This fall I took my girl and my camera to visit my father. We drank some wine, watched the leaves change colour, spent some time riding around the back roads in his 1949 Willys Jeep, Patches. And we went off for an hour to do a portrait project I’ve been wanting to do, more and more urgently as my father …
CREATE. SHARE. REPEAT.
A couple large prints would look great on these walls. Photographers are a funny lot. So easily distracted. I just came back from the camera store where I came within an inch of buying the new Fuji X Pro 1. I resisted and had a cupcake instead. But as I drove home I thought about it. I had been working …
Why I Print
Monument Valley, 2011 With the advent of digital photography, and even more importantly, the internet, our ability to share and experience photographs has changed dramatically. The wet darkroom, once so necessary for creating prints we could touch and feel, is much less common than it once was, and if I were a betting man I’d wager that the majority of …
A Second Edit
Iceland, 2010 I spent part of today doing a second edit – nearly two years after the first one – on my Iceland 2010 images. These second edits are important to me, for two reasons. First, we miss images on our first edit, and the closer that edit happens to the moments of making the photographs, the more we get …
Don’t Stop.
Agra Fort. Agra, India. 2008. I rediscovered this sequence of photographs while putting together Photographically Speaking. In the book I discuss one of these images and explore the elements and decisions that make the photograph what it is. But looking at the 3 together I think there’s a lesson along the lines of the stuff I’ve been talking about lately, …
Creativity: Find Your Rhythm
Finding my own rhythm again hasn’t been easy, but it’s still there. Sometimes the waves just seem to take longer to crest, but they do. This was the first time I really picked up a camera since the accident. It took me two months to get there. Photo: Cynthia Haynes. Every creative person I know goes through ups and downs, …
Originality Part II
A week ago I left what might have been my shortest post ever: Originality is Overrated. It generated some good discussion, and from the comments it seemed to really resonate and get some thoughts going. My own thinking has been stirring too, but before I tell you where those thoughts have -for now – settled, I wanted some ghosts to …
Do The Work
“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” ~Emile Zola Lately I’ve had nothing but time. My feet are still weak and the closest I come to walking is fearful crutch-work across the kitchen floor as I put more and more weight on the feet. I have visions of the screws and plates popping …
Originality is Overrated
There is much talk in artsy circles about being “original”. I’m not even sure I know what that means. (Or if it exists.) Of all the places to put our energy, I think this is among the more futile. It’s the wrong answer to the right question. Is desiring originality (insert vague personal definition here) a good thing? Yes. Of …
Impressions
Impression I, II, III All three photographs were made with my iPhone 4, cropped to 4×5, and processed with the Magic Hour filter, all in the Camera+ app. I tweaked curves slightly, and added borders in Photoshop after import. One of the first things I did when the Ottawa Hospital finally let me have a Day Pass to go wreak …