When I go out to take photographs I always strive to create art, not just take pictures. It doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes I come back home and look at my bounty of photographs and think, eh. Other times I come back home and I am amazed at my ability to find artistic photographs, or at least I’m able to bring the art out.
I haven’t always done this when I include people. I often get too distracted by the people I forget to set up something artistically. One of my goals is to fix that and think more creatively and artistically when photographing people.
While the photograph above may be a decent portrait, I don’t think it is all that creative or artistic. There was significant thought and planning put into setting up the lighting, props, and pose it just doesn’t strike me as art.
My challenge to myself is to obtain a better feel for creating artist photographs with people. So onward to study more about artistic portraits.
Two weeks ago yesterday, was my last day of work. I retired, again. I say I retired again because I retired the first time on November 1, 2011. I didn’t have a job for a while the first time, but then I returned to work. This time around, I don’t plan on ever getting another job; this time, it has proved to be much more of a challenge to adjust. I’m not sure why, but for the past two weeks, I’ve been sitting around doing nothing. Yesterday, was one of the few times I got out with a camera and did much photography. While I didn’t get anything super special, it felt good. I also discovered a place that I have driven past so many times I can’t count and for bonus points, there are pubs and a couple of wine bars nearby.
The reason I mentioned all of this is that changes in our lives sometimes affect our motivation and creativity. After yesterday, I have found what works for me to move along is to just grab a camera and find stuff to take pictures of. It doesn’t have to lead to award winners it just has to get you out and thinking, moving, and creating.
It starts off simple enough, a person gets a camera and some photography gear to start a hobby. You know to relieve the stress from the daily grind. Suddenly, friends and family start to comment that the photographs are great. Now the new photographer starts to think, “Hey I can make some money with my photography” and so it begins. I’ve been there and done that myself.
I know many photographers and few that actually do photography just for the art they can create. What happened to the art? Are we getting so seduced by money that we forget about why we started our photography journey? Are we willing to prostitute ourselves and our art just for a buck? I used to think photography could make me some extra money but now I’ve decided to do my photography for me, creating the photographs I want, how I want when I want. I may try to display them in art shows, but I may not. I may try to sell some of them but I may not. I’m back to doing my photography to give me something to do and to create art. Everything shouldn’t be about making money, some things should be about expressing yourself.
I started going through my Lightroom catalog this morning after browsing my photography haunts on social media looking for inspiration on what to write about today. I noticed that I had kept so many crappy photographs. I began deleting the crappy photos thinking to myself, WHY?! Why did I feel the need to keep crap? I deleted just over 3,000 photographs and freed up 20+ GB of storage. My next goal is to go through images as I upload them. If a file doesn’t get a single-star rating it will be designated for the trash bin.
I’ve still got over 31,000 images in my Lightroom catalog so it isn’t like I’m really losing anything. In addition, I’ll be adding more in the coming months and years. Why keep crap?
I talk about the art of post-processing images frequently and I believe doing so is worthy of repetition. Many so-called photography purists love to talk about the work of masters such as Ansel Adams. So let me do so. A quote from Ansel Adams’ book, The Print.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that we can take an inferior negative (inferior in the technical sense, but of expressive significance)and work wonders with it by imaginative printing procedures.
The Print by Ansel Adams page 2
In the digital age, we have a variety of tools available that Ansel Adams did not such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and many similar programs. Ansel Adams goes on to say:
We cannont correct poor focus, loss of detail, physical blemishes, or unfortunate compositions – but we can overcome (to some extent) such accidents as overexposure and over- or underdevelopment… The truth is that in a large body of work (even that of a photographer of great experience) there will be many printing problems and subtle variations of interpretation.
The Print by Ansel Adams page 3
Today, with programs such as Photoshop and Lightroom we can even correct physical blemishes and unfortunate compositions. To some extent, we can correct poor focus and loss of detail.
Let’s take a look at the original photograph, as captured, of the grain silos above.
Through my digital “printing” process the image above went from blah to bam! Don’t let anyone attempt to convince you that you don’t need to use post-processing or “digital manipulation”. The masters often manipulated their prints they just used different tools to accomplish what we can accomplish today in the digital age.
I know it is still new but this is my second real day of being retired and able to commit my time to my photographic art. I had very loose plans to go out and wander and take photographs. It is 3 PM and nothing other than a sunrise shot this morning.
