Bulging at the Seams

Does this lens make my butt look big? Honestly, I've gotta' give more directions next time I hand my camera over to Tracy.

But, if you move me outta' the way, this is a pin cushion view of our brick wall at the "Think Local" holiday store, in downtown Kalispell (140 Main St.). Tonight was the grand opening. (And yes, that is a four-foot-wide Raven canvas.)

If you're looking for original, handmade gifts this year, then this is the place. "Think Local" is a group of Flathead Valley artists who put on two outdoor, summer shows, and pull together the indoor holiday store. In it's second year, the store now features about 30 artists.

The historic building is bulging at the seams with handmade items, everything from pottery and jewelry to fine furniture crafted by my friend, Jim. Of course, if you like creative photography, there's one wall you'll just have to visit...

Challenge Your Creativity

"I can teach technique, but I can't teach vision." (Mike Cindric)
"Photo gear is good, but vision is better." (Chase Jarvis)

The local art museum recently asked me to write up a brief description of my photography. Hmmm. It sounded easy enough at first, but it became exponentially harder the closer I got to writing. Sort of like describing your life in three paragraphs or less.

But I did it. I boiled photography down to one sentence, and then backfilled with three paragraphs of fluff. I'll fluff it up even more for you.

(My opinions are not intended to bash those camera owners who will feel, well, bashed. Rather, I think this way in order to challenge to myself to hone my own photography. I want to dig deeper and make better images, and I don't want my work to look like everyone else's.)

So, here goes...

As a medium, photography spans a wide range of merit, from a vacation snapshot to an Ansel Adams creation. In this sense, I believe that there are many people who take pictures but only a few photographers who create photographs. And I'm not talking about Photoshop creations. It's a creative imagination behind the lens that makes a few photographers stand apart from the ubiquitous copycats.

Let's say that I wander around in Glacier Park until I find a "pretty" scene -- this will require 2 to 3 seconds. I choose a pleasing composition, carefully select my camera settings (manual, always!), and wait for the best light. But when I press the shutter, I am taking a copy of something that is already "pretty." In this case, I'm just a technician, and there are thousands of technicians with cameras out there. Not much different than some guy pressing the button to Xerox a glossy calender.

In some cases, this is where I begin the image making process. But in many cases, this is where a lot of self-described "photographers" end their efforts. I see these guys over and over at art shows. Oh look, yet another "picture" of flowers in front of Mt. Reynolds in evening light. Gag me with an Instamatic.

Pretty? Sometimes. Original? Not in the least.

I don't understand how some people claim the "photographer" title, just because they can point a camera and press a shutter. A moderately bored orangutan can do that. We can do better, fellow humans. We must, or photography will continue down the slippery slope towards boring irrelevance, the rejected spam of the art world.

One local "photographer" (his claim, not mine) appears to "take" every picture with a 50 mm lens from a standing position, and then whines about digital hurting "real" photography. Well, I believe that a "real" photographer should be able to create compelling images with digital, film, wet plate, pinhole, or even a cell phone. The image depends on how the brain cells are used, not the kind of camera.

Another photographer I cross paths with apparently finds images in photography magazines, and then drives around the country to copy them exactly. Shaft of light in slot canyon? Check. Sunrise in Tetons? Got it. Lighthouse on California coast? Got that, too. There's not a single image in his booth that hasn't been taken and published by a thousand others before him. Not one faint flicker of originality.

On the other hand, I recently met a high school photographer named Alex, and some of his early images are more creative and original than many of the examples above. I always tell aspiring young photographers to go ahead and "take" the easy picture. But that's where they should begin, not end. Keep working it, changing it, and sometimes you'll end up with something rare -- an original photograph! Something that isn't in every other portfolio (and art fair booth) out there.

(Don't even get me started on the so-called "game farms." If your idea of creativity involves forcing incarcerated animals to perform for you then, in my humble opinion, you don't even deserve a camera. Your dollars are creating a demand that forces wild species to live their lives in cages, and you should be strung up by your camera strap. Enough said.)

Like I said at the beginning, this is my own personal challenge and a goal that I often miss. Some days, I only manage to "take pictures," and I'm a so-called full-time professional. I try not to put too many of these pictures out in public view. Instead, I try to keep working an idea until I get to something original, or until I give up.

Okay, a few examples.

On the east side of Glacier Park, Chief Mountain stands apart from the rest. I watched the moon rise past Chief Mountain a few times, and took some pictures. But my images never did justice to the real live spectacle, so I kept mulling it over. Finally, I experimented with a few nights of interval photographs as the full moon cruised silently past Chief. That was it. My final image is not a top seller for me, but in my mind I finally captured a bit of the spirit of the vision quests that the Blackfeet Indians seek from this mountain top.

