Extraordinarily Ordinary ~

My guru Richard recently complimented me on one of my photographs. In particular, he noted the way that I made something quite ordinary look much more dramatic than what might have been suggested at first glance. But it made me think, and what I thought was, well, this is probably true for nearly all photography, no? I mean, sure, we've seen images of extraordinary events and extraordinary people, but when we take up our cameras and sally forth, that's not what we're looking for. If it was, we'd be missing the point.

It's an extraordinary experience, photography. There's nothing normal, nothing natural, about taking a photograph. First of all, there's that whole act of seeing, of being totally in the moment, observing that one point and eliminating all else, fixing it in your mind, and then -- only then -- performing the very unnatural act of bringing a camera to your eye. It's random, it can be anything: raindrops on a flower, a beautiful smile, a busy street -- or maybe just the sunlight streaming in through my kitchen window. Anyway, I think all the arts must be like this; putting paint on canvas or typing words on paper are efforts every bit as extraordinary and unnatural.

We train ourselves to believe otherwise, but really, the challenge is to avoid becoming complacent, and that's easier said than done. Me, I spend nearly all my waking moments looking around me, seeing those perfect and deliciously imperfect moments, taking little mental photographs. And no, it won't drive you to drink, not that there's anything wrong with that, but you do end up spending every waking moment adjusting your vision.

 So when I'm walking around in the rain with my camera, or even shooting a job in the studio, I may want the motions to be smooth and seamless, but I also want to lose my balance just a little bit. I see things better that way.

Ordinarily.

Does Size Still Matter? ~

It's a conversation that goes back to the beginning of time. If you measure time in pixels, anyway. I was there at the beginning, before the turn of the century (I always wanted to say that) and I'm still around to start an argument. We wanted bigger sensors then, more pixels, and we still do. If it seems to matter even now, it's because we still can't help but compare this to our experiences back in the day when we were shooting on those lovely big negatives. It's an uneasy transition, and sometimes quite unconscious. My brother Jim, a remarkable life-long landscape shooter who certainly knows his way around the upper echelons of digital cameras, sent me some unworldly and spectacular black and white images he had recently taken of storm clouds over a Minnesota lake, with an innocent after-thought thrown in: makes me wish I had a large-format camera. Me too, bro...maybe.

Because back then, size really really did matter.  A bigger negative gave you an image with more clarity and more detail than a little one. Medium-format was universal, and when I shot my Hasselblad or Mamiya with the mirror locked up, the developed negatives were sublime, and their prints were pure magic. Landscape people commonly trudged about with their 4x5 cameras, looking all Ansel Adamsy, making black & white masterpieces. And as you can see from the oddly out-of-place selfie above, I even sported an 8x10 camera for a while. Let's just say it was my Edward Weston phase.  But let me tell you, an 8x10 sheet of perfectly exposed and processed Tri-X, contacted-printed on a sheet of Brovira,...well it was, um, groovy. (The only 35mm we shot were Kodachrome or Ektachrome slides. A blog post for another day). Bigger, better, and yes, heavier. Way heavier.

So how much of this translates into the digital world we know and love today? Probably more than it needs to, because just as with a large negative, the size alone affords us little advantage all by itself. There's too much else at stake, not the least of which are good lenses and strong vision. And as sensors get larger (and better), the architecture of cameras gets smaller and smaller. I'm lost anymore without my little mirrorless Fuji, and my iPhone? if I could carry it into my dreams, I probably would. I made this lake scene on my little 6s. Pixels be damned.

The point? Use what you have, worry more about your style and vision and bank account. Pixels don't come cheap, but great art can -- and usually is -- created on modest technology and modest budgets. The rest is just bragging rights.

Besides, mine's smaller than yours.

A Color of Black & White ~

Chalk it up to old age if you like, or just a trip down memory lane, but I've been thinking a lot about black & white photography recently. Most of my photography career was dominated by the practice, in the lab and behind the camera. In fact, both were necessary components of the magical black & white arts: you shot it, and you developed and printed it. Along the way were incredibly expressive tools and techniques. Sometimes I miss that, smells and all.

