how does this make you feel?

well, it’s been a while. the suck is strong in this one. i’ve been busy and a bit burned out, so the blog has taken a back seat. but it’s time to get her going again, so here we go.

i mentioned i’ve been a bit burned out, and truthfully i’ve been a bit mentally fried from the election in the US and its fallout. i used to escape to nature in order to recharge and escape the mental crazy, but even the few trips into the mountains that i’d taken had resulted only in my viewing of the fires of this past summer - resulting in further mental degradation. and so i got away from photography altogether for a bit, and made a return to making of music. i have numerous musical projects halfway done or at least with a bit of a musical idea, so i escaped into a musical idea - one that was happy, a spirit lifter. after a few years of rarely touching anything musical other than the piano on occasion, i found a much more deft touch on mixing down a song and the use of effects. in the past as i’ve made music, (quite immature in that regard might i add) i would do my best to add as many “cool” sounds as possible - even at the expense of busying the song or at the expense of the feeling the song provided. i found myself this time using much more restraint, and i credit this to photography and my growth in that art form.

scorched earth

burned ground at the edge of the fire area of the east troublesome fire - the second largest in colorado history

i have a wonderfully horrible habit of starting a book, reading a few chapters and forgetting the book exists. sometimes i remember the book exists for another chapter or two only to again be hit with my anti-elephant-ness. other times, i have the horrible habit of reading through some lessons all the way through, perhaps outlining what i feel are key points - never to be read again. my last exploration into Guy Tal’s The Landscape Photographer’s Guide to Photoshop ended with him stating that before beginning an edit of an image to recall as best we can the feelings we felt when photographing the scene. if that’s not possible, we should instead concentrate on what the image makes us feel now, as we look at it on the computer. as we edit, take steps in the edit to further enhance those feelings. as was the case in music, oftentimes i would attempt to make the image look as “cool as possible” in my earlier days. i haven’t read any more of that book for one reason: i realized the importance of his statement, and i knew if i progressed in the book i would forget this point. so i made it a point to stop there and practice it with each image as i process them.

moustache

there’s one facebook group i visit with regularity - it’s a private photography group created by a photography book writer and class developer. i’ve taken some of his classes, gotten and received some great advice there. someone recently asked in that group, “is my image too X” where X can really be anything. i asked him if the fact it was so X helped evoke the feelings he was trying to evoke, but he wasn’t sure what feelings he was trying to evoke. so i told him to look up an emotions list on google and see if he felt any of those things when looking at his image, and if so did the X in his image help him or detract from his feelings of those emotions. if you’re struggling with expressing yourself in your photography - or your music, or any other art form, look at the emotions you’d like to evoke from the person experiencing your art and as you progress with your piece, ensure those emotions are being enhanced. but having a starting point or vision will help immensely.

i used to adjust a slider in lightroom or photoshop and ask myself, “does this make the image look better?” i may go back and forth with undo and redo, and finally i’d conclude one way or the other. but better is very subjective, and i’ve gotten away from that. i now ask myself, “how does this change make me feel? does it make me feel more happy or less happy? (if happy is one of the emotions i’m trying to express) if more happy, the modification was a success. if it made me feel less happy, i need to undo and go a different route.

if you’re looking to be more expressive in your art, then “cool” is not the route to take. to be successful in this regard, it helps to have a starting point or vision of what you want the viewer (or listener, etc) to feel. then as your art comes to fruition, make sure that the modifications you make are more fully causing that emotion to be felt by you.

devastating sunrise

first light hits the peaks behind a number of trees burned this fall in rocky mountain national park

the two takes on visualization

visualization is a concept highly regarded in the photographic world and suggested by Ansel Adams and Minor White among others. but that concept is often misunderstood. just recently, i heard an interview with a photographer whose work i admire. in talking about visualization, he mentioned that he doesn’t go out on a photography trip or walk envisioning a certain image in his mind that he’d like to make.

but that’s not the visualization or pre-visualization, as some like to call it, that Ansel Adams and Minor White were talking about. Adams’ grandson tells the story of how Adams came up with the concept of visualization. he’d hiked up to a viewpoint of half dome with his wife, and as was the case at the time, had a limited amount of dry plates in which to expose. he took one image of half dome, but decided he wanted to try using a red filter with his last dry plate. he wanted the final print to be a higher contrast scene than what he was physically seeing, and he wanted a more moody, dark sky surrounding the huge slab of granite. once he returned home and developed his plates, he was thrilled to see that his second shot - the one with the red filter, was exactly as he had envisioned the image to look in his mind as he was making the photograph. the key point here: visualization as prescribed by Adams is envisioning the final print (or the post-processed image in the current world of digital photography) prior to snapping the shutter of the camera - not going out with a pre-conceived image in your head of the photo you want to take.

the never ending forest

some might argue this other form of visualization - going out with a specific image in mind is the same thing, however there is a distinction between the two forms. going to a location with a certain image in mind, with lighting a certain way, with a specific composition in mind or certain weather conditions is one form of visualization. however, the form of visualization Adams refers to - envisioning the final, post processed or printed image in your head before snapping the shutter is the other. in this scenario, you’ve already found an image and scene that intrigues you - perhaps something you had no idea about prior to finding it. i’ve performed both forms of visualization described here, and can tell you that going out with a predetermined image is actually a detriment to me. i become so locked into getting the image i’ve sought, that i don’t look for anything else - missing a number of possible images on the way. i’ve been so frustrated by not getting the image i set out to make, that it put me into a mental state where my photography suffered. so for me, and i can only speak for me, but this form of visualization is a hindrance to getting the most interesting images. there is, in fact, a big difference between getting out of the car about to embark on a journey for a specific type of image, and standing behind the camera setup to photograph a scene envisioning what you want this scene to look like in the final version.

there’s a reason that Adams’ version of visualization is important, and it is largely because it speaks to artistic intent in photography. it speaks to the individual expression in the final image, as well as the ability to ensure the image captured maximizes that expression. now, some may argue that times have changed - the digital world allows us to have far more flexibility in our post-processing, artistic vision on our photographs in comparison to the almost handicapped darkroom-based world in which Ansel Adams existed. and you wouldn’t be wrong in making that argument. the world is our proverbial artistic oyster as we can completely remove and add things to our photographs at will. we can modify the colors as we wish. there is so much that we can do today that couldn’t be done. (or done nearly as easily as they can be today) but what if we miss something compositionally in the field? that’s the one thing you cannot change in post processing. this concept of thinking through the image prior to pressing the shutter button, of knowing exactly how we want it to be in its final version - this is a concept that can guarantee we get the exact picture we want to artistically express. as “easy” as it is to “fix” things on our computers in this day and age, so much of what is being done today does not have the mental “staying power” of the great artists of that time. why is that?

impending winter