It Never Ends...

Music | Blue Friday by Kenny Dorham

The more you know, the more you know you have so much to learn... I just heard that earlier today at the café. How true, how true... Photography has been an intimate part of me for more than half my life. Lots of time, knowledge, mistakes... Adventures, more knowledge, not just technical, but the life lessons that have come along the way as well. I can say from the deepest part of my heart, it is a craft that I know more than most people. Some of that knowledge is automatic, like loading a Hasselblad film back, or putting a 30 year old light meter in my hand and know exactly how to use it like I was using it yesterday. Innate knowledge learned through repetition.

As I move thru the years and hopefully more profoundly with photography, on occasion I have epiphanies. I have learned we exploit what we know because we know by this time we do it well. I also have figured out that it is easy to rest on laurels and stay on the same course if I am not careful. I have been fortunate enough to move thru a diverse array of processes and technologies. I know it is easy to get caught up in the technical, forgoing for whatever reason not pushing forward artistically.

I have moved from my early days working with film, then digital, then shifting back to film, and now processes from the mid 1800's, going in the opposite direction of the modern. 4x5, 8x10, antiquated processes, hands on. Those are merely tools, a way to a final image. It has taken me all these years to get to where I am, and I am only now thinking of not the process, but the image. I've gotten good at conveying the obvious, but now comes the hard part... Convey ideas in between the lines...

Sometimes I feel like all the time that has passed, I should be there and not here. It is relative, and these years did do good in teaching me we move at our own speed and the lessons come when they do. All this knowledge and so far to go...

Aesthetics, Respect and Days Gone By...

Music | Porecelain by Moby

Remember as a kid, going thru family photos, either thru albums or boxes of loose prints? Remember going to museums and looking at actual art pieces, sculptures, paintings and photographs? Having seen images thru magazines or books, then seeing the actual work was just so much better! I realize the tides are changing and viewing art electronically has become the default.

In these times, I wonder if the painter is painting with the end result being on the screen as their main intention. I guess if so, they could paint with the computer, lose the feeling of dabbing brush into paint, then onto canvas. Command Z for mistakes and just as easily change colour with the press of a button. Of course I know the answer to my question. Painters are painters and they do what they do because they have to. What true painter would forgo the subtleties of pressure, feathering and all the techniques they have learned over the years?

With photography, I realize the end result is not always the print. Not that tangible object that you can hold in your hand and feel, study, look and think upon as an object of desire in itself. The camera phone, android, iphone has made things where we no longer even think about the photographic print.  I'm just as bad as the next, shooting photos with instagram and posting for the world to see. I get my pats on the back and hope my number of comments and likes increase...

The electronic and digital age we live in has managed to devalue many aspects of our lives. It has also stripped away man's view of aesthetics. Now, we have access to everything, in overt abundance where more people are capable of doing more bad things and compare themselves to those who have worked hard and paid their dues to reach where they are. But since we live in a "Good Enough" society, only those that have been able to keep a smidgen of aesthetics can see a difference.