Some photographs are the same. There are those that I know exactly what I want to see when it’s done then there are those that just keep praying on your mind so you go back to it over and over trying different things until the picture revels itself. I find that this happens most on photographs that I passed over the first time I sorted shots. I’m just not in tune with it at the sorting time but later I see it and all of a sudden something popes out. The mystery of art or maybe better, the mystery of the mind.

Here is a sample of a poem that isn’t cooked yet. I keep them in the “not finished” folder on my computer.

I see blue sky

Finally;

The cold sets in.

But today the sky is blue.

I live for blue.

My chest. A thousand pounds

Pressing down.

What useless emotions.

Wasted and wasting me.

Where is peace?

Under the rubble of broken buildings in Haiti,

Shaken by God’s hand?  Maybe.

The year ends. I look for that strand to pull myself into the next.

Visit the site: http://www.100in365.com/

In keeping with the season.

Ghost

I don’t talk a lot about how I work so I thought I’d take you through one of the images I did last year. “Wings.” What I really do is when I see something that stirs my artistic curiosity I stop and look at it and if I really see what I’m looking for I take some shots. What I see is not what others driving by see. I try to peel back the layers of metaphors and get to what the object or what ever really is. In this case I saw an abandoned gas station with those wing type lights on the pump islands. The pumps were long gone but these lights were still standing but in wacky ways. I hoped out of my car and shot the light from a few angles and varying exposures and left. Very quick operation.

Original photo of the light.

Now this original was over exposed but I really liked the texture and deep blues so this is where I started. I often begin with a less than perfect shot if it is closer to what I “see.” So from here I usual spend time in Lightroom doing development adjustments. I messed with the exposure, color mix and cropping. Once it is looking pretty good I will have an image that looks like this.

Intermediate image

Now into Photoshop to remove the light pole and make sure the image is clean. I did color fine tuning here with effects to produce the final image.

Wing (finished piece)

I know I didn’t explain which knobs I turned but I don’t really remember. I do it by feel not formula. Once I finish the piece I take back into Lightroom. I work from DNG files through the entire process. I don’t do jpegs unless I have to. There are times I have to export a DNG file into a JPEG for some external processing but I always re-import the image as a DNG.

Well that’s it for now. I finished writing the book about Robin Randle and I’m editing so I can create readers copies. That’s kept me off the streets so I’m itching to get shooting again.

N

Three Trees

I have to say there was a time I believed this was the route to go if one really wanted to learn about the art but as I’ve thought more about what photography is as either a journalistic medium or artistic medium I feel less and less that using film and a wet darkroom has much value at all unless it is artistically justified.

I’ve been shooting pictures for over 40 years so I have shot a lot (and I mean a lot) of film and spent 100s of hours in a darkroom. I still have a wet darkroom but only use it for things like Palladium printing.

Why is film necessary to learn the nuts and bolts? I use manual on my digital camera all the time setting the f-stop or shutter speed. I think depth of field and focus are not film related. Negatives use to be made on glass or prints made directly on tin.

Film photography is expensive with the rise in silver prices and the chemicals are toxic presenting a safety hazard and a pollution problem. Learning “How to See” is not a product of the medium being used it is a product of the mind. Brain wiring is made stronger by repetition. Practice. Shooting a 100 photos will advance you better in the art than 24 shots at a time.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love film cameras. They themselves are works of art but is its use necessary to learning the art? I think not.  Art isn’t about cameras or paints or film or paper. Art is about seeing what is real and interpreting that for others to see. When the camera clicks you are trying to create a statement that may or may not be directly in front of you.

Take for instance this tree photo. When I took the photo I really didn’t “see” what I was shooting. I never used it so it sat on a hard drive for a few years until one day the art exposed itself to me. That’s one reason I say, “Never delete a single image, it just may take awhile to process.”

A few weeks ago as I was working on a piece of writing this tree opened up to me. Now I see what is real so I can show it to you. Maybe it’s time to think about new ways to teach this art. You think? I mean, I’m just saying…