A Lost Weekend and Wandering Thoughts:

Goodrich Sign, Okeechobee, FL 2010

After about a 10-year lapse in belonging to the Society for Photographic Education, I rejoined this year for various reasons, chief among them, I wanted to reconnect to a larger group of photographers. I recently felt out of the loop to photographers in my region and across the country. So I paid my dues again (more expensive) and signed up to go to the Southeast Regional Conference in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (less expensive). I applied to give a talk on my photography and it was accepted. I was among about a dozen programs given throughout the day on Saturday.

The trip was eventful from the beginning, while still in the predawn dark I ran over something metal which punched a hole in one of my tires and wedged a steel bar to the undercarriage of my car. Due to the good work of AAA I got back on the road again, with a new tire in little more than an hour. This event however, placed a strange veil over the rest of the weekend, where most everything turned out good, but there were some things that made the weekend not as good as it could have been. It should be said that I blame no one for this, as the serendipity of the road is sometime good and sometimes works against you.

I saw about four of the programs, (three were going on at any given time) and they were all interesting. I particularly enjoyed a talk about the photographs made in the Storyville section of New Orleans in the late part of the 19^th century. After this excellent presentation it was my term and I attached my computer to the projector and looked at the first image to make sure that it looked good and started my lecture. I am not sure what happened, but the rest of the slides had so much contrast they looked as if they had only two tones, black and white. At this point there was not time to see if the projector could be adjusted and I just went on with the talk, inviting the audience to look at a box of prints that I brought to get a better idea of what the images looked like.

The ones in the audience, who talked with me after, said that they understood about the projector, (it seems that it had been that way almost the whole day) but still found the program interesting because of what I had to say. One young lady, who was a student at Virginia Intermont, said to me later that she knew that I would not knowingly have such awful images, so it had to be the projector.

For the most part it was a good conference as I did see many people who I had known, but not seen in 10 years. I was pleased that they remembered me and seemed glad to see me. I was glad to see them. I also met some new people, a librarian from Kansas, who had an intense interest in photography. Another young man was very interested in my method of traveling for he too was a wanderer. He was doing a project where he would, as he traveled, stop every hour and photograph whatever was there. There is someone who believes in serendipity!

Even with the good reception among my older friends, I will have to attend more conferences to fully recapture my sense of belonging. Like any group, there are cliques. This not a snobby or bad thing, it is just that some of these people only see each other once or twice a year and want time to catch up. I will have to pay some dues. I felt good about the students that I met. So, even with the issues involving tires and projectors I had a pretty good time and the weekend did for me what I wanted it to. Thanks to all those who made me feel welcomed and remembered.

A Means to an End

Wanted, Used Cars, Orlando, FL 2011

In class the other day, we started talking about approaches to making photos. One of the students saw something in the back of her photo that was of great interest to her now, but she completely did not see when making the photograph. I told her that often when someone makes a photograph they only concentrate on the main subject. In my own photography, I try to give a good deal of effort looking around the subject to make sure that there is noting in my images that I do not want there. I tend to give more attention to what is behind the subject than the subject itself. After all, the subject must be good, or it would not be the subject. Along the same line of thinking is what Sam Able said in a workshop of his that I attended, when he talked about how he tried to compose from the back forwards.

As the discussion moved on, the subject changed a bit from what is seen in composing a single image to how making one photograph can ask questions that may determine how the next photograph is composed. I have always said, that as much as possible, if a scene or subject is worth one photograph then it is worth making a few more. For a number of years I would just think about how many different ways that I could make an image, like change from horizontal to vertical, get higher or get lower, or change the focal length, et cetera, et cetera. However, in time I began to think that I would make one image and while looking at it through the viewfinder, the previous composition might suggest another composition or even ask me a question about how the subject might be viewed differently. Taking that extra look in the viewfinder might suggest another point of view, or lens to be used, or whatever. When I did this, photos seem to build upon one another, each image asking me what would happen if I did this or did that. Changes in composition were made with more purpose and allowed me to become more absorbed in what I was trying to say with my image.

Recently I was shooting a sign for a local car repair place. When I first got out of my van I saw the image as a straight forward image that would have been solely of the tire and what was written on it. But that image told me that it might be more if there was more foreground – background relationship, so I pulled out the wide angle lens and got a composition that also included another sign in the foreground and a billboard in the background. But then moving to the other side, I was able to include a house like building in the background that was visually important, but subtler than the image that had the billboard. Either image was visually and contextually stronger than the first view. It paid to have taken the time to consider as many of the possibilities and opportunities that any composition gives me.

