The Desert

At the beginning of May, Hannah and I spent two weeks backpacking in southern Utah, around Zion and Grand Staircase - Escalante. We were there just long enough to wet our appetites. On the way back, I picked up Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. How is it that I haven’t read this book before?

I love that desert, I do. There is much about this world that is wild, untamed and fantastic. Go. Take a long walk and breathe it in. Your life may depend on it.

And then, there’s Niagara Falls. Makes me want to cry.

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Through The Veil

More of spring from yesterday’s afternoon walk. These tiny web resolutions just don’t do images like this justice. I’m looking forward to printing this one big.

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The Trees Dance as the Redbud Sets

It’s spring. The trees are blooming all around town. I love it.

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Taking Pictures In The Rain

There are certain types of weather that get me itching to be outside - the good weather. It started as warm, sunny, cloudless days, with a gentle breeze. A few years ago, I bought a stunt kite, the kind with two strings that allows you steer the kite into acrobatic maneuvers. I could also reliably steer it into the ground. Good weather now included windy weather. I’d see the trees swaying and itch to be out.

With photography, good weather started with the magic hour, the golden light around sunrise and sunset. Then, it became the soft light of cloudy days. Then it was harsh light filtered through leaves.

Lately though, the good weather has been with the rain. The damp earth smells good. The world changes in front of me as drops land and slide and glisten. The rain patters as drops land on my jacket hood, like a drumbeat to the soundtrack in my head. It’s me, the woods and my camera. My camera is wet, as are my nose, and my knees, and the trees. Through the puddles I play.

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Little Pieces All Together

If you have been following my work, you may have noticed that many of the images depict lots of small bits of things: leaves, grass and bits of trees. They are abstractions of organized chaos, if you will. I started making photographs like this about two years ago. I didn’t start out seeking to make these kinds of images. It was after the fact, as I reviewed my shots, that I would notice I was attracted to these types of compositions.

Just about a year ago, I tried to explain why I was drawn to these coordinated little pieces, which resulted in a blog post.

…There is something really amazing about orchestras and choirs. Perhaps it’s the large group of people, each with their own talents, textures, voices and parts. When they all move together, they create something wonderful, something larger and outside of themselves…. This fascination has tumbled into an appropriation - at first subconscious and now intentional. I’m viewing nature and considering the orchestra.

Now that I had a notion of where I was going, I no longer had a random trend. I had a project. In the past couple of months, I’ve been editing down the images to a smaller, cohesive portfolio. And now, I’m finally at a point where I feel it’s ready to share. The project is called Little Pieces All Together. You can view the images, along with a statement about the project, in the gallery area of my website.

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Beauty and Silence

At the recommendation of Paul Buzti, I picked up a copy of Creative Authenticity, by Ian Roberts. The book is a collection of essays about artistic vision. The first chapter explores the role of beauty in art.

With my images, I attempt to express beauty. Not necessarily pretty, but beauty in a deeper sense, one that expresses truth. As an aside, by truth, I don’t mean the same thing as fact. Truth and fact may overlap, but they don’t have to. Statistics are facts, and yet they can easily lie. A parable, or myth can be a work of fiction, but be resoundingly true.

OK, so I’m exploring beauty. Among the many reactions to my work, one that keeps coming up goes something like this: The person sees a piece and immediately exclaims, “Oh, wow.. that is so beautiful! Gee, isn’t that amazing… You’ve done a great job!” And then, just as quickly, walks away. I enjoy getting compliments. And, I’m thankful when someone appreciates something that I’ve created. But, this use of the word “beautiful” is different than what I’m striving for.

As languages age, words change in meaning. In this case, beautiful is losing meaning.

From Creative Authenticity:

I like Ken Weber’s definition, that beauty “suspends the desire to be elsewhere”. In the face of great art we experience transcendence….

In the face of beauty, we are silenced, because beauty expresses silence. In lavishing attention on the object of the artwork, the consciousness of the artist can touch something divine, some transcendental quality, and that transcendent element now resides in the artwork. How do we know it? We feel it. We experience it. Our heart responds to that sublime quality the artist infused into the work.

Now, my work may not yet be to the point that I can expect people to call it beauty. But, that’s what I strive for.

A few weeks ago, Hannah and I spent a few days backpacking in Red River Gorge. The weather was cold and the packs were heavy (ugh.. a good portion of that weight is camera gear). I spent a good amount of time during those few days responding with silence. I would come up to an amphitheater carved out in the rock, several stories high, and stand in wonder and awe. I had no desire to be elsewhere.

A few weeks before that, during a road trip, I was at a rest area in Tennessee. There was a woods next to the parking lot. I ran over to the woods, spread out my arms, and took a long deep breath. I felt an urge to run into and just breathe in those woods. I was at a rest area. And yet, the beauty was there waiting.

In light of this, one of the highest compliments someone could give would go something like this: the person would come up to a piece, spend several minutes looking at it in silence, turn to me and in the slightest of whispers, say thank you. And then, walk away. That would be the deepest sense of wonderful.

I suppose they could also buy the piece. But um… that’s a different topic.

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The Fifth Impression

Our daily interactions are filled with first impressions. Think of the strangers that you met earlier today, or that new pop song on the radio. Think of watching the auditions on American Idol, where you are encouraged to make a quick judgment on whether that person is worthy of additional attention. Most advertising is based upon first impressions. If they don’t catch your attention in the first few seconds, they don’t catch you at all. When we travel, much of the experience is based upon first impressions - the surroundings are different and novel. Wow, pretty! And, ooh shiny! That buzz and thrill. These are the reactions of a first impression.