Yeah, I’m still awake very early in the morning because I’m not quite adjusted to sleeping later. I did spend a bit of time catching up on some video tutorials on Photoshop since I have allowed my Photoshop skills to slip a bit, but I’m ready for the real fun to begin. It is just a matter of me getting off my butt and getting out there.
Let us begin the fun of working and getting some art done. It’s time. To play off of Monday night football a bit, are you ready for some photography?!! I am! Let’s get it done.
Photographers are often a unique bunch of people. Since we have the technology and ability to effectively record people, objects, and scenes almost as they exist in reality some believe that a photograph must always reflect reality, at least their concept of reality. Anything short of their version of reality is not photography. As a result, many begin to create to please the views of the reality photographers rather than their own vision.
If we visit an art museum or art gallery and view paintings and sculptures we often see that those artists create their vision rather than attempt to recreate people, things, and scenes as they exist in reality. They create what they see in their mind and express their emotions, ideas, and concepts. Photography is often not viewed as real art because of the very nature that it captures a scene, person, or object as it exists requiring little to no talent by the photographer. Often other visual artists believe photography is just pushing a button. When other visual artists comment that photography isn’t really art often photographers get offended yet they are the very ones who perpetuate this mindset because everything has to be a photocopy of reality rather than an artist’s interpretation.
More so than ever we photographers have within our grasp to easily create an artist’s interpretation of a person, object, or scene through software. When photographs had to be developed in the darkroom with the use of chemicals it was much more complex and often beyond the reach of many who lacked the ability to have a dedicated darkroom.
If we, as photographers, want to truly advance photography to become more accepted as art should we not open our minds and attitudes towards becoming more creative rather than focusing on photocopying the world around us. Should we stop creating to please other reality photographers and create to please our own need to be artists?
A few days ago I went out wandering with another photographer. It was a damp foggy day and we just walked about looking for things and scenes that caught our eye. The area we chose to explore was the “downtown” area of Overland Park, Kansas (the city where I live). The corner of the Rio theater caught my eye. This building was built in 1946 and built in an art deco style.
The photograph below I took back in 2014.
This time, the building wasn’t lit and had since closed, but the curves of the glass blocks and the textures of the frames around the blocks caught my eye. While rough and worn it still has beauty to it. A reminder of what once was elegant and graceful.
For me, this is seeing as an artist. To recognize the beauty, grace, and flow of objects many people walk past on a daily basis. It’s all about recognizing the extraordinary amongst the ordinary.
This is the dawn of 2023 and as you may know from previous posts I have a big change coming, I’m retiring. Not from photography but from working for others. Now I am working for myself and my art. I thought it to be quite fitting that nature provided a wonderful sunrise with a slight frost and light fog. It inspired me to think the coming year would be colorful, and crisp with a slight bit of haze of what may lay ahead.
I am fortunate to have some wonderful creative photography friends and a wife who is super supportive of my photography and creative passion. All this and a new level of freedom from the daily workplace will allow me to take my photographic art to the next level.
While I hope to produce more, my goal is to produce 12 significant works of art in the coming year. I don’t mean just good photographs I mean, at least, 12 that stand above and beyond the good and move into the extraordinary.
Please join me along this journey and let’s grow together!
When I started out in photography, the internet didn’t exist. In fact, it would be several years before it would even be a thing. Photography was done on film and you either developed your own or had to send it off and wait for the film to return to even see if you got anything decent. This means the only real feedback you could get was from people you knew and could see your prints. Often, this was family and friends. Unless you belonged to a photography club, taking photography classes, or other such groups you didn’t get any real critiques and the comments were typically nice words from your family and circle of friends. The challenge was purely on you and your thoughts to improve your skills.
Then came along the internet, and our circle expanded to people we would exchange ideas and comments with that we would frequently never meet in person. This led to an exchange of ideas and concepts that may be new to us. Improving and gathering new information was at the tip of our fingertips. The first photography-sharing site I ever used was Flickr. I could interact with photographers from around the world.
We come to today, Flickr is still around but has taken somewhat of a backseat to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. So many photographers go through their photographic life not wanting to hear the thoughts and opinions of others. Other times, photographers express their thoughts and ideas in hateful and condescending ways, which drowns out those who truly wish to help others with progressing and offering a different way of looking at our photographs. It is much like car alarms, we hear them, so often we ignore them.
I’m of the opinion that we need to get back to listening to others around us. I’m of the opinion we need to get back to really viewing, not only our own photographs, but also those of others. How do we rise above the noise? How do we express our ideas and grow without hearing how others view our work? Do we care or do we just blindly create?
Photographer Clay 