Home Runs and Foul Balls

Dawson Tire, Dawson GA, 2011

When we look at the work of any accomplished photographer we assume that every time that he or she goes out photographing their resulting photographs are destine for museum walls. After all, most every Ansel Adams photograph I have even seen has been perfect. The thing is, that Adams is known for about 300 or 400 images that have become shown on a regular basis, but he made thousands of images that have never made it to the print phase. The fact is that we have only seen the best work of some of the photographers who we have grown to respect and admire. Of any given photographer there are, for every good photograph made, hundreds of those that did not make the cut. Some of these images are pretty good, and we would have not minded taking them, but if we were to look deep in the inner reaches of any photographer’s collection we would find many images that just are not that good.

How can a well-known professional photographer, who has made many great pictures, have any duds? It is my guess that his duds played a roll in many of his or her great images. While I do not think that anyone thinks of me as a great photographer, I try as much as I can to take as many photos of a given subject as I can think of. Any group of these images fall into three groups: there will be some that are down right bad, I should have never wasted the pixels taking the image. What was I thinking? There will be another group that are OK, good compositions and exposures, but nothing special. The last and smallest group is where I hit the home run, out of the park. I have been doing photography for sometime, so how come I had that group of bad photographs? Really great photography is not done without risk. That is not to say that you are putting your well being at risk, but in every photograph one should take visual risks. It is the visual risks that allow us to explore the deeper possibilities of what a photograph can mean. So when taking photographs, taking visual risks allow for the opportunity to make an image that is special, but as is true with taking risk we may also make an image that is shot down in flames. The risk did not pay off. When they work, the photograph is something special, when it doesn’t we cannot hit the delete button soon enough less the person we are photographing with see it and makes fun of us. With risk there are many rewards, but there is also peril. In the end, no one has to see the stinkers, and in fact that is why they have a trash button, but one has to give them credit for the role they played in getting the better image.

The best photographers that I have known are those who are fearless in making their images. They do so knowing that the visual risks that they take are not always going to work out. But when they do, it is often times those images that they make their mark with.

A Day Out

Motel, near Perry, FL 2011

This past weekend I went to Tallahassee to do some shooting in southern Georgia and Alabama. I went with my good friend Jon Manchester and then we met another good friend, Todd Bertolaet in Tallahassee and we went off for a day of shooting.

True to the way that I approach finding my images we went out early and drove in the general direction of various towns in southern Georgia and Alabama. If at anyplace along the road we see something of interest we would stop and look closer and then maybe make an image or two. I sometimes make a stop along the road just to make some photos, to break the ice as it were. Sometime it feels like if I do not make the first image at some point, then the day will be lost. I do not care if the image comes to something, I just need to get the camera out and expose a few frames.

While I was having a great time, both Todd and Jon are good people to spend time with; I was frustrated that I just didn’t think that I was getting anything photographically. It was frustrating, but I kept plugging away trying to make the most of opportunities that at first glance I did not think much of. But when I got back to the room, looking over what I had shot, there were some gems among the photographs that I took. From this I learned two lessons: First, there are not always great subjects out there. Or at the very least, there are not good subjects that are apparent to you. Second, it is not always the subject, but what you, as the photographer make of it. The best of my images from last weekend came mostly from my seeing the light and finding interesting subjects in that light and then finding the best composition for the subject in that light. It is always a building process.

Great images or not, it was a good weekend with friends and photography. To my mind not a bad way to spend a couple of days.

Developing a new eye

Flowmaster, Okeechobee, FL 2010

This past week I had an opening for an exhibition that I curated. It was a show about abstraction, and I wanted to give a few of my thoughts about the weekend of events that surrounded the show. First of all, the show was very good, the work of Betty Scott Owen, Scott Sturgeon, and Jon Manchester were all very good and got rave reviews from those who were there. Showing abstraction is somewhat rare for us in the Photography Department at Crealdé, mainly because most of us here are more in the tradition of documentary photography. Curating the show, it was hard for me to find three good abstract photographers, but in the end the effort was worth the wait.

Betty gave a workshop that weekend and it is my feeling that some of the participants were working out of their comfort zone. I was glad to see those students in the workshop because it is always good to photograph without feeling that you totally sure of yourself. I feel that it makes you look harder, look deeper. Even the student, who did not do the most abstract work during the workshop, was heading in that direction, using his eyes more than he had ever done before. He may have been unsure and unhappy with his work, but he did make movement.