This photograph was created 20 years after "taking" my first "picture" of the full moon behind this mountain.

Another example. I spent a few years monitoring Bald Eagle territories in Glacier Park. I watched eagles catch fish and ducks, but I'd never seen a photograph that did justice to the skill involved. I pondered, how can I photograph eagles in a way that shows what they must do just to survive? After the image came into focus in my mind, we set about in a canoe, photographing the resident pair of eagles on a small lake.

It took three months, off and on, to get the "Eagle Talons" image out of my head and into my camera. This photograph is one of our top sellers because people have never seen anything like it. Neither had I, before developing it in my mind.

One more moon example. A lookout friend tried to describe a full moon night in a fire lookout, but couldn't find the words. So I set about creating a visual description. I picked Huckleberry Lookout, looked up the azimuths and transects for several nights around the full moon, and started drawing lines on a map. To make the moon look huge, I had to make the lookout small, so I needed to be miles away from the mountain. I started hiking.

On the first evening, a cloudy moon rose to the right of the lookout. So I drove back the next night and changed my location. This time, the moon climbed the ridge and just missed to the left. Rats! So I returned the third night and moved the camera location again. This time it worked. From the first two nights, I learned to anchor my tripod better and shorten my interval. The final, edited photograph at the top of this page -- a photo that I created in my mind before creating it in my camera, many months later.

For two years now, I've been working on a moonrise panorama over yet another mountain. Still not good enough. Still trying -- this one, and a head full of other images that are still just ideas.

"Taking pictures" is easy. About all it takes is opposible thumbs. "Creating photographs" is much harder -- not for technical reasons, necessarily, but because it requires you to think. It requires imagination.

Again, I'm not saying that my images are better than others', or that creative photography necessarily sells better than the repetitious "pretty pictures." What I'm saying is that we should work hard to create our own niches, to be a little different. I don't always succeed, but at least I try.

And if I can succeed from time to time, then obviously you can too.

Behind the brain cells: If my words are less than convincing, listen to a much more eloquent version from guru David "AKA Strobist" Hobby at The Candid Frame podcast #98.

Behind the pinhole: If you need a little inspiration, the quote at the top of this entry is from the website of one of my favorite photographers, Stu Jenks down in Tucson, Arizona. Not only is he a creative photographer and musician, but Stu is also one of the best writers I know. His business card identifies him as, "Nocturnal Photographer, Daytime Writer." Damn, sure wish I'd have come up with that before he did. Should I just copy his creative words?

John's Stimulus Plan

"You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.” (Winston Churchill)

We just returned home from our first “Spring” art show of 2009 to find our tulips starting to bloom -- in glass jars on the kitchen counter. Just beyond the kitchen window, it was 14 degrees with 9 inches of fluffy new snow. Ahhh, spring in Montana. Just trying to walk the dogs can be downright stimulating.

I’m hopeful for some of the stimulus plans springing up these days. I think they will help melt our fears and frozen finances, and accompany us into the halcyon days of summer. Currently, none of the plans target artists. But if I was handed a pile of money, I would just double-down and produce even more art until all of the money was gone. My goal has never been to become rich and famous, and I am pleased to report that I’ve been quite successful so far. I just want to spend a quiet, introspective life that enables me to share the wealth that I create. But wealth is not the same as money. Therefore, I used the last few days to hatch my own stimulus plan.

This past weekend, thousands of people paid good money to walk around an art show. They explored the islands of creativity, looking at artworks that may or may not stir their emotions, and visiting with artists who would otherwise never cross their paths. Art changed hands, and friendships were born. But after touring the show, half of the people walked out empty-handed. Did they get snookered out of six bucks? Hardly.

Artwork on display creates emotional responses, and people soak it up with various degrees of thirst. Most of the time, people who seek out and enjoy the artworks only “pay” the artist with compliments. A careless and insincere compliment becomes a hurtful insult, but one heartfelt compliment can be a gift that makes an artist smile for weeks. We brought home a little money and lots of compliments, and we’re still smiling and a little perplexed.

At almost every show I hear some version of, “These are the most creative photographs I’ve ever seen!” from people who get momentarily lost in their emotional response to an image, only to watch them walk away without buying a print. This can be perplexing behavior to see from the artists’ side of the relationship. One minute you’re sharing your wealth and the next minute you’re just part of a circus, dazzling their senses while they eat handfuls of popcorn.

