 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!
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 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.  The issue today is change. Not that it’s happening, but that we, as a society, aren’t handling it. It’s how we’ve gotten into the situation we’re in. The pace of social, technological, economic, and political change (or lack thereof) has superseded our ability to adjust. People find themselves longing for some bygone day as an ideal which, of course, never actually existed. Feet planted in the past have lost the ability to ambulate.
Any teacher will say that the secret is not knowing, not memorization, it’s knowing how to learn. It’s a skill as important as the ability to read. One needs the skill of learning. Please allow me to suggest that the time has come to facilitate the skill of knowing how to change. After all, it is no longer the case that the things one learned in high school or college is an unmovable bedrock, and if I may paraphrase Paul Simon, much of what any of us learned in high school is crap. It’s no longer possible to be the same person at 35 as one was at 25, or someone the 35-year-old would recognize at 60. It’s as true for artists as anybody; the only way to keep dragging new art from the subconscious is to keep growing. I’ve recently begun following a young novelist you should know named V.E. Schwab, whom I came across through N.K. Jemisin, whom you should REALLY know. (Now, I do know a couple folks very critical of emerging writers, always pushing 19th and 20th century masters as the be-all-end-all; it’s a fixation guilty of the above, and as a Vonnegut man it pains me to say that. The old masters are what was; Jemisin and Schwab illustrate NOW). (BTW, a lot of new stuff IS crap, but that’s neither here nor there). Schwab’s genre (fantasy) is not necessarily my cup of tea, but the writing is so superb I find myself drawn in. Schwab lamented on Twitter today that she’s learned her newest novel in the works must be completely re-outlined. She actually suggested quitting while she’s ahead. It’s just a youthful bit of handwringing (she’s only 31) that we’ve all regressed to at times. Burnout is a common artisan’s condition to which one must constantly re-condition. Now at what I would term my advanced age I’m confident in offering a warm fuzzy, saying “V.E., hey, it’s only the tip of the iceberg, girl!” Ambulate, but with empathy. * * * Two points of note in today’s work. First is the filtering which brought a sense of movement to the leaves while at the same time adding hard lines to the stationary objects. I accomplished this through a combination of edging and texturing. Second is the addition of color to the black and white film-derived image – some might call it tinting more than coloring. I discussed this technique in my August 8 post. I had a choice between increasing the saturation to blow out the yellows or decreasing such to create a subtile effect in which the composition superseded the abstraction and chose the latter. I might change my mind, well, later. * * * 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.  Let’s get something straight I think I might have misrepresented: The title of the work displayed above, headlined above the picture, and any prose, musings, ventilations, rationalizations, or disparate fantasies that follow below – what you’re reading now – yeah, they have nothing to do with each other. Even when I’m discussing the displayed photo art itself, which I guess I do about half the time, the title still has nothing to do with it. The title is a product of the work, what I’ve tried to reveal or the emotion lurking within. The prose may discuss the technique I used or may go off onto something on my mind; some insight I may think I know. The prose is … well, it’s mainly because I can’t keep my mouth shut.
* * * Creating photo art from film photography, because of the static nature of film, is much more dependent on the nature of the photograph itself; much more so than a digital image. There are fewer data points to which the artist can grab onto using the computer. I like to describe the creation of photo art as digging into the pixels to reveal hidden aspects of the photographic capture. But an image based on film cannot be dug so deeply into; its structure is set. It’s like trying to dig into rock instead of soil. Which isn’t necessarily bad; there are some gorgeous rocks. Use of a wide aperture when capturing the photograph, which creates a narrow focal plane, is one technique that lends itself to the artistic process later. It creates very sharp edges, offset by a softer background. This can become particularly pronounced in black and white photography as there are no distracting colors. The artist can utilize a number of techniques to extenuate the edging. Every rock, as it happens, has crevasses. * * * NOTE: This is the third post 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.  If I were to boil down the art of cooking to a single rule, with apologies to the exquisite chefs I know, it would be: Control the temperature. If I were to boil down the artistic process to a single rule, whatever genre of art one may be discussing, it would be: Control the light.
Digital photography has been a boon in that regard because there are so many ‘data points’ within a digital image through which a computer can control that light. Film is very static; very much more difficult to control. Darkroom wizards are very good at manipulating an image by changing the manner in which light hits emulsion-coated surfaces. The computer provides, however, greater precision and detail in such manipulation. But pull a film-derived image into a computer, as is the case here, and many of the tools available go away. I’ve made the point previously that superior black and white (I still affectionately prefer to call such images ‘noir’) images start as color photographic captures to which a black and white filter is applied. Such application turns every color into shades of grey; but the artist can still use the computer to adjust colors originally present. Adjust the colors and one adjusts the shades of grey, thereby manipulating the final image. That was the technique I used in the recently completed Tornado series to create work in the near-infrared. With black and white film, however, there are no original colors. There is nothing for the artist to adjust. Simply working with curves may or may not bring the desired contrast or highlights into the final work. There are, however, at least four different ways to add color to the image, all of which can be layered on top of one another. That will seem sloppy – image quality seems to take a nosedive. But apply a black and white filter NOW and those added colors become useful as controllable shades of grey that will increase the drama and tension present in an image. The quality of the noir improved by adding color, then taking it away. - - - NOTE: This is the third post in a series examining the application of digital techniques to film photography in creating photo art.  When my Dad was about 25 or 26 he went out and bought himself an Agfa fixed lens 35mm rangefinder camera with flash attachment and leather case at the Montgomery Ward department store in Bloomington, Illinois. At least I’m pretty sure it was Bloomington – at any rate, it was his second most complex technological tool.
