During the past year I have been very fortunate to have been invited to present my work to several camera clubs, expositions and workshops in the mid-Atlantic region. During my presentations I talk about using photography to recreate vision and emotion and I use my own images as examples. For each image I show the original photograph and then describe my thoughts, feelings and experiences that influenced the final image. I enjoy doing this and so I have decided to create a new series of blog posts called Story Behind The Image. I will post an image and then describe not only what I saw but also the emotional reaction that I had to the subject. An archive of these posts will be stored separately in the Story Behind The Image section of my blog.

Taking the book analogy one step further, the novels we enjoy are typically those that draw us into the imaginary world created by the author.  We develop emotional relationships to the characters, places and events because they remind us of people we know, fears we have, places we have visited, and our own personal experiences in life.  Photographic images must do the same, but without the words.  Our challenge is therefore to create images that not only represent what we saw but also depict our feelings and our imagination in a way that the viewer can relate to.

Because what we see stirs up our emotions, whenever something captures our attention we should pause for a moment and think about what it was that actually stopped us in our tracks.  Since photography is a visual art though there is a tendency to focus on the visual elements when creating the final image.  We are all taught techniques that help us recreate what we saw but it is extremely difficult to teach someone how to tap into their inner thoughts, feelings, experiences and imagination to recreate what they felt.  In my recent Recreating Vision and Emotion post I wrote about how visual elements tell us something of the subject, but emotional elements add depth and meaning to the subject.  Much like the characters in a book are given names to identify them as subjects, their personalities are also described to give us an insight into their life so that we may relate to them in some way.

In my last post (Family Portraits) I wrote about how a portrait of a person tells us as much about the photographer as it does the person being photographed and how, with this particular series of images, I wanted to capture the experiences of my own childhood by photographing my own children.  However, even when there are no people in the scene I am photographing I still try to capture something that would suggest the presence of man.  This is an important element in my images of abandoned places – I try to recreate my curiosity at what life must have been like by combining my imagination with artifacts left behind by people who may have lived or worked at the locations.  In short, it is my fascination with the lives of others that draws me to this subject matter and it is my imagination of what life must have been like that I try to bring through in the images I create. 

The following is an image that I took during one of my trips to the Lonaconing Silk Mill.  A set of old stamps were scattered amongst a set of records that had been tipped out of an archival box onto a table.  The records included meticulously maintained ledgers and I just thought that the stamp worked well with them as a background.  I can almost imagine the accountant sitting under a dimly lit lamp keeping record of the purchases and sales for the Klotz Throwing Company who owned the silk mill.

The day was a little overcast, which gave perfect lighting, especially for shooting under trees – to prevent “dappling”.  I managed to capture a few shots that Grandma would be pleased with, including the following:

 However, while the photographer was getting the girls set up to take more “pretty shots” I saw an opportunity to take some candid photographs in between the shots she was planning to take.  These were the moments when the girls were simply being themselves.  They were not being forced to smile and were not being posed.  They were simply lost in their own thoughts and imagination, which was amazing to see.  It reminded me of when I was a young child growing up in the countryside of North East England, when I would just wander for hours, exploring the fields and forests that surrounded our village.  As I have stated in several earlier post, I firmly believe that every image we create says as much about us as it does the subject, and in the case of portrait photography I believe that we project our own personality into that of the person we are photographing.  I had this and my own childhood memories in mind when I created these images.  Although these are not the kind of images that will end up on Grandma’s wall I actually prefer them to the “pretty shots” because they remind me of who my kids really are and also take me back to my own childhood.

The process of taking photographs has not changed significantly, I am still free to go into the field and take photographs with either my film camera or my digital SLR. Although the digital darkroom is liberating, I still have to wait until I am back in front of a computer to create my images.  Since one of my goals in photography is to recreate vision and imagination and since I have very limited time to sit in front of my computer once I am back at home I have been looking for ways to streamline my workflow and keep the time between capture and final image creation as short as possible.  This is one of the main reasons why I have embraced the iPhone photography revolution – I am not tied to my computer and can start work creating final images whenever I want and wherever I am.  Although the iPhone is amazingly liberating, my image making remains constrained whenever I decide to use my digital SLR.  However, that recently changed when I discovered the EyeFi memory card.  This little device is essentially a memory card with a built in WiFi hotspot.  When used in my digital SLR I can store my photographs on the memory card and although I can still work on them later with my computer I can also automatically transfer them to my iPad wirelessly and set to work creating images immediately using my favorite photo Apps. 

While out enjoying a beer the other night, I photographed my friend Lewis Katz with my Olympus EPN3 camera with the EyeFi card installed, transferred the file to my iPad and created this image before he had finished his drink.  This is very exciting.

One of my main goals in creating images is to reproduce what I saw and felt by distilling each down to its very basic form, leaving only the necessary information. I try to achieve this by keeping my entire workflow simple:

• When I compose my subject I aim for simplicity, isolating those parts that are important and eliminating those that do not contribute.
• During post processing, I often aim to create images with a very limited tonal range to add emphasis to the subject and to further reduce complexity. 

Keeping the workflow simple allows me to give way to imagination.

The fog hides

and the mind imagines.

Composing the emotion of the moment is the result of our subconscious at work.  It grabs the viewer’s attention and transports them to the moment.  It introduces our feelings of the scene to the final images we create.  By way of example, think about the following great images:

• Eddie Adams – Vietnam Police Chief
• Dorothea Lange – Migrant Mother 
• Ansel Adams – Clearing Winter Storm

While each image is technically superb, it is the emotion that grabs our attention and takes us to a place in our imagination where we are left to wonder and think. 

When we are learning our art we indulge ourselves in the technical.  We spend countless hours studying the work of other photographers, wondering what they did to create such remarkable images.  We rapidly fill our knowledge banks with instructions on how to perform certain techniques and learn all about the functions of our cameras.  This is what the magazines and photography books tell us we need to do – after all, instructing us on the technical is how they make their money.  Providing instruction on how to include emotions in our artwork is very personal.  We each react differently to a scene and bring to the scene very different emotions, some of which are stirred up through our life experiences.  Therefore, each of us requires a more personalized curriculum, which obviously cannot be achieved by a book designed for a wider audience.    

The answer lies in practice.  The more we practice our image making the more automatic the technical becomes.  We will eventually spend less time thinking about what camera settings will create a certain look and the act of composing an image just becomes a part of what we do.  While we may never cease in our pursuit of technical excellence we arrive at an important point each time we master a technique.  We have the option to move on and learn a new technique or we can take advantage of this newly mastered technique and add depth and meaning to the images we create by focusing more on our thoughts, feelings and experiences.  

I seek images that make me imagine.  Whenever an image grabs my attention, I wonder if it is the technique that caught my eye or is it an emotional reaction.  I recently heard an analogy that I think sums this up nicely.  If a photograph is grainy and you notice the grain then it is just a grainy image.

A recent three-hour drive to the Lonaconing Silk Mill was no exception.  I have visited the Mill on several occasions during the past year and although images of the expanse of the place occupy my subconscious it is often the small details that I seek out, especially those that add something new to the human story that has remained untold for fifty plus years.  However, while going through my usual routine on this particular occasion I also started to recall images that I have not previously captured.  I began to realize that for such details to stick in my mind they must be important, and therefore I made it a goal to photograph them.  While recreating vision may result in good images, recreating emotion adds depth and meaning. 

One thing that I have seen on every single trip to the Mill is an old discarded novel – Her Third Man.  The first several pages of the book are well worn but the rest have not been thumbed at all, suggesting that the owner never got to finish the story before the Mill closed its doors for the last time.  Until this trip I felt the book was out of place and didn’t have a role in the story I was trying to tell, and therefore I ignored.  On this particular occasion however, I realized that the book was actually a part of many different stories.  On the one hand, much like the story of the books’ main character I imagined the owner being a person unsuccessful in their attempt to seek an escape from mundane every-day life only for it to be suddenly terminated when the mill closed.  On the other hand I imagined the book being a symbol for the Mill itself, discarded with only a fraction of its story told.  This to me was powerful and I decided to create an image of the discarded book in a manner that would emphasize the symbolic feelings of isolation and human tragedy.

They stand tall and proud, governing the surrounding landscape, reaching high to bridge the gap between sky and earth.  Several hundreds of years existence for a single tree is often only a fraction of its entire life, which fills me with wonder when considering that in its lifespan it may have already experienced many of mankind’s more significant times and events – both good and bad. 

It is difficult to reconcile the fact that something can remain in just one place for its entire life while the surrounding world moves along at a frantic  pace. 

A single tree in open landscape imparts a feeling of sadness and makes one wonder what might have happened that resulted in it standing alone.  The images included with this post focus on the individual tree, isolating it from its environment to emphasize its majesty and also to tell a story of loneliness and are all p[art of my new minimalism project.

I had mixed feelings.  Although the criticism was about just one image, because I work hard to create minimal images I began to question my style.  Isolating the simple from the complex is one of the many challenges I am faced with when composing a photograph.  I am constantly looking around the frame, wondering what to include and exclude.  I want to include enough information to ensure the viewer recognizes the subject and the environment within which it resides, while at the same time exclude those elements that contribute to neither the subject nor its environment.  Isolating a subject from a complex scene is a skill that I have already invested a lot of time trying to perfect, and one that I want to keep on developing. 

In analyzing my feelings: 

• A psychologist would tell me to take criticism as a gift. 
• The demons of self doubt could put me in a slump for weeks, or longer. 
• My life experiences growing up in the north-east of England were telling me to react in some means that would have undoubtedly landed me in trouble with the authorities. 
• The scientist and engineer in me was saying that for every action there should be an equal and opposite reaction. 

There is truth in all of these individual feelings and therefore since criticism should be considered a catalyst for growth I decided not to respond to self doubt in a negative way but rather consider this as an opportunity to respond in a way that would help me grow as a photographer.  In an earlier post I talked about “thinking outside of the box” and how incrementally adapting what you already do well is often the best way to solve problems.  Since minimalism is an important part of my work I decided that the best way to solve this particular problem and grow is not to change my style, but rather to celebrate it.  I plan to spend some time in the coming weeks going through my images and create small folios of my work in which I have used minimalism to emphasize the subject and help describe what I felt when I took the photographs.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we have a new addition to the family.  Our son, Patrick was born a few weeks ago and I have received many requests from our families and friends around the world for photographs.  Although we have two other young children I have never really done much more than take snapshots of the kids – my wife is the “family photographer”.  However, in that same earlier post I mentioned that inspiration from other photographers has piqued my interest in photographing Patrick in the context of a photography project.  And therein lie the problem.  Although I know I want to create a body of fine art black and white photographs of my baby son I have never done this type of work before.  I have spent the last few weeks asking myself lots of questions, such as where should I start and how do I photograph a baby and what message do I want the body of work to convey.  However, after thinking about this again the other night I realized that I hadn’t taken a single photograph.  More importantly however, I realized that all of my questions were delaying the start of the project and since babies grow quickly, unless I started to think outside of the box I was in danger of missing the opportunity. 

