Here's a thought…

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HT2548 - Exposure Tones vs Exposure Textures

The so-called "exposure triangle" is usually thought of as a means of controlling the lightness and darkness of an image, and that's obviously true. But we old timers learned in studying the Zone System that tones are related to textures, particularly in combination with the angle of illumination. Human vision almost never sees tones without textures. Even the absence of texture is a form of texture.

HT2549 - From Whence We See the World

Photographing is always a subjective act. I can't think of a single instance in which a photograph is truly objective. After all, as photographers we choose where to stand, when to click the shutter, which things to include in the photograph and not, all of which are subjective decisions, decisions that reflect our point of view, our value system, our statement about what is important to observe. Photography becomes art when we embrace that subjectivity.

HT2550 - The Best Way to Add Value to Your Photographic Artwork

Not everyone is pursuing the sale of their photographic artwork, but it's also not uncommon. The foundation of this pursuit is to try to build value into your artwork. If history teaches us anything, there are two keys to building value in your artwork: produce your prints prior to 1975; be sure you died in the 20th century. Both are difficult tasks here in 2026, but at the very least, announce you are not feeling well and you fear your art producing days are limited.

HT2551 - Four Hundred Donuts

We all like a donut now and then. Two donuts on occasion. Three donuts? Might be entering the realm of excess. A dozen? Impossible without getting sick of donuts. Enough is enough and more than that leaves us overwhelmed, repulsed, ill. This comes to mind because I recently received a 400-page monograph of photographs. Roughly 40 pages in and I started feeling numb. At page 100, I gave up, realizing I hadn't really seen the last 60 images at all — and there were 300 more pages left to go! Too much of a good thing finds us racing for the exit door.

HT2552 - Big Things and Little Things

Some friends of ours are visiting Kyoto this week, many of the same places I visited in 2019 in my last visit to Japan. They are sending lots of pictures and I can't help but observing a difference between what they're photographing and what I photographed. Same locations, different visions. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise, but it does have me thinking.

HT2553 - Minutia

It can be quite entertaining to hear photographers talk about their images. Almost without exception, the photographer will examine tiny areas of the image including details, juxtapositions of composition, perfect tonal relationships, extremely subtle things that non-photographers would never see, or I should say never notice. For some reason, photographers think these minutia can make or break the success of a photograph.

HT2554 - Scant Feedback, If Any

Applause is lovely. Accolades are lovely. Sales are lovely. Relying on such feedback to fuel your motivations is to place yourself in a position that doesn't help your creativity. Statistically, it just doesn't add up. Produce your work because you need to do it and because the Universe needs you to do it, not for the applause and (God forbid) not for the sales.

HT2555 - My Advice Cannot Make Your Pictures

I spend way too much time on YouTube because it's such a great way to learn tidbits about the technology of photography. That said, there are also gazillions of videos that will try to tell you the steps you must (or must not take) to make an aesthetically pleasing photograph, in essence how to follow the rules without admitting that you are following the rules. The challenge is to learn from the technical while simultaneously using aesthetic advice with extreme caution lest you find you are making other people's photographs.

HT2556 - Knowing When to Move

I think it was Picasso who said, "The trick in painting is knowing when to stop." I've adapted Picasso's thought for photograph. When out photographing, try to remind myself that the trick is knowing when to move on. I'm always tempted to move on immediately after I've pressed the shutter. I have it, so be done. If I can remember to resist this temptation, it's amazing how many times I find a better picture by being still, waiting a few moments, paying attention to the changes, and looking for the unexpected.

HT2557 - Key Tones

There's a theory in fine art photography that every image needs to have key tones, some spot in the photograph that is absolute black and another that is absolute white. These tones supposedly calibrate our vision for everything else in the image. They become tonal reference points. Like all other rules in photography, I find this one contains a truth, but not a rigid one. Key tones are worth considering, but not with inflexible rigidity.

HT2558 - Losing History

When I started in photography some 50 years ago it was axiomatic and universally understood that it was important to learn the history of photography. There were, I'm guessing, a couple of hundred photographers who are still important to this day, who were the pioneers, whose work we needed to know at least briefly if not intensely. We built a library of their books, study their images, read their essays, and recognized intuitively that this was a prerequisite for our own photographic growth. Instagram and internet influencers have replaced the need to study the masters from the history of photography. I'm trying to imagine a novelist who doesn't read novels or a pianist who never listens to music.

