A Time to Look Back & Ahead

It was 53º in the North Country today. Our January thaw arrived before January did. The beaver pond that I walk past for my daily exercise has standing water and slush over the ice and the river is losing much of its ice. Walking is good for thinking.

I’ve been reading “Occam’s Razor” by Bill Jay. Bill has long been my favorite commentator on the state of photography and our son bought me a copy of his out-of-print book for Christmas, a series of essays. It is classic Bill Jay. He cuts to the chase and tells it like he sees it. The essay I read this morning was “Professors and Professionals” in which he describes the divide between academic art photographers, “a lazy dilettante, playing with inconsequential, irrelevant and largely superficial ideas...” and commercial photographers, “who, because of lack of intelligence, moral scruples or willful ignorance of the medium’s history and aesthetic issues, have compromised with commerce...”. His descriptions go on and explain the problems I have experienced trying to cross that divide.

I started photography at age 13, was largely self taught until high school when I enrolled in NYI’s correspondence course (still available today) followed by the ill-fated Famous Photographers course. After joining the Army I both attended and later taught in the Signal Center & School of still photography at Ft. Monmouth, NJ. Of course all that was based on commercial photography but I had an artistic bent and (perhaps naively) saw no reason that I could not apply my commercial photography skills to ‘personal work’ that could be considered to be art. After all Ansel Adams was doing that.

In art school after getting out of the Army I had my first encounter with the divide that Bill Jay described in his essay. Because I had changed my major I lost some credits and became aware that I needed to make up at least 6 semester hours in order to graduate as planned. The dean of students suggested that I get one of the professors to agree to grant me some credit based on my prior life experience and I thought that my photography background would be just the ticket so I approached the photography professor (there was only one) to ask what I would need to present for him to consider it. I hadn’t taken any photo courses from this fellow since I had already been through three schools and taught in one. He took one look at my work and informed me that I didn’t know as much about photography as his first semester students. Puzzled I asked what I was doing wrong and he said “Your work isn’t esoteric enough”.

Needless to say, since I wasn’t trying to be esoteric, I didn’t get the necessary credits to graduate from him. I did get them but that is another story. As a commercially trained photographer I was trying to clearly communicate with my photographs, not hide my meaning. Some time later I saw some of his photos in a faculty exhibit, blurred images of snowplows plowing snow in a blizzard printed in shades of grey, roughly zones 3-6, no blacks and no whites (Ansel would not have approved). They were in a gallery and were considered “ART” but had one of our students in the Army school where I taught turned in images with technical quality like that for their assignments we’d have flunked him out and sent him to infantry school instead. Therein lies the divide. Neither of us was seeing photography in the other’s terms.

In this weblog I have dealt the question “is it art?” several times, most recently in October, and I still have trouble with that divide. Bill Jay said that for his part he didn’t think that photography was art. He apparently didn’t think it was lesser or lower than art but simply a different animal. The real problem however isn’t how we define art, rather it is the gap that the two mindsets create. I finished my degree in Fine Art (ceramics, not photography) and, as this blog attests, I have continued photography. All this is the long way of saying that my New Year’s resolution is to continue to try to wrestle with the gap. That and lots of making photographs and I wish you all a happy and productive 2011.

Going Round Again

A different twist on the round images I did last year. Those were just cropped round, these are distorted in Photoshop to appear spherical. I got the idea from an email sent to me by Adorama which attributed the idea to Carol Leigh. I couldn't find it on her site but she has a lot of stuff there. I probably just didn't look hard enough because Adorama had all the instructions in their email.

The photo is of a dandelion seedhead that I photographed at Chaumont Barrens in 2009. It was cropped square and set to 8 bit mode (the filter doesn't work with 16 bit images). The trick is to distort the image twice with a 180º rotate in the middle. First you  use the distort>polar coordinates>polar to rectangular filter. Rotate the image 180º and apply the distort>polar coordinates>rectangular to polar filter.

