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Below are the three most recent Here's a Thought . . . commentaries
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HT2305 - It Truly Makes No Difference |
I was putting together a new project for the next issue of Kokoro when I realized that the 15 images in the final edit came out of 14 different cameras. Looking at the images, I would never be able to identify the camera without referring to the metadata. The lesson? You already own a sufficient camera, no matter what camera you own. |
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HT2306 - Enough with the Vibrance Already |
The vibrance and saturation sliders are taking over the world. I use a Windows PC and every day when I fire up my computer, I'm confronted with and over-saturated landscape. This morning's abomination set a new record. I didn't realize it was possible to crank up the saturation control to 1,000, but it is. My concern is that if dialing up the saturation is a virtue, then its opposite (realistic or muted color) is becoming a sin. |
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HT2307 - Memory Card Lifespan |
The other day I mentioned my search for new hard drives to replace my aging, 5-year old ones. I received an email from a listener who brought to mind another aspect I'd never thought about. He mentioned that the memory cards we use in our cameras also are subject to aging and should also be replaced every 5-10 years just like SSDs. I've used the same cards for over a decade. Time to do some more research and shopping. |
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HT2308 - Removing Sharpness |
Most (but not all) images require a sharpness that has us searching for and treasuring tack sharp lenses. We shouldn't let that, however, determine our aesthetic decisions. We can always reduce sharpness from a sharp capture if needed, but we can't create more sharpness than the lens captures. |
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HT2309 - A Nagging Sense of Guilt |
It's been over a year since my last publication of a new issue of Kokoro. I feel a sense of guilt about this. In that same time, I've release 400 Here's a Thought, 60 podcasts, 60 episodes of Finding the Picture, 5 issues of LensWork, and that doesn't count episodes of Looking at Images, Seeing in SIXES commentaries, or Trilogies commentaries. So why this nagging sense of guilt? The pressure to produce takes many forms |
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HT2310 - What You Might Do Someday |
It occurs to me that marketing camera gear is all about convincing you that your current gear is somehow inadequate. It also occurs to me that art making art is the revelation of the possible, that is to say, all art is made with the tools we have at hand. No one, of course, is going to run an expensive marketing campaign to show you all the things your current camera is fully capable of accomplishing. We have to remind ourselves of the incredible capabilities we hold in our hands. |
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HT2311 - The Quiet Light, Digitally |
John Sexton published a wonderful monograph of his work titled, The Quiet Light. His images glowed off the page. This effect was due to his extraordinary skill as a printer in combination with a side effect from reciprocity failure with gelatin silver film. It's wonderful aesthetic that was difficult to achieve but beautiful to behold. Now, with digital processing, it's a few clicks away and easy. |
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HT2312 - Photo Vests |
For 50 years now I've had an on again, off again relationship with photo vests. I'll go through periods where I find them convenient, comfortable, and adequate, then periods when I find them too limiting. The real issue, obviously, is not the vest but rather the amount of gear I feel is necessary for me to do the work I want to do. That issue always leads me back to gear minimalism, and the search for the least possible gear needed. I'd long for the yesterdays of just a camera and that's it, but I've never experienced that. What is the minimum kit? |
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HT2313 - Anthologies |
As we all know, you can't please all the people all the time. This is one of the foundational philosophies behind the anthology nature in both LensWork and in my personal work published in Kokoro. The strategy here is that even though a reader might find any given project uninteresting, an anthology increases the possibility that each viewer will find something they like and appreciate. |
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HT2314 - The Fly in the Acrobat Ointment |
I love publishing PDFs for Acrobat for several reasons including cross platform compatibility (Mac, PC, tablet, etc.), layout integrity, typographic fidelity, and book-like pages. There is one drawback to PDFs, however, that is frustrating. |
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HT2315 - New Work Revitalizes Older Work |
There's an interesting phenomenon that I've observed now for a couple of decades. Every time I release a new issue of Kokoro, there is an upswing in downloads for previous issues. Of course, the current release is the volumetric winner in terms of downloads, but the accumulated downloads of back issues always exceeds the current release. In other words, publishing new work has a way of revitalizing older work. Plus, as the back catalog grows, the coattails effect increases dramatically. |
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HT2316 - Photography and My Morning Coffee Routine |
I start every day, 7 days a week, with photography — and my morning cup of coffee. I find that first half hour or so when the house is quiet and I'm not fully awake to be an ideal time to think about photography, brainstorm projects, and even visualize specific images. I don't sit in front of my computer and work in Lightroom or Photoshop, but rather let my mind warm up to the day while I try to be aware of whatever creative impulses bubble up. |
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HT2317 - The Masters Are Better Than We Think |
