Hot Pants

Something is giving me dancing feet….ants in the pants…..cabin fever. I don’t have any idea what it could even be: it’s been unseasonably warm this winter thusfar, I’ve been getting out a lot on my travels (though not in the past month or so…) I have no money to travel on an extended vacation anyway….but something is making me anxious.

Maybe it’s because I really didn’t take a vacation this summer. I was too busy being unemployed and getting drunk, hah. Nonetheless I am longingly staring at maps. I am drawing up budgeting plans to take up my belt and put a few pennies away for (ever rising) gas prices. I am sizing up the schematics of sleeping in my backseat (or front seat for that matter, which I have certainly been known to do while too drunk to drive….).

I want to go somewhere.

I want to go urban exploring in fun abandoned places….but ones in another part of the country. I want to run around in Michigan Central Station in Detroit. Or Waverly Hills in Kentucky (even if it isn’t abandoned anymore). I want to see Ghost Towns in the West.

I want to see weird places and attractions I’ve never seen before. I want to see how “the rest of the country” lives. Like the people in oil country in Texas. Or the guy down the street in Arkansas. I want to see Las Vegas too. The neon graveyard…and I want a picture with an Elvis impersonator. Any one will do. I want to go to the Badlands. I want to see New Orleans. I want to see that giant crater in Arizona left by the meteorite from a very very long time ago.

I want to see it all. I have no idea why. I just do.

mixing up the mediums

The other day when visiting my parents my dad excitedly should me an 8×10 image he had purchased from a local art show over the weekend. He had a look of amazement in his eyes as he showed me this masterpiece, a work of art that completely baffled him; because he could not figure out how the artist had created such an effect.

I couldn’t bear to tell him it was the watercolor filter in Photoshop. Instead I gave him the benefit of boosting his happiness but acting amazed and intrigued as well. But in reality, all the artist had done was taken a simple photo of a landscape and ran a single Photoshop filter on it to make it mimic another form of art. He then printed it on rag paper that would soak the ink in and thereby add to the effect, blending the colors together. Sure, I guess he did a good job at it. My dad thought it was the greatest thing he had ever seen. And that’s great for him, that’s what he likes. It’s good that he knows what he enjoys in art. But the fact that I knew how it was done sort of ruined the mystique for me I guess.

There is a software company called Alien Skin who specializes in the creation of a wide variety of Photoshop filters. They have a package out called “Exposure,” and interestingly enough, it allows the user to add film characteristics to their digital exposures. Add. You can add characteristics of color saturation and film grain to photos through the use of this filter package. Film grain! I thought one of the big selling points on digital was clear images with an absence of “ugly” graininess films can sometimes provide. I can see how this software could be a great learning tool; I can load up a picture and observe the difference between T-Max and Tri-X, push processing and cross processing, Reala and Velvia. But why is there a need to make a digital exposure look like a film one?

There are many things the age of digital photography has made easier for the artist. The wet darkroom is no longer a necessity if not desired. Images can be endlessly played with and experimented on, and with the push of an undo button all changes disappear. Don’t get me wrong, I love digital photography. But I don’t understand the push to make it look like something it’s not.

If you want a watercolor painting, buy a watercolor painting. Don’t take a photo and run it through filters, then print it on special paper to make it “look” like a painting. Just like I don’t understand the point of adding film grain to a digital image. If you want the grain, shoot in film! Each medium of art has its own strengths. Rather than make a medium look like another, why not learn to use and exploit its own particular strengths and embrace the fact that it’s a digital image? Use brushes if you want. Use filters, use toning, use things that are not possible or very very challenging with traditional film photography. Take advantage of its ease and abilities.

Personally for me, the jury is still out on whether I am ok with the idea of “Photoshopping” an image and still calling it photography. But I’m not even about to start analyzing that right now. But one thing I definitely don’t understand is, I don’t understand the point of turning a medium into something it’s not, just to make it look like another medium it’s not. It just seems like walking in circles to me.

digital "art"

Maybe part of what irks me about the digital revolution is that it’s almost like a new form of art, and I feel like others are using it to surpass my own more traditional work….but in the same respect, I can’t seem to bring myself to use it in the same ways. Sometimes I will see a photo displayed on flickr, or somewhere else on the internet, and it has obviously benefited from Photoshop work-fake tilt-shift lens work, hdr, toning, basically things that were not possible in traditional photographic practices, or at least much much harder to achieve. These are all things that require the creative switch to be ignited once again in the digital darkroom. Sometimes I see these shots using blur filters, adjustment layers to bring out dark contrast, things of this nature, and I really like what I see, and it’s almost as if I get jealous, because I consider these to be tools I cannot access.

