Postcards from the Creative Journey

Photo Safari XXXIV - The "travel" day

Photo Safari XXXIV started today. Flights from Raleigh to Spokane, Washington took up most of the day. Air travel has certainly come a long way since I first traveled for business when there were always hot meals served on china with metal utensils to today's plastic bag with crackers and water. Ah, well, the things we do for art. 

On the way from Spokane to Moscow (that's Idaho, you know) we stopped by Steptoe Butte because it was late afternoon and we could do it. We broke out the cameras and started photography. The light was great and the views were wonderful. We thought it would be a great idea to come back tomorrow morning and see what the world would look like when the light comes from the East. 

698 Now Just Why Are You Doing This?

In the many years I have hovered around the edges of commercial and art photography, the question of “making your photography pay for itself” has been a topic of discussion. The quest seems particularly important to those that deem themselves artists and do not wish to sully their artwork with crass commercial influence. After spending decades worrying about “can I make my photography pay for itself?” I decided to assume it was not a question worth worrying about and conceding that I will never make my photography pay for itself. Stress removed and with it the worry about "making it pay" and I gained the freedom of making the art I wanted.

I came to the conclusion that deriving income from photography makes you the owner of a small business whose sole asset is your photographic skill. If you know any small business owners you know they spend a very large part of their time with self-promotion and sales with a very small part of their time doing their business. With the limited time I had available for photography, I chose to spend that time creating art, not promoting myself.

I did not want to take a pleasurable activity and turn it into a job.

Thus, sharing my photographs with the world became the primary goal for my photography. To that end I have centered my photographic output around my web site and this blog. I rarely make a photographic print anymore. When I do make a print it is usually motivated by entry into a juried competition or a gallery show. Success in that endeavor is having my photograph accepted for exhibition. If I earn an award or someone purchases a print I consider that a bonus.

697 An Artist… With a Camera - First Published 8/24/2014

I like to think of myself as a photographer. My art starts with a photograph and does not venture too far from its photographic origin. I use my camera, associated equipment and software as the primary tools for creating my art. I have been trained in these skills and practice these skills to produce photographic art.

I’m beginning to see a lot more variety in photographic art. More artists are using cameras and software in creating their work. The difference I see is that the camera is just another tool to these folks. I refer to these folks as “an artist ... with a camera.” The written word does not do justice to my description. So, please read that phrase thus: “An artist (Long pause) with a camera.” I suppose these artists might consider the camera in the same light as paint brushes, chisels or a loom. It is another tool to help them create art, not the (only) tool used to create art.

I’m OK with this trend. One has to leave their comfort zone to learn anything new, or advance themselves. It’s just that I’m not ready to accept that just because you are a virtuoso in one medium, you should be considered a virtuoso photographer.

696 Well, it Just Happened Again; A Lesson Learned

If you're going to go backwards and resurrect some of those old digital files, or egad, maybe revisiting the good old days of film negatives, there's a lesson or two to be learned. No more whining about usable or unusable images. Here's what I have learned. 

When doing a “new” project using "old" images we can expect to have different criteria and what is good or usable. A new project deserves to be started from scratch. That means the original files, or film negatives. Why is starting over from the beginning a good thing?

We are no longer “in the heat of the moment” and have the luxury of time and perspective to view what we saw. We might be able to see more and better in the cold light of day. Then there’s you. You are probably a better photographer and digital editor now, too. You have more experience now in software manipulation, image sequencing and most importantly your vision (not eyesight) has improved since the time you made those old images.

We have better software than we did in the past. Software is always improving, so the results we get from new software are better than what we had in the past. If you don’t think so, do a side by side comparison of a RAW file processed with an earlier version and the current version of your favorite digital editor. Improvements are significant. Noise reduction immediately comes to mind as a major improvement as well as the de-haze and clarity functions; all three are important for us folks that do landscape photography. The folks at Adobe just won't quit improving their software. 

Better software and a better you mean you have the skills to repair, edit, fix and improve film negatives that were technical failures. There are many good to great negatives out there not usable in the analog darkroom because of damage. Scratches, pinholes, fingerprints, improper fixing and annoying objects you didn’t see when you made that exposure can be removed with clone stamps, content aware fill brushes, healing tools and other means we didn’t have in the analog world.

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Here's one of those 5x7 digitized negatives. If you look at the left side of the image, you'll see those nasty scratches I will be able to fix up so this image will become usable in the digital world. And no one will be the wiser. Except you, dear reader, who will know the secret of this old image. 

