An artists journey

Category: Fear

  • The Color Is…

    The Color Is…

    Color is one of the major considerations in our photo processing. And it can be hard. Have you ever considered how many tools and settings there are to control color in Lightroom and Photoshop?

    But where are you on the color concern spectrum? For you, is color:

    1. Critical. It must exactly match
    2. Important
    3. An annoyance
    4. Just a design variable
    5. Don’t care

    Why do we need to change it?

    Despite all of the great technology we have, color is still an imprecise and slippery thing to deal with. Different camera manufacturers often create their own unique ‘look”. Fuji, for instance, has profiles built in for some of their famous films (remember Velvia?). But because of different technology and processing tradeoffs, there are subtle differences between, say, Nikon and Canon. There are even small variations between samples of the same camera model,

    The color variations are magnified as we move further along the processing chain. What we see is greatly influenced by the decision to shoot RAW or JPEG, and if JPEG, what color balance is chosen. And is our monitor calibrated to ensure it correctly represents the colors in the digital file?

    Finally, when we make a print everything can change drastically. The print is strongly influenced by the paper we choose and the printer’s ink set. Using good profiles for the printer and paper combination helps to produce an output that is “similar” to what we edited on screen, but it will never be the same. Just the move from illuminated pixels in RGB space to reflected light from a paper substrate in CMYK space means they can never be exactly the same. The physics is completely different.

    The variations along the way are the process of color correcting the image.

    Most of us do not see or pay much attention to these differences. The importance to us depends on our application.

    Graffiti abstract ©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Tools

    The color correction tool chain starts back in our camera. Specifically, the color balance setting.

    The color of the light on our scene varies greatly in different conditions. Bright sunlight is completely different from open shade, as is a cloudy, overcast day. Indoors under tungsten or fluorescent lighting and. even LED’s give different color casts.

    Out eye/brain automatically adjusts for most of these differences, but the camera does not. The color balance setting in the camera is a means to dial out the color casts. But this is only useful for JPEG images and the preview we see in camera. Color balance has no effect on RAW images. Those compensations are made in our image editing software.

    My camera stays set to Auto White Balance. I only shoot RAW, so it has little effect on my processing or results.

    Lightroom

    When I say “Lightroom” that is a shorthand for “Lightroom Classic”. That is the only version I care about. But I”m pretty sure everything I say about it applies to both applications. There are differences in color representations in other RAW image processors like Capture One, but I do not have enough experience with them to say much.

    Lightroom is packed full of ways to change the color of our image. In the Develop module you are never far from something that can modify color.

    Some of the controls change color globally, that is, for the whole image. Just scanning down from top to bottom (I think my controls are still in the default order), we start with profile. This can be a simple selection of default balance or you can set any of the many provided color effects, including black & white toning.

    Next there is the white balance adjustment to allow us to adapt the image to a color that should be neutral. Next to that is the color balance selection to partially compensate for lighting conditions.

    Right under them is the Temp and Tint sliders. Vibrance and saturation do not actually alter colors much, but they have a strong effect on the look of colors.

    Then there is the Tone Curve, where we can adjust red, green, and blue channel properties directly, followed by Color Mixer and Color Grading. Finally there is the Calibration group where we can control hue and saturation of each channel.

    All of these are only the control that affect the whole image. We have many of the same controls to perform selective adjust color in regions (like a linear gradient) or spots (e.g the brush tool).

    Illustrating its the journey©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Partly driven by the application

    Hopefully, you get the impression that Lightroom gives us a lot of control of color. It must be important. I won’t even go into Photoshop with its many adjustments. I trust the point is made. This is not a “how to”.

    Color adjustment is a large part of what we may deal with in post processing.

    Maybe.

    It depends on our application and needs.

    If you are doing product photography, the customer is very concerned that the color of their logo or product absolutely matches their specification. Portrait customers have a fairly narrow tolerance for off colors in people’s faces. Or you may have a self-imposed rule that the final color must exactly match the original scene.

    In these cases you are probably using gray cards or Color Checker swatches to ensure you faithfully match the original. You may even be calibrating your camera to minimize discrepancies. You will probably be using many of these Lightroom controls to adjust the colors to balance out shifts or color casts.

    I’m a Fine Art Photographer

    But I’m a Fine Art Photographer. I dislike that term and I’m not completely sure what it means, but I do know that what I create is art. Art is not tied to a real scene. Maybe someday I will get into a discussion on indexicality, but not today. By my definition, anything I want to do as art is acceptable.