I have mixed feelings about this sort of modification because I have so little control over it. It feels like I should have more of "a hand" in the process than to simply set an automated "accident" in motion. OTOH when I was firing Raku pottery there was always an element of accident and I didn't have any qualms about accepting the results of that process. I guess I have a prejudice against computer accidents vs kiln accidents. I need to work on that. In the end, just as with Raku, sometimes you get something nice and sometimes you just want to break/toss what comes out the other end. The advantage with pixels is that there are no broken shards left over to give evidence to your failures.

You do have a bit of control in your choice of what images are appropriate to use for this treatment and I've played a bit with applying other filters before or midway through the spherizing process described above. Of the ones I've tried "Pinch" seems to help sometimes.

Addendum: I've been playing with this process to see what works best. The one below is definitely one of the best so far.

An Oldie but a Goodie

I made this photo back in 2005 and posted it to a website that I had at the time. A woman in Maryland promptly bought a large print of it. It comes up again because another person just commissioned a print after seeing it on a note card at the local gallery where I have some work.  It is an nice image and has special memories for me as it was made during a pleasant walk in a snowstorm. The tree was one of my 'milestones' as it was exactly one mile from my house. Sadly they cut it down the following spring. I can't walk by this spot without thinking of this photo and that snowy walk in 2005. Be sure to click on the image for the larger view. The blowing snow shows up better in the large view and feel free to use it on your desktop but please do not "share" it by sending copies to others or posting it elsewhere without permission from me. If you want others to see it, send them the URL to this page.

Shameless self-promotion: Although I'd be hard put get it to you in time for the holidays I remind my readers that I sell prints. They make a nice treat for yourself any time. An 6X9" print matted to 11x14" is $35, an 8x12" print matted to 12x16" is $60 and a 12x18" matted to 18x24" is $100. Sales tax (if you live in NY) and shipping is extra.

Holiday Greeting to All Our Friends

Click on image to see a large version

Amaryllis Closeup

The fourth bloom has opened (see yesterday's post) and there is a second stalk with two more buds. This closeup of one of the blooms was made this afternoon .

Blooms in Winter

Diane bought an Amaryllis for her windowsill at work and it bloomed this week, three blossoms and a fourth bud. We're having a very wintry patch of weather, first snow and now sub-zero cold. A bit of color on the windowsill is a pleasant reminder that this weather is temporary.

Brisk Walk

I took a brisk walk late this afternoon, brisk in both senses, I walked briskly and it was only 25º F with a significant breeze. When I reached the  beaver pond I found it mostly frozen over and the geese finally gone. There had still been a couple dozen or more there as recently as two days ago. Much of the thin ice cover had little dots of snow on the surface giving it a speckled appearance. I shot several photos of details along the shore and patterns on the ice. Arriving back home after an hour plus of walking I showed the photos to Diane. She declared this one 'blog worthy' and so it is.

Photo made with a Canon G10 on aperture priority, ISO 400, 1/30th sec @ f/4.5.

Tracks

We were greeted with a dusting of snow on the ground when we woke this morning. When I went out to fetch the morning paper there were squirrel and bird tracks under the bird feeders and on the front walk. We have a group of Mourning Doves that  hang around our yard. They are ground feeders and they wander about in erratic patterns as if they are unsure where they want to go. This one walked under the front gate and wandered about in several circles before walking back under the gate into the yard. Some days I feel that bird, wandering about aimlessly.

The photo was taken with my Canon G10 and has been modified in Photoshop to emphasize the tracks and their pattern.

New Blog Recommendation

Great news. Jay Maisel has started a blog. There's link to it off his website. Woo Hoo! For those who don't know he's an awesome photographer. He has a great eye and a great attitude. He is one of the few photographers I'd like to take a workshop with. Check him out and while you're there look at his "recent work" link too.

A Book of Adirondack Photos By Yours Truly

I created a small (7"x7") book of B&W Adirondack scenes using Blurb. It has now been made public meaning you can preview the first 15 pages of it and purchase it directly from Blurb.

