Wall and Yellow Posts

This shot comes from a shoot I did on January 3rd.  I don't feel I got anything especially wonderful, but this will do...

Concrete Wall and Chainlink Fence 1

I don't know if I like this image because it creates an interesting mood or if it is because of the interplay of lines.  I'm beginning to suspect that the images I have shot that I like best are the ones that give away the least meaning.

Insignificant Choices

At the core of “Revolutionary Road” is the idea that people can lead greater lives if they take the right chance. Central to the story is the wife's suggestion that she and her husband dump their current, conventional lives and move to Paris so that her husband can find what really matters to him. They start to make plans but then a minor success at work leads the husband to resist the change. The film is an illustration of lives lead in perhaps not entirely quiet desperation.

My life has not gone as I intended it to twenty-five years ago. I never became the film maker I planned to be. I tried a bit of writing but not being a verbal person, found the work too emotionally exhausting to be a feasible career. In much the same way, I find personal interactions with strangers equally challenging which limited what I felt capable of doing in a commercial photography. I have found myself accidentally slipping into a career which lacks the grandeur I had hoped for, but does provide for my love of technical challenges. It's not everything I have wanted, but it's better than a lot of people get.

About twelve years ago I briefly considered moving to New York to pursue a more vibrant career. The thought of moving away from my friends and family terrified me and I quickly set aside the idea. Was this cowardice or pragmatism? Am I justifying my decisions when I feel with a strong conviction that no matter where I go, I will still be me? If it is not within me to live an exciting life in Los Angeles, is it really believable that things would be different in New York?

The life you have is the life you carry with you. There are circumstances that modify the specific details of how you live your life, but you will make the same choices in Paris or New York as you would in Los Angeles. While there are people whose lives are torn away from them and they may justifiably be angry, those of us above the poverty line in the United States are wealthy and privileged: we have to option of making choices.

I suppose what really is at issue is the question of would you rise to the challenge if you took the leap into a dangerous unknown? And can you ONLY rise to the challenge in the face of danger? Can you rise to the same challenge despite peace and prosperity? Perhaps that is the more difficult challenge; to succeed at something when your life does NOT depend upon it.

So given that we have the misfortune to have more than we need, to lack real life threatening challenges, how do we still make our lives exciting and grand? How can we live lives where we cannot predict what will come tomorrow and we cannot be certain of the plot of our own stories? Running away provides a brief unpredictability and gives excitement for a while, but as we grow accustomed to the new environment, we find we still make the same choices and lead essentially the same lives.

Grand decisions appear difficult. The choice to let go of everything you have and move to Paris appears to be a harder decision than to decide will you go out and try to make a good photograph today or will you drink a beer and relax. In reality they are equal: it is simply a matter of choosing one side or another. The choice itself requires little effort. What requires a great deal of effort is to live your life making a hundred good choices a day. It is the small choices you make that define your life. The grand choices are not insignificant, but they are far less significant than the daily accumulation of infinitesimal decisions.

The really difficult choice; the hard work of life, is to keep making good choices in the smallest of moments. In examining one's own life and wanting change, the difficult choice is not about a single momentous change, but of small, seemingly insignificant changes. Knowing this, the frightening question I have to ask myself is “will I make the better choice a hundred times a day?”

Gas Station Awning

 

Too Many Effects

I like this image. I particularly like the vignetting at the edges and the split tone color effect. If I had the beta of Lightroom 3 at the time I processed this image, I probably would have added a lot of grain. I like cheesy effects. Sometimes I make myself sick.

The real issue here is how much becomes too much? At what point am I tarting up an image with effects to hide its mediocrity? When everything I shot was on slide film, I treated the processed transparency as the final image. When I scanned the image, the only adjustments I would make were to get the digital version as close as possible to the original slide. But when I shoot digitally, I know I will take the image through a “digital development” stage and so I feel freer to meddle.

But if the effects used in the development stage is part of the original visualization then it is simply the use of a valid tool. Where the problem arrises is when effects are used to add appeal to an inferior, poorly realized image. But then again, if the final image is compelling isn't that all that matters? If one is able to modify a poor image and make it effective, then the fact that some secondary creative work occurred after the shutter closed does not invalidate the cumulative value of the work.

I don't have any easy answers to this question. At times I feel that a minimum of post-processing is the only ethical way to make an image. At other times, I'll happily modify to the extent that the software allows.

What the heck is art, anyway?

This kind of work, the stuff we call art, is a way of communicating experience to one another. There are things that cannot be expressed in words and so we must turn to other means of affecting someone. A text book or an instructional manual can only explain so much. If we want to take another person through an experience, guide them through a piece of life, we must devise a means of communication that bypasses reason and logic and instead puts us directly into the path of a train of emotion and reaction.

I have never approved of artist statements. I think that when an artist says “My work is about...” it dilutes the effect of the art. Art should stand on it's own or fall. It should never be buttressed by a demand that it be interpreted in a particular way. The interpretation is always unique to the individual viewer or reader or listener. And while there is a time and a place for analysis, usually in the spaces between viewings, the real value of art is that it can jolt us into a new moment in life; it gives us a chance to briefly live in another person's body.

Art is, for the artist, a way to access what is normally hidden within themselves. I look at other photographer's work and wish I could do something like that. I go off and I try to copy some effect only to find my copy has been shaped more by the way I see the world than by the original. It is as if I am handicapped to see the world only with my own eyes.

I look at the photographs I make and there is something deeply satisfying in the better ones. Clearly my photographs will not be to everyone's tastes. Some may be affected, others may find nothing in them that makes sense. For myself, I find upon looking at them that it is as if the world, for a moment, alines itself and everything can be understood. It is as if the chaotic noise of the world slips into a simple and calming melody; that the framed image pushes away all the broken, jumbled lines and shapes leaving only a simple, self supporting form.

Perhaps it is because I am frequently overwhelmed by the noise and chaos of the world, that these photographs provide a sort of escape, a moment of calm that I can retreat to. They may be other things as well. Once the photograph becomes a fixed image, the affect it might have on a person becomes their own experience. I have mine and any other viewer has theirs. I hope they are valuable to another person, but mostly I take these photographs to excavate my own experiences and hopefully find something of value.

Stairway to L.A. Water and Power

This image is a re-shoot of an earlier image that I shot with a Nikon D70.  It's the sort of image that I feel works better in a larger print so I was dis-satisfied with the smaller frame of the Nikon.  This image was shot with a Canon 5D.  I corrected the perspective so that the vertical lines were more or less parallel.