Once I had established the need to think outside of the box to solve this problem I immediately started to think about how I could utilize the same approach I have developed over time (i.e. my workflow and style) to create images.  This was when I realized that the only thing new to me was the subject.  I can use the same technical skills and tools to achieve good composition, exposure, tonal range and focus and I can allow my subconscious to creatively drive feeling into the final images.  I now have my starting point and I am now looking forward to photographing this little guy’s life.  And the project has one added benefit – I will be able to spend valuable one on one time with Patrick.

• I enjoy taking photographs of old buildings – interiors and exteriors.  Some of the images that I create are wide angle scenes to illustrate the expanse of space, while others focus on small details, such as a window, a mirror or an ornate decoration.  Since architecture is design work that has been created by one or more people it is therefore art.  Although more often than not the images that I create are of a subject that is in an advanced state of decay I am still making art from someone else’s creation.
• Another popular photography subject is graffiti, which, since it has been created by another person is therefore artwork.  

The more I thought about this the more I felt I needed to come up with answers.  In this particular case I feel the answer actually lies within another question – does it actually matter?  I take photographs of things that grab my attention.  For example, if something about a statue in a garden attracts my attention I will try to capture what it was that I saw.  For example, it might be the texture of the stone or metalwork, it might be the interesting play of light on the statue, it might be the feeling of loneliness in a wide, open space.  In other words, although the subject matter is central to the image it is not the only element that I intend to capture.  Another example to expand the thought further: When I photograph an old window frame that has peeling paint and one or more cracked panes of glass I am actually using the architectural subject matter as a prop to capture neglect and decay. 

In summary, I have no problem photographing a subject in which someone else’s artwork is predominant in the scene. However, as with all images that I create I also try to convey what it is that actually grabbed my attention, which could be a particular feature that is clearly evident or, less tangible, the feeling that I experienced.

To illustrate this further, I recently took a trip to Eden Mill, which is about an hours drive north of Baltimore and when walking around the old mill buildings that are now a museum I began to notice old paper bags that were used to package flour produced by the mill.  In particular, the illustrations on the bags caught my attention, probably because they depict a time during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the mill was operating.  As opposed to the complex illustrations that we might see on packaged goods today, these particular designs were very simple and although the illustrations were in color, after photographing them I created black and white images to try and focus attention into the illustration rather than at it to allow the viewer an opportunity to experience the period in time from when these were drawn.

In order to answer this question I think one has to understand what it is that the photographer is trying to capture.  Is it really just an old chair, peeling paint, broken windows, a discarded toy, etc. or is it something entirely different?  For me the root of the answer lies in the balance of technical and imagination.  The photographer still has to seek out compositional elements such as line, framing, and placement of the subject while lighting continues to be vitally important to help emphasize texture, shape and form.  However, although a focus on the technical can create superb images, the truly stunning images are those that have an element of story, usually with the nonexistent human element being the theme.  In becoming familiar with his or her surroundings the photographer starts to become one with the subject and it is at this point when feeling is introduced to the images, imagination kicks in and story-telling begins.  In a state of imagination the photographer initially wonders but eventually feels a part of what life must have been like. For example the long silent machinery in an abandoned factory suddenly springs to life, the sound of children running through the halls in a long closed school suddenly becomes deafening, and the sounds of every day family life in a crumbling house rouse experiences from one’s own life.

So, in consideration of the foregoing, why would a photographer renowned in a particular genre of photography become so excited at making images of an old, abandoned and decaying building?  For me, as with any type of photography, the thrill of the chase in pursuit of the unusual provides the incentive while the creation of a story provides the motivation.

By way of example, I recently heard about a new App called Rainy Daze that adds the effects of rain to photographs.  After downloading the App and playing around with it I instantly saw opportunity.  I began to trawl through my archive of photographs to find those that I thought would benefit from this App and from the first image that I worked on I quickly began to loose myself to imagination.  The resulting images are not what I previsualized when I tripped the shutter and although I was obviously attracted to the scene my imagination was the dominant influence in the creation of the images.  The following are examples of what I have created so far.

On a sadder note, although it is only a few months since I last photographed at the silk mill the building has deteriorated significantly.  Heavy rainfall in the summer breached the roof, which was already in need of repair.  several sections of the roof have already collapsed and several others are propped up with wooden supports, only extending the inevitable.  As can be seen in theimages above, most of the windows are now broken and on the day I visited snow was blowing right through the building and settling on the machinery.  The Lonaconing Silk Mill is now on life support and it may not survive the winter without attention.  This rare example of American history is about to be lost forever.

This past weekend I travelled out to western Maryland to meet up with some friends for a day of photography.  After an early start followed by a 3 hour drive, several hours of photography, a late lunch / early dinner and another 3 hour drive home I was absolutely exhausted.  While driving through a mountain pass just as the daylight was beginning to fade I noticed the white trunk and branches of a tree peeking out between the surrounding darker trees.  It was a scene that just screamed opportunity, but I drove right on by.  However, several miles down the road and after feeling terrible for passing by such a wonderful scene I remembered the missed opportunity from the New York trip and despite the fact that I was already exhausted I forced myself to go back.  The daylight was fading quickly and I ended up travelling almost 20 miles at well over the speed limit to find a turnaround that would get me to back to where I needed to be.  I knew that I only had a few minutes of light left and despite the fact that I was on the freeway I pulled the car over to the emergency lane, set up my camera right there on the side of the road, composed quickly and fired off a few shots.  The image that accompanies this post is what I ended up with.  I am pleased that I did not pass up this opportunity.

And so it is that I am writing this post after spending the best part of the last hour doing nothing much more than simply staring at a photograph on my computer monitor interrupted only by moments of pushing a Photoshop slider this way or that.  Nothing.  I can’t create a single thing.  Since the number of opportunities that I have to sit down and create something are becoming increasingly rare, (and are therefore very precious) I am often left feeling cheated and frustrated when this happens, which usually results in a feeling that my time has been wasted.  So why do I keep putting myself through it? I think the answer is because in those rare moments when creativity happens, it really happens.  My motivation is to find that moment and exploit it to the full because when it happens it gives me a buzz and I trip off into a timeless zone when my entire focus of attention is on creating.

But, for now its back to staring, hoping that I will be more creative the next time I am sat here.

In my work I always try to form some kind of a relationship with the subject.  For example, if I am photographing an abandoned building I want to imagine what life must have been like when it was inhabited and therefore I try to include human elements in my images and use them to give the building a personality.  If I am photographing a landscape I want the feelings of the scene I experience to come through in the images I create. Creating a relationship with such subjects is relatively easy – they don’t answer back, and for the most part they don’t move and therefore I can take as long as I want.  Once the relationship has been formed I need to lose myself to my imagination since, for me this is where creativity resides.  However, for me, taking photographs of people is much more challenging because this relatively slow, methodical work flow just doesn’t seem to work.  I still want to form a relationship with the subject but unlike when I am photographing other subjects, I struggle to determine at what point the relationship has been established, and therefore I have a hard time allowing myself to trip off into the imaginative state that I feel I need to be in to create images that tell my story of the person.  

In an attempt to overcome my fears of photographing people and to learn new approaches to form a relationship with the subject I have been reading Discover Yourself Through Photography by Ralph Hattersley on and off for the past couple of years. Published in the 1970′s the idea of the book is that the process of photography can be one of self-discovery, rather than one of documentation or creativity. I was attracted to Hattersley’s thoughts because this isn’t radically different from how I approach my photography.  Hattersley continues his argument by stating that self-discovery by itself is not enough – you have to know how to do it.  The book is arranged more as a workbook whereby tools are described that the photographer can use to dig into their own subconscious and apply the learning in their own work.  Pretty deep stuff.  In parallel with my on and off reading of Hattersley’s book I also started to follow closely the work of photography historian, writer, and photographer Bill Jay who created a body of work called “Men Like Me” – the following is an example image from his portfolio. 

The images in the project depict a side of humanity that we all share, irrespective of the fact that the subjects are down and out men. Each image tells a story that reveals something each of us could be, in our own way.

As I mentioned, there are rare occasions when a situation presents itself that I just can’t pass up and just have to pluck up the courage and get the shot.  More often than not the resulting image doesn’t work but there are instances where I am pleased with the result.  One such example is the following image that I created a couple of years ago, not long after starting to read Hattersley’s book and following the work of Bill Jay.

I was wandering around some fisherman’s huts at a place called Paddy’s Hole in Warrenby near my hometown in the North East of England and saw this man peering out of his cabin.  He had an extremely interesting face and after walking backwards and forwards several times trying to pluck up the courage to talk with him he asked me what I was doing.  Since I was armed to the teeth with camera gear I think he suspected that I worked for the local press. This presented the opportunity I was seeking to strike up a conversation and once he got comfortable that I wasn’t about to include him in some major expose he shared with me an amazing collection of antique clocks, all with a nautical theme that he hung on the walls of his hut.  He was clearly very proud of his collection and he asked me if I wanted to photograph it.  I jumped at the chance.  After spending half an hour or so making a few exposures of his collection I decided to take it one step further and asked him if I could photograph him with his clocks.  He agreed without hesitation and although I did make some environmental portraits I couldn’t help but think of Bill Jay’s Men Like Me work and I began to previsualize images just of this man’s face.  Since the environmental portraits were more in a documentary style I started to close in to isolate his features and capture my perception of his personality.  I thought the lines on his face resembled a roadmap that somehow lead the way to his life story.   I also knew that the final image would work best in Black and White since I wanted the focus of attention to be the shape and patterns on the man’s face without any distractions from the color of his clothing or the cabin walls. I was immediately reminded of a quote by Ted Grant:

When you photograph people in color you photograph their clothes.  But when you photograph people in B&W, you photograph their souls!

My brother is researching our family history and in his quest he has gathered a number of documents, including photographs of family members.  A while ago he sent me the photograph attached to this post of our father and his work colleagues, which we think was taken in the 1950′s – he is on the far right.  I was tidying up my study the other day and re-discovered the image and the very second I opened it up I had a sudden feeling of sadness.  Our father died 21 years ago and I have looked at this photograph on several occasions but never had this response before.   I began to analyze my response and although I came to a conclusion that it must have been influenced by the recent birth of our new baby and the fact that he will never get to meet his grandfather, what this particular event also made me realize is that new experiences allow me to look at photographs in a new way.  This is actually very exciting since I often look at photographs for new ideas and therefore it occurred to me that I can periodically go back through my archive of photography books, magazines and on-line resources to seek new inspiration in old images.

Click the following link to see the presentation.

 Seeing in Black and White: Nature Visions Expo, 2011 Presentation.

