# 5906-08 / around the house • kitchen sink • landscape ~ as easy as waking up and falling out of bed

January 19, 2022

CREATIVITY and IMAGINATION ARE 2 WORDS /CONCEPTS WHICH ARE bandied about in discussions of the making of pictures. They are often used interchangeably, as in “use your imagination more” and/or “try to be more creative”. Hell, I can not count the times I have heard, re: my pictures, “your choice of subject matter is very creative” or “I would never have imagined that as a subject for picture making”.

Not that I don’t appreciate the comments-cuz I do-but those comments leave me ever so slightly perplexed cuz I do not associate the idea of creativity or imagination with the act of my picture making. Written sImply, when I make a picture I am just picturing what I see and do so in the manner in which I see. Saying that I am being creative or using my imagination while making pictures is like saying that I am being creative and using my imagination when I put put one foot in front of the other while walking down the street.

As a result of how I make pictures, specifically pictures that are intended to be art, I believe that there are 3 very suspicious / questionable bits of picture making-in the pursuit of finding your vision-advice: 1.) find a subject / referent you are very interested in / passionate about and make lots of pictures thereof, and, 2.) be as creative / imaginative as you can be, and, 3.) don’t be afraid to break the rules.

Re: questionable advice #1: following this dictate the chances are very good that, unless you are passionate about a very obscure and/or little known object of affection, you’ll be making pictures of a subject a lot other picture makers are picturing. Re: #2: creativity and imagination pursued for their own sake will head you straight down the road of cliche picture making. Re: #3: forget breaking the rules and concentrate on making your own rules.

iMo, the only advice worth a damn-employed in finding your own unique artistic vision-is to make lots and lots of pictures of any thing and every thing (no thinking allowed) that catches your eye and and pricks your sensibilities, using a single camera, one lens (or 2, a semi-wide and semi tele). Make small (cheap) prints and look at them. Following this activity for, say, 1/2 a year, I would be surprised if ,when you lay out the pictures, you don’t find some that; 1) capture the look and feel of what you saw, and, 2) stick together as a unified body of pictures.

The purpose of this activity is to discover and, hopefully, begin to understand how you actually see the world. That is, not in a “creative” or “imaginative” sense, but, rather, how you literally see the world using your visual apparatus / senses, just like you do when you open your eyes in the morning.

# 5883 / life without the APA ~ That wouldn't make you a shallow person would it?

December 21, 2021

from ***Life Without the APA*** body of work ~ (embiggenable) 8x10 view camera + µ4/3

LET ME BEGIN THIS ENTRY WITH A VERSE FROM LYLE LOVETT’S Here I Am song (it will make sense later):

Given that true intellectual and emotional compatibility
Are at the very least difficult
If not impossible to come by
We could always opt for the more temporal gratification
Of sheer physical attraction
That wouldn't make you a shallow person
Would it?

Add to that a link to a Stephen Shore picture, Holden Street, North Adams, Massachusetts. FYI, the street image in my picture in this entry was created long before I was aware of Shore’s picture. Nor was the composite image made with a single thought of imitating Shore’s picture.

OK then, now I can move onto the point of this entry…

I was skimming through a book of Stephen Shore pictures, interviews and commentary when I came across a commentary, re: the aforementioned linked picture, by Joel Sternfeld. The commentary, which ran to 7 pages in length, started as follows:

Stephen Shore’s photograph of a summer morning setting on Holden Street in North Adams, Massachusetts, appears to be a picture replete with dualities, the most obvious being that of town and countryside. The brick commercial buildings bookend a panel of green hills and blue sky as if the entirety were a early Christian altarpiece. The most sacred panel, the center one, contains an image of a deity , which in the secular case turns out to be a wooden building of pure white. The building stands in front of a mountain, a standard symbol of spiritual elevation.