At art shows, we’ve handed out thousands of business cards that feature our most popular image on the back side. We could have left it blank. Only once (that I know of) has our business card led to a sale of that particular image. This small gift is a net loss for us professionally. But personally? What is the value of making a total stranger feel good for a moment? If someone in my booth breaks into a belly laugh, but walks out without buying a photograph, our interaction adds nothing to the GDP.

But just how much is the laughter worth to that person’s health? And what is it worth when Tracy and I get caught up in their infectious delight? What about the next time they stumble across our business card, and turn it over to smile at the image again? This doesn’t help us feed our dogs, but our “net loss” must be generating some amount of wealth in the human ecosystem. We might make the same amount of money by selling fewer images at higher prices, but then our little emotional response generators would hang in fewer homes, and thus generate a little less wealth.

Therefore, the question becomes one of somehow balancing wealth and money. This can become a twisted conundrum. To me, art should be a soothing balm for the masses, not reserved for the uppity income brackets. By and large, artist are gawd-awful salespeople. We live too close to the heart, and our creations can sometimes end up worth more to us emotionally than they are worth financially to others. The vast majority of artists never even dare to try and sell their works. Many of us would much rather give our creations away to those who "get it," those who respond emotionally -- if only we could still afford groceries. Hence, the "starving artist" stereotype. I’ve met one or two salesmen who happen to be good artists, and they always seem to do well, but I know scant few artists – myself included – whose salesmanship equals their creativity.

(Personally, this relates to the reasons why I don’t photograph the same old rented bears and captive birds that every other wildlife photographer sells. I don’t want to take those same old images, even though they sell well, because they hold no emotional value for me.)

So I spent the weekend hatching a new plan to carry us through. It is brilliant in its simplicity. All I really need is one curious patron who is rich but wants to become wealthy. And all they have to do is share enough pesos to keep us in beans and rice (and to keep our dogs in dog food). That, in turn, will allow me to share every bit of wealth -- in the form of art -- that I can wring out of my remaining days. This is my stimulus plan, such that it is. We are currently accepting applications.

Such were the thoughts rumbling around in my head as the art show was winding down. And that’s when a neighboring artist walked into my booth with a gift for me -- a cartoon drawing that I had “paid” compliments on earlier. In a simple act of kindness, he chose to share it with me instead of selling it. In that moment he gave up a future sale, but his warm generosity made both of us feel wealthier.

These days, during this stubborn economic winter, we need to be brave enough to spread a little bit of money around. But more importantly, we also need to spread more kindness and real wealth around with the people we meet. If we can afford a little bit more of this behavior, then spring is sure to bloom a little bit sooner.

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people." (Victor Borge)

State of the Photography Nation

"We're between the future and the pasture.” (John Gorka)

At this point in our evolution, I’m feeling the need to review our current “State of the Photography Nation.” Warning to photographers: the following tantrum is wrapped around twisted opinions that may cause disorientation. Please sit down before reading this.

The “digital revolution” truly is. Human history is now divided into BD (Before Digital) and AD (After Digital). This brave new digital world wields the twin advantages of (1) user-friendly cameras that can be relatively cheap, and (2) elimination of the chemical darkroom. The old 35mm cameras were mostly technical, pricy, and intimidating to the masses. These shiny new digital “toys” are incredibly user-friendly – some even come in designer colors. And even if there was a chicken in every pot back in the days of film, there was never, ever, a darkroom in every garage. Computers have replaced most darkrooms, and now both computers and digital cameras far outnumber garages.

The good old film days were better for the business of photography for the truly talented. But, in my humble opinion, the digital era is better for the art of photography because it is dropping millions of friendly cameras into the clever hands of the curious masses.

Does this mean professional print photography is a dying business model? Well, sort of. It hasn't gone extinct, but it is evolving into a different kind of animal. What used to be a business that relied on delivering a product (the photographic print) is turning into a business that delivers a service (education) to thousands of new digital camera owners who want to make their own art.

Education is a great thing. Unfortunately, delivering this education is turning us into a screaming clan of self-aggrandizing former-photographers who now churn out endless workshops, lectures, books, CD’s, DVD’s, online classes, etc. I sometimes think of all this as a steaming pile of “Self-help Training Until Financially Fatigued.” (STUFF for short. I avoided the temptation to create a different acronym.)

The result; you no longer have to be a talented photographer to be in the photo business. Heck, you don’t even have to be a photographer. You just need a search engine-optimized website to hock your CD guide to the Newest-Best-Software-Ever-Of-The-Month. Or your e-book on the nimble Nikon D10,000 Camera-Slash-Personal-Assistant that delivers your morning coffee before heading out to take perfect pictures while you scan the headlines and sip your drink in your pajamas. (Hold on – didn’t that used to be my job?)

