread, proofread and then let that project go.

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If you want to read the entire, G rated artist statement, the Project is Light Through a Window on my website. 

And while you're there don't forget to download the February issue of The Lipka Journal!

1000 Another Milestone for the Blog

A few weeks ago, I celebrated the thirteenth anniversary of this blog. That’s a lot of topics and writing. The Thursday throwback posts have increased the number of posts, but that’s OK because most people haven’t read decades old posts. If you haven’t read something, it’s brand new to you.

One of my blog secrets is I have an inventory of ideas, questions and topics I want to write about. Just where do these ideas come from? Many of the ideas come from thinking about what I’m doing in photography and the problems I encounter and my reaction to them. I don’t rely too much on other photographic web sites, blogs or YouTube channels because for the most part the rest of the internet is interested in the technical aspects of photography or the latest and greatest gear to buy. Some ideas come from discussions with different photographers like my photo buddy of four decades, Brooks Jensen (of LensWork fame). While we live on opposite sides of the country, we skype and correspond frequently. These conversations are a source of thoughts for both of us.

The more you do something, the better the chance that you will become good at it. That’s why I never stop thinking about (or writing about) the creative part of photography.

999 But It Is Not Ready Yet First Published 3/22/2020

Here is another thought or two on Procrastinating Perfectionism to help you get past that fear of completing the project. There are times when good enough has to be good enough because no one can produce anything that’s perfect. Sometimes you just have to let go and send that project on its way just the way it is. Even if you think it’s perfect, it isn’t. As soon as someone looks at something you have completed, they will tell you something you can do to make it better or more disastrously they tell you of an error. Once you let it go, you will see something you can do to make it better. You can always make it better later. Everything you do is the sum of what you know and what you can do with what you have right now. Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year you will be able to do it better because you have the experience of today’s work, plus whatever advances have been made in materials and tools since you finished that work.

It’s ready. Let it go.

998 Collecting Images or making photographs?

What is the end goal of your photographs? Are they the finished product of your work once you print them up, or are they just the beginning of an art project? Will they be part of a book, a pdf on your web site or will they be mounted, matted and framed as that nice image you hang over the sofa?

The end point of your photographic project must be considered before you start out to photograph. More care must be taken when the end point is a project because you need to collect the images with a specific thought process in mind for telling a story with images.

997 A Thought on Longevity First Published 4/22/2018

I’m working on a project incorporating both old photographs and images scanned twenty years ago. There is something wonderful about holding a photograph that is one hundred years old. The prints that are coming close to their centennial are still viable and yet the scanned images from twenty years ago aren’t useful for this project because the scanned files are sized at 500 x 800 pixels at 72 dpi.

I find it odd the much older print is still useful to me in this project. The scanned images were done in the early days of digital processing and suffered from (digitally) primitive processes. Today, I will photograph the old print with my camera and get a very sharp 14Mb RAW file to process.

996 The Great Equipment Debate

What format should be used for the best result? I don’t care. I won’t participate in such discussions or arguments. I survived the Canon/Nikon wars and am a decorated veteran of the analog/digital Armageddon. After all these conflicts I really don’t care what type of format you choose, how many pixels you have, or any other host of hardware options you have or have not selected. I don’t care about your kit at all. There are more important things to consider. We get what gear we like, what will work for us and what we can afford. We move on from there to create images. That is what is important. 

I want to look at what your camera has produced and be moved by the emotional content and message you are communicating with your images. It’s not about the tools, it’s about what you make with those tools.

995 Better Looking leads to Better Looking Photographs. First Published 10/21/2018

Breathtaking landscapes are really fun to make because most of us have to leave home and travel a long way to arrive at the place where those breathtaking landscapes live. How many photographers have photographed in their homes, their backyard gardens and scenes from their everyday life and made great photographs? Ansel Adams lived in Yosemite Valley and Edward Weston lived almost next door to Point Lobos and they made some great photographs in their respective backyards. Gee, maybe I picked two really bad examples to illustrate my point. We can’t all live in photogenic places, so what can we do in our own backyards?

There are a number of great photographers that made wonderful photographs in their hometowns. Josef Sudek made great photographs in his yard. Late in his life, Paul Strand spent many hours in his garden photographing. Eugene Atget never stopped photographing the back streets and out of way spots in Paris.

What can you find within a couple of miles your house that is just waiting to be photographed? We are so used to where we live we take it all for granted and are so focused on what we are doing we fail to see what is around us. Suppose you decided to make your next photographic trip a local one? Approach the exploration of your town as if it was Yosemite, or Death Valley or some other American Landscape destination. What would you see differently?

Your world is ready for you. All you have to do is bring your camera and powers of observation.

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This lovely landscape was made with an iPhone on the Keith Hills Golf Course in Buies Creek, North Carolina. 

994 I’m Really Happy With This Except…

Got caught with a rookie mistake. This is absolute proof that experience and hubris are no match for the laws of physics. I was assembling a project for a recent issue of The Lipka Journal. The project contained landscape photographs with a rare combination of weather, light and location. I was fascinated by this and instead of calling out to stop for photo opportunities, I just opened the window and fired away. “Ha,” I thought, “even though we are speeding down the highway, a fast shutter speed will freeze the motion.”

Apparently not.

All the foregrounds were not as sharp as the backgrounds. I did not notice this huge flaw in the excitement of the editing process. Once the full frame images were displayed full size the flaws were obviously apparent. I solved the problem by cropping out quite a bit of the foreground and not using some other images. The project became much smaller because there is no reason to show work that is introduced with, “I’m really happy with this except…”