HT2559 - A Catalog of Your Work

A friend of mine (who is a little older than I am) is involved in a massive project to create a digital catalog of his life's work. This consists of over 2500 finished images. He has inspired me to think about doing a similar project and catalog for my own work. But then, I had to ask myself, who would ever see it? Why would such a catalog be important to anyone other than me? Which is more important, doing new work or recording that past work has been done? Perhaps here is a compromise

HT2560 - Describe What You See

Before you click the shutter, tell me what you see. I would be willing to bet big money that your description would mostly include details of the things you mentally isolate from the larger context. In essence, your description would be a list of objects you deem important enough to notice. Reread that last sentence and replace the word "description" with "photograph." To make a better photograph do we need a better description? Or, is what's missing emotional content and connection beyond mere description?

Is the Frame Part of the Artwork?

We don't just thumbtack our prints to the wall. Instead, we dress them up a little bit. We mat them and frame them and then hang them on the wall. Where does the artwork stop and the presentation embellishments begin? Said another way, are the mat and the frame part of the artwork?

HT2562 - More on Framing

At the risk of beating a dead horse, here are a few more thought about photography in frames, an extension of yesterday's comments about whether or not mats and frames are part of the artwork.

HT2563 - Advice on Travel Photography

Here is some advice about travel that doesn't come from me, although I do agree with it. Strangely enough, it's a passage from the book Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1929. Not aimed specifically at photographers or artists, it still is an observation about travel that I think fits perfectly with our creative process as photographers.

HT2564 - I Saw This Very Cool Thing

Here's another thought experiment about producing artwork. I looked back at all I've done and divided my productivity into two piles. The first pile was photographs that essentially say, "I saw this very cool thing." And the second pile was the artwork where the essence of the work was to say, "This is what I have to say about this thing." I found I had way more work in the first pile, but that the most meaningful work I'd done was in the second. I wouldn’t be surprised that you might find the same divisions in your work. If I'm right about this, what does that say about those projects we are yet to complete?

HT2565 - The Updating Dilemma

Major software updates have become a part of our photographic life. Some of these updates in software features are subtle, but occasionally an update introduces a major game-changing capability. What are we to do if a new update in software processing allows us to make a significant improvement in one of our images from yesteryear? Do we go back and "fix" the images processed with older software? If so, where do we draw the line?

Appreciating Technical Accomplishment

I had an odd revelation at a concert last night. Afterwards, at dinner, the general consensus was that the pianist was incredibly talented and accomplished. Although I enjoyed the music immensely, I realized I had no ability to appreciate her skill. I don't play the piano i.e., I have no context for the difficulties of the performance. I have no way to judge her talent other than I like it or I don't. I wonder if this is the same with the public as they look at our photographs. They may not appreciate the technical accomplishment because they have no criteria against which they can measure what they see. Their analysis is reduced to I like it or not.

HT2567 - Moment Is Not Quite the Right Word

One of the things I particularly like about the Seeing In SIXES concept for photography is its ability to expand or stretch time. Instead of the instantaneous photograph, with six images we have the capability to express a moment. I've never been comfortable with that term. Describing the unit of time for a Seeing in SIXES project is difficult. A moment is too short; an hour is too long. I think this is so because it's not a measure of clock time but rather of conscious attention. Somehow, "unit of consciousness" seems a bit clumsy.

HT2568 - A Portable Gallery

Here's a story about my friend, the late Kevin Raber. Whenever we would find ourselves discussing an image or a photographer, he would immediately pull out his tablet and bring up the image we were discussing. His tablet was, I think, primarily his portable gallery. He carried with him the entire set of LensWork, a good percentage of his own photography, lots of images from photographers he admired, and an assortment of images that were important to him. My portable gallery is limited to images retained in my memory. Kevin's portable gallery is a much better idea.

HT2569 - A Few Clunkers

I have no idea why, but I felt compelled this morning to look back through my 180 projects published in Kokoro, the first of which was completed in 2015. Ten years, 36 issues, 180 projects. I wish I could report that they were all brilliant and have withstood the test of time. The reality, however, is that there are a few projects I now see as clunkers. That's the thing about the art life, we always produce with enthusiasm but occasionally mature with a cringe.