After this “Christian altarpiece, sacred panel, deity, standard symbol of spiritual elevation” Art Major-ish search for meaning, aka: interpretation, Sternfeld-whose pictures I admire-goes on 7 page literary, cultural, architectural, historic, photo theory laden exposition / academic treatise that, iMo and for me, adds little, if anything, to the pure visual senses enjoyment of just looking at the picture. Which is not to write that, for Sternfeld, it does not matter inasmuch as all his interpretation stuff goes to the cause of justifying his appreciation of the picture cuz, without it, it’s just a picture.

Nor am I suggesting that my Life without the APA picture(s)-and pictures like it made by others-do not contain dualities, symbols, cultural / literary references, et al if it is a viewer’s propensity to “see” such things. However, my intent in the making of those pictures was simply to illustrate how the Adirondack forest preserve might look like-and consequently, feel like-without the protection / oversight of the APA. And, in doing so, create pictures which tell that story without requiring that the viewer have a Phd in Art History or Art Theory to “get it”.

In any event, back to Lyle Lovett and the relevance of his lyrics to this entry.

It seems to me that Joel Sternfeld (and others like him who are given to the nearly compulsive desire to discern meaning and interpretation in pictures) needs to find a feeling of “true intellectual and emotional compatibility” with a photograph-a feeling which is “at the very least difficult If not impossible to come by” (for mere mortals)-in order that he not succumb to the temptation of “the more temporal gratification of sheer physical attraction” to a picture and thus descend into the realm of becoming “a shallow person”.

# 5880-82 / landscape (new topographics) ~ staying true to my vision one picture at a time

December 16, 2021

**Adirondacks / Blue Mt. Lake, NY** ~ (embiggenable) • Nikon F3 / color negative film

**Finger Lakes Region, NY** ~(embiggenable) • view camera / color negative film

**Rochester, NY** ~ (embiggenable) • view camera / color negative film

INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH VERY FEW “SERIOUS” PICTURES MAKERS, Adirondack residents wise, (if any) make pictures which make visible the hand of humankind in the Adirondacks. Picture wise, I mean pictures made for display in galleries, et al. Even Adirondack Life Magazine, in its annual Adk Life calendar, selects reader images which, surprise, surprise, evidence only pictures made in the god’s-own-garden genre.

That written, I was honored to have a multi-page-one picture per page-feature spread in Adirondack Magazine. The feature was not an assignment, rather it was of pictures selected from my picture library. I am happy to write that there was not a single god’s-own-garden picture to be seen therein. On a side note, the art director had the courage to use my dead deer in a pickup bed picture. And, lo and behold, the feature was awarded an Award of Merit at the International Regional Magazines Award Event.

You can read about it and see the spreads here.

# 5876-79 / landscape • the new topographic ~ walking with a toothache in my heel

December 15, 2021

WARNING: RANT TO FOLLOW…I just gotta get this monkey off my back…

…a couple days ago, I come across-over on T.O.P.-yet another exquisite example of Landscape Porn adulation. You know what to expect, picture wise, when you read picture descriptions like…

“The photographs are consistently beautiful, running the gamut from stunning vistas in perfect evening light, to dramatic storm-scapes, to telling details. Without exception they are technically immaculate, stunningly detailed, with a beautiful yet restrained color palette.”

Or, perhaps I should write, I know what to expect - puerile, romanticized, schmaltz / dreck. To be certain, uninspired, follow-the-camera-club-landscape-picture-making-rules landscape pictures are rather commonplace and, to be honest, should not be grounds for near apoplectic fits on my part. But the fact is, they most often incite such a reaction to my tender landscape picture sensibilities.

