civilized ku # 5110-16 (the new snapshot 220-226) ~ symbiotic

serenity garden ~ embiggenable • iPhone

serenity garden ~ embiggenable • iPhone

serenity garden ~ embiggenable • iPhone

Serenity Garden is a roadside embankment which has been landscaped by a group of community members. The park-like garden slopes down to a natural marsh.

In a very real sense, the garden and its placement along side of a natural environment is a wonderful symbol-don't think the community members thought of it as such-of the Adirondack Forest Preserve (aka, Park)... a place where man and the natural environment co-exist in a sustainable / symbiotic relationship.

FYI, for those who are not aware of it, the Adirondack Park-50% (and growing) of it is protected by the Forever Wild amendment to the NYS Constition-is larger than the state of Vermont and it's where I live. I LIVE IN A PARK!

civilized ku # 5187 / ku # 1416 ~ stop, look, listen pt.2

In my last entry I postulated a methodolgy for viewing photographs - STOP, LOOK, LISTEN. That is, STOP (thinking), LOOK (really look), LISTEN (to what the picture has to "say" to you).

With the exception of a single word substitution-replace the word picture with the word referent in the phrase after the word LISTEN and, iMo, you have the formula for making good/great pictures. Although, the sequence of actions for picture making should be amended to LOOK, STOP, LISTEN. Consider ....

LOOK(ing):

Real photography begins when we let go of what we have been told is a good photograph and start photographing what we see. ~ BROOKS JENSEN
Any thing and every thing can be pictured.

STOP:

A good photograph is knowing where to stand. ~ Ansel Adams
Simple enough, or so it would seem.

LISTEN:

To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible. ~ EDWARD WESTON
Forget the rules of composition and arrange the elements within your framing in the strongest manner possible to illustrate what the referent has said to you.

ku # 1415 / civilized ku # 5181-82 (diptych) ~ criteria

ocean lightning / Honorable Mention selection ~ South Jersey Shore (embiggenable)  µ4/3

feet in situ ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

I am finally back in the saddle after a 10 day hiatus which included a 3 day getaway, a 4 day hospital stay and a couple days of trying to feel like myself again. During that time, I received this notification:

I am very pleased to tell you that one of your images was selected for exhibition in our Middlebury, Vermont gallery. Congratulations! … I’d like to extend special congratulations to Juror’s Award recipient Kathleen Fischer and to Director’s Award recipient Atsuko Morita ... Congratulations also to three Honorable Mentions: Mark Hobson, Marilyn Maddison, and Kate Wnek.

I must admit that there is a degree of satisfaction which accompanies the fact that one of my pictures was selected for the exhibition, WATER, from amongst the nearly 3,000 submissions. Of the 35 pictures selected, it is also nice that my picture was called out with an Honorable Mention.

That written, I have previously written about the fact that, whoever the jurist(s) might be, their selections will be very subjective. My honorable mention picture might not even have made the cut into the exhibition with a different jurist on the case. And, to be honest, my honorable mention picture was a last minute addition to my 5 submissions and I did not consider it to be the pick of the litter. Lesson to be learned: one person's criteria is not another person's criteria.

In and event, re: the topic of criteria, I have been trying to adjust my criteria regarding the making of my pictures. That is, does a referent demanded a snapshot aesthetic approach or is it a "serious" picture making opportunity? And, perhaps more important, should I even care?

The primary consideration, re: "serious" v. snapshot designation, is that of which picture making tool to use in the making of a picture. "Serious" picture making would seem to call for a "serious" tool (aka: a "real" camera) whereas a snapshot not so much - in other words, a phone camera module. FYI, an aside ... I will confess that I feel that I am making a mountain out of a mole hill inasmuch as both tools produce very good image quality.

However, it's not the image quality I am concerned with. Rather, it is the picture making M.O. that I bring to the table when making a "serious" picture v a snapshot. To be precise, my "serious" picture making M.O. is oriented less to the referent and more to the visual structure-form v. content-of the picture. Whereas, in the case of a snapshot, I am much more oriented to the content than the form.

In addition to those considerations, I bring a more formal approach to "serious" picture making wheras with snapshot making I am more "loose" about framing and other technique notions. See the individual pictures in the feet in situ diptych above as an example.

