diptych # 210 ~ updates

flowers ~ North Creek, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

I have been working over the past few days on updating my WORK page. There are now 9 bodies of work updates. 3 more bodies of work to come. Click on the WORK link in the Navigation bar to view.

As always, comments are encouraged and welcome

civilized ku # 4044 / pinhole # 18 / what the camera sees # 8 ~ ground glass

bathroom objects ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

fruit, root veggies and might bulb in wooden bowl ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

apple and laptop 

re: photography is not a 3-Dimensional world.

The prints or images produced by camera are 2-Dimensional art. That means that the art has the dimensions of length and width (in the same plane) but that it does not possess depth. The idea that "leading lines" in a picture draw a viewer into a picture is ludicrous simply because there is no "in" in a print. Consequently, even though a print might suggest the idea of objects with depth, in fact, the flat 2-D surface of a print is comprised of shapes (to include lines).

In the creation of 2-Dimensional art, painters, since they start from a blank canvas, understand the importance of shapes and their relationship to one another with the confines of the edges of their canvas. A masterful painter places shapes on his/her canvas in relationships which help incite feelings of serenity, chaos, tension, placidity or any other emotion/feeling he/she desires to accentuate by means of his/her work. (since shapes can have color and tonal values, these properties of shapes are also employed as devices to incite the perceptions of the work in the eyes of a viewer of the work).

A picture maker with a camera does not have the luxury/ability to physically arrange the referents he/she wished to picture. However, he/she does have the ability to arrange/place those referents (aka, shapes, to include colors and tonal values), by means of his/her POV, within the flat field imposed by its frame. By doing so, the picture maker has the same ability as a painter in creating the visual feel/pereived emotion of his/her work.

I have always disliked the word "composition" when use to describe the picture maker's choice of where to place what in the making of a picture. The reason for that is simple inasmuch as the word "composition" is most often used together with the idea of the rules thereof. And "rules" indicate a predisposition to a manner of thinking which proscribes the adherence to proscribed dictates.

iMo, the organization of shapes (colors and tonal values) within the frame imposed by the picture maker's POV is not an activity dictated by thinking but rather should be directed by emotions and feelings. To wit, an somewhat intuitive sense of how and when a specific arrangement of shapes makes one feel.

If all of this approach to "composition" seems rather touchy feely, try this exercise: the next time you aim your camera a toward a referent in an attempt to "compose" a picture, put the field of view within your frame out of focus. This will reduce all of elements within the frame to "pure" shapes, colors and tonal values which, without the visual specificity of your referents, the relationship of those visual components to each other. If the relationships work well as out-of-focus components, iMo and experience, they will work equally well in focus and help you develop an intuitive "feel" for what works compositionally.

FYI, my best aid in seeing and feeling how my arrangment of visual elements within the frame is working is the use of the LCD screen on my cameras - even those with an EVF. That screen is a 2-D device and, consequently, is a step in the right direction, re: the translation of 3-D into 2-D. The LCD screen works much like the ground glass screen on the view cameras I used for decades. There is nothing like sticking your head under a focusing cloth and looking at a ground glass screen (on which the image is upside down and horizontally reversed) insulate you from and to reduce the real world in front of the camera to a 2-D representation thereof.

civilized ku # 4042-43 ~ the earth is flat

window light ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

canoe straps ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

About a month ago I viewed an exhibition of the work of Ellen Phelan on display in the Adirondack Museum. While the range of her work - technique, presentaion, subject matter - is quite diverse, the work on display was photo-derived - gouache, watercolor, pastels on paper applied over photo images. I found the work to be well suited to my eye and sensibilities.

With that in mind, I purchased the book, Ellen Phelan Encylopedia of Drawing, at the museum book store. In the book, a writer - an Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard - goes to great lengths (in discussing Phelan's work) to (seemingly) impress the reader with his knowledge and grasp of art history, movements, technique, et al, all of which he employs in his effort to inform the reader regarding Phelan's pictures.

After several readings of the essay / introduction, I have yet to find any indication that the writer has any interest in Phelan's work other than to disect and describe it in purely intellectual / academic terms. Nowhere can I find how the writer feels about how the works touch his emotions. If art is not about reaching a viewer on an emotional (gut feeling / perception) level, what's the point.

That written, I did find 2 interesting tidbits in the essay. One from W.H. Auden, an English poet: "It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ."

Another from the writer himself: "Phelan can draw. Whatever than means in our current atomized age. Perhaps it means an at-home-ness, a familiarity with the translation of three dimensional into two and an ingrained compositional sureness that lurks behind even the foggiest pictures (the "trained eye" as Phelan said recently, discussing the photographs taken by painters)."

I write all of this because I believe that very few picture makers, Photography Division, really understand the intrinsic characteristic of the medium by which there is a translation of three dimensions into two. Or put another way, that photography is not a 3d world.

Most viewers of photographs, to include most picture makers themselves, view pictures only for what they depict, completely oblivious (consciously) to the purely 2D relationships of shapes, tones and colors as organized within the frame imposed upon them by the picture maker. However, iMo, it is those "hidden" qualities, when found in a picture, that make a good picture as opposed to a merely pleasant picture.

That written, I do believe that many picture viewers when confronted with a "foggy" picture - as in, they are in a "fog" regarding the idea of why make of picture of this - nevertheless find themselves liking the picture for reasons they can not explain. It is my experience and belief that the reason they like the picture is because, on a subconscious level, they have been affected by those "hidden" non-representational 2D qualities to be had in good pictures.

pinhole # 17 ~ more artsy bullock

canoe straps ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

Rencently encountered artsy bullock:

...My current research as a photo-based artist can be characterized by a shift away from the reliance on the photograph purely as image to an examination of the threshold between image and surface and its metaphorical equivalence to the relationship between observation and imagining.

Apparently, according to the preceding BS, today's picture is not a picture made with a pinhole lens. Rather, I am engaged in research, examining thresholds and exploring a relationship.

Yah, yah. Or, you could just think of me as a pinhead using a pinhole to pin point how to dance on the head of a pin.

civilized ku # 4039-40 ~ straight ahead

apples and hose ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

dead plant ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK

Lest you think otherwise, I haven't given up straight picture making. In fact, I am picturing along, straight picture making wise, at about the same pace as I was prior to the arrival of the what the camera sees thing.

what the camera sees (overexposure) # 7 ~ + plus a couple additions

steps

apples and hose

lawn and sidewalk

As I continue to make what the camera sees (overexposure) pictures, I continue to wonder if I am on to something or trying something different just for the hell of it. And as I continue to experiment I am coming to the conclusion that I am creating 2 related but, in fact, different bodies of work.

The first body of work is, as the title of this (and previous) entries suggests, what the camera sees (overexposure). However, in addition to that nomenclature, what is also emerging is a separate body of work which could be titled, what the camera sees (out of focus) - see yesterday's birch tree picture and the apples and hose picture in today's entry.

And then, just to put another pot on the stove, there is my continuing fascination with what could be titled what the camera sees (blown highlights).

In any event, I'll continue putter around and picture away just to see where it all leads.