civilized ku # 5325 ~ what I see is what you get

trifecta ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

Sometimes it's about color. Other times it's about shapes, lines, form. Then there are times when it's about light. In the case of today's picture, it's about all 3. Occasionally, it's actually about the referent. However, in this case, it's most definitely not about the toilet, door or floor.

In fact, it would not be much of a stretch to write that most of my pictures are only tangentially about the depicted referent .... as I have previously written, I have a seemingly preternatural sensitivity to the relationships/ arrangements of color, shapes, and light to themselves or each other. It's how I see.

That written, that sensitivity operates on a subconscious / intuitive level. However, I have come to understand that that sensitivity is what causes me to make the pictures I make inasmuch as I make my pictures driven by "feel".

That is, there is virtually no thought process-other than getting the exposure right-involved in the making of my pictures .... when my eye and sensibilities are pricked by a something (could be any thing), I bring the LCD screen to my eye and isolate / arrange the visual elements by how they feel, organized-wise, within my chosen frame. When everything feels "right", I make the picture.

Re: "feels right" - when the image on my LCD screen feels right, I make the picture. Because it feels right, I almost never "work" a subject - i.e., change my POV, variations on my framing, etc. In addition, because I picture what feels right, I never crop my picture files. What a viewer of my pictures sees is exactly what I saw on my LCD screen at the instant I made the picture.

In my next entry, I'll address the best comment I ever received, re: my pictures, and how it explains how, in addition to my career as a commercial photographer, I also had a side-career in graphic design and a stint as an ad agency Creative Director.

kitchen life # 43 / civilized ku # 5318 ~ encountering the light

(embiggenable) • iPhone - processed on my desktop

(embiggenable) • iPhone - processed on my desktop

(embiggenable) • iPhone - processed on my iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone - processed on my iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone - processed on my iPhone

Spent the last few days chasing the light around the inside of my house. Although, to be honest and as I have previously written, the light was chasing me. I just happened to be in the right place at an opportune time.

civilized ku # 5175 ~ the advantage of a vantage point

in the kitchen / 12:35AM ~ in the Adirondack PARK (embiggenable) • µ4/3

In his book, THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S EYE, John Szarkowski, in discussing the idea of Vantage Point, wrote:

If the photographer could not move his subject, he could move his camera. To see the subject clearly-often to see it at all-he had to abandon a normal vantage point, and shoot his picture from above, or below, or from to close, or to far, or from the backside, inverting the order of things' importance, or with the nominal subject of his picture half hidden.
From his photographs, he learned that the appearance of the world was richer and less simple than his mind would have guessed.
He discovered that his pictures could reveal not only the clarity but the obscurity of things, and that these mysterious and evasive images could also, in their own terms, seem ordered and meaningful.

iMo, these are some of the absolute best words-when one fully understands their import-to make pictures by inasmuch as Szarkowski is not attempting to impart a formulaic methodology for the making of good pictures but rather to express how Vantage Point can influence the creation of visual characteristics and qualities which define a good picture.

It is my intention, over the course of the next few entries, to attempt to emunerate and clarify those visual characteristics and qualities which Szarkowski has chosen to mention in his Vantage Point writing.

around the house # 6-8 ~ pictures everywhere

It should surprise no one who follows this blog or knows me that I, with my belief in print making as the only manner in which to fully appreciate a photograph, have pictures hanging on the walls of my house. However, it did surprise me to realize that there are 56 of my pictures (all framed) on the walls. If pressed before I made the count (just today), I would have speculated that there are 20-25 hanging photographs.

Moving on ... on today's entry on LENSCRATH, there is work that shares my fascination with dirty / patina-ed kitchen utensils and food given over to decay, albeit pictured in a different manner than my similar referent pictures. The work by Joan Fitzsimmons is accompanied by an artspeak-ish (not the worst I have ever read) statement, which is to be expected from a B.F.A + M.F.A. picture maker ...

In my work, I’ve asked questions about human relationships, the nature of home, my relationship to nature, and the significance of the quotidian. The ordinary act of living is endlessly complex and uncertain .... ~ Joan Fitzsimmons

Fitzsimmons goes on to tell about her manner of working and her "relationship" (my word) to her referents and concludes with informing us that she "now note[s] that my materials and imagery and manner of collecting them, suggest/are traditional female work, so I am, once again, ready to place it within a feminist context."

Fitzsimmons' pictures are OK. Some work in creating a moderate visual interest. Others not so much. In either case, as far as making pictures of cutlery is concerned, Fitzsimmons' work pales in comparison to that of Jan Groover.

Groover's work has been described as "predominantly empirical, visual, and sensual - images rife with mystery, movement, and intrigue. There's a good read, No More Lazy Still-Life Photography, Please about Groover HERE I especially like the part about when Groover stopped making what she had been doing during her early career. She complained that ...

... she didn't know what to do, and her husband literally said, "Go photograph the kitchen sink." He managed to shut her up, but she took him quite literally, and started photographing just the shit that was in the sink.

Unlike Fitzsimmons and other contemporary picture makers for whom Concept is everything (hence all the artspeak which, ironically, is rarely about art and more about personal self-psychoanalytic crapola), According to Groover, the meaning of the objects is of no importance; only the shape, texture, and form that falls into a particular space is important. And was Groover's Formalist attention to shuch thing which instigated John Szarkwski to say...

.... her pictures were good to think about because they were first good to look at.
iMo, that's something that could not be said about Fitzsimmons' pictures.

around the house # 1-5 ~ fertile ground

Pursuant to yesterday's entry I culled out 130 pictures - from my archives - which were made within the confines of my house. Hence, the start of my around the house body of work.

During the selection process it became very apparent that my kitchen has been the most fertile picture making location, followed by the area around the toilet in one of the upstair bathrooms. Both rooms have abundant and ever changing natural light. However, the kitchen leads the picture making pack by virtue of the ever changing tableau vivant(s) of kitchen things (especially in the sink) and food stuff (raw and remainders).

The overwhelming number of around the house pictures could accurately be labeled as still life pictures.