Looking back, looking forward
I’ve been working on a couple of projects in LightRoom for the past 2 weeks, organizing my photos and looking back over past work. I have specific reason for doing this, but I also think its good to go back over my older work from time to time with fresh eyes. I see how far I’ve come in the past 7 years, but more importantly I re-discover the excitement of photography that drew me to to the craft in the first place.
It’s hard sometimes to get the same excitement about a recent photo shoot. I usually take a few days before I edit the images from a shoot because it’s all too familiar. I’m excited to see how the shots turned out, but when the shoot is fresh in my mind I tend to see all the weaknesses in the photos. I see the strengths too, but the weaknesses are exaggerated in the beginning. When I look at photos I made a couple of years ago, I can see them the same way I see another photographer’s work. I can see the merits of the photo as it is, instead of comparing it to the idea in my mind about how it should have been.
Project #1, which I work on in my down time, is key-wording all my images and, as a result, building my own little hierarchy of keywords. I was working on building a keyword list based on the International Press Telecommunications Council standards, but it’s a lot of work to edit it down to a form that LightRoom will recognize, so I ended up building my own tree organically. I still plan to finish the IPTC list and I will probably share it with the LR community, but I don’t expect to add it to my old images once it is done.
Project #2 is scanning my catalog for images to include in various collections. One is the “Tao of Seeing” collection; I will be submitting this portfolio to a new magazine that focuses on art and spirituality, so I need to pull enough images together for that. Another is collecting some event coverage work to round out my portfolio so I could submit it to an editor whom I was recently introduced to. And the third is pulling new images for the “Auto Deco” series for possible inclusion in a calendar, which I plan on having ready by the first week of December so it is ready for the holidays.
I’m off for the next few days with family in town for the holidays. Most of you reading this are my American friends, so Happy Thanksgiving!
Talk Club
An idea I had a little while back.
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1) The first rule of Talk Club is You must talk at Talk Club.
If this is your first night at Talk Club, you must talk. You can talk about your feelings, religion, politics, your day, your family, your hopes and dreams, or nothing in particular. You can bring up topics for discussion or stand on a soap box and preach. But you must talk; if you won’t talk you, you can’t stay. You can come back any time you like, but you must talk!
2) The second rule of Talk Club is You must talk at Talk Club.
You can’t yell. You can’t whine. You can’t sing. You can’t whisper. You can’t have musical accompanyment. You can talk with your hand, with your mouth, with an interpreter, or with a machine, but you must *talk*. If you can’t talk, you can’t stay. You can come back any time you like, but you must talk!
3) The third rule of Talk Club is You can talk at Talk Club.
If someone else is talking, you listen. You don’t have to like what they say, but you have to let them talk. If you disagree with someone, you’re allowed to disagree with them; you are allowed to talk about why you disagree. If someone disagrees with you, they’re allowed to disagree with you; they’re allowed to talk about why they disagree. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom without replies or disagreement. If you don’t allow them talk, you can’t stay. You can come back any time you like, but you must allow them to talk!
4) The fourth rule of Talk Club is You can talk at Talk Club.
You can say anything you like, talk about anything you like. While you have the floor you are allowed to express yourself uninterrupted if you choose. Because this applies to everyone, you may have limited time and have to yield the floor, but you are allowed to say what you like in the time you have. This is about freedom of speech as well as speaking out.
Good photography
Repost of a response in a forum on MySpace:
I have a quote in my profile at deviantArt: “If you stop shooting beauty because it’s cliché, you will have nothing left to shoot but ugliness.” That is my response to the idea that pictures of sunsets and flowers are overdone. I had bought in to that idea for a while, and it made me question my efforts at those subjects. I almost felt guilty for posting pictures of “cliché” subjects.
The point of that statement is not to disagree with the idea that those things are overdone. There are people who believe that just because the subject is a sunset or a flower, that it is automatically a good picture. Not true. Anybody can point and click. Not everyone can compose a striking image. If that were true, the images I have on my wall here next to me – a butterfly and a frog, both by a very talented nature photographer – wouldn’t really be worth what I paid for them.
But this is much like the discussion over whether the presence of cheap digital cameras diminishes the value of the works of the dedicated photographers. Just because there are a lot of pictures of sunsets and flowers, doesn’t mean that there are a lot of good pictures of those things.
I do agree that one measure of a good photographer is the ability to take good photos of everyday things, but I don’t necessary hold that as a requirement when making the judgment. After all, there are plenty of people doing great shots of volcanoes and deep sea creatures that deserve credit. 
