 The greatest creative highs come by surprise. Something emerges out of nowhere. An idea, an inspiration occurs and at the end of the session something unexpected has been created. Something new. Something breathing life. The artist seeks to create art. In the end the art creates the artist.
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 Many who know me, know me as a scotch man. Never less than 12 years old, and always a single malt (as opposed to a blend) if humanly possible. A lovely, golden shot of scotch, neat, with an IPA chaser, sitting in the garden next to the crackling firebox, the fountain in the garden pool gurgling, just as the sun sinks past the far horizon – a little slice of heaven. Central to my sense of self and my general spiritual well-being.
And then I realized (for reasons of HIPAA, not AA, I might add) I had to quit drinking altogether. Who the hell am I, again? Which begs the question, where does one gather their sense of self? Harkening back to my most recent post, that gathering had better not be entirely external and had better not fixate too heavily on any one thing, within you or without you. Everything in life shifts; everything one loves will change. Knock on wood or whatever, but my life is so rich - family, art, books, movies, friends, puppies - the loss of alcohol, which admittedly had stopped making feel in anyway good (HIPAA again), has been little more than a mild annoyance. Perhaps it is the very little mental trick of accepting the richness life without the distraction of things that are not there that is the key to contentment. Accomplish that and one may experience joy even when cradled in Satan’s bosom, hellfire blasting all about, hot coals throbbing in your head while the cheap ass team on the field lucks out again. Maybe, but probably not. I see I have again digressed …  The subject of joy comes up, spurred by a Twitter post this morning from a young writer I follow who asked her followers “I need some joy in my life this morning, share something that’s bringing you some”. This is a person who is ENORMOUSLY successful for her age, and that success brings pressures and chaos.
Running parallel this morning are a couple Facebook posts … Sometimes I go to my happy place Where I can punch people in the face And there are puppies. … and … I need a leaf blower But for people. And these posts are from people I actually know! All this comes with the backdrop of the 9/11 reminiscences spilling today like H2O from a burst water tank. A pallor of the undertoad hangs over everything today. Which DOES beg the issue of joy. How does one cultivate and maintain a sense of contentment when the world around them is angry, hateful and vengeful? Or at best, ambivalent? Standard answers to this question, of course, is that happiness is an internal, not an external, condition; without going all Carlos Castaneda, one has to decide to be happy, to feel joy, and damn all that which stands in the way. Find something within and build on it. Wall out the external unpleasantries. Which is unobtainable, and maladaptive when partially achieved. I’m thinking balance emerges in the juxtaposition between joy and depression. Between those peaks live both mania and wisdom, each mindful of the other. Your choice. * * * Today’s post comes from the back end of Busch Stadium in St. Louis, the gate facing the interstate. Cardinal fans, once again experiencing inexplicable success rooted in their pact with Satan, may recognize the scene. Talk about depression …  Are any rules being followed here? Composition, Rule Of Thirds and all that? Focal point – is there one?
One of the very first works I sold was like today’s photo art – no focal point at all. Just a field of golden, tall grass that I had edged and saturated. It was exactly what the customer was looking for – just a blast of color coming at her. No rules, little artsy fartsy expression or textbook form or dramatic moodiness. A liability of being serious about our art is that we take ourselves too seriously, like a movie drenched with a director’s self-absorption to the point of irrelevance. Form over function. That it’s “Art” does not foster immunity from “who give a shit”. I captured a sharp macro of the tiny blooming flowers of a bush (yeah, no, I don’t know what it’s called), softened it, added texturing and increased the red saturation. I cropped it down even tighter and added an additional light source from the upper right, just enough to add visual interest without detracting from that blast of color which is, after all, the point. Sometimes art reveals itself in the rules the artist doesn’t follow.  Last of the current crop of raindrop-centric works; labeling these as the “current crop” is misleading because I’ve captured so few of these in the past, and these are absolutely the first to include foliage and florals. Capturing weather related shots can be a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right equipment, starting with the motivation to be there.
