Here's a thought…

HT2609 - Creativity Is a Private, Personal Thing

HT2610 - There Will Always Be One More Tweak

Pablo Picasso famously said that the trick in painting is knowing when to stop. I think this is true in photography as well. There will always be one more tweak we can make to an image to improve it. And when we think we have it perfect, with the passage of time, we'll realize there is one more thing we could do. Ad infinitum. Perfection will always elude us because it's a constantly moving target. At some point, we must be willing to accept "good enough" and let go of the pursuit of perfection.

HT2614 - What You Should Do

Perhaps there is no deadlier advice from a workshop instructor, mentor, or master photographer, than their statement about what you should do with your photography. I've learned countless things from photographers who have told me what they do and leave it for me to pick and choose what parts of their creativity might be applicable to mine. On the other hand, I've learned essentially nothing from instructors who tell me how I ought to make my pictures.

HT2615 - Beyond Place or Moment

You may recall my Editor's Comments in LensWork #173,  Projects as Wall Art. I have  another observation about this that I missed until recently. An image on the wall says something about a place or a moment. A project of a dozen images or so says something That is neither about a place nor a moment. My current project on the wall consists of 13 images of snow scenes that says something about snow and winter that I'm not sure I could accomplish with just one image all by itself.

HT2616 - My Serious Camera

A troubling mindset that I have difficulty discarding is that I think of my gear as either serious or, well, not. With my serious camera, I work more intensely, with a deeper concentration. I also have a more portable, but fully capable camera that goes with me everywhere. For some reason, I can't seem to use that camera with the same intensity as my serious gear. I must let go of this prejudice.

HT2617 - Battling with the Real World

The problem with photography from a creative medium point of view is that it too successfully allows us to make pictures that show what the world looks like. I'm not sure this is helpful for those of us who want to use photography as a personally expressive medium. The more our photographs are truthful to an objective point of view, the less they reflect our own interpretive response to the world. Do we create photographs that copy the world or do we push further toward a more personal expression?

HT2628 - Photography Is a Graphic Art

Are you familiar with that book, Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon? If so, you are familiar with the idea of borrowing (a more gentile word than stealing) ideas from other disciplines. For example, postal stamps. For example, Japanese picture books known as e-hon. For example, Audubon bird books, botanical catalogs, wanted posters, old time postcards, bookmarks, Tarot cards, or pub coasters. All of these graphic arts could be merged with photographic images to create artwork that goes beyond camera as recording machine.

HT2629 - The Myth of Accurate Color Balance

Is there truly such as thing as correct color balance? What about differences in the way individuals see? What about light sources that effect how we see a print? Seems to me that accurate color balance is a myth. Instead, I prefer to think in terms of believable color balance, emotional color balance, or interpreted color balance — none of which are accurate but all of which might help create a more persuasive image.

HT2630 - Why We Are Making the Complete LensWork Digital Back Issues Collection Available for Download

We announced a few weeks ago that we have begun a long-term project to publish the entire content of the LensWork Print Editions as PDF digital back issues. We've already posted the first 21 back issues. We'll add two more back issues each Friday until we have them all completed. These downloadable digital back issues are available exclusively to current members of LensWork Online. Here's why we are publishing the entire back issues collection.

HT2631 - I Done Good

I sincerely hope I am not self-deluded about this, but I often find that after some months or perhaps years I look back at older images and find them far better than I remembered. I'll kick myself for not recognizing the potential for an image that now seems so obvious. It's as though the passage of time imbues the image with surprising improvements. Or, maybe my subconscious has been working on the image all this time. What I originally passed by becomes an image I now celebrate. Why is this?

HT2635 - Money and Print Size

I married young, had kids young, about the same time I decided to seriously pursue fine art landscape photography. All serious landscape photographers at the time were shooting large format view cameras which meant 4x5 or 8x10. I could afford neither, so settled for what I could afford which was a 2¼ by 3¼ monorail view camera. Little did I realize the implications of that limitation  that set the direction for my entire life in photography. Worse, that hasn't changed in the intervening 50 years.

HT2636 - Release vs Publish, and Why

I was recently watching a YouTuber discuss the "release" of a new photograph he'd just finished. It evidently was time to go public with this new image. I was struck by his term "release" as though the image had been imprisoned until its liberation. Besides the obvious detention metaphor, I questioned whether or not this is a term used specifically with single images rather than projects with multiple images. Considering all the images we now have in our digital assets, why do we "release" one and not the others? Is this a volumetric decision or a marketing one?

HT2637 - The Transcendent Moment

The term "The Decisive Moment" has been an important concept in photographic circles since Cartier-Bresson first coined it with the publication of his book of that name in 1952. I've always struggled with this term because I think of the decisive moment as a time-related concept. Rather than capturing the right instant, I'm more drawn to photographers like André Kertész who give us the transcendent moment.

HT2638 - Photograph As Launch Pad

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a photograph is a destination of a viewing process. It's as though seeing a photograph puts a period at the end of an experiential sentence. The reason I call this a trap is because it seems much better to me to consider a photograph as a launch pad for an experience, one that encourages a train of thought, a series of questions, a dialog, a search for meaning and understanding. A photograph that only provides answers is easy to forget.