I believe landscape photography is the most challenging genre of photography. People are easy to photograph. Almost anyone can make a decent photograph of a person. The subject in a photograph is easily established. The main point of interest in a photograph of a person can be more easily established. A landscape is much more challenging.
I know, there are rules of landscape photography, diagonal lines, geometric shapes, the rule of thirds, and framing.
Then you get areas like the photograph below with wide-open spaces and few elements except sky and grass.
If you want a real challenge, wander about and look for landscape compositions in places with wide-open spaces with few trees, rocks, mountains, or waterfalls. There is beauty in these places and you will notice that beauty there but to bring that beauty to life in a photograph is a challenge.
Why do I do it? I know, it is a cryptic question and title. No, I’m not attempting to do a clickbait title. It is a real question and it pertains to a couple of different actions.
First, why do I do it, as “it” pertains to photography? For me, there are probably many reasons but I will say the most important is that photography gives me a venue to express myself artistically. I enjoy getting a final product. Something that both myself and others think is interesting, compelling, an object of beauty, emotional, or thought-provoking. I spend countless hours reading, studying, experimenting with, and practicing my photography skills. It is one of my life obsessions. Photography is something I can become very compassionate about.
The other “it” to which I refer is this blog. There are days I get disillusioned with the few views I get, but then I remember I started this because the blog and writing are an extension of my photography. I also have a few readers that are very regular and occasionally I hit a chord with them. As an example, last night I received a message from a reader that consisted of a link to an article. The link was to an article, Postmodernism in photography. You can find the article here. The reader and friend said the article reminded them of some of my posts on straight photography. This is wonderful to me because it shows me that the size of the audience doesn’t always matter as long as I can make some connection. I am fortunate that I have a few readers of this blog who have made a connection and that is what keeps me going.
This is why I do “it”. I’m sure you all have your reasons and may, from time to time, ask yourself why do you keep going because it doesn’t seem like anyone is paying attention or is interested. It doesn’t matter how big your audience is, keep plugging away. Sometimes, you may not know who or how you’re making connections. You may be surprised. Keep creating your art, your writing, and sharing your creative ideas and concepts with the world. You may be the motivation others need or want.
Who decides your work is art? Is it you, the artist? Is it your audience? Is it an art curator? Is your work not art unless it is or has been displayed in a gallery? Who decides?
There are those who argue that art is what the artist decides. If an artist creates something with intent, it is the intentions of the artist that make something art. There are those who argue that it is the audience, the viewers of the work whose decision makes something is art. If they don’t determine the work to be art, then it doesn’t matter the intentions of the artist. There are those who say it is the powers that be, critics, journalists, curators, gallery owners because they are the trained and educated eyes.
For me, it is a combination of at least two of those groups. Certainly, the artist has a play in it, but what about people like Vivian Maier? She probably never intended her work to be considered art and yet today her work is displayed big name galleries. In Vivian Maier’s case, it is the “powers that be” and the audience who decided.
Since not all of us will ever have our work displayed in the big name art galleries, it comes down to our intentions as an artist and our audience. The size of our audience is often irrelevant as long as it extends beyond ourselves.
Certainly we should listen to the powers that be, the critics, the curators, and the gallery owners as they may help us to grow and mature our art, just as our audience. Without the outside influence and views of others we do not grow and mature as artists. Listen to your audience and the critics to grow your art into the masterpieces you dream about.
Yesterday’s blog may have confused some people, but to me, that is sometimes a good thing as it leads to a discussion. For me, there are three general categories of photography; fine art photography, representational photography, and commercial.
Fine art photography is created in line with the vision of the photographer as an artist to convey a message, emotion, or idea. Representational photography is to create a visual account of a subject or event representing objective reality. Commercial photography is to sell products or services.
I strive to practice fine art photography the vast majority of the time. Yes, I can occasionally delve into representational photography or even commercial photography, but my goal and intentions are to create fine art. That is my passion. That is why I don’t take hundreds or thousands of photographs per month. I wish to convey a message, emotion, or idea with my photography. I become bored with just taking a photograph to objectively represent a subject or scene.
I am a photographic artist, practicing fine art photography. For me, it is more of a challenge to engage your audience than merely being representational. Set a challenge for yourself. Follow your path.