True nature and wildlife photographers (and, again, I’m not a photographer, I’m a damn photo artist) have to be supremely dedicated to their craft. They have to haul mountains of equipment miles into the boondocks and sit there through the elements for god she only knows how long before they get what they need. There is a level of planning and precision and perseverance in their work that I am in awe of. For this series I traveled the miles to the great wilds of both my back and front yard gardens on a day I was blessed with a soaking rain followed by a dead calm that allowed the raindrops to collect on leaves and flower pedals and me to line up photographs. But … I guess I could argue … the dearth of these kinds of shots in my portfolio suggests perseverance in waiting for them. That the foliage and florals which became the subjects are only there because I planted them, there’s the planning. Timing the captures to the correct lighting, there’s the precision. Having hauled all my equipment and established a studio here in my own boondocks.  Days past I might have considered this a rut. My standard routine has been to wildly vary the techniques I use, even when working from the same series of photographs. The result is that my portfolio has hundreds of works, with only a few of them similar enough to exhibit together. In those days past, I believed repeating techniques to be a weakness. In these days now, I believe not having a series of works in consistent techniques to be a weakness.
I’d started bending in recent times, but limited it to three or four similar works, tops, and even then there were variations. I bent a lot in my recently completed tornado series (yeah, there’s a pun there I’m trying to avoid) because it seemed there was only one appropriate way to depict the carnage. Now, it’s raindrops. Again, there’s a vision I’m going for and there are specific techniques I’m using to get there. The result is a half dozen works that coexist on the same wall in synergy greater than the sum of its parts. I don’t THINK I’m moving away from the single, one of a kind statement that constitutes most of my portfolio. I don’t THINK I’ll become predisposed to repeat the same identifiable techniques over and over in a mass marketing frenzy (babies in flowers). I THINK I’ve learned to carry a vision across a broader pallet. But I’ve been wrong before.  The photo editing software I use works in layers. The artist does something to the picture, then lays something else over a part of it, then lays something else over another part of it, then does something else to all of it, and so on and so forth.
So file that away, then think about the picture three dimensionally. This photograph began with close subjects very sharp, slightly further off subjects not so sharp, and a background appropriately blurred; all characteristics of a short focal plane. But only one color. And everything blended together, short focal plane or no. So the challenge becomes getting the sharply focused subjects to stand out by grabbing hold of the slightly further off objects and desaturating to an appropriate degree, and then grabbing hold of the background and desaturating a little more. Working a few layers at a time. This work finished with more layers than many of the wildly abstract works I’ve completed, yet the effects are quite subtle. When I did turn towards artistic filtering, again the priority was to hold onto the integrity of the raindrops so filtered effects needed to be delicate. Careful application of the artist’s touch, using a computer just as intricately as a brush.  I find it curious that the 1x1 scale seems less bound to the Rule Of Thirds than the more standard 2x3 scale. If anything, the 1x1 scale seems to draw into dead center, exactly the antithesis of the Rule of Thirds. Today’s work uses the same subject (although a different bloom) as my August 29 post, but changes the scale, and repositions the focal point from just right of center to (mostly) center. Stylistically they are virtually identical. But visually I have to agree that the previous 2x3 scale is more interesting. In each case, the eye goes straight to the bright red of the bloom. But in the 2x3 work, the eye has more to occupy it; there is greater context to the focal point and its environment. It feels more at home.
The 1x1 scale has become popular in social media for exactly the reason that there is no context – attention goes straight to the focal point. It is not indented as a visual experience, it is intended as a visual message. It is concerned less with art than with communication. Perhaps context is what separates the two. Whereas communication moves in a straight line, art moves in a circle, or perhaps a wave, and in doing so broadens the message into a dialogue. The contrast of the two begs consideration of where a given work is exhibited publicly and the intent of the exhibitor in displaying it. Are they communicating or are they exposing? Or is an exposition simply another form of communication? * * * Did I just correlate the title of a work to the ramblings I post to go along with it? An accident, I assure you – I’ll try not to let it happen again!  Back at it after an extended battle with .. allergies. Yeah, that’s it – allergies!