Adirondack Scenes in Black & White by Jim Bullard | Make Your Own Book

On My Daily Walk

I've been walking every day lately and taking photos of the cloud patterns that I see. Yesterday there were some really interesting patterns and I intended to post this last night but my computer picked up a Trojan (Backdoor: Cycbot2) while surfing some education site. It took me two hours to get it off my computer which I finally did by doing a system restore. Fortunately I had just installed Lightroom 3 a day or two earlier followed by an update that Lightroom found when I first opened it. The computer set a new restore point before each install so all that I lost was the update to LR 3.2. I reinstalled that and after verifying that everything worked (and the Trojan was gone). I manually set another restore point. Note to those who write and release viruses, Trojans, etc. onto the Internet, GET A LIFE!

Both yesterday and today I was walking in late afternoon/early evening and the clouds have been quite varied. They also change appearance fairly quickly between the wind and changing light. I liked this composition best of those from yesterday.

Artist's Open Studio Tour

The local arts council sponsors an open studio event every year and I took part this weekend. My "studio", the place I do my photography, is outdoors and my digital darkroom, where I massage my images to what I visualized using Lightroom and Photoshop is a very small room in the back of my house. The former is no place to display photos and the latter is too small to accommodate more than one other person so I borrowed space from the arts council in Old Snell Hall in Potsdam.

The space is available so I've decided to rent it as a place to do my matting and framing. It will also serve as a gallery for my work. No formal hours at this point, just if you happen to catch me there or make an appointment. Email is the best bet for reaching me to make an appointment, jim.bullard at gmail.com. (Use the symbol in place of the word "at" and of course, no spaces). Put "Studio Visit" in the subject line so that it doesn't go to my spam file. I will be doing future Open Studio events too.

The "Art" Question Again

Fellow photo blogger Guy Tal posted a defense of photography as art to his blog yesterday. Guy is a first rate photographer and, in my opinion, an artist. For what it's worth I call myself an Artist/Craftsman/Photographer on my business cards because I think that what I do encompasses all of those, sometimes all at the same time. Like everyone who takes photos some of my images are just photos, images made to record an event, take note of something I want to remember visually. If I mean to share it with others I will apply my skills to make it really good, to 'craft' it well and then it is both craft and photograph. Others, like the one above are the result of a particular visualization of the subject which involve a specific intent in the camera and/or in what we have come to call "post production", the digital version of the darkroom.

The image above was made with a 'simplification' treatment in mind. It was shot on one of the walks I do for exercise. I wanted to emphasize the pattern of the fence and the vines but I knew that in the straight photo that would largely be lost amidst the detail of every blade of grass in focus. It was shot with a Canon G10, easy to carry on such outings but like all pocket sized digital cameras it has great depth of field even at fairly wide apertures. So I used a polygonal simplification filter to reduce the detail to the level I wanted. I did also apply some blurring to the grass beyond the fence prior to the simplifying filter.

I don't feel that applying such obvious filtration to an image is necessary to make it "Art". I consider the photo I posted on Tuesday to be art as well. Despite its straightforward appearance I did take care in composing it to include precisely the elements I wanted to communicate and I did apply post production work to it to emphasize the details I wanted the viewer to see. But the details of what I did aren't what makes it art. They are just the tools of art. What makes art is using those tools in the same way that the poet uses just the right words arranged in just the right way.

Check out Guy's blog and look at his photos while you are there <http://guytal.com/wordpress/2010/10/no-lesser-art/>

First Snow

Last Saturday we drove to Endicott to visit our daughter. From Canton to around Dekalb Jct. it had snowed during the night, just a light dusting, but it reflected the early light of dawn making the world brighter than it otherwise would have been at that hour.

This isn't my usual type of landscape. I'm often annoyed by power and phone lines that obstruct an otherwise beautiful scene. The large tower here is the 765KV line that cuts across our area and was the subject of considerable protest when it was built to carry power downstate. There are at least two other sets of lines in the photo for regional and local delivery of power. While the big tower does have an industrial/engineering sort of beauty about it I can't help thinking how serene this view would be without all the poles and wires.

Recently I've had hope for such a future. The Solar Highways project could eliminate all those wires because in addition to generating power it would become the power grid. It is projected that converting our road system to solar generation could replace not only our current electric generation (no more dammed rivers), it could also replace oil, gas and coal. If we replaced all the asphalt with solar panels it would generate more than twice the total energy we now use. Another reason I need to live to be 100, to see that day.