Labels and titles, we all love them and hate them. Many love putting those inititials behind or in front their name, PhD, CEO, DC, VP, PA, the list just keeps growing. We also like to get creative with job names, Chief Sanitation Engineer. We go to the coffee shop and order a coffee from a barista, literally a “barman/barmaid”, but barista sounds so much better, to us. So why do I refer to myself as a photographic artist?
I use the term photographic artist a lot. I refer to you all, my audience, as photographic artists, I call myself a photographic artist. Why not just say photographer? For me, there is a difference. Both take photographs but in my way of thinking for different reasons.
When I have told people I am a photographer one of the first things they ask, “do you do weddings?”. Often the first thing many non-photography people think of when they hear photographer is you’re a wedding photographer. No, I don’t do weddings.
I adopted the term photographic artist because I work towards creating art with my photography not a Xerox copy of a scene or subject. For me, the term photographer describes one who takes photograph that may or may not be art, portraits, commerical, product, architecture, journalistic, or artistically. I use photographic artist just as a person uses photojournalist. The term photographic artist narrows down my range a bit to define my intent to create something artistic, even a portrait.
My goal is to get more photographers to join me in the creation of art through the use of photography. Follow along with me and become the photographic artist you want to become.
Photography is the only art form where some people require the artwork to represent reality. People don’t worry about reality in a painting. The artist can paint a scene as they imagine it or perceive it. The same goes for drawing or sculpture.
There are some forms of photography that must be as close to reality as is possible. Forensic and photojournalism, even though journalism as a whole has taken a hit due to both perceived and real bias or alteration of facts, but anything else, especially, fine art photography it should be left to the freedom of the artist.
Let’s take a look at the image above and put it to the reality test. First, the vast majority of the world’s human population does not see in black and white. So immediately the image above fails the reality test. Okay, you say we can give that a pass. Below is what the scene looked like in actual reality.
This photograph was taken on the east side of a building at 1:40 PM in mid October. This was an alleyway in downtown Kansas City, on a bright sunny day. Off to the camera left is an assistant holding a large reflector. to light the subject. This is what the scene looked like in reality. Not nearly as interesting as the final image. With a little bit of creative light metering and the use of post-processing I was able to get the image below.
So, if this was my intent for a fine art photograph is this okay? Most people would agree it is fine, we’re “allowed” to do this level of manipulation.
How about the next image?
When we look at a scene like this we don’t see the smooth flowing water, but again we call that permissible.
The image above has the sky replaced, a “ghost” added, lots of dodging and burning. Now some would say we’re going too far that “we’ve altered reality”.
The image above versus the original below.
Now we have really gone too far for some. The final image is totally altered reality.
As a photographic artist to hell with reality and what the purists say. My goal is to create art as I wish. If you like it fine, if you don’t not my problem. Don’t let others stop you from creating your art. Don’t worry about altering reality. Make your art, that is where the real freedom comes as an artist.
I’ve discussed this topic in the past but I believe it needs to be revisited from time to time. Photography is one of the few art forms where we have a divide in mindsets over the process of creating a photograph. The divide is between post-processing and no post-processing, the anti-Photoshop snobs. (Note: I use the term Photoshop noun for Adobe Photoshop or any program that is similar.)
Why anti-Photoshop photographers are snobs
This may be a question you ask when I choose to call the anti-Photoshop photographers snobs, so I’ll explain my choice of words. Dictionary.com defines a snob as; 2. a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field:
If the discussion comes up between the pro-Photoshop photographer and the anti-Photoshop photographer we often get to the “I get it right in the camera” comment. This is just another way imply that the pro-Photoshop photograper is always just “fixing” an image because they got it wrong. To me, the photographer that says this clearly doesn’t understand photography, film or digital. These people never really worked a darkroom with dodging, burning, pushing/pulloing film, or any of the other advanced darkroom techniques.
The great master, Ansel Adams wrote a three book series, The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. Two of the three books are solely dedicated acheiving the final printed image, or 2/3s of the process of creating an image. Two thirds!
The goal isn’t to “get it right in the camera”
The anti-Photoshop crowd that argues they “get it right in the camera” don’t realize the goal isn’t to “get it right” because what is right? Who decides what is “right”?
