Archive for the 'Photographic process' Category
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Last week, I made a 22″x33″ print of one my recent canyon images. When I was reviewing the print, I noticed some over saturated reds along the horizon, and a spot from sensor dust. I can’t help to feel but a little bit defeated when I need to redo a large print. I suppose I could have caught the dust spot and reds while I was proofing the image on my monitor, but some things you don’t see until you see. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks looking at a 10″x15″ print of the same image, and never noticed those two issues until I made the bigger print. Especially the dust spot. After you notice a dust spot in an image, it just glares at you.
I made adjustments on the image yesterday and send it off to my printer, a 24″ HP Z3100. The print gets about a third of the way through, and stops. Ugh, I’ll have to redo the print again. The printer’s display informs me that one of the ink cartridges, the Gloss Enhancer, is faulty. Not empty, but faulty. The cartridge is still under warranty, so I call HP support.
HP’s automated answering system asks me what product I’m using and puts me on hold for awhile. I get transferred to a real person, and she promptly asks me, “What product are you calling about?” Why is it that every answering system for any company I call asks for up front information and when you finally talk to a real person, the first thing they ask is what you’ve already told the robo voice? Every time.
Anyways, I provide my information: Name, address, phone, email, printer serial number, printer model number. This takes a few minutes and then I’m put on hold. I’m transferred to the DesignJet printers division. I give all my information again, another five minutes. It takes five minutes because I have to repeat and spell out each word multiple times. And then, I finally get to explain why I called. ”I’ve got a faulty gloss enhancer ink cartridge”, I say. “It’s under warrenty, can you send me a new one?” “Sure”, she says, and asks for more info. She asks for the letter on the cartridge. It’s an E, which stands for Gloss Enhancer. “Are you sure”, she asks? She asks me two more times to tell her the letter on the cartridge. “E”, I say. “It’s the Gloss Enhancer.” Hmm, she ponders. She’s stumped. I’m bewildered. I’m talking to the tech support within the DesignJet printer division of HP, and they don’t recognize the name of the ink cartridge that goes into their product. She says she needs to find some more information and puts me on hold for a couple of minutes. I’m listen to the pleasant hold music. She returns to the phone and says, “Ahh, you need the Gloss Enhancer cartridge.” Yes, I say. “I need the Gloss Enhancer cartridge.”
She says they’ll ship it to me, but she doesn’t know when it will ship. She’ll send me an email. That was some twenty hours ago, and I haven’t received the email. I have two exhibits coming up and need the printer working – working soon would be good. So, I went to an online merchant and placed an order.
Ah well. At least I didn’t have to fight to convince them that the faulty cartridge fell under warranty.
Update: I just got a FedEx package. It’s the Gloss Enhancer ink cartridge, overnighted from HP. Nice. No email notice though.
Posted in Photographic process | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
You have the opportunity to stand at the rim of a desert canyon. Or, the shore of a mountain lake. The location could even be the yard around your home. You can also pick the type of light and weather. What would you choose? What kind of picture would you want to make? Would you like dramatic clouds during the stillness of the early morning light? Or, perhaps the golden light of sunset with a wide view of the landscape.
Now, think of your favorite stories. It could be a novel, a movie, or something you heard from your neighbor. What makes these stories connect with you? Do they contain humor, beauty, oppression, grieving, peace, confusion, disaster, sacrifice, healing? Probably.
My favorite stories seem to start with a nobody main character. The protagonist is on a journey, it could be great or small. There’s struggle and then some sort of redemption. The ending could be happy or sad, but something has changed and I, the audience, have changed as well.
Let’s consider again the hypothetical nature photograph. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks in the high desert, so I’ll take the canyon option. So many of the nature photographs that we are exposed to have an idealized, on vacation, I’d-like-to-be-there quality. If these photographs were to be stories, I’d tell you about lying on my back on a sand bench, falling asleep as I gaze at the stars though a frame of high canyon walls. Mmm.. that’s good.