From an artistic standpoint today’s work is another exercise in doing just enough that it constitutes ‘photo art’ as opposed to photography, but not so much as lose the detailed photographic elements, in this case the rain drops. Take the raindrops away and the abstraction could have been more profound. But I like the raindrops. The next several works, BTW, will feature plants and raindrops. From a subject standpoint, this is a vine native to this region, though I’ve no idea what (feel free to let me know…). When we moved into our home backyard was, and still is, bordered by an overgrown fence row with mostly woods behind. Part of that overgrowth was, and still is, thick honeysuckle, which annually would explode in the most exquisite aromas. When I built my beer garden, revealed in my August 21 post, I decided to frame one end of it in honeysuckle as well. It had been in the ground, thriving, for a few years when I was told, NO! Don’t do that! Honeysuckle is an invasive species! Use this instead. So when I expanded the border I did. And for three years, I thought it was just this dead thing sticking out of the ground. Sure each year it seemed to come back and grow a bit more, but there was nothing to it; no blooms and only the rare leaf. Then suddenly, BOOM, I get all this. I get blooms like this all summer. Comes in thicker every year. Several obvious morals to this tale. But, yeah … obvious.  My recent black and white series ends, and we go back to full color on this Monday following a weekend of intense seasonal allergies. Not much in my head besides snot, but let’s see how we do today.
I’ve mentioned that part of me feels like florals are cheating because they’re sort of automatic abstracts; why the hell bother with artistic effort, just shoot them, correct for exposure and we’re done. But here’s the other side of that: If there’s no artistic process then it’s not really photo art, is it. This work, I think, is an example of doing just enough. I didn’t want to take it so far as to lose the clarity of the raindrops, and yet the delicate flowers themselves have gone through just a touch of abstraction. This one well represents the effect of making a photograph look like a painting. I went with a 1x1 scale simply because it cropped best that way and composition by way of the Rule of Thirds runs diagonally up the frame. And who doesn’t like purple. There – how’d I do? Say this real fast: If you’re smoochin' with your honey And they’re nose is kinda runny And you think it’s really funny Well it’s not.  An artist friend I respect said something at a gallery reception recently that keeps buzzing around my head like a horse fly in my face. What she said was something about using presets in Photoshop or Lightroom to achieve the same effect over and over. And it keeps buzzing around my head because in the context of our conversation … wait … is THAT what you think I do?! No!!
For the uninitiated, a “preset” is a series of commands used in sequence in photo editing software that are recoded into a single command. It’s very useful for photographers who need to process a series of photographs taken under essentially the same lighting conditions; for example, at a wedding or a sporting event. Instead of making the same adjustments to three dozen photographs, one can simply click on a preset and apply those adjustments to every photograph at the same time. It’s a tremendous time saver, as I say, for photographers. I’m not a photographer – I’m a photo artist. Presets do not work in art because the techniques applied to the photographic capture are much more sophisticated and much more a play between the lighting present for the original photograph and the will of the artist. As proof I offer today’s work. The art shown here is created with a technique I have only been able to achieve twice, including this one. The first, which has received awards and been very well reviewed, was created using a color digital photographic capture. Today’s work is created from a black and white film image. Even if I’d created a present after the first work, it wouldn’t have worked here because the original photographs are so different. Since the first work, I’ve gone back and copied all its techniques and applied them to maybe a dozen other works, and every time it failed to create what I wanted, because the technique has to integrate with the unique lighting