Although the machinery sits cold and lifeless, one imagines that the simple throw of a power switch could spring it back to life.  The silence is overwhelming, but as you stand amongst the lifeless machines and listen carefully, voices of the Lonaconing Silk Mill workers begin to transcend the passage of time.  First one voice and then another.  More join the crowd and the chatter is of hardship and gossip.  Imagination begins to breathe life into the machines and they slowly come alive, their pulsing heartbeat intensifying in tempo, pushing the voices into the background. Barely decipherable, they persist in their story – a story in which the last chapter is still unwritten, but soon may be.  They want to give their own ending, an ending that would leave something behind to remember them by.  Something elaborate and dignified would be nice, but most of all the voices want to stay together, they do not want to be broken up and sent to places far apart where they can no longer be heard.  The Lonaconing Silk Mill was not just a place of work it was a place where friendships and lifelong bonds were made, as strong as the silk they wove but just as delicate, prone to sudden and catastrophic failure. 

The building that remains today of the once magnificent Klotz Throwing Company Lonaconing Silk Mill may be nothing more than bricks and mortar, but its soul is the stories its occupants told through the artifacts they left behind.

The following images are from my newly completed project that I will be launching at the Nature Visions Expo in Manassas, VA on Saturday November 12, 2011.  I have also published a book and e-book of the project, further details of which can be seen on my Announcements Page.

Although we generally stuck to a loosely arranged “plan” to visit certain parts of the city, we had no idea what we might find.  For example, one of the areas that we wanted to visit was Chinatown, New York City and we simply wandered around for a couple of hours not shooting very much, just soaking up the atmosphere.  After pausing for lunch at one of the many amazing restaurants we stumbled upon a huge and noisy crowd in Columbus Park right in the heart of Chinatown, New York City.   We later found out that each Saturday afternoon the older members of the Chinese community get together here to challenge each other to games of chinese checkers, chess and cards.  Huddled around their small tables the players were surrounded by people, several deep cheering (I think!!!) their every move.  Some of the games were attracting more attention than others and generating much more noise.  We quickly became a part of the crowd and allowed ourselves to be absorbed.  At this point we began to photograph.  Although there were plenty of photographic opportunities at the extremities of the crowd I wanted to feel a part of what was going on because I wanted to capture the personalities involved in whatever they were doing as well as the lookers on.  It was an amazing experience with the sights, sounds and smells providing the sensory experiences, helping to stimulate creativity.

Well, that happened a little sooner than expected. Our new baby was not expected until late November, but decided to make an appearance quite a bit sooner – Patrick was born on October 27. Although we weren’t prepared in general, I was absolutely far from being prepared to start photographing this little guy’s life. In our rush to get to the hospital picking up my camera was the last thing on my mind. Once he was born I started to kick myself that I hadn’t brought my camera with me. And then I remembered that I actually had – my iPhone… And so the story begins.

This photograph was taken of Patrick when he was just a few minutes old.

At its peak, the Scranton Lace Factory employed in excess of 1,400 workers.  But this was no ordinary place of work.  Advanced management techniques and employee programs combined with traditional blue collar working practices made this more of a community.  Although its huge clock tower stood well above the city skyline providing its inhabitants a constant reminder of its presence, the Scranton Lace Factory also had less authoritative features such as an entire floor dedicated to sports and recreation that included a movie theater, a stage for theatrical productions, a games room and a two lane bowling alley.  Even back then they had started to realize that happy workers meant good productivity. 

However, like many other large, industrial facilities impacted by changing economies and technologies the Scranton Lace Factory finally succumbed and closed its doors.  For almost a decade the factory has been left to decay.  But, rather than collapsing under the weight of neglect or attracting the attention of a developers wrecking ball, the buildings that were the Scranton Lace Factory are being given a new lease of life and readied for a new generation of industry.  Equipment is being removed, revealing the sheer extent of the place and football field size rooms that once occupied colossal machines await their new occupants.

I had an opportunity to photograph the Scranton Lace Factory a few weeks ago and I am preparing a small folio of my images.  The following are some that I have worked on so far.

With color, the subject was not necessarily important: only the color itself was of interest – Brassai.

I take black and white photographs and my black and white photography has been heavily influenced by the work of Brassai.  Despite the fact that he lived in a very different era and in a very different place (1930s Paris) and that his work is mainly street photography I draw inspiration from his simple compositions and effective use of contrast and tonal range that bring his subjects to life.  Since we see the world around us in its myriad of colors, black and white photography is a departure from reality and therefore the challenge in black and white photography is to make the unseen seen and emphasize the feeling of the moment.

Imagination is more important than knowledge – Albert Einstein 

At some point in our photographic life we reach a major fork in the road.  The easy path is to become proficient in the use of our camera equipment or the tools we use to create our images, be it the darkroom or digital post processing.  The difficult path is to accept what we already know and expend our energy tapping into our self to connect with our imagination and our creativity.  While it is true that proficiency will likely result in technically perfect images I am more drawn to images that make me think, wonder and feel. 

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are – Anais Nin

I have said in earlier posts that a photographic image says as much about the maker as it does the subject.  I am a firm believer that the camera points in both directions each time a photograph is taken.  The final image is coded with our own thoughts, feelings and experiences and somehow expresses them in a manner that will allow the viewer to either connect with the photographer or will rouse their own sensitivities and feelings. 

The moment of exposure is the culmination of the rejection of all other possibilities – Ruth Bernardt

When we take photographs we are making conscious decisions that will help emphasize the subject such as composure, framing, what to include or exclude from the frame, time of day (or night, year etc.), use of lighting, etc. etc.  However, our subconscious is also at play, sometimes influencing the technical decisions and sometimes simply telling us that now is the time to trip the shutter.  Since our subconscious holds our thoughts, feelings and life experiences it is important to emotionally connect with it when creating our images, which starts right at the moment the exposure is made.

I am sure there are many more quotes out there from which we can draw inspiration, but since I like to keep my photography simple I also like to keep my sources of inspiration simple and therefore, for now these quotes continue to guide me as I grow.

However, I have many examples of projects that have stalled because something other than the learning process has prevented me from simply jumping in. For example, although the majority of my photography work is digitally based, every once in a while the work of a photographer that is film based catches my attention and I get excited at the thought of creating a project that entirely uses one of my film cameras. Whenever this happens I might drag out my large format 4×5 view camera and blow through a pack of my favorite, severely out of date Polaroid PN-55 film to get “reacquainted”, or dust off my Hasselblad and load a roll of 120 film. However, very soon afterwards the excitement dwindles because I start to build my own mental roadblocks. I often tell myself that I don’t want to waste film that is often hard to find and very expensive. I worry about where I can get my film processed or if I should try to do it myself. I wonder if my scanner is good enough to give me the results I want or will I have to get the film professionally scanned. Etc. etc. etc. For some unknown reason, unlike my more chaotic approach to learning, I feel that I need to resolve each issue before I get started, meaning I usually don’t get started and the idea does not get off the ground.

And so I am thinking about this as I venture into a new field of photography. For some time now I have admired the work of many “low-fi” photographers who use inexpensive, often home made or modified cameras. I understand that although the inherent technical limitations of the equipment can give unpredictable results they can be a great tool in the creation of powerful, expressive images. Since this is a goal in my own photography I have been thinking about giving it a go. Therefore, I bought a Holga camera several weeks ago and 20 packs of 120 roll film with the intention of jumping in and learning as I went along. However, the demon mental roadblocks started to pop up and the camera sat on a shelf until last weekend when I realized that this was crazy and decided to take the camera with me on a walk with the kids to the park. I just started shooting, figuring that I would have to demolish one roadblock at a time. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have a starting point and now I just need to keep up the momentum.

I picked out the following two images and started to look at them individually in an attempt to describe how I captured the feeling of the moment. 

 Although the images were created several months apart and are clearly of very different subject matter it occurred to me that there are actually more similarities between the images than differences.  For example, a key similarity is the way I tried to describe the feelings I experienced when these natural and manmade structures were revealed at the dawn of a new day when the advancing daylight illuminated their magnificence. I tried to use tonal relationships to bring out textures to emphasize the way the limited available light affected the surfaces of the structures and therefore their appearance.  Although I believe there is a relationship between these two images, the real eye-opener occurred when I started to look at other images in the same context and saw many similar relationships.  This convinced me of my subconscious at play and that it significantly influences the technical decisions I make in creating my images.

We have travelled to this part of the world on many prior occasions and similar to other places we frequently visit, over time we have drawn up “lists” of favorite places to eat and things to see. Whenever my mind is transported back here it is these experiences that I usually think of. I can easily recollect the smells of certain foods and spices cooking in the kitchen of a country restaurant and salt in the air from the ocean mixed with the faint scent of flowers. Just as easily I can also recollect vistas and views that embody each city. However, for some unknown reason I have never photographed my experiences on any of our prior trips and therefore I made it a mission to capture memories this time around.

I wrote this post while sitting on a stone wall that surrounds a small, quaint fishing harbor in the old part of Biarritz. It was very early in the morning, well before sunrise. While some fishing boats were getting ready to depart for their day at sea, others were arriving and are offloading their catch of mackerel, destined for the local restaurants. The screech of seagulls echoed around the harbor walls and water crashed against the rocks just outside of the harbor mouth. I was waiting for the light that occurs just before the sun rises, when it pulls back the blanket of darkness and starts its journey across the sky.

Bayonne.Biarritz.

Although I planned to supplement this project with some new images, I also wanted to do something a little different.  However, since Paris is one of the most photographed cities in the world doing something different was not going to be easy.  Therefore, I decided to continue making the same type of images that I had started in England earlier in my vacation.  I wanted to create images of familiar places or things in a way that was new to me.  In other words, I wanted to see familiar subjects in a different light and the following are some examples of the images I created. 

While creating these images I was reminded of my earlier post on ideas and inspiration in which I said that although I often take photographs of locations or subjects that have been photographed before, I firmly believe it’s not so much what you photograph but rather how you photograph it.  When I was trying to come up with an idea to photograph Paris in a different way I decided to build on the idea that I started back in England.  As I stated in that post, I believe that ideas are incremental and new ideas are nothing more than adaptations of older, existing ideas and can be based on a theme, feeling or experience that I have previously worked on.

To me, this is an important part of growing my photography.  I want to explore the range of ideas that I am developing in my mind, many of which have been inspired by the work of other photographers.  I also want my thoughts, feelings and experiences to become an increasingly important part of my work.  However, rather than thinking about this when I am preparing for a photography trip or during the process of taking photographs, I want this to become more of a subconscious process.  And this is where the real challenge lies.  Spending less time focusing on the physical act of taking a photograph and more time becoming a part of the final image. I talked about this in my earlier post entitled The Camera Points Both Ways in which I suggested that each image we create includes a part of us and therefore tells as much about the photographer as it does the subject. 

The following images are from our trip to England. I plan to post other images from our trip in future blogs of familiar subjects seen in a new way.

