It has been one year since I began this journal, and it has been a year of experiences and growth. The original idea behind the website was to have a place to add some images, nothing more. When I found the service I used had a “journal” function, I thought what the hell… it was an opportunity to write down some thoughts. The writing was just a lark -- a way to add some pages to the ‘real’ reason for the website… photography. But as time has progressed, it has become quite a bit more. I seem to post more writing than I do images, and that is fine with me. The subject matter ranges from cameras, to image styles, to teaching, but in the end, it really isn’t about photography, per se. It uses the topic of photography to talk about ways to view of the world, think about life and to help people expand their horizons beyond the norm. Photography is just a vehicle to move on to more important things.
Now some people may think the point might be to get lots of views and responses to each journal entry. But that isn’t really me. It’s not important if there are dozens of likes or multiple comments on a post. They don’t matter. It's not about praise or glory or recognition. It's about making a difference. And if this journal makes a difference to even just one person, I've done something good. And as far as I can tell, I kinda did that with one of the posts... so I’m good. So who was I when this journal started? As I said on the first post: “After many years learning and using film photography as my medium, everything changed…”. I thought I was talking about the world of digital photography, but what I was really talking about was myself. I have changed through the years -- from a young man who was sure that photography was not only forever, but was also my absolute identity -- to an adult who was seeing everything he held dear disappear to be forgotten. Yes, it was that bad. I had become disillusioned and felt the world had moved on without me. After many years of the world transforming itself, as it must do, I realized I was stagnating, and it was time to make some adjustments. The journal was one way to do this. I am not the person I was then. I am more confident at work and in my day to day life; I enjoy the writing I do; and I’ve found photography again, which I have to admit, is still a part of my identity. Okay so maybe this journal is a little bit about photography. But what changed me? Was it the writing or the photography? I think it was both, but in different ways. The photography was the impetus to make a website, but it wasn’t the real inspiration for change. Because of the technological developments in digital imaging, I was able to reconnect with my photography, which was great, but that was only a tool to use for change, not the change itself. Like driving to the store… the car is just the vehicle, not the reason for going. It was the journal, the lark that was only there to fill up space, that was the true instrument of change. Writing the journal has allowed me to organize my thoughts into something more concrete, to codify what I knew was there, but was unable to interpret until I wrote it down. I have grown through this process, and my photography has grown with that transformation. My work seems tighter, more focused; I don't automatically convert every image to black and white; I play around more with color balance, contrast, and developing a mood in images; I use both a mirrorless camera and the camera on my iPhone to create new work; and I am attempting to broaden my photographic horizons by trying out street photography. Not sure where that may lead, but that's for another journal post. These posts have been an unexpected catharsis for me. I was writing just to jot down my thoughts on photography, but in the act of setting down thoughts, I have come to understand my motivations, the ways I see the world, the interactions (or lack thereof) with others. Although these journal posts have views, they are not high in number. They have very little commentary from others... there isn't really a lot of reason for it. The journal is really a diary of sorts… a way to work through the ups and downs that are the experiences of life. And that is where it has excelled. The changes that have occurred in the last year happened in small increments, so small I did not notice them. They culminated in a Valerie Jardin workshop on street photography, something my old self would have scoffed at and never participated in. I have learned a great deal about myself and my place in this world. Change is not always bad... or good. Change is just change. It's how we cope and what we do with it that matters. I used an idiom in my first post a year ago... "I have seen the light". Well, have I seen the light? I think maybe that isn’t the point. It isn't necessary to fully understand everything. I don't have to know exactly who I am and where I am going. I thought I did a long time ago when photography was film and chemistry... and things would never change. I thought I knew exactly who I was and where I was going. All that did was send me down a dead end. It took a long time to realize you are never who you think you are and you never know where you'll end up. You might have heard life is a journey, not a destination. Every step you make, the skips, the falls, the jumps, the runs... all those moves forward or backward (both are good!), make up who you are and lead you to new destinations every moment of your life. Anything can happen.
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In the last post, I wrote about having difficulty being present during my film and chemistry days. This happened because my mind was always living in the darkroom instead of the present moment. In this post, I'm interested in discussing what I'm calling "experiential" photography, the idea that you need to be present at the time you are actually creating images in the field, and by doing so, you gain a greater understanding of your surroundings and your photographic work.