What amazes me to this day is the remarkable range of color and tone that were possible in the craft we simply think of as "black & white" photography. Some of it had to do with the variety of papers we had: silver bromide papers, some with a barita base that increased the "whiteness", and some smooth, very warm-tone chloro-bromide papers. The names may not mean much to you now, but I assure you they still resonate with me: Agfa Brovira, Oriental Seagull, Kodak Ektalure. Geez, I can't even remember what day it is half the time, but somehow I can conjure up clear memories of these, and a lot more.

And toners; we had tons of toners. Chemical toners were largely used as a means of increasing image permanence in the photographic print, but they also imparted a fine, subtle coloring of the image as well. Selenium was common; it produced a cooling, slightly purple-ish tone to high-silver papers which was lovely to behold. And everyone, of course, is familiar with the warm brown tones of sepia, often used to give prints an "old fashioned" look. I rarely liked it. But you get the point: a combination of paper and chemistry could result in a remarkable range of possibilities.

So let's cut right to the chase: can the modern digital photographer find love and happiness in black & white? Well, yes, maybe even more. There's some mind-blowing, incredibly beautiful photography going on out there. And onOne Software, for example, re-creates the look of actual black & white films, some of which disappeared from the market years ago. How cool is that? But for me, the great black & white experience can't ever be fully duplicated. I miss the cloister of the darkroom too much, but I'm not complaining. I think I'm finding more expression with my photography than I ever have, it's just...different.

It's more colorful.

A Rule Of Thirds ~

Chalk it up to twelve years of Catholic education, but when I hear the word "rules",  I just kind of ... bristle. Yet I was hardly fazed when I was studying art and photography and "the rule of thirds" (along with many other theorems, constructs, proclamations, and paradigms) was displayed on the chalk board. It was the foundation of all the was beautiful, they said. It was passed down from our elders. It was dogma. And I ate it up with the passion of the true believer. (Remember, Catholic school, nuns, the works).  And the truth is, it still guides me and informs my work, but it just doesn't... rule me anymore.

I guess the trouble started a couple years after I began working in studios when, after a steady diet of large-format film and the occasional roll of 6x7 medium-format (and, not so commonly at the time, the ungodly 3:2 format of the 35mm camera) I was introduced to the lovely, simple, gorgeous square of the Hasselblad. Now truth be told, I was taught to compose loosely with it, so that a rectangular-formatted image could still easily be cropped and printed from it. But phooey on that. The perfect square I saw in the viewfinder was nature at its best, rules be damned. Granted, it's an occasional treat and not appropriate every time and every portrait. But when it is, it's sublime. My portrait of Whitney C would have no power or grace composed in any other manner. It's just how I see things sometimes.

The rule of thirds (and the corresponding principle of "power-points" in a composition) is of course a viable artistic standard that can lead us down many a beautiful path. We ignore it at our peril. Honestly, I'm not an anarchist; I can conform to convention and "rules" with the best of them (again, think nuns.....) and we need to be mindful of their usefulness as guides, lest our work dissolves into some sort of expressionistic garble. But we can turn it on its head from time to time. A slight bend of the rule, or an odd juxtaposition within it, can make a more compelling and powerful composition -- or a disaster. It's a thin line that divides them, but it's delightfully fun to live on that edge.

So I figure, it's ok to learn and follow the rules, as long as you make up a few of your own as you go along. After all, it's your vision, your statement, your story. And nobody can tell you how to do that.

Not even the nuns.

Trying To Get Back Home ~

Let me tell ya folks, nostalgia ain't what it used to be. We're reminded of this every time we think we have it figured out, or at least I am. This past week was a case in point. My big brother and little sister and I met up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a week of photography up in the Tetons. Jim and I get together every year for a photographic excursion (and a little tequila) and the addition this year of my portrait photographer sister made a very special family event. And the Tetons hold a very special place in our family's heart and memories.