I have certainly tried. I have sat in front of the computer many a time with a photo on the desktop, staring at it, Photoshop options lain out before me….and I have no idea what to do. My slate is blank. I know what I like when viewing the work of others, but I don’t know to translate that to my own work. It’s very strange. I can sit here for an hour looking at grunge artwork and say yes I like this, I like that, oh he used that grunge texture, ok download that, give myself the same exact tools he even used- and still come up blank. I can’t translate it. And this is what tells me my creative force lies behind the camera, not behind the monitor.

I just don’t understand all of these post-production digital methods. Each little thing requires 50 steps to achieve, 49 of which I don’t understand why they are needed, and it’s not as if I am illiterate in Photoshop, I have been a graphic designer for years. But all of this switching to lab color, selecting only the highlights, blending only this range of grays, I find it all to be highly technical stuff that I never would have figured out on my own save for someone giving me the cheat sheet, the cliff notes version. And I don’t understand how that is being creative. I guess for some people it is. But it kind of feels empty to me. Disposable, plastic. Much like many things in today’s society. So then again, maybe it does make sense, this whole digital imaging revolution.

new advances

Since I have started my latest job, I have noticed an extreme increase in my creativity and productivity as an artist. It’s probably mostly due to the fact that my new job leaves me with large spans of free time….thereby allowing me to daydream. When I daydream my mind tends to gravitate towards my passions, like most other people I’m sure. And my passions are photography and urban exploration. But mostly photography. I can sit there for hours thinking about where I’m shooting next, how I’m itching to get in the darkroom, something I need to buy, some photos I need to retouch….anything. So while sitting in the office, I began to bring in photography-related “work” to both satisfy my creative needs and accomplish something while keeping me occupied during a lull in activity.

First I added a backlog of about 2 months of work to my website. Then I decided I was bored with my website and completely overhauled it with a brand new redesign. Then I kept adding and adding to the website, until it was a behemoth bursting with over 700 photos in various galleries. Then I combed through all of those photos and pulled out approximately 150 of what I thought were my “best” photos, and placed them in a flickr gallery for more photographic exposure.

Then I still needed something to do to occupy my time, so I created a flash presentation cd of about 20 of my best photos organized into a folio under one theme for distribution to galleries maybe some day. My photos probably aren’t good enough to be in galleries, I’m aware of this. But if I don’t try, I’ll never know I guess. Then I started scanning old prints and retouching some negatives I scanned using a flatbed scanner at my last job that I never removed dust from. They’re just been sitting on my hard drive.

Now I’ve begun linking my site to other outside sites to bring in more traffic. I’m setting up an ImageKind gallery on the off chance somebody would actually want to purchase a print of mine (though I don’t expect that to happen). And I spend time almost every day tinkering with Photoshop effects, blending modes, saturation layers, and brushes on my photos, just seeing what I come up with, not worrying if it comes out looking like Photoslopped garbage. I’m just experimenting.

There are just endless things for me to tinker with and learn, and the past two months I have truly kicked it into hyper drive. And the best part is I have noticed about myself that once I get the ball rolling, I recognize that sense of accomplishment I receive, that good feeling, when a goal is reached, and I look for something else to do to reach that high again. It’s great.

At this rate, I’m going to conquer the world.

live it.

I’m realizing more and more that if you like something, really like something and are serious about it….it should be your life. But not just that, I mean it should encompass your daily life. And since my living space is a direct reflection of who I am, my living space should give off this idea, that I am photography, and photography is me. Moreover, if I am placed in this situation where I am constantly bombarded with photography and surrounded by creativity, as a result I will be in a more creative and photographic frame of mind, which is definitely a good thing,

So what is my living space like? Well, going from memory since I am in front of a computer….I would say I embody this ideal fairly well.

The rest of my day might play out like this:

I get in my car to drive home from work, where there is a photographic instructional book on the floor of the passenger side front seat. Sometimes on the way home while sitting in endless traffic I will listen to a photography-related podcast, if not, then just music.

I walk into my apartment where I am greeted by various photos of mine thrown up on the walls, there’s an old bottle of film developer sitting next to the tv that I keep meaning to throw out but keep forgetting.