But there’s more than just that. What about all those other elements that make up the stories we love? That kind of photograph would be just the happy ending destination. How many of your favorite stories consist of just a nicely resolved destination with no journey? What would my and your photographs look like if they contained more of the visual equivalent of a good story?
Hey, we’re an instant gratification society. Give us the destination and screw the journey. The comfort without pain. Who needs change, just gimme the cozy goodness. Interestingly, our great stories are not like this.
Photojournalism, portraiture and street photography are good at covering this fuller range. What would this look like in nature photography? What is a great nature photograph that goes beyond presenting an ending?
Posted in Camper Van Chuck, Images, Photographic process | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
I like being able to see things. I’m extremely near sighted. Without my glasses or contact lenses, the world is a blurry mush, like walking around in one of Monet’s paintings. Each morning, I get to step between these worlds, from the undefined to the crisp as I put my contact lenses on. Once the contacts are in, I mostly take this crisp vision for granted. Except, every couple of months, when I go to the doctor for a glaucoma checkup. Glaucoma is an eye condition that eats away at your vision. It starts at the edges and works its way in. At each of those visits, I go in a little anxious, hoping that I won’t be hearing bad news.
A couple of days ago, I got an irritation in my right eye, so I’ve been wearing my glasses rather than the contacts. That would be fine, except my glasses are a prescription behind. I can mostly see, but not the fine details. I can see fine enough to walk around, but not the subtleties. The details come to a blur just as I reach out to them, like grapes just beyond my reach. I feel disabled. Something vital to the way I make photographs is gone. It’s frustrating.
I’m currently in Port Huron, Michigan, at the beginning of a two month photographic road trip. Rather than taking pictures, I’ve spent the day trying to find an ophthalmologist with an opening in their schedule.
When people view my photographs, sometimes they’ll comment that I have “good eyes”. On days like today, I mourn a little over the goodness of my eyes. It is really good to be able to see. By seeing I get to make pictures and by making pictures, I strive to see the world even deeper.
Two women came to visit once when I was exhibiting my work. One of the women had her arm linked around the other’s as if being guided. As they viewed the photographs, one of the women would pause to comment on each image. “This photograph has several small branches that are dancing around each other. There’s an airy softness, but there’s also crisps bits pink as the lines lead to small flowers.” After a few images, it occurred to me what was happening and I was deeply honored. Her companion was blind. The sighted woman was being her eyes, so that they could both see the photographs. She was, in the truest sense, giving my work to her friend. They had eyes to see.
Update: I got in to see an eye doctor, and everything is fine. He pulled a bit of fleshy growth (ugh!) out of my eye and put me on some antibiotic drops. Contacts can go back in the next morning. Onward to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Posted in Camper Van Chuck, Photographic process | No Comments »
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
I delivered a group of photographs to a gallery today. Two of the pieces were printed at 33″x50″, larger than I’ve ever printed before. Now, I’ve heard a range of rants against large prints: Big prints are just a fad. You don’t have the intimacy that you do with small prints. I’ve heard that large prints are just compensations for ego, shouting out “pay attention to me!”
When I started photography, an 11×14 was a really big print. The first time I framed an image to 18″x24″, the final result seemed impressively humongous. I felt dangerous working with such a large piece of glass. Why, a few months earlier my largest images were 5×7’s and that was splurging. That changed last year when I bought a printer that uses 24 inch wide rolls of paper. These “huge” prints only seem so large because photography as a medium has, for most of it’s history, been tech-limited to printing smaller. Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, but smaller doesn’t either. They’re just different. And, with different options we can express different things. We’re used to paintings in large and small sizes. We’ll get used to it in photography as well.
Now, I’m not dismissing the small photograph. There’s something precious to holding a photograph in your hand and taking in the detail. However, looking at my images printed big, the size just feels right. Especially in the images with all the little pieces. There’s enough detail to let each little piece be it’s own entity, and enough presence to stand back to observe the overall motion in the composition. Yeah, I just love those big prints.