Now, think about the photography that we’re exposed to in mass media. Calendars, National Geographic and travel shows. You’ll find many well done, eye catching images. These images are captured to give you a taste of what it would be like to be “there”, at the location of the image. A taste… a first impression.

First impressions are great and all, but they’re also only surface level interactions. So much of my busy, distracted life is surface level interactions.

A couple of days ago, I was out wandering around the woods with my camera. The location is one of my favorite places to photograph in the city, one that I’ve returned to many times. I was looking at the same tree for the twentieth time and thinking, what does it take to see beyond the first impression? What would I notice on the third and fourth impression?

When I first started photography, I was enamored with looking for new things. I would get up early to see the sunrise. I would stop and look at peeling paint. I would notice the patterns on a leaf. I took pictures of these things, but they were more documentary than anything. It was more to show that I noticed something, rather than, I got to know something. I thought I was seeing things in a new way, but all I had done was begin to look.

What type of images would you make, by the time you got to the fifth impression?

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The importance of color

Through various art shows in the past weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many wonderful people. If you’re reading this because of such a meeting - Welcome! And, thanks for keeping up with my efforts.

Photography shapes how we see. A still image, smooshed down flat to fit on a piece of paper, or on your computer screen, is a different experience than how we see the world through our eyes and how our eyes get processed by our brain. With the prevalence of photographs in our lives, this creates a strange cycle where we see something in a picture, which then shapes our perception of that subject in our minds, which is different from the perception we would have had if we encountered that subject with our own eyes.

This interpretation of seeing gets even trickier when considering color. Our perception of color seems subjective at best, and is complicated by different kinds of lighting, neighboring colors, cultural conditioning and probably even our moods. Just think of all the color patches available when selecting paint colors for the walls of your home. Take one home, put it up on the wall, and it looks different than what you saw in the store. Paint a whole wall with the color, and it looks different still. Put your couch next to it, and you have yet another perception.

So, what to do when rendering color in a photographic print? The best I can go for is to render colors in a way that suits the vision that I want to convey. Most times, I try to match a vision of how I “saw” the subject when taking the photograph. That is, imagining how the subject would look as a photograph while looking at the real thing with my eyes.

I have a photograph of a reddish/orange canyon wall that I first printed very saturated. This initial printing was just after I got home from hiking that canyon, and I was filled with a wonder of walking among colors that were bolder and richer than I would have expected. A few weeks later, the same orange made me think of Cheetos puffed cheese snacks, and I tweaked the color in the image and printed it again.

When people are viewing my photographs, I’ll often get the question, “Are those the real colors?” Well, they are as real as I can convey my perception of reality. And they are as biased as how I might recount the story of a first kiss.

A few weeks ago, at an outdoor art show, a woman spent some time looking at a print of the “Globemallows” picture that I’ve included with this post. She turns to me, and asks, “Are those the real colors? I wouldn’t expect the flower stems to be blue.” I replied saying that I remembered the stems as being a pastel green, perhaps a green-blue. She pauses, takes off her tinted sunglasses, and looks at the picture again. She responds, “Ah…. I suppose they are green.”

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New Studio In Progress

My current studio within my house is small and cramped. Each time I switch tasks from printing to matting to framing, I have to rearrange things to make room. The trash can is in front of the filing cabinets, which is also where I have to stand to use the mat cutter. The mat cutter is on a table which needs to be slid away from the wall to be used. When the mat cutter is in use, the table then blocks the way to the computer. I use the counter in the bathroom as extra surface space to aid shuffling things around. I’ve worked out a system to where the small space and rearranging doesn’t bother me. But, maybe that’s because I’ve worked this way for long enough that I don’t know any better.

Working from home also results in a good amount of solitude. This is great and convenient at times, but I also miss having camaraderie.

So, I’m excited to say that I’ve been busy this week preparing a new studio space. The new space is in a building that houses around twenty other artists studios and a few galleries. I suppose the change of surroundings will result in a change in how I work.

This week has been a blur of dismantling and painting. Photos to come as the space progresses.

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Backpacking On Kindness

At the end of last month, Hannah and I set out to hike a portion of Grand Gulch, in southern Utah. We planned on a three to four day through-hike route, which means that the hike is one way, without a loop. To facilitate this, I arranged to park our car at the endpoint of the hike, and then have a shuttle drive us to the trailhead. We had a long drive from the airport to Grand Gulch, so I told the shuttle company that I’d give them a call with a specific pickup time as we got closer.

I didn’t expect, however that most all of southern Utah is long stretches of remote land. There were few towns or gas stations along the way, and no cell phone towers.

We arrived at the shuttle meeting point around 5:00pm. No cell phone signal in the last two or three hours. I had mentioned to the shuttle company that we would arrive around five, but without making the final confirmation call, I wasn’t sure if they would still come. At 6:00pm, with no sight of the shuttle, Hannah and I loaded up our packs and decided to walk the five miles of road to the trailhead. After 1.5 miles on the road, a car with two ladies pulls up and asks with concern and confusion, “What ever are you two doing out here?” After some quick hellos, and guarantees that we wouldn’t hurt them, they gave us a lift. I supposed it helped that we were just starting our hike and looked fresh. A few days later, we would exit the trail with days of sweat and covered in dust.

I should also mention that their car pulled up just as we were approaching a dead, decomposing cow. I actually didn’t notice, but Hannah did. So not only were we saved precious miles of racing the sun hiking, we were also excused from experiencing the lovely aroma of decay in the desert sun.

Once at the trailhead, we had another four miles ahead of us. We setup camp in the last few minutes of dusk.

To those two ladies, who risked their lives to help two helpless backpackers, I again give you my heartfelt thanks. I hope you had a wonderful time exploring Monument Valley. My gratitude to you for seeing us off to a most wonderful journey.

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