Into the kitchen where the table who’s current purpose is nothing more than a holder of “stuff,” currently there are a couple of pages of negatives in a pile and another photo in a frame I keep meaning to hang up. Through the hallway which is a veritable art display with large amounts of my photos on every free wall…..and into my room.

At least fifteen photographic monographs, biographics, and instructional books are lined up on shelves. Smaller shelves near my bed hold another two dozen books dealing with my photography, and some on psychology and the history thereof. The couch next to my bed has three rolls of uncut negatives strewn about, and my freelance photo back with equipment. Photographic magazines are on the floor, and the walls hold more framed photos. My entire computer hard drive is a mish mash of unorganized and unfiled digital negatives. The desk is filled with prints, photo articles I have torn out of magazines as a note to “check this out” later on the web.

And of course the basement, my own darkroom. A black and white enlarger, trays everywhere and tongs, bottles and bottles of chemicals, an entire shelf of paper boxes, a print flattener, various other tools used in the production of a wet darkroom.

I love my life.

behind which creativity lurks

I always find it interesting to watch other people work. I tend to gain that much more appreciation for a photo when I see how the person worked to achieve it. Sometimes I find people approach photography in very much the same ways I do. Sometimes they don’t. When I go exploring with my usual group of friends, I tend to take what I am doing much more seriously than they do, or at least I am much quieter and more reserved than they are during a phototaking session. I can’t help it. This is how I work. I break off from the group to have my own little zen experience, to stand in an empty room alone and let my eyes and senses tell me where the photograph is. I find this hard to do with a group of 3 other people around me laughing and goofing off. My friends are used to this. They know to collect me at the end of the day, in a manner of speaking.

When I take photos, my camera is on a tripod, firmly positioned. Each frame is carefully thought out and composed, every inch of that viewfinder is meticulously reviewed and mulled over before I click that shutter. This is how I practice my art. I take what is in front of me and translate it through my trusty camera and into a rectangle frame. When I click that shutter, I am finished. And short of some slight Photoshopping, for the most part I leave images as is when taken. Sure, I perform the necessary tasks, color correction, curves adjustment, slight sharpening, possibly perspective correction, rotation or cropping, but for the most part that is it. Although recently I have begun experimenting with combining exposures through use of blending layers and blurring techniques in order to avoid blown out windows. I still don’t consider this to be over the top work though.

The first time I took photos with a friend of mine on a cold March weekend in a Connecticut training school, I was ever so slightly amazed by her workflow. In the time it took me to take one photo, she had taken at least ten. She didn’t use a tripod. The whole time I was composing my scene, adjusting f-stops and shutter speeds, she was running around me taking quick snap shots of this and that, maybe this, maybe that. How in the world could she be coming up with thoughtful work? And yet I have seen her work and I think it is marvelous.

But where I only make somewhat minor editing changes in Photoshop….that’s where she put on her artist’s hat and gets creative. She starts pulling out blurring filters, multiply this and blend that, luminosity here, desaturated color there….basically putting in ten times the work in Photoshop I was putting in. Her time to be creative was behind the computer. She liked to take her image and adjust it to fit the mood she felt when in the location, to create a dreamy kind of state of mind, the feelings she had when standing in that room earlier in the day.

So I guess it’s all proportional. I am creative behind the lens, but prefer to not be so creative in Photoshop. I use Photoshop to adjust my original vision, but only slightly. I feel as if heavy Photoshopping takes away from my original composition. But my friend instead spends her time gathering things to work with on location, and then when she sits down in front of the computer, that is her zen experience, her time to be creative and let things flow. When I get home and pull things up on the computer I am already out of that mode and am just looking to process my work and tidy it up. It’s like I don’t know how to put that creative cap back on. It’s a process I am not familiar with. I have tried…..open up a photo, look at it on the screen, and say to myself, “how can I improve on this?”

But the problem is, when I see that photo, I say to myself, “it’s perfect already in my eyes.”

I think this difference in creative workflow is what helps fuel the rift between photography and digital art. And it’s always the photographers who have the problem with the digital artists in my experience. The idea of using the camera not to create art, but just to collect things to make art with later….that’s such a strange idea to me. And I know I’m not alone on that thought. I’m not saying it’s a bad one. It’s just a foreign thing in my mind.

….all of this photos are from rana x.