Quick Quotes: Janet Malcolm

If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.

Janet Malcolm

Think about that one for a minute. I really like what this quote implies!

Atwood-Higgins House

In my post about editing photographs from a trip, I mentioned that often images that are not stand alone 'best of' photos can still be important to a project because they impart to the viewer a feel for a certain area or location. This was the case for the Atwood-Higgins house, which is an early colonial homestead near Provincetown, on Cape Cod. Since I had mentioned the location, I thought I would show one of the photographs that is not all that special alone, but might well be an important contribution to a project related to the area.

Atwood-Higgins House
Copyright Howard Grill

Pixel - Peeping, 70's Style

One thing leads to another. I used to watch Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In regularly as a kid. Recently, Henry Gibson, one of the show's comedians, died, which got me thinking of that time in my life. This led to my remembering a book which I had recently bought but had not yet cracked open.

In one of the late Bill Jay's Endnotes columns which he wrote for LensWork, he mentioned, and recommended, a book by Ralph Hattersley entitled "Discover Your Self Through Photography". He mentioned that it is still as relevant today as it was when it was published, though it has a good bit of 60's lingo. Somehow, having Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In on the mind led me to have a peek at the book.

Initially published in 1971, it really is a wonderful book that is filled with ideas and exercises to help expand one's creativity through photography and is definitely worth reading. I personally find the occasional smattering of 60's language and ideas a bonus that tends to bring back memories, if only for a short while (and if they were there to start with). And to top it all off, the book can be had quite cheaply and contains many images by Jerry Uelsmann (who taught with Hattersley at the same institution).

One of the paragraphs in the book made me recognize that what we now call 'pixel-peeping' is not at all something new....the pixels may be new but the peeping goes back a long way. In his introduction to an exercise called 'Creative Destruction' (an exercise involving the exploration of purposefully breaking photographic rules), Hattersley says:

"One of the fascinations of photography is that it can be a subtle and demanding craft. No matter how much sensitivity and technique you pour into a photograph, it can still absorb more. This is a great challenge, of course. But it can lead to the hang-up (there's a bit of that 60's creeping in) of being overimpressed with craftsmanship at the expense of everything else. People who fall in this trap generally turn themselves into unhappy, nit-picking old maids (yikes, I don't think anyone would publish that terminology today) who are terrified of making technical mistakes. To avoid them, they conduct endless experiments with technical trivialities or ceaselessly repeat past technical triumphs."

That sure seems to me a reminder that pixel-peeping is nothing new and that our main goal in photographing should be to instill emotion into our pictures while still secondarily maintaining a backdrop of technical excellence.

The Importance Of Editing

After workshops I have been to in the past, I have tended to process and print a few choice images that seem to stand above the others. However, I typically have known which images these will be even before returning home. This, however, has led to a bad habit.

While I have typically keyworded the images from the weeklong workshops I have attended, I have not edited or rated them as a unified group in terms of overall quality. This has led to a situation where I have, from each trip, two or three 'best of' images printed while the others lie dormant and relegated to pleasant memories. It is difficult to revisit these, as they now exist as hundreds upon hundreds (or thousands upon thousands) of unedited images, making it difficult to resurrect the trip or a photo grouping that represents the workshop. Truth be told, the same situation exists with a good deal of the images I have made at home as well.

I have decided to put an end to this situation. Having the photographs keyworded but unedited as a group is not a good situation for the images or for the photographer. I believe it inhibits learning and progress. Picking just one or two 'best of' images from a trip doesn't allow you to have an overview of how you photograph. To see the overall 'big picture' of how you approach photographing a location can give helpful insights into how you think about making images and, more importantly, can give direction on how to get off the path on which you are most comfortable in order to become more creative and extend beyond your own comfort zone.

In addition, looking at a conglomerate of images to rate them will allow for the selection of photographs that might not be 'greatest hits' viewed in isolation, but which are important in the understanding and portrayal of a location. For example, on the workshop I just returned from, the group visited a location called the Atwood-Higgins house. This is a group of cottages that were built by some of the original settlers in the Provincetown region. They are locked (at least they were when we were there), so only exterior photographs could be taken. When looking for 'greatest hits' images, a photograph of an old and unusual door handle would not likely make the cut.....but it would be an image that would most certainly be in a grouping designed to transmit the feel of a visit to Cape Cod.

In short, taking time to cull down hundreds and hundreds of images to perhaps twenty or thirty that truly represent the best images from a trip and which stand together as a group that relates the 'story' of a location is an exercise which I am just beginning to understand the importance of. And I think the timing is just right for me to do this for the images from the Provincetown workshop I just attended.

Edit too soon and you run the risk of being overly sentimental. Wait too long and you lose the sense of place that you had experienced. I will ultimately go back (albeit quite late) and do the same for the photos from prior workshops, but tasks like this are best undertaken in small portions. If the scope is too large the work gets abandoned and never completed. So even if it delays other ideas that I wanted to pursue, I plan to give to the images I recently took the time they deserve.