695 I Love the Smell of Sagebrush In The Morning, First Published 5/10/2015

It smells like photography.

No town in the American West has a better name than my wife’s home town of Roundup, Montana. The best time of our visits there was the first morning. Still stuck on East Coast time, I would wake up a couple of hours before everyone (except the donut maker at Picchioni’s IGA) and venture forth with my camera in the early morning light.

The aroma of sagebrush and pine filled the town during the night. The smell was fresh and clean and I knew I was out west. Even though I was in town, the smell of the sage reminded me how close I was to the range land of Eastern Montana. For that hour or so before everyone starting moving through the town I could photograph alone and undisturbed. When the trucks starting coming through town, the still air was disturbed and the smell of sage was lost in the exhaust.

By then it was time to stop photographing and head to Picchioni’s for fresh donuts.

694 Dang. It Just Happened…Again

I wanted to do another Blurb book based on a completed project, Hell’s Half Acre. I thought it would be a quick project, I already had the images in a web folio and converting to a Blurb book would be a “piece of cake.”

Wrong.

Again.

The files I used for the other projects were not appropriately sized for a Blurb book. That means I had to go back to the original RAW files and reprocess the images for the Book.

Easy enough to do.

No. It wasn’t.

I started going back and looking at files. I found a bunch of files that I could have used but didn’t. I have no idea why these good images were not used. I also found files that had to be the worst images ever created by anyone, anywhere at any time. Then they weren’t because they turned out to be components of a panoramic photograph that I hadn’t noticed for the past fourteen (yes, fourteen) years.

It gets even worse. I went back into the sheet film archive and found some 5x7 film negatives of Hell’s Half Acre from an earlier, shorter trip. I found some nice looking negatives that were never used then because they had scratches and pinholes. After digitizing these images with my camera and Negative Lab Pro Software I have a few more images for the new book.

Hang on for a second, I’ll be right back.

Thanks for waiting. While I was writing that last paragraph I was thinking, “if you were shooting 5x7, you just might have some 4x5 negatives, too.” Yeah, I just found four nice 4x5 negatives from Hell’s Half Acre and a competent clone of Ansel’s photograph of the Tetons and Snake River as an added bonus.

This phenomena happened each time I went back to update an old project. The Hong Kong Bird Market, Hong Kong Flower Market, several other Book Projects and Journal articles all came up this same way.

More on this topic next week! These blog posts are prepared weeks and sometimes months in advance of their publication date. You didn’t think I was this brilliant on a consistent basis did you? You did? Why thank you. Anyway, I thought some more about this and I have some nice information next week. Y’all come back now, heah?

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See the photograph above? It's kind of like the photograph Ansel did, except he did it better, but it's my cliche photograph and I really like it. 

693 Technology and the Long Term Project - First Published 12/2/2012

The trouble with a long term project is that technology probably is moving much faster than you are. I have a friend who recently finished a multi-year project. In looking at his final prints for the project you could tell his progress from 35 millimeter film (told you it was a long term project), medium format, large format and digital cameras. Each camera was selected in response to a set of conditions (you don’t see golfers playing with only one club do you?) and the level of technology available at the time.

But here’s what threw me. I could identify each photograph with the type of camera used. For a person that expects consistency in a project, I really didn’t know how to respond to this. There is a limit to the visual consistency that can be imposed upon an image through digital editing. At some point, the digital editing process changes the look of the image to the point where it no longer looks “photographic.” Maybe the distinctive look of each format needs to be embraced as part of the project.

692 Dropping Something

When photographing in the field, we try to make sure that we can do as much as possible by rote, using muscle memory and feel to free up our mind for more creative tasks. At one time, I could unpack my field camera set it up, add a lens and set maximum aperture to focus on the subject all by feel. Those days are gone. I have a new routine for using my digital camera and part of that routine is to take off my glasses to view the flip out touch screen.

The one thing that makes this possible is to have a croakie that attaches to my glasses to keep them from falling on the ground. It’s really important to remember to put those guys on my glasses as part of my daily photographic preparation.

One morning I was getting ready to make the first photograph from the edge of a bridge over the Teal Slough and I absentmindedly took off my glasses and was about to drop them when I felt something wrong. I didn’t have the croakie cord attached to my glasses.

It would have been a costly mistake to drop my glasses into the slough because I didn’t have a back-up pair of glasses with me.