of each. It’s an almost intimate relationship, and now that I’ve made it work a second time I’m even more aware how each technique has to be carefully applied to each exceptional circumstance. Presets do not work in art. Only an artist’s instinct and expertise create a work that stands as ‘Art’. That is true whether using the computer or a brush. This work began as a black and white image using Ilford Delta 100 film. That image was digitized, adjusted in Camera RAW, then opened in Photoshop where I worked separately with six different sections of the image using a couple dozen levels of filters and adjustments. Again, this effect has only worked twice. Will it ever work again? * * * NOTE: This post is the final in a series examining the application of digital techniques to film photography in creating photo art, done in tribute to the closing of the last regional retail photography stores.  A little bit of a reveal as today’s work is a detail of my patio/garden. I built it myself over the ground that had been home to my son’s swing set after the swing set had begun to deteriorate and my son was too old to enjoy one anymore. Bum shoulder and all, I laid down a barrier, dug out a hole for the pool and fountain, spread river rock and large stones throughout. Potted plants throughout, birds dancing around their feeders, a lovely windchime, a stone firebox, a stone coffee table, bouncy places to sit while the fountain gurgles. It’s back in enough shade that you can retreat there as late as 11a without the sun hitting you. The pots have to hold deer-resistant plants or they’re eaten down to the nub, but on the plus side it means you are visited by deer and wildlife often. Once the sun drops to the horizon a log or two in the firebox makes for a perfect spot to down a couple end-of-the-day beverages. It’s a lovely spot to chill and collect your thoughts if one actually has time to collect them, which, more days than not, I don’t seem to. The black and white photography with a fair amount of texturing and the devious little gremlin make the scene seem more like a fairytale than it really is. A dancing fire in the firebox just behind the gremlin’s head might have intuitively made an even better work, but probably have simply come out as a washed-out blob.
Photography is touted as an art that requires vast treks across the wide world, but so much of my work is captured just down the street or, in this case, right out my back door. The most rewarding creation for me is in the art of everyday things. Redefining the status quo. Reprogramming the computers in our heads. Rewriting all the if/then statements. * * * NOTE: This post is part of a series examining the application of digital techniques to film photography in creating photo art, done in tribute to the closing of the last regional retail photography stores.  Juxtaposition with the August 17 post on the discussion of clarity; this work goes the other way. Where that one was hyper-sharp, its subject drenched in sunlight, this one uses much softer focus plus just a hint of filtering. The leaves are clearly defined, the cracks in the bark clearly discernable, but more softly. The focal point, the leaves just above center, are outside the bright light instead of defined by it; indeed, only the spot drenched by light loses its definition, exactly the opposite of the August 17 work. This work lives in the shadows, and is defined by it.
Two photographs, shot on the same roll of black and white film, on the same day, in the same forest within a few hundred yards of each other. Minimal post processing to both. Two very different moods created. All a matter of clarity. * * * NOTE: This post is part of a series examining the application of digital techniques to film photography in creating photo art, done in tribute to the closing of the last regional retail photography stores.  A number of retrospectives have been published in the past week marking the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the great concert at Yasgur’s farm that perhaps caught the 60s in full bloom. Missing from at least the retrospectives I’ve read is that the bloom withered and died four months later at Altamont, another free concert, this one in California, that was marked by severe violence including one stabbing death, two hit and run automobile deaths and one LSD inspired drowning, among other incidents.