This past fall, when I was in Yorktown Virginia visiting my friend Bob Lerner, I showed a few pieces that were a good bit more abstract than my usual photography. However, Bob noticed that my normal social landscapes had a different feel to them in part because my “for fun” attempts at abstraction had influenced my eye and those photographs that were not intended to be abstract. I feel that the photos were the better for it. Abstraction for me is difficult and I have to work at it, but it is there to be mined if I take the time to notice. Maybe in another 20 years I will have enough worthy abstracts to show, but until then, I will use them as an exercise for my eye and mind.

 

Wanderings XXXV

For Love or Money:

Sold Richmond VA 2009

I remember when I was just starting out in photography there were some reasons that I thought that a life in photography might be cool. I was 18 at the time, so girls figured high in my interest in photography, but also a thought as to why to become a photographer was money and fame. On some logical level, I knew that fame and fortune would be difficult, but it crossed my mind many times when standing over a sink of smelly chemicals in the dark.

There was a flaw in my yearnings, but then there always is when your 18. Money and fame is no reason for one to become a photographer. I will go so far as to say that if it is money and fame that you seek, the possibility to obtain it is greatly reduced. The only reason to be in photography is the love for it. Looking back, even at 18, I must of known that, because even at that early age I made photographs that I was interested in making, not because I thought that greatness would be the result. This may be boastful of me, but I think that I have made a few pretty good photographs over the years, but not once did I make those thinking that I would become famous because of them. I made them because they were reflective of how I see the world and those who looked at those photographs either found a connection with what I had to say through my photos or it showed them a new way of thinking about the world. Both of those results are much more important than any money I may have made from those images.

Some of you that know me personally know that I have a more than average interest in the history of photography and that I like to read biographies of some of the more important photographers. Reading a biography of Ansel Adams, the one truly rich and famous photographer that we can all name, really was not that rich until his sixties. He was well known, but he had to take commercial assignments throughout his working career. Many of the most important photographers that I might name were not well off when there photographic life were over. Rich or poor, the one thing that is common to all those photographers was that they were passionate about what they did. Their work was more important than the money they made from it. To this I agree.

While I never had what might be called fame and fortune in my life in photography in the common sense of the term, my life has been so much richer because of the people that I have met and the places that I have gone because of my life in photography and for me that is more than enough.

 

Visually Thinking VI

Tanks, Power Plant, East Florida, 2010

What I see of myself:

 

The other night I was at an opening when I was greeted by a woman who is a student at Crealdé School of Art and she was telling me that she found a few of her class mates intimidating because they just seemed to be so much more creative than her. I find it interesting for several reasons. First, the creative process is not a competitive process, (it does show up from time to time, but it has nothing to do with being creative) and that she did not think that she had any talent. I told her not to worry about what others did and spend more time thinking about doing the best work that she could do. Her discussion did bring some thoughts to mind that I thought might be of interest.

She reminded me of a story from when I was in school. There was another student who, in my mind as well as others, to have been the best student in class. When critique day came, we would all stand our pictures on a ledge and then the students and the teacher would talk about them. I would put my work up feeling that I had really done something, only to see this other student’s work and have a sinking feeling that his work was so much better than my own. When at the end of the second term, he was going to another school, we shook hands to say good by, he said to me that he hated critiques because whenever I put my work up he felt that my work was so much better than his. I began to understand that a person tends to discount their own efforts while they see the uniqueness of the other person’s work. I feel embarrassed sometime when someone comes to me and tells me how good they think my photography is. How can it be good? I just pointed the camera in some direction and snapped the shutter, what is the big deal? We don’t always see what is unique in our own work, while we do see what is unique in others. In the end, the best thing is not to think or worry about it. When I am photographing with a friend I sometimes think, “Damn, I wished I had thought of that!” and I will tell that their picture really made me mad. (Telling them that is a high complement) In the end, I try to learn from my fellow photographers and artists and see how I can make what others have done and make it my own. Do what is honest for you, learn from others and after learning your craft you do something well feel good about it.

Thinking Visually V

A Visual Language:

B. Ball Court, South Florida, 2010

My students often ask me about what makes a good picture. How does one tell if an image is any good? This question can be about the student’s own photographs as well as famous photographs. There is no easy answer to why a photograph is good or not as a major factor can be a matter of taste. Having said that, there are some things that one can do to determine whether a photograph is any good. Developing a sense of what is good or bad can be important in editing one’s own work as well as increasing one’s enjoyment and understanding of other’s images. To understand what makes what makes an image good or not it is good to develop a language of how to think about images. This visual language is a starting point to determining the worth of a photograph.