Additionally, I will be presenting my “Seeing in Black and White” program at:

• The Tidewater Camera Club in Easton, MD on October 3, 2011
• The Nature Visions Expo in Manassas, Virginia on November 11 -- 13, 2011. I will be presenting alongside such great photographers as Art Wolfe, Joe Rossbach, and many others

The following is a video that I used in an earlier version of my program.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ahjL5XAVRc

Earlier in the summer I bought Susan Burnstine’s book, Within Shadows. Susan’s work has a unique style that not only brings her dreams, experiences and thoughts alive but their inherent mystery challenges viewers to create their own interpretation and meaning. Her work inspired me to think about photographing familiar subjects with a new approach. The image that accompanies is post is of Saltburn Pier, which I have photographed many times, including from this very same location. However, the image is very different from any that I have created previously.

• Set the scene (the tip of the pyramid),
• Tell the story, and
• Add mood and atmosphere (the bottom of the pyramid). 

Although I am conscious of the types of images I want to include in a project, the act of taking photographs and creating images random.  When I have assembled a collection of photographs and get down to the act of creating images I usually go where the mood takes me.  Some days I can work on images that cover the entire range of the “pyramid”, while on other occasions I might prefer to work on one particular element. 

The Lonaconing Silk Mill project I am currently working on is no exception to the process I have described, except that recently I have been spending most of my time working with photographs that although similar in subject have subtle, yet important differences. 

The walls of the silk mill are adorned with signs and notices instructing the long gone workers in the do’s and do not of company policy.  Desks are scattered with notebooks that include such things as supervisor notes, employee pay rates and plans for a Christmas party that never happened.  Each gives their own insight into the daily lives of those that worked in the mill.  While wide angle images of the mill building will help establish the scene and images of the machinery will give some idea of the purpose of the mill, I think such human elements give the place a life.  Without human elements the images will tell a story of nothing more than bricks, mortar and machines.  Therefore, I think the reason I am spending so much time creating images from these subjects is because they will not only help tell the story I am slowly developing in my mind but they will also help define and add perspective to the story.  They will hopefully add mood and feeling to the final portfolio that I will create.

The following are examples of the images of signs and notices that I have created.

While I admit there was lots of stuff on display at the festival that didn’t grab my attention or inspire me, there was never a moment when I thought to myself that what the maker was displaying was not art.  In fact, as evidenced by the number of people that paused to take a closer look, there were many occasions when what I passed up as not very interesting was clearly very interesting to them.

 As the evening wore on and after the folks I was talking to had left I began to wonder what higher being does attending art school make a person?  Does art school really teach students how to decide what is art?  I have always dreamed of pursuing an education in art in the belief that I would learn how to free up my thoughts and feelings and express my vision in the work that I produce.  However, if in doing so I had to allow myself to be brainwashed into believing that some things can be discarded because they do not pass the “art” test then I am much happier being the uneducated artist that I already am.  I wouldn’t have much need for a text book that tells me what art is, I would much rather have a text book that taught me how to appreciate art in it’s many forms, understand it’s meaning and critique it accordingly.

 In summary, while I think we can decide whether or not we like what we see, I do not think we can decide whether or not what we see is art.  If the maker says it is art, then it is art.  This is absolutely what I enjoy about art. It is relative.

Since including personality in imagery helps define our style it is probably important that we recognize the “symbols” we are coding into the images, whether we are doing so consciously or subconsciously depending on the mood we are in at the time.  However, this isn’t as easy as it sounds.  It is quite difficult to believe our own images are anything other than trees, landscapes, people, street scenes, etc.  Actually, it is probably easier to identify the characteristics of another photographers work. 

I recently took a short trip back to England to attend the funeral of an uncle.  I took my camera with me and I had an afternoon free so went out to photograph.  It was a beautiful afternoon and the beaches near my home were filled with people enjoying the warm weather.  However, I felt anything but happy.  I took lots of photographs of things that I saw while walking along the beach and that same night I started to create images, one of which I include with this post.  The images are gritty, tense, edgy and atmospheric and reflect how I was feeling at that time.  It made me wonder if I would have created different images had my mood been different.   Therefore, as an experiment I am thinking of revisiting the photographs in a few weeks time to compare the two sets of images to see how much a change in my mood can influence my work.  If I go ahead with this I hope it will give me a better appreciation for symbols that I code into my work, which I further hope will help me better understand how my personality is reflected in the images I create.

I grew up by the ocean and a walk along the waters edge at low tide has always been one of my favorite things to do.  The sound of crashing waves and the smell of the ocean carried on the breeze are therapeutic and unforgettable.  Looking out to the vast nothingness of the ocean makes one wonder what lies beyond the point where sky meets the water.  It is easy to lose oneself to imagination.   Looking downwards reveals patterns carved in the sand by small creatures scurrying about seeking refuge before the tide turns.  Seaweeds and seashells left behind by the last high tide are scattered randomly for as far as the eye can see, often creating interesting patterns and textures of their own.  These are images of found objects that I captured during one such walk along the beach.

Whenever I come up with an idea to photograph something it is generally because I have a picture in my mind of what I want the final image(s) to look like.  However, to me ideas are incremental.  A new idea is nothing more than an adaptation of an older, existing idea and can be influenced by the work of another photographer or an adaptation of a theme, feeling or experience that I have previously worked on.  In the world of media advertising this would clearly be sacrilegious.  We are constantly being told that “new” is best and exciting, whereas “old” is dull.  I once read an analogy that I think explains this perfectly and it goes something like this: 

Ideas are like barrels.  When they are new they are empty and have no contents that have benefited from careful nurturing, adjustment or aging.  Like barrels, ideas must be filled.  Ideas are filled by being used, by having thought, emotion and experience poured into them.  Through usage they are shaped, the rough edges are smoothed down and the useless parts are discarded.  Through time and usage, meaning slowly attaches itself to an idea.  

I don’t want to approach my photography as if I had to re-invent the whole art itself.  I feel that those who refuse to photograph a location or subject “because it has been done before” are throwing away an opportunity to introduce their own creative spin and therefore enrichment of their own development.  Lots of my ideas are the result of inspiration from the work of other photographers.  If I see something that I like I start to wonder how I can apply my own vision.  I don’t want to go out and recreate the exact same image but rather consider how I can introduce my own interpretation of the subject through the feeling(s) it imparts within me.  

I was recently reminded of this when looking through the current edition of Diffusion Magazine (Volume II 2010) when the work of a photographer named Kimberly Mowbray leapt out from the page at me.  Kimberly’s images were taken with a large format, 4 x 5 camera using Polaroid PN 55 film.  This film produces a positive and a negative and you adjust your ISO rating separately for each, depending on which you want to keep.  I have also worked with PN 55 and still have a large [out of date] stock in my refrigerator.  The negative has a very distinctive look to it that is created when the film is exposed and then pulled through the rollers, spreading the developer chemicals over its surface.  The chemicals are then “supposed” to be cleared in a sodium sufite solution.  However, Kimberly had decided not to clear the developer but let it dry on the surface of the film, creating a very interesting texture.  I had toyed with this idea a few years ago but hadn’t produced anything that I enjoyed.  Looking at Kimberly’s work inspired me to try again and the images included with this post are examples of what I have started to work on.  I am enjoying working with this idea and look forward to developing it, just to see where it goes.

The building that remains today may be nothing more than bricks and mortar, but its soul is the stories its occupants told through the artifacts they left behind.  However, the wrecking ball is inching its way forward and unless it can be halted the last chapter of the story may soon be told. 

The images that accompany this post follow on from those that I included in an earlier post, all of which are from the project that I am currently working on to document the Lonaconing Silk Mill.  I am not quite sure where the project us going to take me, but my goal is to tell the stories that echo within the walls of this place.

• A photograph is “a picture produced by photography”
• An image is “a physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing”

I have my own spin on these definitions.

While a photograph is clearly something that is taken with a camera I believe it is also a representation of the scene where its capture is limited by the framing of the lens, the shutter speed and the aperture.  An image, on the other hand, is something that is created from a photograph and is the result of imagination influenced by experience and feeling.  In short, a photograph is made and an image is created.  Clearly, there is a journey between the two, the length of which is influenced by conscious decisions that the photographer makes to recreate the experience or feeling.  In documentary or photojournalistic photography the journey is intentionally short since the photographer’s objective is to reproduce reality.  However, in fine art photography the journey can be as long as the image maker wants it to be.  Constrained only by imagination the biggest challenge for the photographer is to develop the skills necessary to reproduce the image imagined. 

During a recent trip with some fellow photographers we stopped at a small town on the eastern shore of Maryland.  We arrived early in the morning and since it was a weekend there were very few people around.  Some people started seeing subjects right away and commenced shooting as soon as the car was parked on Main Street, while others wandered off to explore the streets.  When faced with a new location like this I need to get a feeling for the place and therefore I tend to stay in a fairly small area and just absorb what is around me.  I spent some time wandering up and down the short length of Main Street just looking at the buildings and the carefully arranged displays in shop windows.  Slowly I started to get a feel for the place.  Given the interesting and, in some cases ornate architecture of the buildings I imagined that this was once a very wealthy and important town.  However, as with many small towns there was evidence that tough times had arrived at some point in its history.  Masonry had crumbled, wooden window frames had rotted and paint had peeled.   Attempts were clearly underway though to rejuvenate the town in anticipation of a new era of growth.  I wanted to capture a combination of the old and the new and how they juxtaposed each other.  This became my goal and at this point I began to shoot.  I captured photographs with the feeling of the place locked in my subconscious and when I later looked at the photographs the feelings that I experienced resurfaced and I was then able to start creating images.  This is typical of the “journey” I make when creating images from the photographs I take.

I chose one image in particular for this blog post because I think it sums up the feeling I have of the place.  Interestingly it’s not an image of the buildings that make up the town but rather an old wedding dress that I saw in one of the shop windows.  An elegant dress, its pristine whiteness became tarnished at some point in time with a single stain in the upper left hand corner, a stain that could not be removed.  To me this is a metaphor for what was once a pristine town that became tarnished with the passing of time and neglect during hardship.  I am not sure I would have even thought to take this photograph, let alone keep it had I not tried to feel and experience the place.

The beat of the awakening city struggles to penetrate its dark, hulking walls.  The monotone drone that becomes a constant reminder of its presence is broken only by the cawing of crows.  The expanse of the wide open sky is interrupted by their dark, spirit like forms flying from one tree to the next.  Circling the perimeter, they rarely venture outside the walls.  It is as if they are carrying the souls of the city’s founding fathers, but do not want them to witness the harm that has been done to their creation over the centuries. 

Towering stone monuments compete for attention, with inscriptions that boast of importance and accumulated wealth.  Their cold stone surfaces steal the life of the day and are as neglected and forgotten as the interred they stand sentinel over.  Decaying, crumbling and slowly disappearing into the earth, they too will eventually return to dust.

These images were taken at the Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore using the iPhone.

The Lonaconing Silk Mill opened for business in 1907 and the doors were sealed closed 50 years later.  Largely untouched, it remains today as a rare portal into the lives of those who paved the way for our modern day society. 

Upon entering, one is immediately transported back to a time when things were much simpler and needs much greater.  It takes time for ones eyes to adjust to the darkness that blankets the workplace, but when one begins to see one begins to feel and experience the magnificence.  Standing amongst the hulking, ominous machinery one can imagine the thunderous noise that would have drowned out any conversation.  But the voices of the workers remain in the artifacts they left behind and the stories they tell.