I think the real answer is that there are two requirements for a “great” photographer. The first is technical proficiency. The second is the artistic element, the photographer’s eye. The second element is the tricky piece when trying to make statements about which subjects do or do not mark the work of a great photographer. One photographer may be technically proficient at shooting still-life, but outstanding at capturing candid street scenes. Another may do acceptable studio portraits, but excel at capturing the height of action at sporting events. In the end, you can only judge a photographer on their body of work, without prejudice for the subjects within.
Interesting dream
I’m sure at least some of this is resulting from having attended the deviantArt Summit this weekend, but I had an odd dream just before waking this morning.
I was attending a professional photographers event in a theater type of forum. I barely qualified in the dream… something about being published but only once or twice, still trying to make it in the business. Before long, Madonna comes on stage to perform. One of the stipulations of her performance was that there be no flash photography, so all these professional have cheap automatics out, or are suppressing the flash of their big pro cameras. Me, I’m trying to watch the show. One or two people near me screw up and pop off a couple of flashes; Madonna immediately stops the show, no word at all, and walks off stage. The pros around me start giving this one guy a hard time, and he just looks sick, all the while saying “I swear I turned it off”. A couple of people make comments about how to be sure you actually turn off the flash.
I make my way outside to be away from the ruckus. Out in the parking lot I actually see Madonna and some of her people getting loaded onto her tour bus. She’s just standing around talking while the equipment gets loaded. Uncharacteristically bold, I walk up to her casually and say “Sorry about those guys in there.”
She looks at me and with a wry smile says, “Sorry about the swag.” I look down and realize she’s talking about the cheaply designed t-shirt I’m wearing from the event. I chuckle and say “Well, you can’t always win.”
She looks me over for a second, then says “I’ve got another gig in (some other town), would you like to tag along?” I think it over for just half a second. (Think it over? Definitely a dream.)
“I’d love to.” I pause a moment. “Would you mind if I shoot along the way?” She smiles and says, “Sure, knock yourself out.”
“And can I use flash if I have too…?” She hesitates, and I add “…keeping in mind that I hate shooting low-light flash.”
Madonna agrees, and I’m about to walk on the bus when I suddenly realize I’m leaving without my laptop. I run back to get it. For some reason it’s “downloading” pictures from this old manual film camera I have, one where the focus consists of lining up the top and bottom half of the shot in the viewfinder… Fortunately, it’s just finishing up, so I gather up my stuff, and off we go as the dream ends.
Clearing the air
So I’ve been metaphorically constipated for a while now. Creatively blocked. But there was something in the air yesterday, something brought on by weather bands from the tropical storm that moved up the Gulf Coast. Maybe it was the quality of light; maybe it was a fundamental shift in my own perceptions; maybe the ambient energy of the storm charged up the day. Everywhere I looked, I saw with a creative eye – the activities of weekend sportsmen, wildlife braving the highway for the wetlands on the far side, the clash of nature and urbanization. I missed a lot of things I would have shot because I wanted to run errands and get some lunch first, but I did get some shots I like. I also struggled with the wide-angle lens, but it was a creative struggle; I wanted to draw things in, but I lost a lot of the distant detail I would have preferred to stand out.
Last night I was so driven that I couldn’t sleep. I realized that I’ve been struggling with a daemon, an almost desperate need to be creative. Here’s my bookshelf:
And this doesn’t even begin to cover the scores of photography, digital art, and digital music magazines. I love the feedback, and I’m disappointed without it, but I need to be creative, to put something out there that is of merit. Perfection would be nice, but I’m learning to accept imperfection in the creative process.
This morning I wanted to post some of my work from yesterday on deviantArt. I came in with my first cup of coffee and sat down, but before I got started I was watching a slide-show I left running on my other box of some older photos I had put together for the express purpose of having a photo screen saver. Most of it was work I had posted to alt.binaries.photo.original, a newsgroup with some talented people that I abandoned because I was frustrated by the impermanence of the postings. I had fully intended to re-edit and submit these to my gallery online, and somewhere over time lost the focus/motivation to follow through. Many were shots I truly like. So I started digging through this morning and finally got down to the business of editing for post. I ended up posting two photos from yesterday (of very different character) and eighteen photos from the slide-show folder. Whew! Busy morning.
The agenda for today is finish up some XSLT code for work, laundry, clean up the office, come up with a better name for the office that represents the creative work environment I’m trying to foster there, and then prep a chicken for roasting for Sunday dinner.