However, it is not the picture’s visual qualities-or lack thereof-that sets me off. Rather, it is the ongoing perpetuation of the big lie. Once again, I quote John Szarkowski (from the Introduction to the Robert Adams book, THE NEW WEST):

“As Americans we are scarred by the dream of innocence. In our hearts we believe that the only truly beautiful lanscape is an unpeople one. Unhappily, much in the record of out tenancy on this continent serves to confirm this view. So to wash our eyes of this depressing evidence we have raced deeper and deeper in the wilderness, pass the last stage-coach stop and the last motel, to see and claim a section of God’s own garden before our fellows arrive to despoil it…[N]ow however we are beginning to realize that there is no wilderness left…[A]s this recognition takes a firmer hold on our consciousness, it may become clear that a generous and accepting attitude toward nature requires we learn to share the earth not only with ice, dust, mosquitoes, starlings, coyotes, and chicken hawks, but even with other people.”

Just in case you don’t get it, let me be clear, pictorially, I am sick unto death of sappy, escapist, god’s own garden sentimentality. Walk as far you will into the so-called untouched-by-humankind wilderness, but the fact remains, there is no such thing as untouched by humankind.

My position on this situation, picture making wise, falls directly in line with the words of Robert Adams in his book, WHAT CAN WE BELIEVE WHERE:

“In common with many photographers, I began making pictures because I wanted to record what supports hope: the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world. Along the way, however, the camera also caught evidence against hope, and I eventually concluded that this too belonged in pictures if they were to be truthful and useful….[A]s much as I try to stay away from abstactions, I often find myself asking three questions, and I repeat them here as a point of entry into this book: What does our geography compel us to believe? What does it allow us to believe? And what obligations, if any, follow from our beliefs?

So, some might think, shame on me-Adams, Szarkowski, et al-for even suggesting that a picture maker might have, in some situations, obligations in their picture making endeavors. What am I, some kind of a picture making commie, socialist, bleeding-heart, pinko? How dare I even hint that a picture should be truthful and/or somehow actually useful? You know, useful, as in, more meaningful than its use as an object of escapist decoration.

And, please, do not try to rationalize such escapist tripe as playing a part in raising people’s awareness of / appreciation for “nature”. Given that such pictures have been adorning walls, calendars, books, et al for generations, the evidence-the current state of the planet’s environmental state / health-can only support the fact that it ain’t getting that job done.

FYI, if you are wondering why I am so passionate about this issue, it is simply because I live in very unique place, the so-called Adirondack Park (it’s not a park, it is a forest preserve) the largest publicly protected wilderness area-and the largest National Historic Landmark-in the contiguous United States-bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and the Great Smokies National Parks combined.

The place is unique in that Adirondack forest preserve is a combination of public and private lands dedicated to the practice that the public lands are protected-by the NYS Constitution-as forever wild and together with the private lands are under the regulation of the Adirondack Park Agency, created in 1971 by the New York State Legislature to develop long-range land use plans for both public and private lands within the boundary of the Park. To date, this regulated public / private land use has demonstrated that humankind and the natural world can co-exist to the benefit of both. Read more about it here

# 5863-67 / landscape (civilized ku • ku) • around the house ~ working different

December 8, 2021

I SORTA GOT SIDETRACKED BY THE IS-SQUARE-GOOD-FOR-LANDSCAPES thing along with a dose of BW infatuation. Using the work of Robert Adams as markers / aim points for both ideas, as well as rummaging around in my picture library for pictures which were suitable for RA-like (signs of man in the landscape) conversion to BW, I am well satisfied that, for my picturing, square and BW digital BW conversion processing is good. I might even state that it is very good.

Re: digital conversion / processing for color > BW. From time to time I come across, most recently on T.O.P., the idea that digital is not BW picturing friendly. That the only way to achieve the best BW pictures is via the analog, aka: film, picture making process. I disagree….

…That written, I am not here to debate one process against the other. Rather, the position I take is that digital BW images can be created which compare-that is, if comparing is your thing-very favorably with film created BW images. Me, I’m not into “comparing”. Nor am I a life-long devotee of BW picture making.