Inner Vision

I just returned from my yearly photography workshop with Nancy Rotenberg, Les Saucier, and Don McGowan. This particular workshop was held in Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod and, as expected, was another wonderful experience.

Why return to do workshops with the same instructors year after year? Simply put, it is because I don't believe anyone teaches a workshop with the same focus as they do. Sure, you will learn technique, digital processing etc, but that is not the foundation of their workshop experience. Rather, the emphasis is strongly on 'learning to see' , focusing creative energy, and using one's unique inner vision and heart to create images. Now, imagine doing that with 15-20 other terrific people who are also interested in the same thing. I have never been to one of Freeman Patterson's workshops, but imagine that there are a lot of similarities.....I guess it is therefore not surprising that he wrote the forward to Nancy's book "Photography and the Creative Life".

In the next week or two, even though I know it will delay some of my other projects, I plan to edit and post some of the images from this fantastic trip.

Botanical Blends: Rudbeckia I

I have completed the second image in my "Botanical Blends" project and thus have accomplished half of my goal for the month. Of course, the goal does not merely reflect the number of images completed, as the images need to be of the appropriate quality as well. Artistic quality, however, is for the viewer to decide.

This particular image was made with a LensBaby.

Unfortunately, the small image size that Blogger displays makes it difficult to see the underlying blended texture in photographs where the texture is subtle. However, there is not much that I can do about that!

Rudbeckia I
Copyright Howard Grill

Quick Quotes: Harry Callahan

"I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures that I like."

Harry Callahan

Let's see....that calculates out to a 2% success rate. I usually feel like my success rate is even lower than that. But at least now I feel like I am in good company!

Goals And Deadlines

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to specifically answer the questions I thought were important to consider when planning a photography project as they relate to my recently initiated "Botanical Blends" series.

However, before I do so I would like to add one more important concept to the planning stage of my project. This is likely important for anyone planning a project, but is particularly apropo for me, as I tend to spend too much time on any one image, making changes that I am sure no viewer will likely notice. This concept has to do with deadlines. I believe it is important to set a reasonable and achievable schedule for producing the project. This schedule will be different for everyone depending on their 'life circumstances' and available time to devote to the project. However, it does need to be achievable while allowing for completion of the project within a reasonable time period.

With that said, here are my personal answers, goals, and deadlines for "Botanical Blends":

Who is the intended audience?

For this project, given the subject matter, I define my audience widely. I believe it would include anyone with an interest in flowers and horticulture as well as nature. In addition, as a secondary audience I would include people that I work with and/or my patients, as I will likely have an opportunity to display prints at work and in my office.

How do I primarily intend to reach that audience?

The primary goal I hope to achieve is to have a display at a local botanical conservatory. Obviously, I can not be sure that the goal will be achieved as the decision to hang prints there is not one that I make. Thus, I need additional viable methods for getting the work seen. For this project, that would include hanging prints at work/office. In terms of other distribution methods for the project, I am considering a pdf publication (though I have not used InDesign or Acrobat before and thus this will have a fairly steep learning curve and will probably not be coincident in time with other distribution methods), as well as possibly making some 'give away' promotional type prints.

Are prints needed? How many? What size?

Since my primary, and at least one of my secondary methods of distributing the work is via display, prints will clearly be needed in larger sizes. My plan is to have prints matted and framed to 20x26 inches. Why that size? As I have made some flower images in the past, this size just looks right for display to me and I already have some frames in this size as well. It is also an efficient size, as it allows me to obtain two mats and backing boards from standard sized 32x40 matboard and foamboard. Given that I hope for a formal display in a conservatory, standard white matting might be best, but I still have not ruled out the possibility of black matting. The frames will be simple and relatively inexpensive standard, thin black metal.

The number of images needed is difficult to be certain of and obviously depends on how many worthy photographs I make. However, as an approximate goal I am contemplating 20-30.

What is my deadline?

This is a difficult question but, knowing myself, a very important one. As I mentioned above, the goal needs to be attainable but the project also needs to be completed in a reasonable period of time. In addition, I anticipate working on some other prints during this time and I suspect there may be some periods when I have very little time to spare because of work constraints.

I have come up with a deadline goal of four finished prints every month. I plan to aim for one print a week, but I know that there will be times when I am unable to work on the project and times when I will be able to devote more time than usual.....so it seems to me that a monthly goal will be more reasonable. If I keep to that deadline, I should have the project well in hand by 6 months.

I should add that I have many, many flower pictures that I have taken and not 'developed'. So the primary focus of project completion will be on the computer as opposed to actually taking the photographs. That said, it does take a good bit of time and experimentation to find a texture that works well with an image. Clearly, the starting point is an excellent botanical photograph, but that alone is not enough for what I am trying to do.

I decided to put this goal in writing in order to help me keep to it, and I will post images and my progress as I go along. Because the next month is going to be quite busy for me at work I am going to give myself a bit of leeway at the start and declare today as the formal start of the project even though I already have 1 1/2 images processed. By September 27th I therefore need to have completed four images.