On Photography
“Photography, itself, became for me a new landscape.” Paul Caponigro
On this day of giving thanks, I want to give thanks to photography. Naturally I am ever thankful for Ann, my family, friends, the wonderful world I live in and my great fortune to have the life I am able to live. But this week my mind has been on how thankful I am for what photography has given to me over the years and continues to give.
The creative process is a mystery I do not nearly understand; all I know is that one has to work at it and, if one is lucky, something gets triggered. It seems the process has moments of convergence, such as this year’s trip to the Santiam River, where suddenly disparate things come together and there is a flow of thought and action, often built upon what has come before. It happened again this week, though not with the camera in hand.
To be honest, since our 2018 Grand Fall Adventure ended, Ann and I have struggled to resume normal life. We would rather be back on the road, living a much simpler life and filling our thoughts and days with photography, instead of at work and the routines of life necessary to keep everything going. But you can’t run away from life, and we’ve finally managed to resume a routine that tries again to inject some photography bits into each day and hopefully photography out in the field as often as possible. It’s these bits that came together this week.
Tuesday morning I read the above quote from Paul Caponigro (this month’s photographer of the month). While studying his lovely images, that quote hovered in my mind as I absorbed the types of images I so love to make. Images that speak to the process of photography and the joy of seeing. At one point I stopped to reflect on a couple of videos Ann and I watched this past week where Joe Cornish talked about his work. And then I recalled a pointer from David DuChemin that I came across while looking something up just the day before - study your own work. Then the flood came.
I put down my book and grabbed first an index card and later a pad of paper to write down the flow of thoughts that raced through my head. Then I had to make sense of it all. So here it is:
For me, photography is a state of being; an act of joy and deep pleasure where I work to see what is there in the world and receive the gifts the world has offered to me. It instills in me a sense of curiosity, of exploration and discovery that repeatedly fills me with wonder and awe at the sheer beauty and mystery of the ever-changing environment around me.
I try to instill qualities in my images that reflect my experiences. I want my images to engage the viewer by leaving questions unanswered by the photograph and by encouraging visual exploration of the image. I strive for images that lead a viewer to ask even more questions. Always I seek balance in my images. It’s a struggle to compose visual elements, line, form, tone, color and texture to make an image seem “right” even if the image appears to be of dynamic chaos. At the same time, the image must have an energy to it, whether through the apparent physical movement of elements, or the visual movement of the eye through the frame. And then there is the use of ma - the visual tension between elements that I find so compelling. And last, there is a sense of moment - that this image is of something that has never before been and will never again be - whether derived from the quality of light or the nature of the objects within the frame. Not all images can nor even should have all of the above, but it is these design elements that help to make an image something more, something that begins to capture what and how I felt at the time I saw it.
The tools I use in these explorations are grounded in photography and its processes. In no particular order, they include: shutter speed, aperture, plane of focus, the frame, color or B&W tonal values, choice of lens, point of view, filtration and darkroom techniques. Those are the tools in the tool bag that I draw from - spontaneously while in the field photographing, or afterwards when developing an image and, on occasion, printing one. And their effective use is what gives me the sense of practicing the craft of photography.
For me, when I use the term photography it means all of the above. It’s the mental state, the sense of discovery and creation of images, and the exercising of craft that, when it all comes together, is magic.
That is why I am thankful for photography.
I’ll end this post with the full quote from Paul Caponigro’s book Landscape:
“I began to record nature with a camera, and as I slowly gained ability with photography I came to see its great potential for personal exploration and discovery. Photography, itself, became for me a new landscape. The etching power of light, the response of chemical emulsions, the transformation of objects through the lens, the subtle tones of the black and white print, all became for me a landscape of discovery and delight.”