    I may not care at all about the color of the original scene. I’m certainly not fanatical about matching it or balancing color casts. My consideration is how the resulting image looks (to me) and what effect it has for the viewers.

    Yet I do use most of the color controls I listed earlier. Except I very rarely use Calibrarion to adjust color, but that’s just me and my thought process. All the other controls, in global and regional and spots, are tools I use frequently.

    Color is a subtle thing. Almost imperceptible shifts can create large perceived changes. It can be tricky, or impossible, to achieve an effect I have in mind. But I try.

    Abstract image with serious gamut problems.©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Not an absolute

    Breaking the assumption that my image must look like the original was difficult for me. Coming from a very technical, engineering background made me think in absolutes. Precision was important. But now that the assumption is broken, it is freeing. The realities I started with no longer hinder my vision (as much).

    Even so, I do not usually create comic book-like pop art. Unless I want to for some reason. But, on the other hand, I do often enjoy making images that are so extreme you will think I modified them too much, even if I did little at all.

    Sometimes color is the subject. Sometimes an image “needs” to be a different color than the original. An extreme use of color modification is black & white. Yes, taking away all color and just leaving tonality is extreme color manipulation.

    In the questions I posed at the start, I’m usually operating at about 4 or 5. It is a tool I can apply to accomplish my vision. Not something I am stuck with because that’s what the original was.

    Great, saturated color©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Do what you need to do

    Color perception is one aspect of a visual image. But it is a powerful one. With our technology, we are blessed with extreme ability to control or modify color. Don’t be afraid to use it creatively.

    Unless you are working in an application that demands absolute fidelity to the original, color becomes just another design element to be used for art.

    Make your art. The color is… what you need it to be.

    Today’s feature image

    Is this the “right” color? I don’t know. First, I didn’t have a gray card with me. Second, even if I did, I couldn’t have held it out the window at 40,000 ft. Third and most important, I don’t care.

    This is what I remember seeing at the time. It is the way I chose to make the image look. It is art. I like it like that.

  • The Hardest Part

    The Hardest Part

    I have figured out what I consider the hardest part of photography. Excluding Marketing. It is selecting a portfolio.

    Pick a few

    It’s a common situation. Perhaps I am entering a selection for a gallery competition. Maybe a client has requested a few choices for a job. It could be just needing to pick some images for this blog post. Whatever the reason, I am faced with the problem of selecting a small set of images for a certain use.

    Oh sure, I have the images that would work. It’s not like I”m not happy with my choices. The problem is selecting only a few.

    I’m calling what I am doing here making a portfolio. That is not precisely correct. Formally, a portfolio is a collection of images designed for presentation to an audience. Often one-on-one. However, the process is substantially the same for that and the situations I described. So I will not distinguish them.

    Embarrassment of riches

    Please don’t take it as bragging, but I have lots of images that I like. I have been at it a long time. Lots as in many thousands. That’s just the ones I promote to my top level selection category. A lot of others in my catalog would be useful for certain applications.

    Yes, I have a disciplined filing system. Everything is culled through multiple levels of selection. I find it is hard to pick the ones I like best from a shoot, so my process is oriented around rejecting the ones that are not as good. I don’t know why, but it is easier for me to say “I don’t like that one as well” than to say “I like that one best.” That is repeated through multiple levels. I apply more stringent criteria at each level.

    Giant bear peeking into an urban building©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Most of my images are filed geographically and I have an extensive keyword system for tagging all sorts of information. And I use it.

    All this should make it easy to find just what I want. You would think, but no. It is easier in that I am only wading through thousands, not hundreds of thousands of images to pick. But that’s not even the most difficult part.

    No guidance

    We are awash in training material to help us become better photographers. Some if it is actually good. There are thousands of hours of videos on camera operation and composition and visual design. Many more on techniques in the field and techniques for post processing. And gear guides are limitless. As are books to supplement the videos. All of this can help boost our knowledge and improve our technique.

    But when it comes to pulling together a portfolio, the advice is: it’s hard, keep editing, get it down to a few great images.

    Thanks, but that is not really helpful. Well, it is helpful to find out that I should expect it to be hard and I have to do it myself. But where is the video that shows me to pick this image instead of that one?

    Should a choose a tight theme with carefully coordinated image selections, as for a project? Or would it be best to present a range of subjects and styles to show the breadth of my work? Would it help to research the curator of the exhibit to try to guess what they would like? Why would this image work better than that one?