By the way, one hazard of printing big is framing big. I spent a couple of days last week cutting two inch strips off the long side of 32″x40″ glass sheets. I had to give myself a little pep talk before each cut. You need to have a cool demeanor when cutting glass, ’cause if you get frustrated there’s nothing safe around to punch. I had a couple of cuts go wrong and felt doomed to losing every piece of glass in the case. After the next cut came out perfect, I leaned back in a sigh of thankful relief. By the time I was done, I had broken just the right amount to have enough left over to frame everything. Whew.
Posted in Photographic process | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
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.
Posted in Images, Photographic process | No Comments »
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
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.
Posted in Announcements, Images, Photographic process | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
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.
Posted in Images, Photographic process | No Comments »
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
Concerning the image accompanying my post, Fifth Impression, my dear Uncle Chuck asks:
I am curious about why this picture and this topic. Is it assumed that the cross made by the empty space in the center is obvious now when framed correctly, but the framing and therefore the recognition of the cross didn’t appear to you the first (2nd, 3rd, 4th) time around? While repeatedly studying the scenery at this place in search for interesting or striking subject matter did you eventually realize it had been there all along but you had simply missed it? Or is there something else you feel is now obvious to you but which may yet be too subtle for me see or grasp in my own “first impression”
The image choice was kindof arbitrary. You may notice that the Fifth Impression post was written in February, while the picture is of leaves in the fall. So, alas, the tree depicted is not the tree mentioned in the posting.
However, the tree in the image was something that took several visits to notice. I’ve walked by that area probably tens of times. Trees have such character within their shape that I had previously worked on capturing the shapes of the trees themselves. On this outing, I was fascinated by the gaps. I had this notion of entry-ways into another world. I didn’t see the cross shape until that day I became gap intrigued.
I don’t know if that realization is a subtle one, but it did take until way beyond the first impression for me to notice it. The cross seems obvious to me now. But most insights, even those that at first felt like revelations, seem obvious to me once I’ve taken them in.
Posted in Photographic process | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Last summer, I read “A Wrinkle in Time”, a children’s book by Madeleine L’Engle. I had just finished reading four Harry Potter books in a row and was on a fantasy kick. In the following months, I read several more of her books, both fiction and non-fiction. So now, I pretty much adore Madeleine L’Engle. In fact, I’ve got a current formula for when I can’t decide what book to next read: L’Engle for soul, and any one of Terry Pratchet’s numerous Discworld books for amusement.
Anyways, back to Madeleine. There’s a deep earnestness in what she writes that brings out a sense of a life worth living. Not a fantasy-everything-is-hunky-dory life, but a real fully alive kind of life.
In her book, “A Circle of Quite”, she describes the danger of self image, and advertising:
Give the public the “image” of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality.
Self image pulls us away from reality. Deep, isn’t it?
Following that, L’Engle describes going through rejection:
…during that decade when I was in my thirties, I couldn’t sell anything. If a writer says he doesn’t care whether he is published or not, I don’t believe him. I care. Undoubtedly I care too much…. Every rejection slip – and you could paper walls with my rejection slips – was like the rejection of me, myself, and certainly of my amour-propre.
She goes on to describe how several of her books were turned down and how she felt guilty that her writing had taken away from being with her family. This culminates in a difficult rejection on her fortieth birthday:
So the rejection on the fortieth birthday seemed an unmistakable command: Stop this foolishness and learn to make cherry pie. I covered the typewriter in a great gesture of renunciation. Then I walked around and around the room, bawling my head off. I was totally, unutterably miserable.
Then I stopped, because I realized what my subconscious mind was doing while I was sobbing: my subconscious mind was busy working out a novel about failure.
I uncovered the typewriter. In my journal I recorded this moment of decision, for that’s what it was. I had to write. I had no choice in the matter. It was not up to me to say I would stop, because I could not. It didn’t matter how small or inadequate the talent. If I never had another book published, and it was very clear to me that this was a real possibility, I still had to go on writing.
…. What matters is the book itself. If it is as good a book as you can write at this moment in time, that is what counts. Success is pleasant; of course you want it; but it isn’t what makes you write.
Posted in Photographic process | 1 Comment »
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
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?
Posted in Images, Photographic process | 3 Comments »
