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?
As usual for me, I’m up and sitting in front of my computer screen at 4 something in the morning. It’s not that I can’t sleep but rather after years of working a job where I have to be in at 5 or 6 in the morning, it is my usual habit.
This morning, however, is Christmas. Now my children are grown and I am sitting here drinking my coffee remembering back to the days when they were young. Even though I have been involved in photography even while my children were small, on Christmas morning I never bothered to take many photographs. For me, it was about memories, not pictures. While we did take some photographs later in the day, the time when it was the flurry of gift opening and the flurry of Christmas paper was about the joy of watching the excitement.
While it is true that a photograph can remind us of the past, it is often living in the moment that is more important. Some scenes are better remembered in our minds rather than the photograph. This, for me, is also true of many other events that occur in our lives throughout the year. Some of those are not meant to be photographed but rather meant to be enjoyed, sitting in peace with yourself. Take time to enjoy some sunrises or sunsets without attempting to capture them. Take time to enjoy the view of the landscape at the vineyard having a glass of wine with loved ones. Take time to soak up the zen of nature periodically. Not everything has to be photographed, some things just needed to be enjoyed.
Enjoy your Christmas day and create some memories without photographs.
One of the most challenging scenes for many photographers is a snow scene. Using our digital cameras and the built-in light meter snow photographs are often slightly underexposed causing the snow to look gray. Yesterday, I did a bit of an experiment. Not overly scientific just a quick test so to speak. I let the camera’s built-in light meter show me what it thought to be a correct exposure, that is not over or under-exposed.
Camera meter exposure, 1/125 ISO 100 @ f/22
As you can see the snow is well somewhat gray and the image is slightly underexposed.
Light meter reflective light 1/125 ISO 100 @ f/16
Here I metered the scene with a Gossen light meter using reflective light. The light meter measured what would actually fit the sunny 16 rule. As you see, the snow is much more white.
Using incident light with the Gossen light meter the scene was measured and shot as shown below.
Incident light metering 1/125 ISO 100 @f/14
This just goes to show you that some of the old rules are still working today. This post was brought you by the sunny 16 rule.
While it is still frigid outside, the current temperature is -6°F, and it looks like we will be lucky enough to see some sunshine. This may give way to an attempt to work on an experiment I have in mind. Reflective and incident light metering in photographing a snowy scene. Often when we attempt to photograph snow our cameras tend to want to make something gray and often our snow has a gray tint rather than white unless we intentionally overexpose slightly. I’ve never tried using incident light metering for photographing snow or really a landscape.
For me, this is what some days are all about in my photographic journey, experimenting and trying something different. I’ll let you know how it works out. Stay tuned.
Ah, the joys of winter. My current weather conditions are 0°, snowing, with a wind chill index of -22°. My work canceled the workday today so I get to stay inside and this is just about as far outside as I will be going today. Oh, and as the day progresses, the temperatures will be falling rather than rising. The high for the day was just after midnight.
While the snow and winter can offer some interesting scenes for photography, there are days like today that are just nope not going to happen, at least outside. This doesn’t mean we can’t be creative or pursue our art we just do so from the comfort of our homes. Days like today can be used to read, study, and experiment with photographing indoors. I will probably do a bit of reading and studying the photography of others.
When I take photographs my goal is to create rather than merely record a scene. I don’t mean to imply that recording a scene or subject is bad or wrong it just isn’t my style.
The version of the featured photo above looks good and it is a close representation of what the scene looked like in reality, but it doesn’t reflect the same mood as the final black and white version. The black and white version with the darker background was what I envisioned in my mind’s eye.
For me, the difference between a photographer and a photographic artist is to envision the image I want to present to my audience.
I know it has been several days since I have written something. Between working on getting some projects planned, the last few days before retiring from my job, dedicating more time to my art, and the upcoming holidays I have not had much time to think about what to write about.
In the past couple of months, I have met some new creative people and established a unique bond with others I have known for a while. As such, in 2023, I have several new photography projects in the planning stages. One of those projects involves an improved blog site. In the meantime, I will get back to writing each morning and let you in on my daily ramble.
Today’s ramble
One of my projects is to get back into a bit of film photography. The camera I have selected to use for most of my film project is a Vitoret L. This camera is somewhere between 53 and 58 years old and works like a champ.
Most of my other projects I am keeping somewhat secret and only involve those who will be directly involved in the projects, some of which will require additional resources.
Yesterday morning, December 11, 2022, I woke early, as usual, and when I let the dog out for his morning ritual I noticed it was pretty foggy. This is often something that can’t be planned where I live since this morning it was forecast to be foggy but it isn’t. The unpredictability of the weather is often a challenge for most of us since we have other jobs, well I have 14 more workdays left. We can often work with the weather but planning a photo project based on the weather makes it, at times, something that is out of reach for us or when it happens you just have to be ready.
When I saw the fog yesterday morning, I quickly put on some shoes and a jacket grabbed a camera, and started to walk my neighborhood.
I didn’t take many but I was able to get out and get some shots. Even small exercises like this are necessary to get your vision and motivation going. Photographic exercises are just like physical exercising in that photographic exercise keeps your skills and vision in shape just as physical exercise keeps your body conditioned.
Remember to exercise often. If you can’t get some photographic exercise daily, at least to weekly exercise.
Photographer Clay 