    I feel kind of left hanging out there.

    I’m on my own

    That’s the point and the conclusion. We are on our own. We have to be grown ups and make responsible decisions. That is no fun. It is downright hard. That’s why, to me, this is the hardest part.

    Very abstract created image. Representa the evolution of an image.©Ed Schlotzhauer

    So a typical scenario is that I have to select, say, 4 images for a gallery. Open theme. I’m on my own. No guidance. It is very easy to go through my catalog and pull 50 images that I would like to submit. Another pass or two might get it down to 30 images. Then it gets harder and harder as I push on. I love every one of these images. Eliminating one seems like I am abandoning it. I know that’s not the case, but the feeling is there.

    It is sometimes easier if I set it aside for a few days to let the emotions settle down. Then I do my best imitation of being coldly realistic to screen out some more. But what seems to happen is that I get down to, say, 8 images. I can only have 4. That final cut is extremely painful.

    i envy people who have a colleague or mentor they can work with to advise the process. I don’t. The decisions have to be made by me with no help. I have an awesome wife, but she isn’t an artist and cannot help with this.

    Well, I get there. It is painful. I come away with sadness because I had to eliminate some of my favorites in the final mix. That disappears with time, though. After a few days I can look at the final set and be proud of them.

    Overthinking it

    A reality is that I tend to overthink it. What I know is that the images I pull are all very good. And I know, and have demonstrated to myself often, that, with a set of excellent images, every time you eliminate one, you make the overall set stronger. That is, if you make intelligent choices. I try to remind myself of great advice I got one time that you will be judged by the worst image you show.

    So why do I agonize over it so much? It’s not like I throw a great image away if I remove it from the set.

    I think there are two problems. First is that I love these images and feel bad about taking one out, because I’m emotionally attached to it. I can live with that. But the second and bigger problem is, how do I know I have made the best choice?

    Self doubt

    That is the core of the problem. There is no guidance. I am on my own. There are much bigger and more important choices in life that are like this. Who to marry, what career to pursue, where to live, what investments to make, etc. We must use our judgment to make the decision. It hurts. We want someone to look over our shoulder and tell us we did the right thing. Unfortunately, being an adult doesn’t work like that.

    Picking some images for a use is way down in importance from those big life events. Why is it so painful then? I think it is the same fear of failure and the consequences. But I try to be realistic.

    So I try to convince myself that the final set I choose will be excellent. Even though I feel like I am in the spotlight and I am being examined to see if I am worthy, I know that if I do the best I can, that will be good enough. And if not, well, nobody dies.

    I tell myself that, but it doesn’t feel like it when I am in the pain of the process.

    All parts of the photographic process are interesting and challenging. All are subjective, But there seems to be a lot of help to be had in all phases of it up until the final image selection.

    Resources

    There actually are a couple of resources I have found to help give some education in this. Unfortunately they are not freely available. Peter Eastway, editor of Better Photography magazine, has written an excellent ebook on creating a portfolio. As it says, it is specifically oriented to putting together a portfolio or exhibit. But it still gives a lot of good insights.

    Creating a Portfolio might be available at www.betterphotographyeducation.com without a subscription. If not, it is an excellent publication and you will enjoy it. 🙂

    Another option that I have found out is not paywalled is a three part series of newsletters in the Paper Arts Collective newsletter. This is a hidden gem of a publication. The series I’m referring to was titled Evolution of a Small Project, and it traced the decisions and selection process he went through to put together an exhibit. If you do prints then you should check out Paper Arts Collective.

    But I come back to my original problem. It is hard, no one can really help you, you have to make hard choices yourself based on your judgment and artistic vision. And you have to have confidence in your decisions. To me, it is the hardest part.

  • Sustainability

    Sustainability

    Sustainability is a common buzz word these days. It is applied to everything. Every company and product claims it. For this, I’m going to redefine sustainability from an artistic point of view.

    Creative sustainability

    As artists, we live on our creativity. Do you worry that the well may dry up? What if your creativity goes away?

    If we produce hard, do we use it up? Or is the engine somehow fed by using more? Is creativity a “sustainable” resource or does it get used up?

    Since this is the core of what we do as artists, it is natural to worry about it. Probably all of us at some point have concerns that we may use it up. What would we do then?

    So, an ongoing concern for many of us is, should we ration and conserve our creativity so we don’t use it up? Is it even possible to conserve it?