Today, the machinery sits cold and lifeless, and although it seems that a simple throw of a switch would spring it back to life, that switch may never be thrown. Since its closure in 1957 it has been maintained on life support.  For the last 30 years or so it’s present owner has hoped that someone would share his dream to preserve the mill for future generations.  On an almost daily basis he cuts the grass and sweeps the floors.  But his chores have been supplemented recently with a new task – emptying out buckets of water from the third floor windows that are quickly filled whenever it rains.  The roof is in urgent need of replacement.  Although water is the lifeblood of our very existence it is also a great destroyer.  Once water enters a building it quickly consumes the contents and a hundred year history can disappear in the blink of an eye.  

I recently had an opportunity to photograph the mill and I intend to go back soon. The following are a few images from that first visit.

Although I occasionally shoot with a large format 4 x 5 view camera and a Hasselblad medium format camera, the vast majority of the time I shoot with a digital SLR, which means the 3:2 format.  Therefore, one of the first things I do in post processing is to crop my images. I can easily spend as much time cropping an image as I can with any other post processing work.  In the early days of digital SLR cameras the pixel count limited the amount of cropping that could be done without degrading the quality of the image once it’s physical size was increased for printing.  No longer constrained with this limitation I am finding that more of my final images are either close to a 4:5 aspect ratio or perfectly square.

Since the squarer format itself doesn’t add emphasis to the image, greater attention has to be given to composition.  For me, removing the need to include visual elements that work with the 3:2 format actually helps me spend more time just thinking about the subject itself and how I can add emphasis using the fundamental elements of light, shape, form, and texture.  Minimalist and simple compositions are important elements of my work and since the squarer formats are easy on the eye I feel that my final images benefit greatly from this frame aspect.  Additionally, as I mentioned in an earlier post, negative space is an important part of the images I create and I find that the squarer format helps me balance the composition, thereby hopefully allowing the viewers imagination to wander for a while.

The entire telephone interview that was the basis for the article can be heard by clicking the link.  I have also prepared an eBook of the project and a free copy can be downloaded from my website by clicking the link.  

The following slideshow includes a few additional images that are not in the Forest Haven – Where Time Stands Still work that I have on my website. 

My work has been influenced by many great photographers, including George Tice and David Plowden.  I mention these two in particular because their work is based on their own particular memories and experiences.  In the case of Tice he photographed Paterson, New Jersey, which had been home to several generations of his family and where he grew up as a child.   Plowden’s A Handful of Dust work depicts what he saw when he returned to places that he first visited many decades before.  In both cases one needs to look beyond the printed image and indulge for a while in the magnificence of simplicity that once was.  Allowing your mind to wander, one can begin to hear the voices of people in the now silent settings.  Listen to the stories they have to tell of tragic and triumphant events that shaped their lives, homes and the surrounding landscape.

Whenever I take photographs of the urban landscape I try to include a sense of story, of something that once was but is now forgotten unless one cares to look beneath the surface.  A couple of years ago I took a drive to Hoopers Island on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.  It is an old community that grew up around the fishing, oyster, crabbing and farming industries that have been in decline for several years.  People began to move off the island many years ago and in most cases simply left behind their homes.  The buildings slowly succumb to gravity and the forces of nature.  I took these images of a couple of old houses that I found during my trip.

Imagine my surprise then when I was recently thumbing through some old photography books that I picked up at a used book store and stumbled upon the work of a photographer whose images not only featured the village where I grew up but also kids that I grew up with.  The photographer was Chris Killip and the images were from his In Flagrante series. The highly praised  work documents life in the North East of England in the 1970s, with a particular focus on the aftermath of a declining heavy industry with which the area is associated. 

The following are some of Killips images that are available from Google Images.

I remember walking down to Skinningrove with my parents to buy crabs on long summer evenings as they came off the boat at this exact spot. 

I still see Bever (the kid in the above image) in the pub when I go back home each year.

Since I grew up in this time and in this area I was drawn to Killip’s work and recalled several images that I had also taken during trips back home.  While Killip focused on people living in a declining industrial environment my work focuses on the contrast between the natural beauty of the area and the industry that was built to consume its resources.

We are slowly working down our list of things to do and can finally see light at the end of the tunnel.  Most of the work has been done and we are now at the painting, decorating and tidying-up stage.  It has taken us several weeks to get to this point and we have paid attention to detail each step of the way.  Although we know that the effort will reap rewards in enjoyment, it is tiring and right now we just want to get it done. 

The other night I was finishing up one activity and the end result just didn’t look quite how I wanted it to.  However, because I was tired I decided that it was probably good enough.  Now, every time I walk in that particular room I see the shortcomings with just making do.

Why is it then that whenever I am working on my photography the final product has to be precise and exact?  To me there is no “making do” in creating my art.  I can easily spend hours, days or even weeks trying to perfect an image and although it is tiring there is never a point where I just feel that my work is done simply because the image is good enough.  Not unlike the work that we are doing to the house, the end result has got to stand the test of time and it has got to expound a certain character and style.  However, it differs in that the final product of my art making has got to be perfect every time. If not, it’s either back to the drawing board or it simply doesn’t make the cut

Later that night I was working on some of my photographs and it just wasn’t happening for me.  I couldn’t quite recreate ideas that I had in my mind and I started to get frustrated.  I wanted my ideas to be clearly evident in the images and if I couldn’t make the images tell the story I wanted to tell then they could not meet the expectations of my audience – they would not be able to understand what I was trying to say.  I was thinking of simply giving in when I remembered the amazing experience from earlier that evening of hearing my daughter read for the first time.  Sticking with something is a vital part of learning and if we don’t learn then we don’t grow.

But I think it goes even deeper.  I had created an expectation of myself to recreate ideas.  But was it that simple? Was I really concerned at my lack of skills to create images or was I more concerned about what others might think of my images if I felt that I was falling short of meeting their expectations?  Although learning may indeed be the barrier to recreating ideas, was learning new skills the only thing that I needed to learn in order to grow? The more I thought about it the more I realized that my expectation was more to do with what other people might think of my work than what I thought about it.  I realized that growth is not just about learning new skills, it’s also about becoming confident in the work you produce.  My daughter didn’t care what I thought about the story – she only cared about telling the story. I’m sure that as she becomes more confident in her reading skills she will care more about the story, but even then will she care about what others think of the story? Why should my photography grow any differently? What happens in our lives that makes us jump the necessary step of becoming confident in our own abilities without influence from the expectations of others?

My “Mentor” viewing artwork at her first gallery exhibition….

I actually lived in Puerto Rico for several years and therefore I had lots of ideas.  However, one thing in particular that always fascinated me was the mix of Latin American and Caribbean architecture and therefore I thought this might make a good subject.  However, since “architecture” is a pretty broad subject matter I thought about how I could narrow this down somewhat and give me something more specific to focus on in the short amount of time I had.

Initially I thought about shooting architecture that was in an arrested state of decay – a subject that I am reasonably comfortable with.  Narrowing this down even further I decided to focus on one particular aspect of architecture.  It was while thinking about this I remembered one of the very first photographs that I took when I lived in Puerto Rico.  I remembered walking around this sleepy old town and seeing this third floor balcony (that was in a poor state of repair), adorned with un-watered plants and an open window with a pure white curtain gently billowing in the late morning breeze.  Back then, although I visualized a great image in my mind I did not have the skills to recreate the vision in the photograph that I took and therefore the only record I have is the vision still in my mind.  As I thought about this more I decided that my architecture subject was going to be old doors and windows.   This was certainly something that I could do in the couple of hours I had, especially since I could do it right there in the town where I was staying. 

The planning exercise that I describe is something that I do when preparing for almost every photography trip irrespective of whether the trip is for a couple of hours, a full day, a weekend or longer.  Although it is much easier for me to conceive an idea when I am familiar with a particular location the “planning” may just need to take longer when I am not so familiar.

The following are some of the images that I took.

In my case I was able to draw parallels with the struggles that John describes in the transition from believing to creating.  In particular John discusses the feeling of inadequacy that can occur when we question whether or not our work meets our own expectations or those of others.  Such “demons” stifle creativity.  I am sure that most, if not all artists feel this at some point in their growth and for sure this is very familiar territory to me.  Although there are times when I feel that I am able to transcend such negative feelings the demons frequently return to remind me of their presence, especially when working on something new or unfamiliar.  

One of the things that John suggests we do to ease the transition is to just keep on shooting.  The idea being that the mechanics of art making eventually become natural, thereby giving us more opportunities to focus on the visual and creative elements.  Although this makes tremendous sense, the ability to “keep on shooting” doesn’t fit entirely well with my ever demanding family and work life.  Therefore, although an ideal solution, for me it is simply not achievable, which makes me frustrated, rapidly transitioning into a feeling of not being able to grow and eventually to the old demon of inadequacy.  Although I try to maintain my creativity by just doing something “photographically”, such as studying the work of other photographers, working on my images, etc. I agree with John that this is only going to get you so far.  However, the fact remains that I simply can’t get out and photograph as much as I would like. 

With John’s presentation still fresh in my mind I was struck by the appropriateness of an article that I read in edition 93 of the Lenswork photography magazine.  Brooks Jensen, the editor of the magazine wrote in his editorial column that in the real world the time we spend creating art is a compromise with other things that we have to take care of in our daily lives, which includes the mundane.  Brooks argued that it is necessary to find a balance between what could be done in the “perfect world” and what can be done in the “real world” in which we live.  This was powerful stuff.  It made me think about my own frustration at not being able to get out and shoot as often as I would like and grow my creativity to transcend the feelings of inadequacy.  

In thinking about this I realized that I would have to adapt my photography to fit my other activities and stop trying to fit my other activities into my photography.  I feel this is a much more pragmatic approach.  In the short time that I have been thinking about this I have started to conjure up photographic projects that would not require me to “go out and shoot”, but rather projects that I can do much closer to home and at times that fit with my daily schedule.  I am very excited by this and more importantly I am looking forward to taking my photography to a new level.  I want to believe in my ability to create.

Experiences can invoke a wide range of reactions.  The “happy” end of the spectrum may include such things as the smell or taste of certain foods, a particular song, a piece of music or a particular landscape scene.  The “sad” end of the spectrum may include unhappy or unpleasant times in our lives, such as the loss of a family member, friend or pet.  Although experience builds both dreams and fears the balance varies from person to person and may even vary from day to day.  This balance influences our perception of the world around us.  

We learn from our experiences and there is a natural tendency to want to share them.  Whenever we take photographs there is a part of us in each image we create and therefore each can say as much about the photographer as it does about the subject being photographed.  We can use our images to tell stories about how we feel about the subject as well as our particular experiences and perceptions of the subject.  

I often use photography to explore and present particular feelings or experiences.  One example is my Subway body of work.