It appears that there are now more photographers selling STUFF than there are photographers selling photographs. Need a detailed guide to the newest Nikocanon dream camera? You can buy the 600-page book on CD before you can even get your hands on the camera. Who wouldn’t want to learn the “Evolution of a Masterpiece” just by taking an online photography class? Just click that Paypal button, my friend. How about a very expensive vacation disguised as a photo workshop? Pick your favorite park/state/continent, and then take out a second mortgage.

How are photographers – the ones who actually used to take pictures -- evolving in the digital era? Just like the painters did after a new invention called the “camera” took away much of their paying work in portraiture and illustration. Some talented photographers are moving to new habitats in the abstract and fine art fields. Many more are piling on the STUFF bandwagon.

A long-time photographer who boasts of 600,000-plus images (now there’s someone in dire need of an editor!) said that he makes more money giving lectures than he does selling photos. Another photographer in California sells “photo safaris” on his website by dropping the name of his deceased friend, Galen Rowell, every couple of sentences. Many other photographers build beautiful websites, and then proceed to clutter them up with advertising. One of the most honest ideas comes from a photographer I like who writes a technical website. At the top of every article, he asks for a $5 “donation” to help him support his wife and kids.

Wedding and portrait photographers appear to be holding their own, financially. But even they are getting pushed in new directions. Wedding photographers used to make buckets of money by keeping the rights to their photos and then selling endless prints to the happy newlyweds and their families. Nowadays, some of the tech-savvy public wants digital versions of their wedding photos, not prints, and so more photographers are obliging. The people photographers are often paid a flat fee for his/her skills during the shoot, not for the number of photos taken or prints produced.

That seems reasonable for event-specific people pictures. But it pressures us wildlife and landscape photographers to sell digital versions of our images. That idea sounds a lot like following the lemming in front of you towards that yonder cliff. If a high-resolution digital version of your Once-in-a-Lifetime capture gets loose on the internet, you'll never get it back. At least once a week, someone emails me a different version of a “Best Photographs Ever” collection. Some are very good, some are plain bad. Very few of them even credit the photographer, and none of them help the photographer feed his kids.

Plopped down in the middle of this digital revolution like a grumpy two-year-old, I often wonder where my little niche in the “Photography Nation” will end up. I do like teaching, and I would enjoy helping people learn the artform. But I’m not sure how to morph from here to there. My personality tends to be the antithesis of self-aggrandizing (and I absolutely couldn’t stand the egotistical photographers I’ve met), but self-promotion looks like the dominant DNA in this new environment. So how does a modest guy with self-deprecating humor stand up and get noticed in the midst of all these self-proclaimed experts selling all this STUFF? I really don’t know, and that’s why I had to sit down before reading this.

"I never know how much of what I say is true.” (Bette Midler)

On Photoshop & Geezerdom

"Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.” (Benjamin Franklin)

I had the dubious distinction of visiting the doctor today for a check-up. It was my end of a pact made with a friend – I’d go to the dermatologist that I had avoided for five years if she’d visit her doctor, where she hadn’t been seen in two years. So basically, I think it was her sneaky way of caring about me.

The nurse/receptionist asked the obligatory questions. Allergies? No. Medications? No. Any medical conditions? Just old age, I said. She shot back, “You can’t be old because your birth date is close to mine.” (Note to self – make sure nurse is way younger than you before making age jokes.) She left the room, and I started wondering if maybe I’m younger than I give myself credit for. Maybe there is still a Young Buck hiding behind these Old Geezer gray whiskers.

I must have been the rare male patient, as there were approximately 347 “People” and “Self” magazines, along with one “Newsweek.” Thumbing through the news magazine, I started to keep track of how many of the photographs were subtly or boldly manipulated with Photoshop. Blemish-free skin, cut-out backgrounds, three grizzly bears running through a snowfield with three Angus bulls. It quickly became a search for a photograph that wasn’t obviously manipulated. Finally, towards the back, there was one small image that basically looked like somebody’s innocent snapshot. Still, I know that it had been adjusted for density, color balance, and contrast – at a minimum.

People sometimes ask if a particular photograph of mine has been “manipulated.” They’ve never worked with Photoshop, but they’ve heard it used as a verb, and they think this must be a bad thing. My short answer is, “yes,” every digital image must be manipulated in order to make a viewable print. In fact, except for some top-of-the-line professional cameras, every digital camera makes lots of “manipulations” to every image every time you press the shutter. What we might think of as a “pure” snapshot is in reality very altered by the camera. And lots of times, the decisions made by the camera are wrong and need to be corrected (“re-manipulated”) by editing software, such as Photoshop.