    Sustainable creativity

    I don’t believe creativity actually gets used up. It is like a good well that always seems to be full when we need it. If anything, creativity thrives on being challenged and used. It seems like the more we call on it, the more there is.

    But is it sustainable? I think so, but we can be our own worst enemies. If we keep doing the same stuff over and over we get less creative. When we try to stay in a safe rut, there is less need to exercise creative. We’ve done it all. Many times. It is a major challenge to apply new creativity to repeating the same things.

    Unless we are following the lead of where our creativity wants to take us, we risk getting stale. When that happens, we seriously fear we are not creative any more. And we are right.

    That doesn’t mean our creativity is gone. But if we do not give it free rein to take us in new directions, it stops challenging us. For all practical purposes, our creativity is them used up.

    Creativity is like a good friend. It will be there for us, but we have a responsibility to nurture the relationship. If we ignore it, if we do not make time for it, it will eventually give up on us.

    Burnout

    Everyone goes through cycles. Creativity, and everything else in life, can ebb and flow. That is natural. But burnout is an extreme. It is a depressed state where it can seem impossible to ever again do the quality of work we want to do. It can persist for months or years if we let it.

    I know. I have been there. There was a time in my career when I worked long hours for years in a job that was not fulfilling. It caught up to me. I crashed. I pulled back, working less hours and not being as satisfied with the quality of my work. Eventually, by changing position and increasing the creativity of my role, I became productive and happy in my job again. It was probably a 3 year process.

    In burnout, it seems evident that creativity must be unsustainable. That’s not true, though. It is not creativity that lets us down, it is the other parts of our context. It is important to manage our lives and environment if we want to stay creative.

    Creative stimulus

    Like an athlete trains constantly, we must exercise our creativity to stay on top of our game. Everyone’s needs are different, so it is impossible to lay out a plan for you to follow to do it. You have to figure that out for yourself.

    I can provide some creative stimulants I have seen and used. Consider them. Try the ones that seem to fit you. Develop your own methods.

    I will just bullet point some of them. Each could be a topic on it’s own.

    Read. And not just the same old stuff. Read new things. Read things by people you disagree with. And also read some light stuff just for fun.

    Study something new. Don’t plan to get a PhD in it. Just learn something about it. If you like it, go deeper. If not, try something else.

    Write

    Go back and review your old work. Put together a new portfolio.

    Go to a museum.

    Travel to a new place that is NOT a major iconic photo location.

    Put blocks of time in your calendar to do nothing. Turn off your phone. Let your mind wander. Doodle. Look around. Intentionally be unproductive.

    Spend time with friends, just living life.

    Take your significant other out for a nice and unexpected meal.

    Find things that make you happy, but that are not just entertainment. Try to do more of them.

    Take walks, with and without your camera.

    Just do it

    The theme here is to fill your mind with new information. This connects in strange and unexpected ways, leading to who knows what. And to give yourself space and time to just think, ponder, consider, unwind. The more pressure we put ourselves under, the more it shuts down creativity.

    And like the inspired Nike tag line, “just do it”. Get out and work. Take pictures, Don’t worry so much about the results. Going through the motions is comforting and leads to results. Eventually. Creativity is not just inspiration, it is a process.

    Relax and try to de-clutter your head. Follow your instincts.

    Is creativity sustainable? I would say definitely. It is one of the most important traits we have as artists. We can consciously take actions to keep our creativity healthy and flowing. But we have to listen to ourselves and recognize what our needs are.

  • It’s OK to be Uncomfortable

    It’s OK to be Uncomfortable

    I recently read an article from a photographer who admitted he sometimes doesn’t stop to take a picture he wanted because he was afraid of what people would think. I understand that. I have been there many times. But I have come to the conclusion that it’s OK to be uncomfortable.

    What will people think?

    You’ve probably been here. I know I have. You are driving down a crowded road and you see a scene you want to photograph. But we decide not to pull off and get out the equipment because we would look foolish standing there beside the road taking a picture. All those people going by would think we’re weird.

    The reality I have learned, though, is that no one thinks about you as much as you do. That is a fact. We overestimate our importance. We will be more free and inventive if we stop worrying about what they may think.

    People go about their dreary lives almost totally focused on themselves and their needs. If they do momentarily notice you, even if they criticize you, you do not know what they are really thinking. Most often, they are responding to something in themselves. Because they do not really care about you.

    I love this quote from Susan Sontag: I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

    And from Olin Miller: You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do!