I lived and worked in London for two years, and used the subway (the “underground”) every day, along with thousands of other, “anonymous” commuters.  It never ceased to amaze me that despite the crowds that dashed to and from the stations during rush hour, the only sounds you could hear were the coming and going of the trains, the indecipherable operator announcements and the air conditioning system.  Except for the sound of rushing footsteps you rarely heard the people.  There was no talking.  There was no laughing.  Standing on the platform in between trains you could hear the rustling of newspapers as people satisfied their addiction to news of others much worse off than themselves.

Crowded together on the escalators, in the tunnels, on the platforms and on the trains there was very little personal space.  What space existed was highly prized.  After a while at certain times of the day I began to recognize familiar faces, standing in precisely the same spot they had stood the previous day, and the day before that, etc.  The veil of anonymity was slowly being lifted and it was unsettling.  When I realized that I too was slowly taking up residence in my own favorite spots and was therefore also in danger of loosing my anonymity I decided that it was time to leave.

Although London is now a distant memory the old feelings come flooding back whenever I travel the subway systems in DC and New York for my work.  I wanted to create images that not only told the story of my daily commute on the subway, but also captured the anonymity of people.  Being there, and yet not being there. 

I also created a narrated movie of this body of work.  Click here to see the movie on my YouTube channel.

Website.

My website is the window into my photographic world.  It is where I post portfolios of my work and it is where people can find out about what I do. 

I try to keep the content of my website relatively fresh.  I remove bodies of work that no longer represent where I am going with my photography and post new, completed bodies of work.  This keeps me focused on finishing projects, whether they are short term or long term and I try to target at least one major update per year. 

Blog

My blog is where I post updates on projects that I am currently working on or folios of completed mini-projects.  It is a platform that I use to describe particular thoughts about photography or an idea that I am interested in or am actually exploring.  Often, the ideas that I put into words have formed the basis for projects that I want to explore and in some cases am now actually working on.

While a website is relatively static and relatively impersonal I think a blog can add personality.  I therefore try to use my blog to provide a frequent update on what I am working on photographically.  I target weekly updates, which I find helps me focus on a particular photographic theme or thought, which also usually means creating some images to accompany a post.

Social Media

While I try to use my website and blog to provide a window into my creative world I use various social media platforms to present the less formal or philosophical side of me.  Social media is where I can present who I am on a daily basis.  It is where I can interact with other photographers, friends and people that inspire me. 

My goal with social media is to set up a network of contacts who I can learn from and with whom I can share thoughts and ideas.  Social media can be highly addictive and I try to “log in” once a day to see what is new.  Social media helps me stay abreast of developments in technology and photographic processes and often there have been things I have read about or seen that have inspired me to try something new.

EBooks

Although my website contains portfolios of my work the images are fairly low resolution.  Additionally, although the images are presented in a specific sequence intended to present the story I am trying to tell, there is nothing to stop a viewer simply clicking on particular images out of the intended sequence.

Therefore, in addition to placing my portfolios on my website I am also currently working on eBook versions of my work.  The eBooks will contain higher resolution images, which will result in greater image detail.  Akin to reading the chapters of a novel in the correct sequence, the images in my eBooks will be sequenced and therefore viewed as intended. I have set myself a target to prepare eBooks for three of my existing, completed portfolios and also for two new projects that I am currently working on before the end of this year.  The goal of creating eBooks and the target that I have set myself has the added benefit of keeping me focused on finishing ongoing project work. 

I plan to make the eBooks available for download from my website.   

Camera club competitions

I joined the Baltimore Camera Club a little over 4 years ago and it has been a great resource to me.  Not only do I get to see the work of extremely talented photographers but I also get to understand the motivation and thinking behind their creativity. I have been inspired by many great photographers at the BCC and their work has given me many ideas that I have stored away in my mind to pursue at some later date.  

Being a member of the BCC also gives me an opportunity to include my work in club competitions, which gives me a great incentive to take photographs and create new work on a frequent basis that is not necessarily part of a particular project that I might be working on.

I have made many friends at the BCC and there is always someone who wants to go out and shoot. It’s a great opportunity to simply go out and shoot something that is entirely new. Many of my photography projects would not have happened if I didn’t have the opportunity to go out shooting with other photographers from the BCC.

Photography magazine competitions and work submissions

The goal of many, if not all photographers is to “get work out there” to be seen (and hopefully appreciated) by folks that are not just your close circle of family or friends.  Having work published in magazines is an excellent way to get in front of a wide audience.  Magazines (both print and on-line) have a wide reach.  Submitting work for publication or entering annual juried competitions are two ways of getting your work published, but they require hard work.  Rejection of your work can be disheartening especially if this is the only “vehicle” that you use to try and get your work out there.  For this reason, although I have submitted work to be published I use many of the other “vehicles” that I have mentioned in this post to get my work in front of a wider audience.

I am sure there are many more tools and resources that I could use to help me set goals and targets for my photography.  However, for now I intend to stick with the current list and just see what happens…

This image is from a project that I have been working on for the past couple of years from near my hometown in the northeast of England.

 Documentary photographers and photojournalists attempt to capture the “pure” scene.  However, even then, since only a few elements of the scene are actually captured the viewer is still left to interpret the event and its meaning.  For example, Nick Ut’s Pulitzer prize winning “Vietnam Napalm” image of a young Vietnamese girl running naked down the street after a napalm attack on her village is simply his interpretation of the actual event.  Therefore, in the absence of a written story the viewer will always be left wondering what has just happened, what is about to happen and what happened afterwards.  Even in photography where there is a strong element of description, a record of a time, thing or event the final image is nothing more than a suggestion where the viewer is required to fill in the gaps. 

 In fine art photography, when description is not the most critical element suggestion can be put to very powerful use.  Suggestion can rouse the senses. You can feel the texture of peeling paint or the bark of an old tree, the wetness of torrential rain or the cold of the snow.  You can hear the thunder of water as it leaps over a waterfall, the wind whistling through the branches of a tree, the silence of a world veiled with a blanket of fog.  You can smell and taste the food on a market stall or in a restaurant. 

Since suggestion is so important, just how much descriptive information does the photographer need to include in the images that he / she creates?  I think the challenge is to balance the visual elements that describe the scene with the non visual elements that allow the viewer to imagine, to wonder and to experience the feeling that the image imparts.  A few elements can tell a lot about a scene.  In my work simplification is important.  I work hard to create images that contain just the right amount of visual elements that a viewer can then take to explore their own feelings and create their own story.

Recently, Kenna was interviewed by Lenswork Magazine about his new work from the Huangshan Mountains in China, some of which Lenswork published in Edition 92 of both its print and CD based Extended versions.  A common feature in Kenna’s work is negative space, whether it be a white blanket of snow, a veil of fog surrounding a lone tree or the deep, black shadows of night time interrupted only by a sliver of light escaping from the open doorway of an ancient building.  To Kenna, negative space is where “one can loose oneself to ones imagination”. While the main subject in Kenna’s work is usually clearly evident the negative space surrounding the subject can mean different things to different people.   

Studying Kenna’s use of negative space has influenced my own work.  I try to use negative space to isolate the subject, simplify the composition, remove distracting elements and to create mystery.  After considering Kenna’s thoughts from the Lenswork interview I have to agree that in addition to these more tangible benefits, negative space can work on many other levels, some of which are not so tangible, obvious or so easy to explain.  Negative space not only focuses attention on the subject but also allows the viewer to ponder for a while, wondering what is hidden in the shadows, what is beyond the dense fog, what dangers lie beneath the surface of dead calm water.

My first attempts at “serious” photography were from a period of time when I lived in Puerto Rico.  I had taken up scuba diving and photography became a way for me to share the magnificent and colorful underwater world with friends and family back home.  It was during these early attempts that I started to realize that in addition to sharing what I saw photography could help me capture and share thoughts, feelings and experiences.  Further, while color photography could help me describe what I saw black and white photography could help me explain how I was feeling.  The latter became much more important as it occurred to me that this is what I really wanted to share. 

I hope you enjoy this audio interview.

B&W Magazine Interview – January 2011 - Click for Audio to play online in your browser, or feel free to Right Click and download to listen offline.

I have visited the conservatory on several occasions and on my way there I thought about how I could create something that was different to what I had done before.  Rather than creating images that would essentially be documentary records of the plants themselves I decided that I would focus more on details, particularly patterns, shapes and forms to see if I could create something that was more abstract.  Additionally, since the sky was very overcast I thought about how the flat lighting might help bring out textures.  I go through this same mental exercise each time when preparing for a photography trip.  Although some may argue that this approach restricts creativity it helps me stay focused, especially when I only have a short period of time in which to work.

The following are a selection of the images I created during this short trip.

However, it just didn’t look right.  I decided to leave it for a couple of days and come back to it.  I often do this when working on images if something just doesn’t seem right.  Looking at images from a different perspective or with a different mindset often helps me focus on what it is that I want the image to say.  It also helps me decide what, if anything, needs to be changed.  When looking at this particular image again I realized that the graffiti had interesting shapes.  I also realized that the contrast between the colors of the graffiti and the wall upon which it had been painted was what had caught my attention rather than the colors themselves.  I started to wonder if the image would work better if I could emphasize the shapes and use the contrast to focus attention on the shapes.  Since the color was no longer important I removed it. I felt much better with the resulting image.

Brassai.

 I make black and white photographs.  Obviously our world is a colorful one, but I look for scenes that include shapes, patterns and textures that render best in Black and White, emphasized by lighting that creates mood and atmosphere. 

As with any image, all of the elements that the photographer decides to include in the frame should work together.  Any distracting details should be removed, which I believe goes for color too.  Since my work is predominantly black and white, color is not an important part of what I am trying to create and therefore I remove it to prevent it from being a distraction.  Clearly though, there are situations where color is an important part of the subject, if not the subject itself.  Every once in a while I am presented with a scene where color is a very important element and therefore needs to be included in the final image.  Such was the case recently when I went on a field shot with some friends from the Baltimore Camera Club to the Susquehanna River in Northern Maryland.  We arrived before dawn with the intention of shooting ice patterns that form in the rock pools.  However, as the sun commenced it’s journey over the horizon the sky filled with the most amazing reds, oranges and purples, bathing the river and rocks in a warmth that was only challenged by the freezing temperatures.  In the few seconds that this scene existed I quickly swiveled my camera around to try and capture the moment.  The image included with this post is what I saw.  It simply wouldn’t have worked in black and white.

A lone tree clinging to a rocky overlook watches the water continue on its passage before it plunges into the abyss below.

Mist rises above the plunge pools, reaching for the clouds in the sky.  On a cold winters morning water droplets immediately freeze on whatever surface they rest, creating jewel like patterns.  The rising sunlight bounces around their inner surfaces, refracting light into it’s many wondrous colors. 

Huge stones, sculpted by water over millennia reveal natures own, slowly evolving artwork.  Gorges form as the rushing water punches it’s way through hard stone.  Its energy finally spent, slowing now to a trickle.  The sound of gurgling water is only interrupted by the singing of birds and an occasional splash as a fish lunges out of it’s habitat to capture a dragon fly, scurrying about the calm water surface. 