The need for some back up eyeglasses is another story for another time.

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Yup, that mess above might have been the final resting place for the only pair of glasses I had with me. 

691 Old Dog, Old Tricks First Published 1/25/2015

When does a style stop being a style and start being repetitive?

Am I repeating what I have done before? Have I stopped trying to explore new artistic areas and approaches? Am I happy doing the same thing I have been doing for, um, well, since forever? Does happiness and self-satisfaction really mean that I’ve gone all formulaic and repetitive? A few months ago I mentioned that even though I am using a digital camera my aesthetic is still grounded in the view camera. I still pretty much work the same way I have worked for the past thirty years. (How many photographers do you know that bolt their digital camera to a tripod? Besides me, of course.) I seem to see the same way I always have seen and record my vision with a much newer and sophisticated camera.

In terms of finished artwork, the end product has changed tremendously. I used to have single prints, mounted, matted and framed hanging on a wall. Now my prints occur in groups, properly sequenced and presented as folios, be they on the web or as a physical artifacts. Multiple photographs have superseded the individual print and I take the time to write an introduction to the work. The art seems to have pushed the photography into the background and it is now a component of a finished piece of art. Is this current method of work a way to enhance the photographic artifact or is it pushing it into the background? Should the photography change to keep up with the presentation?

I don’t have any answers for these questions today, but I do need to keep thinking about what I want to photograph and how to present it.

690 The Other Foot in the Future

The difference between the work required for a virtual exhibition on a website or a gallery show are significant. There is far less work required to produce the images for a show. No artifacts are created which eliminates printing, mounting, matting, framing and installation chores. With no artifacts projects can be completed quicker and one can create more projects. Creating more projects means one can learn more from more projects being completed. If you handle all the artifact creation yourself, the time spent printing, mounting, matting, framing and installing the prints is time saved for more creative tasks. Not having to create the artifacts also avoids the significant costs associated with creating a physical exhibition whether you pay for all the production services or buy the printing and framing supplies yourself. The costs of a physical exhibition are so great I tell my photographic friends, “I can only afford an exhibition once every year or two.”

Are there disadvantages to the website exhibition? Yes, there are. There is a lack of social feedback on the work presented. One can look at web site tracking data and see how many visits were made to the website and how many people looked at the files. There is no personal feedback on the work. Permanence of the exhibit invites comparison to earlier or later work and lays bare progress (or the lack of it) with your art.

Yes, one of the advantages of a physical exhibit is the excitement of an opening reception. Being able to see people appreciate the artifacts hanging on the walls of a gallery is exciting and gratifying. That is, if the expected number of people show up and they like our photographs. There is always the possibility that the public does not show up and the reviewers are harsh. A sparsely attended opening is an ego shattering experience, where a decline in website traffic is privately endured.

689 One Foot in the Past First Published 3/17/2019

Gallery shows are wonderful, a lot of work and tough to come by. The competition for gallery space is intense and the reward is fleeting and very often not financially rewarding. Yet, we still pursue this as a venue to display our art. There is prestige and honor to have our works shown in a gallery.

Yet, I see gallery shows as a thing of the past. We just don’t go out to galleries and museums as much as in the past. It is so much more convenient to see photographic images just about any time we want by visiting a website (or a blog). We are not required to go to a certain place at a specified time to see photographs. We can do so from the comfort and convenience of wherever we have our smartphone, tablet or computer. We see more photographs online than in galleries or museums by a factor of, what, a Billion or so? With the internet and a smartphone, we don’t have to make a special trip to see photographs. Photographic images are with us all the time, just a click or so away.

Instagram, Facebook and whatever the latest image sharing site is the latest rage are where photographs are going to be seen in the future. We will still have museums, but my guess is that museums will have photographs as more of a curiosity or historical artifact than anything else.

The transition from physical to virtual world should be a strategic effort for photographers. Participating in the virtual world is more effective in showing work to more people, more times and done with less work than having a gallery show.

688 The Accidental Project

I didn’t mean to start a new project, but it just sort of happened. While searching for images for the Daily Photograph Blog (see the link at the top of the page), I started seeing some interesting images. A theme developed right in front of me. I saw a recurring subject in many places over many years. I had no idea that particular subject kept showing up over and over again. I had no particular vision of this theme happening, it just did.

I have no idea why it happened, but now I just have to finish the project. I don’t know how it really started, but I do know that I will have to finish it.