HT2570 - Macro Viewing, or Tiny Screen Syndrome

Can you imagine what a thrill it was in the first half of the 20th century when the means of making a photograph evolved from the contact print to the enlargement? Bigger prints were breathtaking and that trend continues even to today. There is today, however, a reality about viewing fine art photography that should make us photographers a little uncomfortable. Most of our images will now be seen on a tiny screen that is smaller than a 4x5 contact print.

HT2571 - Experiment with Abandon

My favorite capability in the digital workflow is undoubtedly Control-Z. The ability to experiment with abandon and then undo what doesn't work makes processing not only more efficient but it encourages experimentation. If, as I've proposed elsewhere, photography is a matter of choosing among variants, then the creative impulse is all about experimentation, trial and error, give it a go and see what happens. I try, at least as often as I can, to make three stylistic variants with each project before I make decisions and commitments.

HT2572 - At Some Point the Goalposts Moved

For several decades after the invention of photography, the goal for all photographers was to make an optically accurate image. That meant with technical perfection, emulating human vision. Somewhere I can't identify in the history of photography, that objective was expanded and a few photographers began thinking about the medium as something else, something more pliable, something more personally expressive. I think this evolution also occurs in each of us individually and is a watershed moment in our photographic career — assuming we recognize it and embrace it as a new way of photographing.

HT2573 - The Starting Point

My approach to processing is that with every image, the end point of processing is unknown. Aesthetics can evolve, ideas can blossom, expectations can change. Perhaps counterintuitively, I find that beginning the process at the same starting point is a surprisingly useful strategy. With every image I start with input sharpening, some tone mapping to make the image look normal, and even some cropping to straighten horizon lines or verticals. Essentially, I start with a normal looking image a straight photograph, without visible processing. That common launching point provides a solid foundation for exploring more exotic processing.

HT2574 - The Difficulty with Warm-toning

I learned about warm-toning in the mid-1980s. At that time, everybody created selenium-toned images that had a slight purple cast. Contrary to the popular zeitgeist of the times, I discovered Kodak Brown Toner and Kodak Polytoner and fell in love with warm-toned images. In the digital workflow, warm toning is very tricky because brown is such an odd color.

HT2575 - The Aspect Ratio for Publication

The earliest issues of Kokoro were produced in a portrait orientation. My thinking was that the portrait orientation format would fit better when viewing on a phone or a tablet. I discovered, however, that a portrait orientation did not fit computer monitors, or laptops well at all. I knew that by changing to a landscape orientation would complicate people viewing on their the phone, but phones and tablets can easily be rotated whereas computer monitors and laptops cannot. The aspect ratio for publication gets even trickier in book design. Does this mean we should standardize our aspect ratio based on the final means of production?

HT2576 - Illumination

I love word play almost as much as I love photography. Has it ever occurred to you the double meaning inherent in the word illumination? We search for illuminating light to reveal the shadows. We also search for illumination in the sense of enlightenment and understanding. Photography is all about illumination, interestingly enough in both definitions of the term. Perhaps better than the term photographer we could think of ourselves as "illumination seekers" — in both senses of the word. Enlightenment, indeed.

HT2577 - Little Things Gone Wrong

We try, of course, to do our very best with every image, with every project. We strive for perfection. Do we ever achieve it? Far more often than I care to admit, while looking back at some of my completed work I find little things that I could have so easily corrected, but missed. A misspelled word, unfortunate punctuation, the small distraction poking in from the edge of an image, an inconsistency in layout, an image I now realize needed a little tweak here or there. Not failures , but not perfect. Maybe the final step in proofing should be a purposeful review of all the little things that can go wrong.

HT2578 - Ruthless Editing, Again

Last weekend, more or less just for fun, I reviewed all 180 projects in my Kokoro series of PDFs. One of the conclusions from this review is that I need to do more ruthless editing. Far too often I felt that a project simply had too many images. My primary criteria for editing has always been to eliminate repetition, but I need to expand that and maybe set more rigid limits on how many images are included in a project. Breaking a project into smaller parts might be the key, like chapters in novels.