We spent a lot of time up there, going back to the 1960's and '70's. It was probably our dad's favorite place to hang out for a summer and paint; the barn you see here, out on Mormon Row, featured prominently in many of his watercolors. And for me, too: I spent many seasons there in the '80's as well, photographing landscapes for a studio I worked for, and conducting photography workshops. I recall it being more rustic then, not nearly as refined and developed as it is now. I looked for some of my favorite haunts and watering holes which, predictably, are long gone. That's progress for you, and tourists. But considering that this is without a doubt one of the most beautiful places on earth, you can hardly blame them.

Thomas Wolfe famously said you can't go home again, and I imagine he tried doing just that. But for my brother and I, home is an elusive concept. We moved a lot growing up, and so attachments and sentiments were more fleeting. You make do with what you have, where you are. Maybe this is why, for nearly our entire adult lives, we have been so passionate about photography. If photographs can be developed over time and made permanent, then maybe memories can, too. It's a comforting notion.

It reminds me of home.

A Ghost In The Gallery ~

My recent trip to Chicago was memorable in so many ways, not least of which was my pilgrimage to the Art Institute. It's one of the world's truly great art museums. I regularly haunt museums and art galleries; this one is Mecca, and this was my hajj. And I'm hardly exaggerating, for in any museum like this (though there aren't many), I make sure to seek out one of the great influences of my career and my art: the great portrait painter John Singer Sargent. If my trip to Chicago had been only an afternoon to see the few paintings of his on display, I would still have been a happy camper.

Let me back up a little bit, say about 40 years or so. I was a young student just learning my craft, earnestly training in the art of studio portrait photography. The city I was apprenticing in was also where my dad had his art gallery, so along with my technical studies I fell under the sway of some incredible portrait painters. They made in watercolor, oils, and even pastels the kinds of portraits that influence me to this day. And something even more: they introduced me to the world of art and artists that influenced them. This was powerful stuff to a small-town kid. To understand the power of light and shadow, sure, study Rembrandt, Caravaggio, the masters. But to understand the modern sensibilities of a portrait -- perceptive, intimate -- you study Sargent.

Photography is my life and my craft; it has its own trajectory that I follow like a bullet on a beam of light. I'm still trying to get good at it. Although I wander around these days taking pictures of darn near everything I see, the portrait is still my passion of choice. And if you're serious about what you do, you draw on the inspirations that have shaped your direction, that have moved throughout time until they hit your eye. John Singer Sargent is that for me, but there are many, many others: painters and poets, sculptors, singers, playwrights and storytellers -- and photographers. We pick up where they left off.

And they're hanging out at the museum.

Plato's Travelogues, Part IV ~

Travel, if we are to believe Twain, is "... fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness..." and this doesn't even take into account the Red Line on the Chicago "L".  Or any number of other public conveyances that are just sure to test your resolve in this manner.  But photography is all about adventure; we need to seek out those places yet unseen to fix our gaze and capture our imagination. The little annoyances come along for the ride.

I've just returned from a week in the Windy City, which, as luck would have it, was more of a rainy one. But this little annoyance is hardly a deterrent; in fact, the urban landscape in gray and rainy conditions is the answer to a photographer's prayers, if we were so inclined to implore the almighty. I'm all about mood and atmosphere; the sunshine be damned. But as he giveth, he taketh away, oh yeth; for my Cubs game was rained out as payment for my presumption. This, I imagine, is how the world works.

But let's finish up Twain's observation of travel's benefits: "...Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." Indeed. I was raised with but the loosest of connections, and have thus been a wanderer all my life. Airport security lines, crowded public transportation, and rained-out ballgames is the price of admission; minor annoyances all. My feet are in motion, and my camera is charged and ready.

And brother, Chicago is beautiful in the rain.