His first most technological tool was me. I was his television remote control. Television at the time – and we’re going back to 1960 which reveals more about my age than I probably should reveal – was totally analog. Broadcasts were received through antennas via two separate bands. The one everyone is familiar with was VHF – that’s where one moved the big dial in distinctive clicks from channels 2 through 13 – click – click – click; little special tuning necessary. We didn’t get any of those channels. Our television came from three channels out of Peoria, Illinois on the UHF band. That band did not progress by distinctive clicks. Channels had to be carefully and precisely TUNED IN. I had to very delicately adjust the dial to find channels 19 (ABC), 31 (CBS) and 43 (NBC), which later strategically moved to channel 25 to place it between the other two. Sometimes the wind would move the antenna every so slightly, and the dial would have to be incrementally adjusted to find the signal. Once tuned in, every channel had different color hues, brightness and contrast, so I’d have to drop the little utility door and adjust those things, my Dad coaching me to make a channel more red or yellow or this or that, all the time I’m learning how to make the picture clear and natural. Dad would say, “Curt, go turn it to 31”, and up I would jump from the couch to perform as instructed. I seem to recall that at some point he dropped the first name and it was just “go turn it to 31”, and he would move between westerns and cop shows, everyone of which had exactly the same plot (which he would later deny) which was frustrating because I wanted to watch The Flintstones and like programming more interesting to a five-year-old. I digress. So my Dad had this comparatively complex camera which required that he measure the exposure and adjust the f-stop and the shutter speed and manually focus. There was a point in which he decided all that was not so much fun. I honestly don’t have a memory of him with the camera in his hands. The first time I remember seeing it was when I was 15 or 16 years old and he was passing it to me as I had become interested in photography. By then I had had a dozen years’ experience learning to balance the intricate controls of old-time color televisions. So for me, all those f-stop and shutter speed adjustments, using my eyes to gage the light and change accordingly as I moved around a subject was a piece of cake. So it began. Dad’s old Agfa, the later version of the Super Silette, still works perfectly. The flash unit has disappeared, and the leather cover has begun to crack, but the camera itself is fine. I’d gone decades without picking up any sort of a film camera, so it’s admittedly taken a number of rolls but I’m finally comfortable with my ability to set the right exposures and depth of field to capture just I want. What to do with the image once I get it onto the computer is a work in process, and of course, as my most recent post pointed out, how to actually get the film processed is another issue entirely. Regardless, as someone once said about dinosaurs, life finds a way.  My local options for processing black and white film, so far as I know them, are gone.
It can still be done, of course. Walk a roll of black and white film into Walgreens or Wal-Mart or Target and there’s a square right on the envelope identifying the contents as black and white film. It takes two weeks to process, and negatives will not be returned. Again – they keep the negatives. No. Not acceptable. Options here in this community were already gone, so I started taking them to the Columbia branch of a St. Louis area photo store. It closed a year ago. Next closest branch was an hour+ further down the road in Chesterfield. That was OK – gave me an excuse to take out the family. It closed six months ago. They were down to their ‘superstore’ over on Olive Blvd. Dropped a couple rolls off a couple weeks ago – they very kindly had it processed and returned to me via the U.S Postal Service, negatives and all. Two more days go by and the superstore closed too, a victim of the declining retail sector. So far as I can tell, the entirety of Mid-Missouri and metro St. Louis are without a photography store; wanna buy something go on-line. Look, I don’t shoot much at all in film; maybe a half dozen rolls annually, and likely less. It’s a nostalgic act – film-based images give me fewer options as a photo artist. But it’s a nostalgic act I happen to enjoy. Eventually I’ll get around to digging up a new provider – there’s GOT to be someplace that will handle this stuff within reasonable driving distance, and if there’s not one that satisfies me, anything can be had on-line. But for now, and for posts over the next couple weeks. I’m going to fixate on the place I started: black and white photography taken with my Dad’s 1960 Agfa fixed-lens rangefinder camera. A little mini festival of a fading technology.  A thought occurred last week while carrying work to an exhibition opening shortly; a thought pertaining to the slightly askew position photo artists occupy between photography and brush-arts. As a photo artist, I have to nail the roles of both the photographer and the artist. Blow either and the work bombs. Playing the artist on the computer, I might can salvage a photograph with poor exposure or sloppy composition, but I doubt it will be great. Same thing in reverse; take the photograph in the wrong artistic direction and it just looks like an unfocused blob. I have to be just as competent with the camera as any professional, and just as good with artsy manipulation as any artiste. The extent to which that applies is not something I’d much previously dwelled on.
What the photo artist has which neither of the other two do is a spectrum running between them. Professional photographers use the computer to perfect the exposure, color, lighting, and to remove any blemishes. An artiste starts with a blank canvas and fills in, to the best of their ability, whatever they imagine. Photo artists get to do both. I typically work to perfect the photograph, and then, depending what I see beyond that, bend the pixels to my imagination. Today’s work bends those pixels very little – that’s partially due to the flower itself (a Monarda? Holler if otherwise) which is unusual enough that it already seems abstract. (NOTE: That’s something I’ve discovered in my work – the more unusual the subject of the photograph, the less that photograph lends itself to the artistic process. The two offset each other). My most recent work of July 30 clearly lent itself to greater artistic license. So too, and to a more extreme extent, did my works of July 15 and 17, two recent works I’m quite happy with. In a perfect world, the photo artist might grab a photographic capture with a particular artistic application in mind. And, yeah, I do that – nine times out of ten I’m wrong. Maybe even 99 times out of 100 it doesn’t go the way I’d thought it would, so I don’t do it. When I pick up the camera, I’m thinking like a photographer. And when I sit down at the computer, I’m thinking like an artist. I cultivate the duality. |
Curtis HendricksAll my life I have had to learn to do things differently. To see the world differently. Archives
January 2021
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