What I am realizing is that my series Open During Construction (Zhao Chang Ying Ye) is getting a little more complex than some of my earlier work as it relates to scope. Most of my earlier projects were united under a theme and althought they did change over time, but remained realitivly one dimensional.
I thought that this made a better blog title than quit being lazy! I have found that as I work a series of photographs, I have been doing some shortcut evaluations and not really taking the images to where I can fully evaluate them. Such that I was going from camera, to RAW editor, to Photoshop and then to a blogable JPEG. Missing were such steps as Print the Image.
I had read about how digital photographers were getting to the point of not printing there images, prehaps not even owning a printer. Huh? Not me! Darn, now I gotta eat crow, because that is exactly what I have found myself doing recently. Monitor to the web and no hard copy in between.
Okay, so sometimes when titling an image, I get a little carried away and think that I have a visual pun. Part of this is pretty obvious, eh?
So at the moment, I am not sure what the title of this will be, but I have in this image in consideration for my series Open During Construction. These folks were very absorbed in the task of getting this hoist and what appeared to be an engine transferred to the adjacent truck.
As a child, did you ever have an art farm? The little plastic box that you put sand and some ants in and then watched them make their borrow home. We bought our first one and then decided we had enough ants around the area, we could make our own. They were very fascinating to watch. Each ant seemed to know and understand its task and they just seemed to go about doing what they needed to do without any apparent communication. At least none that we could figure out. But just fun to watch.
Untitled, 2004 Photography copyright of the artist, Gregory Crewdson
With Gregory Crewdson’s recent cover photograph in the Spring 2008 issue of Aperture magazine, there seems to be a buzz about Crewdson’s art process. Such as being disappointed that he may not be the one who actually hits the exposure button.
Duh. It’s not who actually makes the exposure, but who decides whats in front of the camera lens or in the photograph.
Petit’s Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, NJ, 1974
White Castle, Route #1, Rahway, NJ, 1973
All photograhs, copyright of the artist, George Tice
Sitting next my book by David Plowden, is the book, Photographs 1953 – 1973 by another urban landscape photographer, George Tice, who I know does have an influence on my urban landscape photography. This retrospective book has a nice sampling of Tice’s work over the previous twenty years, with urban and rural landscape images from Paterson, Amish Country and New Jersey.
Vanishing Point, photograph copyright of the artist, David Plowden
Last October 2007, David Plowden published his retrospective urban/rural landscape photography book, David Plowden: Vanishing Point. I have not seen the images within the book, but checking his web site, I think it may be like visiting old friends.
I believe that Plowden may be one of those early photographic-phylisophical influences for me. In fact, I just pulled my copy of his book Commonplace out of my stacks and realized that I have looked at the images often, but have not read the introduction in some time. Commonplacewas published in 1974 and I probably purchased my copy in 1974 or maybe 1975. At the time, this was Plowden’s eighth book of photographs of the American urban/rural landscape.
I really, really enjoy the immediacy and feedback that is possible with digital image capture. It has allowed me to be more playful, have some fun, be inventive, and to take big risk much more than what I had experienced with my film days. With film, the feedback loop was too long. I now understand why I had so much fun with the Polaroid film cameras and processes.
Thus, I have been experimenting at the speed of digital. (more…)
I thought that I had picked out a suitable subject and time frame for my SoFoBoMo project, but then fate has stuck its head in. I recently completed a medium term project in Riverside County and so I was thinking about where I wanted to work on my SoFoBoMo project. And I had narrowed it down to the strand of Newport Beach during the month of May.
While, now it appears that I will be in and out of Tempe, Arizona, which is adjacent to Phoenix, for the next three or possibly more months. Oh, yeah, it will be getting hot there soon. So a change in projects and a change in landscapes, from the Pacific Ocean to the desert, with catus and sand. Lots of sand. A big shift!
Just to say it again, I am a photographer. Oh right, I am a lot of things; husband, friend, dad, Papa, etc. But as to what I do to express myself, I have settled on being a photographer. For about 15 years, I was a painter. Before that I was a photographer. So you are probably wondering what this is all about?
My insecurity, plain and simple.