This is a magnificent place.

These images were taken at Great Falls National Park, Virginia.

Looking back my only regret is that I was not yet a photographer.  However, the things that I saw and felt are locked away in my memory.  Whenever I am out on my travels and see what looks like an old, abandoned power plant I yearn for the opportunity to take a trip inside with my camera to try and capture my memories.  Such was the case when I recently went on a photo shoot with fellow photographers Tony Sweet, Don Rosenberger, Karen Messick, Chuck Robinson, Don Vetter and Steve Harman to an old, abandoned distillery in Baltimore, which included an old power plant.  These images are a selection of what I took.  I feel a project in the making – now I just need to find more abandoned power plants in which I can loose myself to my memories.

• The subject itself,
• The angle of view, perspective and the use of line, shape, and form,
• The use of lighting, and
• Timing

In addition to photographs made by well known photographers I also used a lot of my own “before and after” images to help illustrate my points.  However, while looking at the images that I included in the earlier presentation I realized that my photography has moved on somewhat and most of the images were no longer representative of my current work.  Therefore I decided to rework the presentation quite a bit.  It was great fun, but it also turned out to be a tremendous learning opportunity for me. 

I am constantly trying to figure out ways to take my photography to the next level and since I am so close to my work it is sometimes difficult to determine whether or not I am actually moving forward.  I don’t exactly have a plan, which may be a part of the problem.  However, I aren’t really sure that I want to constrain myself to a particular plan.  I want my photography to grow with my vision and also with my ability to tap into my inner self.  However, by updating my presentation I was able to compare where my photography was a couple of years ago and where it is today.  I could see a definite shift.  This was very exciting and therefore as my New Years resolution I have decided to put some time aside at the end of each year and compare what I am doing at that point in time with what I have done before.  Unlike most other New Year resolutions that I have made, this is one that I am actually looking forward to doing.

I put together this short video with some of my images to open the show.  If you are using a mobile device and can’t see the video, then you can use this link to the video on my YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/aransomephoto?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/5ahjL5XAVRc

I have always loved street photography, but have never felt at ease shooting people.  Whenever I try it I feel that I spend too much time worrying that I might be getting in their way.  I admire the work of the greats, Cartier Bresson, Andre Kertesz and Brassai and am always in awe at not only how they managed to get such great shots but how they were seemingly able to have some kind of a relationship with their subjects, no matter how brief it might be.

Every once in a while I give it a go.  Recently I took a trip to New York City and decided to use that opportunity to do some street photography.  But this time, rather than worrying about photographing strangers and getting in their way I tried to keep in mind a few of the things that Steve Dembo suggested in his presentation.  In particular, his philosophy of becoming invisible, of not allowing your subject the opportunity to realize that he or she is being photographed thereby allowing them to act naturally.  I realized that this approach:

• Allowed me more time to think about the subject rather than worrying about my equipment and settings
• Gave me time to figure out ways to isolate the subject and remove distracting elements. 
• Gave me time to see something of the personality of the people I was photographing, even if only a small part.

I plan to work on the photographs that I took during that trip and hopefully use this particular experience to help me build confidence for future street photography opportunities.  This shot is one from the trip.

Wow. I remember thinking each to his or her own, but it certainly didn’t sound right.  I wanted to respond but by this time my brain and mouth were no longer synchronized and I couldn’t possibly come up with a coherent response.  Several days have passed since that discussion and I have thought about it somewhat.  I have come to the conclusion that although an iPhone App can indeed produce a “finished” image without much, or any user intervention this alone cannot take away the photographers identity. 

Ask any photographer to define his or her style and you will draw blanks, or at the very best, long pauses followed by mumbled, confused and, at most, irrational responses.  It is one of those intangible things that is almost impossible to describe, but somehow it carries the signature of the photographer.  Therefore, the photographer’s style must consist of a complex mix of things that is not based solely on what equipment is used, or any other individual thing for that matter.  In fact, one of the things I have found is that since the iPhone is so liberating I can actually spend more time creating final images that reflect my personal style.  I can’t describe what my style is but when I finish an image and it feels right then the image must contain some small part of me.  Therefore, as I have said in previous posts, it is not the equipment that defines style, but rather vision.  The camera and other equipment are simply tools that can be used to emphasize vision and therefore style.

By the way, the concept of producing instant images that cut out “user definable” post processing is not a new concept; Polaroid became a household name doing this very same thing in the 1970s.

The image included with this post was taken on the iPhone using the Hipstamatic App and includes some processing with the Filterstorm App.

Such was the case recently when I had to travel the metro system in Washington DC to attend a meeting for my “day job”.  I have a body of work on my website that includes photographs of the metro system in Washington DC, which I used to tell a story about my daily commute when I lived in London.  My story was a already told, but because I find the atmosphere of the underground so fascinating, I always take my camera with me.  You just never know what you are going to find in the world below street level.  And who knows, maybe one day when I look back at these additional photographs I may actually find other stories buried in there. 

The images included with this post are a selection of what I saw on that particular day.

While on my lunch break the other day I called in at my local book store to browse the magazines in the photography section.  In one of the more contemporary magazines there was an article entitled “Hipstamatic Makes Mistakes Look Damn Good”.  Hipstamatic is one of the photography apps that I use on my iPhone.  I have been shouting from the rooftops lately about how liberating the iPhone is and how it is an excellent tool to help me recreate my vision. Against my better judgement I read the article, albeit with one eyebrow raised….

I take great care in executing my photography.  I try hard to create compositions that are simple, correctly exposed and focused.  I try to use light, shape, form, texture, line, etc. etc. to add emphasis to the subject and atmosphere to the scene.  I do all of these things to help each image tell the story that I want it to tell.  However, based on the title of the article, apparently I need not try so hard.  I can allow myself to make mistakes and the images will still look good.  Better still, even if I didn’t know that I had made a mistake there is a damn good possibility that my images will still look good.  This magical software will somehow cleverly hide such mistakes. 

“What utter nonsense”, I said quietly to myself.  I then thought, “I don’t care what tool you use, a mistake is a mistake and a bad photograph is a bad photograph”.  This thought stayed with me for the rest of the day and so that evening I decided to poll an iphoneography group on Facebook that I am luckily a member of.  The responses made me think about this in quite a different way.  The following is a selection of what others had to say:

“It is easy to say it is the tools we use that makes us fantastic, wonderful, terrific, photographers. However it is how we use those tools with our eyes and heart that make us creative and able to take advantage of the mistakes we continually learn from.”

“And my $2,400 Taylor guitar makes me sound good too. It’s amazing how good my mistakes sound. Tongue firmly implanted in cheek”

“I have seen plenty of photos made with a $25 toy camera that look a whole lot better than the stuff I churn out with my camera gear that I would hate to put a value on, but it’s probably right up there with the national debt of a small Caribbean island……”

“A heavy weight was lifted off me when I gave myself permission to embrace my photographs as art! Of course they always were. Sadly though, since I was surrounded by the expectation of journalist images, it took some time to allow such creativity.”

“Very interesting thought, that we have to give ourselves “permission” to embrace our photography as art. As children we didn’t ask anyone for permission for our scribbling or random brush strokes to be accepted for anything. Somewhere along the way into adulthood it would seem that we get brainwashed into believing that we have to ask for such permission or acceptance. Imagine how creative we could be if we weren’t burdened with the idea that we might need to ask anyone (including ourselves) for such permission, especially if what we are doing is not in the mainstream. Why are folks (such as the editor of that article) reluctant to allow each and everyone of us to pursue our art without boundaries, irrespective of whether we take photographs with an iPhone or a $20,000 digital Hasselblad……”

“I once heard that if you are in a classroom of 1st graders and you ask, “Who can draw, paint and sing.” All their hands will go up. However if you go into a classroom of 7th graders and ask the same question, few if any hands go up. Of course all the 7th graders can draw, paint and sing, but sadly somewhere along the way they began to need “permission.”

“My brother was told by his elementary music teacher he could not sing. It took till he was in his 50′s to believe and then give himself permission to sing at Church. My mom was so angry with that teacher because he actually CAN sing!”

“I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.”

In reading the responses I realized that the discussion brought up another equally important question: whose place is to say that a mistake has been made and that an attempt has been made to cover up the bad photograph with some magical piece of software?  Just because a photograph doesn’t appeal to us or contains (in our mind) a mistake, aren’t we simply discounting what the maker considered to be his or her vision of the scene that was laid out in front of them?  Clearly we are all entitled to our opinions, but shouldn’t we at least accept what we consider to be mistakes, even if we don’t agree with them?  After all, as one person stated “…..fasten your seat belt…. the most remarkable things follow…”.

Here are some more “mistakes” that I have tried to cover up using the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone.  These were taken at the Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore.

Many serious and professional photographers have caught the bug.  However, for some reason several seem to be embarrassed to admit they have it.  Phrases such as “great fun” are routinely used to hide just how much of a grip the bug has taken hold.  But why raise a shield?  Is it some kind of an excuse?  Is it a way of saying “this isn’t what I do for my serious photography”?  Having spent small fortunes on “real” camera gear is it a way of justifying the expenditure?  Why would we not want to admit that this is a serious part of our photography?

I have heard people say that it isn’t “real” photography and therefore it cant be used to create art.  People are entitled to their opinion, irrespective of how narrow minded it might be.  I beg to differ though.  Art is not about the tools we carry but rather how we use them to recreate vision.  I don’t much care if a photograph was taken with the latest $7,000 full frame Leica M9, a  $50 toy camera, or the iPhone: if it creates impact and invokes a reaction then it has done it’s job.  Take a look at the work of Chase Jarvis (http://www.chasejarvis.com/) for example and then decide whether or not the iPhone can create art.  Art shouldn’t be discounted simply because of the tools that were used in its creation.  The more I think about it, doesn’t this argument sound familiar?  Isn’t this the same argument that “artists” used to discount photography as an art form when in it’s infancy?

The arguments will continue but one thing I am absolutely, positively sure about though is that the iPhone is liberating.  I carry my phone with me wherever I go.  It is never more than a few feet away from me, and therefore I always have a camera with me.  I have taken many pictures with my iPhone that I would never have taken otherwise, simply because I didn’t have my “proper” camera with me.

The following images were taken at Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore City using my iPhone with the Hipstamatic App….. Great fun!!!

The whole body of work can be seen on my website at:
http://www.aransomephoto.com/Forest%20Haven/Forest%20Haven.html

A video presentation of the whole body of work can also be seen on my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/aransomephoto

In making my decision I wondered why I had grown “tired” of the project.  I remember starting on it and in particular how excited I was.  It bothered me that I now felt differently about it.  In thinking through this I realized the following.

• When I started the project I never really set myself any goals with respect to when the project would be finished.  Consequently I didn’t have any targets.  It’s an old cliche but it is true that there is no greater motivator than having a target date by when to get something done.
• I never really decided what it was that I wanted to say with the project
• My thoughts and feelings regarding my photography have moved on
• The images that I want to create today and the things that I want to say are different than when I started on this particular project.