Sure, sure. Back in the analog days, I had my very own soup-to-nuts “formula” for making BW pictures - preferred film, developer, developing times / agitation, (my own “personal” zone system) + my preferred printing system - condenser enlarger, specific developer, specific graded paper. My formula produced BW prints that I liked very much. Not to mention, I truly enjoyed my private time in the darkrooms (1 for film processing, 1 for printing).

At the same time there were those who took the I idea of creating a personal BW picturing, processing, printing formula to an extreme. Example: I have overheard many a photo club conversation hotly debating the type of bulb to be used in an enlarger head. They loved to tinker with the process to the point where, in some cases, it was the reason they were involved with photography.

In any event, I’ll leave you with a hint-I have mentioned this previously-for making really good BW digital image files. The process is simplicity itself - open an RGB color image file. Convert to LAB Color Space, Discard the a and b channels, leaving only the Lightness channel. Convert to Grayscale. At this point you now have an image file that contains only the lightness values-independent of any color values-extracted from your original color file-THIS NOT THE SAME THING AS DE-SATURATING THE COLORS IN A COLOR FILE-not even close.

Once I have the Grayscale file, I will usually make small tonal adjustments in Photoshop to bring the tonal values in line with the feel of the original color file, therefore in line with the actual scene.

**RGB original** / **LAB conversion Grayscale** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

# 5853-57 / still life (kitchen life) • landscape (civilized / ku) • people ~ this and that

November 29, 2021

THE MORE YOU LOOK, THE MORE YOU SEE. The more you see, the more you make pictures. The more pictures you make, the more you wonder what the hell you are going to do with all of them.

I have yet to come up with an answer / solution to that dilemma.

# 5851-52 / landscape (new topographics) ~ one of these things is not like the other thing

November 27, 2021

OVER PAST MONTH OR SO I HAVE BEEN MAKING A FAIR NUMBER of full-frame pictures. In most cases, doing so after making a square-frame picture of the small referent / scene.

What I have learned from this procedure is that , while I still see square, picture making vision wise, I only see full-frame wise when I switch from square crop to full-frame crop on the viewing screen of the iPhone. That is to write, I do not see the world full-frame, picture making wise, “naturally” / intuitively. Nevertheless, I do feel that once I impose the full-frame rectangle on my viewing screen, I have no trouble “arranging” the visual elements on the 2D visual plane within my imposed frame into a satisfactory visual form.

The interesting result of this crop-of-the-real-world switcheroo is that the full-frame picture-even though it is based upon / around the square instigating prick to my eye and sensibilities-presents (in print), a remarkably different look and feel from the square version thereof. That is not to write that one is better or worse than the other. They are just different.

So, considering the preceeding, were I to set out to make a full-frame body of work, I would set my on-screen crop to full-frame and, after being incited to make a picture by a prick to my eye and sensibilities, I would then only view the instigating referent through the full-frame crop on the iPhone screen.

However, I am intrigued by the idea of making a photographs about photography body of work which is comprised of full-frame + square frame pictures of the same referent. The intent being to have an exhibition with one wall displaying square prints opposing another wall displaying the full-frame prints.

# 5848-50 / landscape (ku) • kitchen life ~ forever and ever, amen

November 24, 2021

I HEARD AN INTERESTING PHRASE LAST EVENING ON A PBS SHOW-”staring into the distance of the present”-which had nothing to do with photography or art but I thought it kinda said something about my pictures. Especially if it is paired with a quote from George Tice:

It takes the passage of time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.

Over the past few years in particular I have willfully avoided, while making pictures, thinking about anything but responding to the moment. I do not think about “the eternal” or any other notion, re: why I am making the picture. My intent at the moment of making a picture is simply to be successful in capturing that which pricked my eye and sensibilities.

My idea of success is measured upon the viewing of the finished print and whether or not it instigates the same prick I experienced upon the viewing of the actual scene / referent. With those pictures that achieve that result, I know that they will repeatedly do so every time I view them, a quality which makes them and the depicted referent somewhat “eternal”.