I should just stop worrying about categorizing my images. I like this image of our winemaker cleaning lees from a white wine tank. The hose is not a pose (sorry); it was kind enough to assume that shape on its own.
My third type
December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
In the “about” section of my website, when discussing my style I said “my photographs tend to break down into two types: those that look like photographs and those that don’t.” I’m not sure, but I think I’ve added a third type (or at the very least a subcategory of those that look like photographs). I’m not even sure how to describe the third type. The word “abstract” keeps popping into my head. Wikipedia says “Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.” I rather like that definition.
In the last few months, I’ve noticed a few of my images starting to look like the one above. All photographs “use a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition,” So I guess compositions either “exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world” or exist mostly with a dependence upon visual references in the world. In other words, they are either abstract or representational, or some combination of the two. I think the composition of the photograph above clearly exists with a degree of independence from visual references in the world, so it is at least partly abstract.
So what, you may ask. I’m not sure, but somehow for me it yields better compositions if I think about such dichotomies.
Reflections on Reflections
December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I like shooting through windows. Some reflections work for you (like the ones at the top and center of the image), others don’t. Among the reflections that usually don’t work are those where the photographer’s image is inadvertently added to the mix.
To avoid that problem, I shot with a wide lens from a bit below the window, then corrected perspective in Photoshop. A more photographically correct method would be to use a perspective control lens (known as tilt/shift or PC lenses) and shift your way out of the image. With my PC lens at home, I didn’t have the option.
One of the nicer things about the category known as fine art photography is that photographic correctness can be dispensed with in favor of graphic interest, at least to a point. Here I felt the perspective correction in Photoshop helped accentuate the rhythm of the three primary horizontal curved reflections of the straight window frames.
I like this image quite a bit. I like the textures of the pots and vases, and that of the wooden crate upon which they sit. But what I like most is the contribution the reflections make to the image, enhancing the notion of the antiquity of the vessels.
Moving from the Wet Darkroom to the Digital Darkroom
December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I had a darkroom for 30 years. I did some color work, but much more black and white. During my darkroom days (which ended in 1999), I preferred black and white for a number of reasons. There was much more you could do in the darkroom to influence the interpretation of a black and white image than a color image. Black and white tended to emphasize the graphic elements, textures and tones of an image, often lending itself well to abstractions. Absent color, it was easier to argue that photography was not limited to literal expression.
Today, owing to the sophisticated tools available in the digital darkroom and a diminishing learning curve in becoming proficient with those tools, there is more you can do with color to influence the interpretation of an image than with black and white. Not that the digital darkroom has left black and white behind, quite to the contrary. But in a color image there is simply more information at your disposal. We can now explore the complexities of color relationships in a image as fully as its graphical elements.
Here is an image interpreted in color, then in black and white. Both renditions are works in progress, both show promise in my view. If I had to favor one, I might lean slightly toward the color, or maybe not. I’d love to hear any thoughts.
Looking with my memory instead of my eyes
December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Last November I invited a group of Portland photographers to shoot Panther Creek (the winery I sold a few years ago, but am still involved with). They showed up armed with everything from 8 x 10 view cameras to medium format cameras with digital backs; plenty of DSLR’s as well. It was great fun for me to see them crawling all over the place looking for potential images.
I’d crawled in all those places myself over the years at Panther Creek. I’d shot so many images there, I quit “seeing” the stuff I saw everyday. Then I saw a number of the images taken by my photographer guests. What a whack in the head! They saw things I virtually tripped over, yet missed.
So while familiarity may breed contempt, it also breeds visual laziness. I realized it was hard to find anything new to shoot in that familiar environment because I was looking with my memory instead of with my eyes. Here’s an image of the jacket of a stainless steel tank I’ve walked by a thousand times without seeing it. Daylight was coming in from the left, and dim tungsten light from the right. I was finally walking slowly enough to see it.
The intentionally ambiguous anchor point in time
December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
As I look at many of my recent images, particularly those that don’t look like photographs, I notice an increasing number have an intentionally ambiguous anchor point in time. All photographs capture a moment in time, but what time? I’m not interested in simply making an image look old; rather, I’m trying to evoke the feeling of an earlier time. Here’s the strange part: I leave anachronistic clues. I like the ambiguity. I don’t know why this fascinates me. Maybe I’m getting old.
Here’s an image I’m currently working on, the church of San Giorgio Maggiore on the Venetian island of the same name. Work began on this beautiful church, designed by Palladio, in 1566. In a sense, however, the church “existed” centuries before in the form of a 10th century monastery on the same spot. The sailboats on the left side are of relatively recent design, but I’m tempted to leave them in. In a way they connect us to the site, literally and figuratively, as did their ancestral sailing vessels over a thousand years ago.
Why I do my own printing
December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
There are plenty of reasons to send your digital files to a fine art print bureau (time savings, expertise, access to enormous printers, to name a few). There are also lots of reasons to print them yourself (expertise, control, satisfaction, masochism, etc.). In addition to just plain fussiness, I print because I love it.
I love printing for the satisfaction it gives me to complete a process begun before the shutter clicks. I love it for the control, or at least the appearance of control, I have over every step of the printing process, from print-directed image editing to selection of paper. Most of all, I love it because it occasionally gives me the opportunity to revise history, to change the way I thought I remembered the way I wanted the print to look when I took the picture.
For me, the whole printing process is a rush like the first time I saw a print appear as if by magic in a tray of developer, but without the smell and exposure to materials of questionable toxicity.