    If that random person driving by thinks you are doing something foolish, so what? How did that affect you? Did you feel it? Did it hurt? No. You do not know what they are thinking and besides, you are doing your art, not theirs.

    The anxiety we feel is internally generated.

    Attract attention

    I understand. I’m very introverted and I am uncomfortable attracting attention. An interesting dynamic because of where I live is that I do attract unwanted attention sometimes.

    In my area there is a lot of wildlife, such as elk, deer, moose, bear, mountain lion, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, etc. I guess I am missing the right genes, but I have little interest in them, other than to observe them. I almost never take wildlife pictures. But if I am setting up to take a picture beside a road, it is not unusual for people to pull off and eagerly ask me what I see. They seem so disappointed when I point to a tree. It’s actually kind of funny.

    And for the occasional street photography I do, I am one of those people who wants to be totally anonymous, unseen. It is uncomfortable when someone “catches” me taking their picture.

    They won’t like me

    So what do I do about this fear that people will think badly about me when I’m out shooting? The right answer is, ignore them. Easier said than done, but that is true of much of life.

    I have learned to try to put them out of my mind completely and get in the zone focusing on setting up the shot I want. Generally this works. Replace the negative concern of fear with the positive action of taking a picture.

    But even if it doesn’t work, more and more I come to the realization that I don’t care what they think. I am not trying to get them to like me or post a Facebook note about how much they admire that photographer they just passed. I don’t care.

    The results I get in these situations validates and justifies my callous “don’t care” attitude toward them.

    What are they going to do to you

    Let’s say some of the passing people give you enough attention to say to themselves “that’s dumb”. So what? What happened? Did you feel it? Did they throw a rotten tomato at you? Did they stop to get your name and take a picture of you to post on Facebook to shame you?

    Of course not. Absolutely nothing happened. They went on down the road and immediately forgot about you. If they were stopped 20 miles later and asked, they probably wouldn’t remember someone standing beside the road taking a picture.

    This is the quandary: we fear what people might think, but the reality is they don’t bother to think about us. And even if they did, it has no effect on us.

    Do what you need to do

    If you do what other people do, you get the results that other people get. – Bill Miller

    We are artists. We see things differently. That means we do things differently. Other people cannot know what our vision is at any moment unless we tell them or show them. Showing them is typically what we do.

    So do what you need to do to make your art. Do not be concerned about what anyone may think about you. First, they probably don’t. Second, it doesn’t matter. You have art to do.

    If you were embarrassed taking the picture feel doubly joyful when you see the great result. You can say to those people passing by who you imagined felt you were silly, “see what you missed”!

    Get over it

    I hope I have encouraged you to forget about your fear of people’s opinion and go for your art. Art is action. It is only an idea unless we create something.

    Act while you feel fear rather than waiting until you feel unafraid. – David Richo, in How to be an Adult

    How sad it is to think about what could have been a great image, except we were too embarrassed to stop and take it. I have done it both ways. I have passed by and regretted it and I have overcome my fear and stopped and usually been happy I did.

    I am old and calloused enough to believe now that I shouldn’t be overly concerned about what I think other people may be thinking. It’s OK to be uncomfortable. If being uncomfortable is a price for making our art, that is what we have to do.

    Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. – Anon

    To you who have never been intimidated by other people’s opinions, congratulations! You have a talent most of us do not have. Use it well. Don’t be an ass.

    Today’s image

    Do you like this image of the vast Utah plains? I do. It is not a result of trekking hours across the barren desert, watching for rattlesnakes. I took it in a rest stop on I-70, right next to the restrooms. It felt uncomfortable at the time, but I loved the scene and had to take it. At this point, I don’t recall the discomfort. But I still like the image.

    When you see something you like, stop and take it, unless it is dangerous or you have higher priorities at the moment, like a critical appointment. There are some things more important than our art. Not many, but don’t ignore them.

  • Learning Takes Effort

    Learning Takes Effort

    Contrary to the forest of web sites and blogs and newsletters promising you easy hacks, quick fixes, and effortless skill building, let me disillusion you. Learning takes effort. The more different your new subject is from what you already know, the harder it gets.

    Curiosity

    I think I can speak to this. In a previous post I said I was afflicted with curiosity. That is stated in a humorous way, but I am very serious. I have a deep and burning curiosity about many things. Learning new things or just extending my knowledge of an area occupies a lot of my time.