Film and digital photography both have limits on the dynamic range they can record. Our eyes have a dynamic range of 21 stops of light. Typically, the best our cameras can do is about 15 stops of light, so I have to make a decision on what is “right” and with knowledge can split the difference if I want and bring back those stops I’ve lost.
Another issue. We see selectively. Have you ever taken a photograph and when you looked at the image later on see something you didn’t see at the time? I have. The best example I can remember was a nighttime photograph of a train station. I setup my tripod, camera, cable release, composed the composition, took the shot. When I got home and began to go through the evenings images, I realized the photograph I just knew was going to be the perfect photograph of the train station at night, I see something on one of the stations window frames. I zoom in, it’s a soda cup. I didn’t see it before when I took the shot.
I have seen very few, and I mean very few “straight out of the camera”, “I got it right in camera” images that I would say are fantastic.
The real reason for anti-post-processing
I can’t help but believe the real reason why these anti-post-processing people are sometimes so adamant about their hatred for Photoshop is it is a self-defense mechanism. They don’t know how to do it, they don’t want to admit they don’t understand something, so it is wrong and I am better because I don’t have to do it.
The bottom line
If you are like me and do post-processing using Photshop/Lightroom/or anything similar don’t worry abou the haters. They’re just envious of our ability to perform tasks they cannot perform or understand. Do your thing. Take your photographs and process away, we are the true photographic artists.
In September 2021 I went on a photography trip with a friend. The goal was to get a photograph of the Milky Way in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The featured photograph is from that trip. The entire trip was set up to take a photograph of the Milky Way, but we drove past a lot of scenes that were very photographic.
We were driving to a location, a secondary site, when we saw an old one room school house. We stopped and I got these two shots.
The photograph above was near a location we decided to visit. I was walking down the street looking for something worthy, in my mind, and saw this old fence at the back of a building.
How many of you have, like me, been heading to your destination of a photographic trip and drove past something and thought “someday I’ll stop here” or saw a scene that caught your eye but kept on going.
As Wayne Gretzy said, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”. Don’t wait to stop and get the shot, because as I have found sometimes that shot disappears forever.
Why did you get interested in photography? I wasn’t ever really interested in art in my youth. I really didn’t have any hobbies. I took art class in school because it was a requirment to graduate.
For me, I was given a camera as a gift by mother in my mid twenties. I can’t even remember why she decided to give me a camera, a Canon AE-1. (I still have that camera by the way). After getting the camera which I knew nothing about I began to learn a bit. I even got to the point of developing my own black and white film. I somewhere along the line I lost interest in photography until 2005 when I bought a Nikon D50. By this time I was 47 years old. I had a somewhat stressful job and needed something to get away and relax.
Once I got my shiny new digital SLR camera my whole view of photography changed. I studied everything I could find. I eventually even went to school and got a photography education.
For me, photography is a bit about expressing my view of the world around me. It is about self-expression, even though I’m often reluctant to express my true self to others. I guess that is a bit of a concern that others may not like my work or think I’m weird. As I write this, I’m truly considering exploring that possibilty. Maybe art is more about expression of ourselves rather than what we think others want to see.
I don’t live where I think “if I had only done things different”. The past is gone and it can’t be changed. I live saying, “I’m moving forward and see where this takes me”. I’m going to share my journey with the world, as best as I can, and express myself and my views in an honest way. For me that is why photography. Photography allows me the creative venue I have learned to use through cameras, lenses, lighting, and Photoshop manipulation. My challenge to you, is let’s do this together. Maybe we can start to change the world for the better, one image at a time.
I forget this often, make art for yourself. This is my new mantra. Back in the beginning of my photographic journey that was what I did, made art for myself. Then, I started to follow the words of others and would make art to please the review of others. I found that it wasn’t as much fun as making photographs and processing them to my satisfaction but rather what others thought to be good.
I get it, if you’re in business to sell the art you have to produce art that sells, but isn’t it likely that if you make what you like you can find others who like it. We may have to market to a different audience but there is an audience for it. For me, if something sells fine, if it doesn’t sell that is also fine.
As artists we need to express ourselves as we are and give the world a glimpse inside our minds eye. Let the world see the subjects of your art through your eye. Make art for yourself. Enjoy your art.
Photographer Clay 