My immersion into experiential photography has blossomed in the past year, all because of digital imaging. In this digital era, we no longer have to devote most of our photographic time to processing film and printing images. We no longer have to focus on the work ahead in the darkroom, and that releases us from obsessing over development and procedure (in other words... being somewhere else!). The digital camera has allowed us the freedom to consider expression in the field. This is its strength... the idea that expression is the journey, not the process. Chemical photography is process intensive. Mixing chemistry, worrying about temperatures and times, setting up the darkroom, printing images, making choices about film stock, paper bases, types of darkroom equipment... all of these factors must be in alignment with each other or the entire operation can fail. And it takes time, most of which doesn't involve the actual capture of images! You can argue you are creating the image in the darkroom, but that is my point... you don't create it when you actually take the image. It's all darkroom based, not experienced based. Digital is different. You tend to focus on what is going on right now instead of what is going to need to be done later. You are engaged in the immediate capture of your image, not in the work that is to come later. You will have to edit the image on the computer at some point, but this work seems to have a distance from the actual capture of the image. It somehow feels less burdensome, less time consuming, less hassle. Mixing chemistry, developing film, waiting for it to dry, setting up the trays full of chemicals... it just takes inordinate amounts of time, and as I get older, it is all the more tedious. Computer editing has freed me from all that prep time. I still have to get the images onto the computer, but that's nothing compared to the prep time setting up a darkroom. I have to color balance, crop, align, and make a dozen other choices, but again, nothing compared to spending hours in a darkroom to get that one "right" print. I hear fellow darkroom photographers cringing at my words, but honestly, it's a new day. I don't disparage any who can stand for hours on end creating masterpieces... I'm just ready to do it sitting down. Yet there is more to it other than the physical demands, the time involved, or the processes that must be overcome. The digital world has opened up my eyes to a far greater range of possibilities in the field as I capture images. There is a sense of belonging to the time that I am shooting, a connection with the experience. These are things that got left behind, or at the very least, became minimized, in my film days. There was just too much to do after the image was captured on film to get a final print. My brain was focused on the "after moment", not the present moment. Don't get me wrong... digital imaging is no easy task, and it creates its own set of issues. To create something meaningful has become in some ways a greater challenge than it has ever been. We now have to compete with thousands of images in forums, digital media, and throughout the internet, all posted on a daily basis! The shear amount of images creates a background noise that is difficult to overcome, with artists and creators who would never have gotten a chance to show their work, displaying images that are easily recognized in a matter of seconds. The strength of some of this work is uplifting, but also daunting... how do you compete with such talent? The reality is, you don't. Photography, at least for me, is about self-exploration, not competition. It is about communicating thoughts and ideas through images and exploring the possibilities inherent within the photographic process. Digital imaging has allowed me to be engaged in that creation, which is the whole point. If you get bogged down with the process alone, your experience is about that process, not about interpreting the experience you're trying to capture using that process. There are many images where creation in the darkroom is the whole point... just look at the work of Jerry Uelsmann. For those who find interpretations are best made in a darkroom... great! This is not a competition. One isn't better or more meaningful than the other. Let me remind you of what I said in a previous post... Photography is not about being digital... or about being chemical... or about one being better or more traditional or more real or whatever other inane argument you may see online. I can appreciate film and chemistry for what it is without feeling like I've sold out or abandoned "real" photography. If we want to get down to it, photography started out with daguerreotypes -- positive images on metal. So film negatives aren't real by that standard at all! So there you have it... experience, engagement, exchange of information. Photography in a nutshell. And always remember... there isn't a "real" photography. There's just photography. In the film days, I had no idea what I had captured until it was processed, so whatever I ended up with was something"I meant to do". That's in quotes because it really wasn't so. Whatever the result, I told myself it was the way I wanted the exposure to look. If the image was slightly underexposed, it was because of the light quality at the time, or the image needed to be underexposed to create an atmosphere. If it was overexposed, I convinced myself I had so much film density to work with!
The more I think about it, the more I have come to believe I was fooling myself. I was fixing errors in the darkroom because of how I shot the image on film. Sure, I love the work I did and I am satisfied I accomplished what I wanted to at the time, but my time was spent in the darkroom, understanding every aspect of an image from an 'after I shot it' perspective. When I was out capturing images, I understood light and how it affected a scene, I saw shadows and the play of light, but my mind was on how I was going to interpret that scene in the darkroom, not on appreciating what I was viewing and interpreting in the field. Since my mind was somewhere else, I photographed with the understanding I would change it later. Nothing wrong with interpretation of course... we do it all the time. But I think I might have lost the opportunity to interpret a scene at the moment of taking the photograph. Instead of appreciating a scene just for the scene itself, I was altering it in my mind, although I don't think I realized that at the time. I became disconnected from what was around me so I could interpret it later in the darkroom. I wasn't living in the moment, or better put, I was altering the moment to be exclusively a photographic one, not an experiential one. I've seen online discussions about how we alter our experiences because of our photographic practice. Many believe they need to convince you to leave your camera at home to appreciate an experience. I can't fault them for saying this... they miss out on the experience of just being there because they focus on the photographic process instead of the journey of photographic communication and interpretation. If that is how you are, then I agree... leave that burdensome box at home! That said... to be present in the moment and to also interpret that moment with my camera is as close to paradise as I'll ever experience in this world. The camera is my way of experiencing something greater than myself, something special and unique. If anything, photography has given me an insight about the world, one that helps me appreciate my experiences. I cannot count the times I have traveled without a camera and completely ignored the world around me. I was too busy doing whatever I was doing and getting to wherever I was going. I didn't take the time to slow down and appreciate the magic around me. The camera forces me into the experience, not away from it, and the process of creating an image makes me appreciate these experiences all the more. |
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