It's difficult to truly and fully admire the work of a master photographer until we try to do it ourselves. I remember being highly impressed with a body of work done by Aaron Siskin that consisted of abstracts of road tar patterns on the highway. I found a stretch of road that was similarly repaired and thought I'd try my hand at his creative vision. My total failure increased my admiration of his work tremendously. |
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HT2318 - Accumulating Momentum |
There's often an unobserved momentum that accumulates with project oriented photography that is absent from single image photography. Single image photography often includes a dichotomy that makes an image successful or not. In contrast, project oriented photography builds a certain momentum over the months and years as candidates accumulate and the project is evolving. |
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HT2319 - Adapting to the Possible |
I've mentioned before that in my twenties and thirties I was an avid backpacker. Most of my landscape photography from those days is from deep in the forest, way out from civilization, in the solitude of pristine nature. My backpacking days are long over, but my landscape photography still continues. My landscapes these days are often from the driver's seat of my truck. We adapt to what we can do or our art career ends. |
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HT2320 - Feedback During Processing |
Like all of my fellow Zone System photographers, I grew up and was trained with a foundational strategy known as pre-visualization. Since then, I've come to value the feedback available in digital processing as one of the core elements of a creative vision. |
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HT2321 - Proprietary RAW vs DNG |
I'm not a fan of proprietary file formats. It seems to me that they have a way of putting our content at risk. I'm not comfortable with that. Instead, I use the open source DNG format for my working images in my Lightroom catalog. I do keep, however, all the original RAW camera files on backup hard drives just in case a future generation DNG converter adds features that I might find useful. |
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HT2322 - After the Social Gathering |
I find it common during a social gathering that the conversation winds around to a topic that motivates me to want to share some of my images or a project that pertains to the topic at hand. I've learned, however, that trying to share my artwork at such moments is not only futile but disruptive. Instead, I find it more productive to wait until the next day and to email a link to the work on my website. I've found that almost everyone will then look at the work — on their schedule, away from the social scene, where they can give it more attention and almost always respond back to me. |
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HT2323 - We Should Call It Grayscale Photography |
It took me a decade or so in my youth to realize that the term "black and white photography" implied a mindset that had me pursuing the wrong strategies. I was so single-mindedly dedicated to achieving the maximum black and a pristine white that I failed to notice that the most important tones were in the middle. Achieving deep blacks and clean whites are important aspects of a monochromatic image, but the magic is always in the gray tones. |
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HT2324 - Distill With a Single Word |
Here's a useful exercise for before you click the shutter. Ask yourself what this picture is about. Distill your answer to a single word. Pick a word that doesn't simply name the subject, but rather one that expresses your response to the moment. This is not as easy as it sounds, but it is incredibly useful in clarifying how you might want to compose the image and which elements to emphasize or crop out of the frame. |
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HT2325 - Two Approaches |
There's an old joke that proposes that people have two distinct strategies about cooking dinner. Some decide what to eat and then go to the store to buy the ingredients. Others look in the fridge and cupboards to determine what they have already, then make a meal from that. Sounds pretty much like photography, don't you think? |
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HT2326 - The Problem with Liking Artwork |
What does it mean when we say we like someone's artwork? Its content agrees with our view of the world? That gets complicated because, for example, I like Picasso's Guernica, but I don't like war. Does it mean we admire their technique and craftsmanship? I have no doubt that Bartok was a talented composer, but I don't like listening to anything he wrote. Does it mean they've shown me a world I've never seen? Then why do I enjoy listening to the same music over and over again? Does liking artwork mean that it meets our expectations? |
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HT2327 - The Value of Going Back |
In my youth, I'd never been anywhere to photograph so all locations were new and exciting adventures. As the years passed, my inclination was to always go someplace new because the thought of going back was always haunted by the idea that I've been there, done that. How silly! Such thinking completely eliminates artistic growth, changes of season, changes of weather, changes, period. Not only that, going back can be the greater challenge to our creativity by pushing us beyond our previous efforts. |
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HT2328 - Thoroughly Ironic Pixels |
I don't see how anyone could disagree with the notion that we are seeing more small images than ever before. Statistically speaking, I'll bet most images you see these days are smaller than 8x10" because most of them you've seen on your phone, your tablet, or your laptop. And this is in the age of ever increasing megapixel cameras. My new camera, for example, has a 200 megapixel sensor ,um, in my phone! Really? |
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HT2329 - Film, Ink, and Batteries — Our Dependence on Consumables |
Cleaning out the attic the other day, I ran across my old Polaroid SX-70 camera, otherwise currently known as a boat anchor. A friend of mine fears a crisis in his photography if Epson stopped making ink for his printer. And of course every digital camera uses a custom battery without which our cameras are best used as paperweights |
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