The great music the decade is known for, and that deservedly so, I don’t think captures the profound significance of the cultural shift of those 10 years as do movies. The Oscar for best picture of 1965 went to ‘The Sound Of Music’, a heartwarming, G-rated musical in which a family of blonde haired, white Austrians escape the yoke of Nazi terror by fleeting over the Alps. In 1969, the Oscar for best picture went to the X-rated ‘Midnight Cowboy’, about a bisexual male prostitute and his crippled Jewish buddy hustling through New York City. And America has never been the same since. On the one hand, you have folks waving the banner of freedom proclaiming that, hey, I like being a freak! I like being black! I like being Latino! I like being gay! I like being a nerd! I like being ... an artist – free to be me!! And on the other side you have people saying, no! This is America - we do things a certain way. We are one nation under God! You don’t like it this way, go somewhere else! You want to be different - you want to be black - fine, just be white as you do! We live in a juxtaposed culture in which the pendulum is constantly swinging back-and-forth, each time further out than the time before, each time leaving half the nation despondent and angry, poised to strike back. And it’s roots may go back further but its flashpoints were the 60’s. * * * The artist has a choice whether in a dark room or on a computer between increasing the clarity of a photographic capture or employing a soft focus. (Or, I suppose, of doing nothing). I tend to lean towards the soft focus, and often intensely so – I think reducing clarity creates an enhanced sense of mystery and wonder. But, as I’ve said before, the choice of what our work becomes often does not fall to the artist. The photograph itself, buried in its pixels, holds the key to what the ultimate work will become. Trying to bend the work contrary to that usually does not work. In the case of today’s work, the sunlight beaming against the perfectly focused tree bark with its deep, contrasting furrows, the background fading into the shade, screamed for all the clarity available. It is a matter of timing; come back to the spot an hour later, or arrive an hour sooner, or do so a few weeks in either direction, and the position of the sun would have resulted in a very different photograph. * * * NOTE: This post is part of a series examining the application of digital techniques to film photography in creating photo art, done in tribute to the closing of the last regional retail photography stores.  A fundamental principal taught in public administration and management, Parkinson’s Law, postulates that every job increases in scope to fill the time available to do it. The common analogy offered is that if you or I are buying a birthday card for our niece, we’ll go to the appropriate isle at the grocery store while we’re there to get other stuff and spend, oh, maybe a minute-and-a-half to pick out a card. That, or just send a quick note via Facebook. If retired and windowed Great Aunt Mabel is buying a birthday card, however, she will spend extra time sprucing up before going out, then go to two or three specialty shops looking for just the right card, then take time composing just the right message, practicing writing it out, before finally committing it to the card. She will spend all that time because she can. That, or she’ll just send a quick note on Facebook (even Great Aunt Mabel has changed), but she will hover on Facebook for the rest of the day waiting for her grandniece to click the ‘Like’ button.
This principle was first conceived by a professor named C. Northcote Parkinson who, after he retired, wrote a series of excellent novels of Napoleonic Era naval fiction every bit as good as C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series and way better than Patrick O’Brian’s Aubry-Maturin series. When I reimagined my life to center it around creating and exhibiting art, I established a routine with plenty of time to putter around the house, saunter through family tasks, dote over my art, read, take naps, take care of the dogs, cook dinner, and watch movies. A few years into this and many days I find myself rushing from thing to thing to thing trying to accomplish everything needs doing. By evening time I’m frantic and worn thin. What happened to my careful structure? It has increased in scope to fill the time available. Or rather, it has increased the rate by which it consumed its primary fuel, time, until its consumption reached capacity. Perhaps I am just waiting to feel the ‘Like’ button. * * * The work featured here is the antitheses of the Rule Of Thirds discussed in my July 30 post (there’s actually room to argue that it exactly follows the Rule Of Thirds, although that’s a subject for another time). Rather than a specific focal point located at one of the slightly off-center crosslines, the canvas is filled with a mash of subjects, a short focal plane feathering sharpness and changing tints across both the horizontal and vertical. Its composition is meant to challenge – it’s meant to move the eye rather than draw it to a single point. It’s a technique I’ve used before in work that has sold, so I know there’s something to it. However, those purchased works were done in color, and were more abstract in nature. Other than some tinting, this is a simple black and white in which the artistic effect was created merely through the user of a short focal plane. I’ve said before I believe black and white photography is its own form of abstract because it represents the world in a way not seen by the human eye. Does this work, which throws out the Rule Of Thirds and banishes color, go too far? * * * NOTE: This post is part of a series examining the application of digital techniques to film photography in creating photo art, done in tribute to the closing of the last regional retail photography stores. |
Curtis HendricksAll my life I have had to learn to do things differently. To see the world differently. Archives
July 2019
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