(Most professional photographers capture images in what Nikon and Canon call “raw” digital form, but even this is not 100% pure. The goal is to remove the decision-making from the camera and place the responsibility instead on the photographer, working at her computer and wishing she was outside taking more photos instead. Most of the time, her goal is to take the electrons recorded by the camera and work them over until they match the scene as she sees it in her mind – which, by the way, may well be different from the scene that her assistant experienced. It’s still subjective!)

For the most part, photographers are using software to overcome the limitations of digital cameras. (Just like we used to do in ancient places called "darkrooms" by dodging and burning areas under the enlarger while printing our negatives.) There are also some very creative people who are using this software to take various parts of many images to create something totally new and unrecognizable from the any of the parts. Some of this new art is stunning, and I’m envious of the amount of creativity these folks snuck off with. (Some fine examples here from Magdalena Wanli.) These creations still fall into the photography category, but I suspect that they are eventually destined for a new description.

So yes, Photoshop is a valuable tool used by virtually every professional photographer – to one degree or another. I have no problem with this, with a few caveats. No propaganda -- truth must remain the playing field. And photojournalism must remain minimally affected by editing. Nothing more than corrections of camera shortcomings. Digital editing is still fairly new, and I wish that people were more aware of it and could tell, just by flipping through a news magazine at the doctor's office, how each image was altered. This, I think, will take many years.

I was feeling better about my years while driving home from the doctor’s office. I’d faced my fear and lived to tell the tale, so I must still be a prime specimen, I reasoned. It was then, while driving down a long straight-away, that I noticed a blinking light on my dashboard. Right turn signal. I’d been driving for miles, telling all of the other drivers that at any moment I would turn -- right into the muddy stubble of a fall wheat field.

“Old man!” I chuckled.

I was guilty of the one thing that officially defines Geezerdom. Oh well, at least my friends still care about me in my golden years…

Lessons From my First Fan

""I am in love with Montana. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans." (John Steinbeck) [ Editor's note: John A. grew up in Texas. He hopes to spend his remaining days in Montana, and he thinks this is one of the funniest quotes he's ever heard. ]

I wasn’t much for photography last week. Instead, I was just a proud son. Ma and Pa Ashley made the long, long, long drive up from central Texas to northwestern Montana. They’ve only been up once before, about 10 years ago, so it was quite an honor to have them visit.

Aside from a few travelling clothes, the only thing mom brought along was an old, dusty, framed photograph. A photograph that used to be – to me, at least – of dubious merit. It captures a cloudy sunset over a group of sailboats docked at a marina, in colors that used to be rich reds and oranges but have since faded to dull browns and yellows.

Anyone could have taken that photograph, but I’m the one who did. I was a skinny high school kid, learning how to use the school’s yearbook staff camera. I think it was a Canon, and I know for sure it was a 50mm because that’s the only lens we had. Cameras these days are sleek and commonplace. But back in those days of prehistory, 35mm’s were big, clunky dinosaurs that were not user friendly at all. I was just starting to learn how to handle a dinosaur.

Mom really liked the sunset photo, and so we got it enlarged and ready to frame. Then the strangest thing happened -- she asked me to sign the print. I felt dumbfounded! It’s an okay photo, I conceded, but it’s not like I’m an artist or something. An artist creates something from within, but I was just a beginning photographer, capturing something from without. I declined to sign the photo (and it’s not easy in the south to refuse one’s mother). She framed the unsigned image anyway. It hung in her office until she retired, and then it moved into the house, where it still hangs today.

Except for last week, when she lifted the frame off the wall and hauled this old photograph all the way up to Montana. You already know why. Once more, 30 years later, my dear mother asked again if I would sign her photograph. I did. I carefully pried apart the fragile frame, and nervously scribbled my name. And now her prized possession is on its way back to that dark rectangle on the wall, where it has hung for so long that the rest of the wall has faded around it.

These days, I’m somewhere in the neighborhood of what my mother’s age was back then. And she taught me a thing or two in the years between. Art, I eventually learned, is all about the emotion that you feel when you “take in” or view a photograph. Or a painting, or a song – or even a homemade meal. We are all artists, each of us, and some of us also happen to be photographers. That old photo doesn’t remind my mother of sailboats. Instead, it reminds her of the pleasure she felt watching one of her boys growing up and exploring the natural world around him.

And now here’s her boy, 30 years older if not actually grown up. Trying to make photographs that will create in other people that feeling of wonder, inspiration and appreciation for the natural world. A good feeling. This past week, my first fan reminded me firsthand what my work is really all about.

"...Art is the message, not the medium." (Ken Rockwell)