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Acknowledging Eliot Porter
Continue ReadingIt is safe to say I would not have made this picture without my study and assimilation of Eliot Porter’s images. I did not have any particular composition in mind from his body of work. It is true his most important work appears in color, and my photo above is monochrome; however, the motif here […]
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Some Beginner’s Luck
Continue ReadingThis is my first photograph of the natural world in the digital era. Despite technical flaws, I think it still works. I believe I had in mind an image by Ansel Adams entitled “Burnt Stump and New Grass,” so there is a copycat element here. Any journey worth taking begins with baby steps, often leaning […]
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The Scarecrow As Esoteric Sculpture
Continue ReadingImagine you are out for a walk in the park and you encounter this fellow. It could be the death mask of an ice-age human, with the huge nostrils for warming and moisturizing dry frigid air, but the goatee is not well-synchronized with the Middle Paleolithic. Clearly it has been borrowed from the fake beards […]
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The Pleasures of Light and Dark
Continue ReadingChiaroscuro in my words means modeling objects and human figures (traditionally done by painters) using definite contrasts between darkness and light, as in our two photographs on this page. Often you will see deep shadows and luminous whites in the same composition, abruptly juxtaposed. Why does an image made with this technique give us pleasure? Michelangelo […]
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Irrepressible Clichés
Continue ReadingIt is tough to resist the platitude, the tug of a superficially important image. When you see tasty low-hanging fruit, you just grab for it by conditioned reflex. The lone figure on the shore, the lonely tree in a vast undulating meadow; the single red umbrella among an ocean of black ones — it goes […]
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Taking Liberties, Example #1
Continue ReadingModern editors of photographs have well-stocked tool boxes, and stand at the leading edge of an intricate history during which every imaginable style, viewpoint, composition and technique have been tried in photography. It’s all legitimate; each special wrench or brush delicately used can be helpful on occasion. A simple reversal (as above) can bring out […]
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Embellishments On A Tired Idea
Continue ReadingIf you have spent time studying photographs — especially in monochrome — either among present day examples or in compositions from our past extending back now almost 200 years, you will have noticed recurring themes. These become stale and impotent with repetition and enter the realm of hackneyed ideas. They exist in their millions almost […]
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On the Importance of Minerals
Continue Reading“The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks!” Henri Cartier-Bresson, Deceased French Photographer In our headline Mr. Cartier-Bresson scorns the work of American photographers Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. His comment is sarcastic but contains a relevant question: could there be any meaning in photographing the natural […]
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Kindred Spirits
Continue ReadingThe three people in my photograph are strangers to me. They appear to be a happy family, average folks paused at a rest area between Flagstaff and Phoenix, Arizona while a winter storm passes. When weather erupts from this spot landscape views can become fantastic and approach sublime proportions — as on this afternoon. The […]
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