What it all comes down to regarding determining whether a picture making opportunity calls for a "serious" or "loose" M.O. is that the tool I have in my hand actually does influence my picture making state of mind. A "real" camera in hand pushes me to a formal picture making mental state whereas an iPhone in my hand pushes me to a very "loose" picture making state of mind.

H2O # 11-15 / the new snapshot # 212 ~ in a natural environment

Almost 20 years ago, when I moved within the borders of the Adirondack Forest Preserve (aka, PARK), I looked forward, with eager anticipation, to spending significant time picturing the natural beauty of the Adirondacks and, for a few years, I did exactly that.

However, as I explored the Forest Preserve, I began to realize that the Adirondacks are not a place of wide-open panoramic-vista landscape beauty. Rather, like other NE forests, the Adirondacks is visually dominated by more intimate natural settings. The lone exception to that characteristic is making pictures from mountain tops of sweeping vistas of other mountain tops / ranges - a genre of Adirondack picture making that is performed to wretched excess (iMo).

Consequently, my picture making gaze migrated to more intimate natural settings (my ku work). Nevertheless, I also began to feel, un-satisfactory wise, that I was making pictures that were "picture postcard perfect". Despite the fact that my pictures were the equal of those made by other "serious" Adirondack landscape "masters", I couldn't escape the notion that I was making "generic" Adirondack pictures - not unlike those in this entry.

As those realizations began floating around in my skull - somewhat subconsciously rather than by conscious thought - I began to move from referent-oriented picture making to that of making pictures of whatever (discursive promiscuity) which exhibited visual qualities and characteristics - organization of color, shapes, lines, tones, framing, et al - that created a visual emphasis on / sense of visual energy. Visual energy which could be viewed independent of a picture's depicted referent.

Hence, the increasing emergence of my civilized ku work which is less linked to referent matter than it is to visual organization across the place of a 2-dimensional surface.

I write of all of this in order to explain why my submissions to the Water themed gallery exhibition will consist of pictures more like those in my previous 2 H2O entries than those in this entry ...

... if I were submitting pictures to a nature picture exhibition, I would be submitting pictures like the ones in this entry - pictures which are referent-centric. However, the call for submissions I am responding to is from a photo gallery which, I am certain, would also be happy to be called an art gallery. That is to write that the juror for the exhibition will be looking for qualities in a picture which transcend that of the depicted referent as well as exhibiting a manner of looking at the referent (water) from a new conceptual perspective.

H2O # 1-5

Yet another body of work, water, has emerged from my picture library as the result of a gallery call for submissions for an exhibition of the same name. I'll soon have a water gallery on my WORK front page.

ku # 1414 / the new snapshot # 209 ~ a beautiful picture

roadside tangle ~ in the Adirondack PARK (embiggenable) • µ4/3

wedding reception ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

In a recent email from a self-proclaimed "fellow photo-geezer", whose site I visit almost daily, the geezer wrote:

.... the majority of my ‘audience’ never spends more time on the images than to identify the subject matter. Sad, but true.

That observation is, arguably, "sad, but true". However, in a real sense, it is a phenomenon predicated upon the medium of photography's primary characteristic - its ability to render realistic representations of the real world - hence elevating the depicted referent, in the eyes of most viewers, as the raison d'etre for the making of a picture.

iMo, in the case of snapshots, the depicted referent is, in fact, both the reason for the making of a picture and for holding a viewer's interest in that picture. That notion, together with the fact that snapshots are the most commonly made type of pictures, accounts for the subject matter centered attitude of most viewers of pictures.

However, my "fellow photo-geezer" is not engaged in making snapshots. His picture making intentions are more concerned (or so it seems to me) with the making of pictures which exhibit an artistic sensibility. That is, iMo, pictures which are not dependent upon subject matter / the depicted referent for exhibiting artistic merit, but rather upon sensory properties - shape, line, value, color space, etc. - which are organized to create unity, balance, imbalance, movement, stasis, serenity, agitation, etc. All of which is implemented to evoke an emotional / sensory response in the eye and sensibilities of a viewer.

A response which can be, and most often is, totally independent of the depicted referent in a picture. A visual phenomenon which is capable of creating a beautiful picture even though a depicted referent is not a thing of conventional beauty.