I have given workshops and classes on how to be able to talk about photographs and on these occasions I start off with having students come up with a list of words that they think are important in what makes a good photograph. I try to have them come up with 25 or so words and then I will throw in a few words of my own. These words are the basis of getting one to think about a given image. Some of these words are very basic, but they are a catalyst to understanding photographs. Some of these words are:

Content,            Impact,            Mood,                        Feeling,            Light & Darkness

Emotion             Space               Rhythm            Movement            Visual Risk

Subject               Communication                        Point of View             Technique

These are just a few and with a little thought more may come to mind. To try this out, take any one word and see how you can apply it to any given photograph. Then take another word and see how it applies. Do this with several words and you will gain a sense whether an image is doing what an image is supposed to do. Use these words to ask yourself questions and to make an effort to see in to the image more deeply. Try this with a famous photograph and then with one of your own. Ask yourself how personal your reaction to the photograph was. Ask yourself about your prejudices and how they shape your feelings about the image. If a historical image, ask yourself about the context that you are looking at the image now and the context of the time that it was taken.  With practice and time you will get a sense of what is a good photograph and why.

Wanderings XL

What can be learned from the past?

Bowling Pin, Winter Garden, FL 2010

Over the years there have been some of my students who resented that I would put historical images in my Photo I lectures. I have to say that most enjoyed my little peeks into photography’s past, or at the very least knew that some history will be part of any educational program. Of those who did not like the images of Arnold Newman, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand and others, it was felt that photos 50 to 150 years old could not be relevant. What does this have to do with the pictures that I want to make?

There are two main reasons that I show historical images in my classes. First, photography is photography. Many of the great photographers of the past 170 years dealt with the same photographic issues as the photographers who want to photograph their kids with an inexpensive digital camera. After all, F-Stops are still F-stops. To be sure there are differences, but I believe that analog and digital photography have more in common than they have differences. To make the photograph come out the way that the photographer wants, some basic considerations have to be dealt with. What better way to learn how to approach making a better image than to look at those whose photographs we are still looking at 50 to 150 years later?

I also think that it is important to know where you are coming from. To ignore what 170 years of photography (and thousands of years of art) has brought us means that we would have to start at the beginning visually, or to reinvent the wheel. If coming to a class is to become a better photographer is the reason, then looking at historical images can only be of help.

In my career, I spent a good deal more time looking at good photography through books and magazines than I did “how to books.” Not that I did not read those kinds of books, I feel that it is important to learn and practice craft, but it is just as important to have a sense of aesthetics as well. I found the work of Stieglitz still relevant today as it was over 100 years ago.

Wanderings XXXIX

CXS Office, Okeechobee, FL 2010

In Search of a Darkroom:

I have a photographer friend whose name will be left unmentioned, he knows who he is, that was lamenting with me one day about how sad it was that I no longer worked in a darkroom. I found his comment interesting because it assumed that I missed the darkroom. I have been working almost strictly digital for the past two years and I have to say that I do not miss the darkroom. The reason is that I have nothing to miss. That is not exactly right, I do miss looking at the image in the tray and have it magically come into view in the developer. But other than that, I find working on a digital image and working in the darkroom to be pretty much the same.

When I look at what I do in the darkroom and what I do in my “digital darkroom” to be much the same. I think that my friend thinks that it is mechanical, you press a couple of buttons and then the job is done, but that is just not the way that it is.  The fact is I am making many of the same decisions and adjustments as I did in the darkroom. Issues of contrast, exposure, dodging and burning, are still the main issue that I have to decide on when printing either digitally or with the silver process. However, with digital I have some more ways to get what I really want out of the print.

Not long ago, at an exhibition of mine a local university professor had brought her students to the show. The instructor commented how much my digital prints looked like silver prints. To be fair, they were under glass and it may have been a little difficult to really see the prints, but I found it an interesting observation that I had heard before. It had not occurred to me before then that maybe the reason was that I grew up making silver prints and that I made digital prints based on an understanding of print quality that came from 35 plus years of printing with silver. Maybe I am using silver standards for making digital prints. To be sure, they are different, holding one of my silver prints beside one of my digital prints they are different. It is the difference between silver and ink, but under glass and on the wall the difference lessen.  (Note: I do not think that one is better than the other, they are just different) The point is not to make them the same, but to exploit the possibilities of the given process to make the best image possible. For me, the best print possible is what the goal should be. That was true when I printed with the silver process and is true with digital.

I am not trying to talk anyone into one process or the other. Whether one makes a digital print or a silver one, or for that matter a print of any process the main thing is, that it is up to that artist. What is important is that the artist makes the best image possible. That is the acid test.