    I’m the kid who, way back in the days before internet, would spend hours browsing through encyclopedias. Any one remember what those are? Looking up a word in the dictionary could take me an hour. I kept getting sidetracked by other interesting words I see along the way.

    It also drives my approach to photography. I am more interested in finding interesting things, no matter what they are, and making interesting pictures from them than I am in looking for particular subjects or iconic scenes. Almost anything can be a good subject if you can “catch” it doing something interesting.

    Learning

    But if we want to go beyond just an idle curiosity, we have to learn new things. That requires significantly more effort.

    Learning demands a commitment of time and study and effort. And dedication. And drive. It is not easy to master a new subject or field.

    But what is learning, really? It is the ability to independently use knowledge or apply a skill over time and in new situations. As opposed to just recalling facts. The American education system is woefully deficient on this. Our schools teach and measure mainly performance, not learning. That is, what is 3 times 4? Who gave the Gettysburg address and what year?

    It is not that performance is unimportant, but recalling facts for a test is just not making us much more educated. For instance, I love studying history. There are usually several history or biography books around me in various states of completion. But I only care about dates as much as required to be able to put things together in a timeline. It is much more interesting and enlightening to find out why things happened, why to those people, why then, what is the back story.

    Failing

    Actual learning is hard. It requires work. And, sorry, but that is the way it has to be. We learn more deeply when we have to work at it and when we fail.

    Fail?? Yes. I don’t mean like repeat a grade. Failing as in try to use your knowledge and find you are incorrect or inadequate. Then you have to concentrate more on it to learn the right way. This reinforces the correct way and you know and remember it better.

    A small personal experience: one of the things I am learning is French. It’s a long story. You know that old expression that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks? That is true for me when it comes to learning a new language. A theory, that seems to hold true, is that it takes repetition and mistakes to learn new words. Repeating them over time builds memory, but repeating the ones you miss more often reinforces them.

    My point here is that the purpose of learning is to be able to use the knowledge or skill independently and with some confidence. We usually can’t do that until we have tried and failed and reinforced it and practiced. This involved making mistakes and correcting them and building on that. This applies to our everyday lives and our art. I don’t recommend that as a way to learn brain surgery.

    Interleaving

    Another learning topic that I have found to be very relevant to me is called interleaving. Conventional wisdom says to practice one thing intensively until it is perfected. Then move on to the next thing. If you are learning tennis, then, you should practice forehands over and over until you have mastered them. Then go to backhands. Etc.

    Interleaving, though, says you should mix a variety of things, even if you have not mastered each of them. So in the tennis example, is says it would be better to mix forehands and backhands and volleys in a match-like experience. There is evidence that this is a better way of learning.

    I am sold, because I do it in many ways with good results. I believe interleaving the activities forms more and stronger connections between different components you are learning. The long term benefit is deeper understanding or skill.

    Learning builds on itself. The more diverse things we learn, the easier it is to learn other new things.

    Dots

    Steve Jobs famously called it “connecting the dots“. He stated it best in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech. The picture is that we learn many different, unconnected, things and have experiences we may or not welcome. We can’t look ahead to see how they will connect. But somehow, looking back, they form the path we have taken.

    I love his example of how his audited calligraphy course led to personal computers as we know them. Read it!

    In order to connect the dots, we need a rich set of “dots” in our lives. Because the more we know the more there is to connect to.

    Photography

    What does this have to do with photography and art?

    I am suspicious of typical ways photography is taught. A linear process seems logical and fits well in a course outline, but I believe students should be out making bad pictures from day one. They should have daily or weekly project assignments. As they see their results they can be shown what aperture or shutter speed or ISO or lens choices could do and why they would want to make tradeoffs. They can be shown compositional problems they made and pointed to great artists to see the choices they made. Students can quickly get the hang of manipulating the camera to get results they want and can then get on to the harder part – figuring out what they have to say.

    But in an environment of experimentation and unlimited choices. After all, we are learning to create our vision.

    I believe we should be life long learners and open to new influences. The attitude that we know all we need to know is dangerous. We can always learn something new and get inspiration from new sources. I recently saw work by a contemporary artist I had never heard of. But some of Aline Smithson‘s project The Ephemeral Archive touched me in new ways and opened windows of inquiry for me. And I didn’t think I liked contemporary photography.

    Learn to be comfortable with being challenged with new ideas and with failing. It is one of the best ways to learn. It’s not supposed to be easy.

    If you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.

    Neil Gaiman

    I want to hear your comments! Let’s talk!