Sketching?

 

Now that the renovation work on the house is basically done, I have lots to do in going through stuff and either getting rid of it or finding a new place to use it or reframing pictures and the list goes on. But what am I doing? I'm playing with the iPhone.

 

This is a Costco Orchid that I bought this week just to have a flower in my bedroom. They last for weeks and so it ends up they are cheaper than buying a bouquet of flowers every week. I took pictures of it and then I sat down to play with photo apps.

 

It isn't exactly "right" but there is something about it that keeps me thinking about it and where I could take the idea.

 

"What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece."

Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

Don't Just Take Pictures, Make Art

Editor Brooks Jensen writes in the Editor's Comments of the May-June 2015 Lenswork Magazine:

Don't just take pictures, make art.
By this I specifically mean finish things -- be it an exhibition, a Blurb book, a website gallerly, a PDF or whatever else makes sense for your process and your content. The very act of committing to something all the way through to completion is one of the best ways to learn. 

I use to say that putting together an exhibition, especially your first one, was a huge learning experience. I'm not doing shows any more but I need the discipline of completing a project. It is nice to come home from a trip or a shoot and run though the images, mark some as the best of the lot. Maybe process one or two for FaceBook or the Blog. But nothing, absolutely nothing, is like deciding that the product of the project will be an exhibition or a boxed portfolio with an artist's statement, or a book that is designed and laid out with templates and text.

It is fine to say this is a nice image and so is this one. I like this too. But when I have to narrow down the shoot from 500, 1000, 2500 files to 20 or 25 for an exhibition, 15 or 20 for a boxed portfolio and maybe 150 for an affordable self-published book, that is when it starts to become a learning experience. Which images are the best of the best. Which images tell a cohesive story.

Then the images have to be processed so that they will be the very best prints I can make with a consistent look. It tests my technical knowledge but the other thing that is happening is that I am learning where my shortcomings are in making images. From that I learn to make the next project better.

Jensen is right. Don't just take pictures, make a finished piece of art.

The image above is Palermo, Sicily, made from the upper terrace of our hotel. And, yes, it will be in the Blurb book about Sicily that I'm working on.

Playtime

 

I was looking at the cutting board today after I cut a tomato for lunch. The light was hitting the pulp and seeds left on the board and I thought it was beautiful with just the touch of green from a cilantro leaf. The thought ran through my mind that I should photograph it but just as I was putting that out of my mind because it was so tiny that I couldn't make a photograph of it that would show a close-up the translucent gelatinous pulp when CLICK! Yes, yes I could. Well maybe I could. I have a new close-up filter that I recently bought but had not tried. I raced upstairs and put it on the camera. That was the beginning of Playtime. Yes, I do like to explore so you are probably going to see some more images with that piece of equipment.

I Need An Editor

Although I have accepted Kindle books for general reading, I love to have and hold photography and artist's handmade books. To me they are precious art objects that I can look at again and again. That feeling has created an expectation for making a personal book. It is an expectation that makes me question every issue about the book. Cover, paper, size, sequencing, text, font, images, relationships.

In trying to put this book together, I think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. I don't expect to list it on Amazon. It isn't going to be for sale. I'm making it for me and family. However, I am agonizing over it as if it were to be placed in the competition for the best photography book of 2014.

On my bookshelf I have Douglas Holleley's book, Digital Book, Design and Publishing. He writes that after you have a preliminary dummy of your book, and this is where I am now, read it as if you were seeing it for the first time....Put your intentions and desires in the back of your mind and look at it objectively. ........one can get so wrapped up in the creative process, that one loses all sense of objectivity about one's work. Intentions get mixed up with effects: effort and time spent get confused with results.

Yes, that is definitely where I am now, I have the dummy, or as he calls it the maquette which sounds much more professional doesn't it. And I have lost all sense of objectivity. I need an Editor.

Bird by Bird Translated to Photography

I've added a new book to my ever growing list of ebook downloads. It is  Ann Lamott's book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.  I discovered the book through my weekly newsletter from Brainpickings. Quite often I find that reading about any kind of creativity, but especially about writing, gets translated in my brain to my pursuit of photography. For example, Lamott writes and I take the audacity to translate it for photography because it so clearly says what photography brings to me:

One of the gifts of being a writer (a photographer) is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing (photographing) motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.

Most of the other quotes by Lamott in the Brainpickings article get translated in my head to what it is like to continue to be a photographer, how to find your way even if the world isn't beating a path to your door and how to be able to find the nourishment you need in the on-going practice of photography.

The name of Lamott's book comes from an incident with her young brother who waited until the last minute to write a report about birds for school. He was overwhelmed with the task ahead of him when his Father gave him a hug and assured him it would be okay. He just had to write it down bird by bird.

Writers write a story sentence by sentence. Photographers photograph a project photograph by photograph. The photograph above is just one photograph from the Port Aransas project.