Today, whenever I start work on a photographic project I start out with an initial project statement that generally describes what the project is going to be about.  Usually the first draft is little more than a jumbled set of ideas and some thoughts about how and by when I am going to complete the project.  I will frequently revisit the project statement to refine it and also to see if it still stands true.  Tweaking is something I do often, especially as I become more familiar with the subject.  This process not only gives me direction in my work but it also keeps the project exciting.  It is no fun retiring a project.

The images that accompany this post are from the project that I have retired. 

When Polaroid announced that it was discontinuing production of PN 55 film I bought up every box that I could find and added it to my existing stock – most of which was already well out of date. Although the majority of my work uses digital processes I also enjoy working with a large format, film based system. Ironically, the Polaroid films still create finished images much quicker than a digital system.

The images that I worked on for this project used an integrated workflow that combined traditional, alternative and digital processes. I used my PN 55 negatives to create the cyanotypes on textured watercolor paper, which were then scanned before “finishing” digitally.

Who knows, one day I may revisit this project with the same passion that I had when I initially started work on it and pull it out of retirement.

Seriously though, I never throw away images.  Yes, during a shoot I pretty much know when I have totally screwed up an image and those I do throw away, but everything else I keep.  When uploaded to my computer hard drive the images are all key worded and archived and are then automatically backed up on my home network NAS drive.  I know, it sounds very anal – but if you have never lost a bunch of images to a hard drive failure then it just hasnt happened to you, yet.  Anyway, I digress.  Every image that I have ever uploaded to my computer during the past 4 or 5 years is still there.  Why?  Well I like to think that as I learn more about photography I will learn how to use tools (hardware and software) that will help me express my vision in the images that I create.  I will have also read more about photography and looked at many images, several of which will make me stop and wonder how and why it was made.   A couple of times a year I will go back through my image archives and almost every time I will see an image that will remind me of something that I have learned about in the intervening time.  I will then set to work creating something that I simply couldn’t have created at the time when I took the photograph. 

I was reminded of this recently when I read a blog post by a photographer whose work and philosophy regarding creativity I greatly admire.  John Barclay maintains a blog and a podcast and one of his recent podcasts was about various software tools that John uses and he was demonstrating how the tools can be used to give life to an ordinary, flat photograph.  I was astonished at the difference between the before and after.  Check out the podcast and you will see what I mean.  This inspired me greatly and since I have lots of “flat” images, John’s post forced me to go through my archive again to see if there was something that I could work on.  I didn’t have the same tools that John used in his Podcast but it was the idea that was important.  I used my tools to try and lift a subject out of an otherwise flat scene.  The blog image is what I came up with.  It has been sat on my hard drive for three or so years.

I have shot landscapes and nature, but I do not consider myself a nature photographer.  I have shot urban scenes, but I do not consider myself an architecture or urban landscape photographer.  I have shot people and street scenes, but I do not consider myself a journalist, documentary, street or portrait photographer.  I actually find such “labels” constraining in both an artistic and a creative sense.

But the more that I think about this, isn’t being called a “photographer” simply another label. How about “artist”?  Another label.  The fact is that we have each been labeled from the moment we were born and have continued to be labeled throughout our lives.  Labels are used to identify, group or categorize us and more often than not we do not identify ourselves precisely with the label we are given.  Therefore, although others may feel a need to put us into context by categorizing us, should we create labels for ourselves?  This, I think is the reason why I struggle to come up with a response to the question of what sort of photography I do.  I don’t want to label myself, let alone give give someone another opportunity to label me.  I feel that if I called myself a nature, architectural, urban landscape, portrait etc. etc. photographer I may start to believe that this is what I have to do, when the reality is that I don’t identify myself with any such labels.

The images included with this post are part of a body of work that I have been putting together during the past few years from around my  hometown in the Northeast of England, which can also be found on my website at http://www.aransomephoto.com/Teesside/Teesside.html

Technology has changed so much in the past century that such an amazing story would be a non event today.  A cheap two hour flight will get you from the mid west to where Pa walked over a period of several days.  It got me thinking about the changes in photography over the same period. 

During the past 15 years or so we have entered what we affectionately call “the digital revolution”.  But what does this really mean?  If you look at the equipment we are using in this time of “revolution” we are still using what looks like the 35mm SLR that has been with us for the past 60 years or so as well as medium format and large cameras for even longer.   The film back has been replaced with a digital capture device and we can now load (or scan) images directly into a computer, allowing us to dispense with the wet darkroom.  This has significantly sped up the whole process of capture to final image.  However, the ultimate goal of photography, to create images that convey a message, has not changed.  If all we have done is speed things up does this alone constitute a “revolution”?  In trying to find an answer to this question I think we need to go beyond just creating the image.  I think we also need to consider the tools that are now available to photographers to find an audience and to share images with that audience.  Back in the day photographers relied heavily on a network of contacts to get their work out there.  Images were shared with friends and relatives in person, at camera clubs, in books, magazines, newspapers, stock agencies and galleries.  You had to know who to talk to in order to get your work known.  Today, although photographers still rely on their network of contacts, the tools that are available to build up that network are phenomenal.  In addition to the more traditional tools,  photographers today also have on-line tools such as social media, blogs, podcasts, photo sharing sites, etc, etc. all of which when used effectively can drive traffic to a photographers website where his or her work is displayed in a virtual gallery. 

Although the paradigm remains – these tools are used to reach an audience – there has been a shift in the paradigm.  The audience still has to be reached, but today it can be reached much, much quicker.  A finished image can be published online and in the hands of the photographers [known and unknown] audience almost at the blink of an eye.  This, for me, is truly revolutionary. 

The photographer no longer has to walk 300 miles in old worn boots to achieve his or her goal.  However, we still need to remember that the goal will never come to us.

Recently, on a rainy Sunday afternoon my four year old daughter wanted to do some art work.  She wanted to paint and so we got out her paints, brushes and paper and she asked me what I wanted her to paint.  My early childhood art-class memory came flooding back to me and so I just told her to paint whatever she wanted.  She persisted and kept asking me for guidance.  However, I just sat back and told her to put whatever color paint she wanted on her brush and to put the brush to the paper and just to let her hand wander.  And she did.  She created something without any boundaries, and she loved it, and I loved watching her do it.  It gave me tremendous inspiration.  

I have Mrs. Bice to thank for my venture into photography.  If it wasn’t for her ignorance of the meaning of art I am not sure I would have realized (albeit almost 3 decades later) that I desperately needed an unstructured outlet to balance the structure in my everyday life.  Unfortunately my photography has not been totally free of falling into line with the accepted norm.  After picking up a “serious” camera for the first time I went through the phase of believing that photography was all about the equipment.  Almost every book or magazine I read told me that without good quality equipment I would not be able to make a decent photograph.   I just had to become an “expert” in the equipment (hardware and software) that I was using.  It was all about the technical.  However, although the learning excited me, I still wasn’t achieving a balance.  I had a yearning to be five years old again and just create something that would somehow tell my story of what and why something caught my attention and reproduce my feelings in a way that had no boundaries.   Unfortunately the dozens of Mrs. Bice that have been my “teachers” and “mentors” throughout my life have done their very best to help me suppress my creativity.  I have been taught to keep my creativity under wraps and instead produce something that would be accepted. 

And so, if I have Mrs. Bice to thank for my venture into photography, I have my four year old daughter to thank for making me realize that it’s not about the equipment, but rather it’s about creativity.  To create something that is not part of the accepted and established norm.  She has made me realize that creativity should never be put in a box.   

The images that accompany this blog are of my “mentor” and were created using my i-Phone, while my “normal” camera equipment stayed in the closet.

The island has been inhabited since the sixth century and in the eighth century the first monastery was established. Since then, there have been several modifications and additions to the monastery that make it into the marvel that it is today. An entire community has been constructed within the confines of the island, all to serve the needs of the monks that inhabit the monastery and also the pilgrims that came to visit.

Today, although the island is swarmed with visitors, especially during the summer months, they usually depart en masse when the high tide approaches, which is said to arrive “at the speed of a galloping horse”. Since the sea covers the causeway at high tide it cuts off the only means of access to the mainland, leaving any remaining visitors stranded for several hours. With a permanent population of only 50 or so people, when the masses depart you are presented with an ideal opportunity to experience the atmosphere of what it is like to live here. Early in the morning or late at night the silence is broken only by the subdued and eerie chanting of the monks as they attend their religious rituals.

I have visited Le Mont St Michel on only two occasions. During the first visit I was in awe of its magnificence and also the atmosphere that accompanied the sense of the place. On my second trip I wanted to take images that captured the simplicity of the complex structure in it’s isolated surrounding.

It was always exciting to see the flashing lights of the rides and hear the shrieks and screams of people as they were flung around at unbelievable speeds. The smell of different foods filling the warm night air is one of those childhood things that you always remember.

I envied the people who worked at the fair, they were able to spend a few nights at a given place and then move on to somewhere else. It was like they were chasing the sun, searching for an endless summer. As I got older the travelling fair stopped coming to my village and I couldn’t help but wonder if the workers had succeeded in their quest to find the endless summer, while the rest of us were left to prepare for the coming winter.

These images were taken at the Howard County Fair, about  a half hour drive west of Baltimore.

When faced with another week of 90+ degree temperatures and almost 100 percent humidity it is difficult to imagine that only a few short months ago we were shoveling almost 4 feet of snow from the driveway here in Baltimore. However, I often find myself looking forward to a change in seasons whenever the weather is either unbearably hot or unbelievably cold – and we certainly get these extremes in this part of the world. And so, recently my thoughts have been turning towards cooler times, which reminded me of a series of images that I took towards the end of last winter in Druid Hill Park, right here in Baltimore City. I had shot many of the trees here before and several of them are included in my Winter Trees portfolio. However, this time I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to create images that had more of a dreamlike feel to them, something that I could look back on at times like today to remind myself that a change is just around the corner.

Just how much luck do you need? Is there anything that you can do to influence luck? Although I have lost count of the number of times I have seen a terrific image and didn’t have my camera with me, there are other times when I try to pre-visualize a scene unfolding before me in the hope that a perfect moment will occur. More often than not nothing extraordinary happens, but every once in a while it does and the lucky part is being ready to capture it.

These two shots certainly fall into the category of pre-visualizing an event occurring and having a little luck on my side to capture them. Both are of my daughter. The first was taken at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. We decided to take her there after she told us she wanted to be an astronaut – she wanted to go into space one day to get the ballon that her baby sister had recently lost. I had a feeling she would climb onto to the handrail to take a closer look at the mural and I just hoped that if she did she would look up at the astronaut – to create a sense of dreaminess. The second was taken just recently when we were at the airport preparing to fly off on our annual vacation to Europe. We have flown several times with our daughters and each time we go to the airport our eldest climbs up onto this particular window that looks out across the runway. Sure enough she did it again on this most recent trip and I was ready with my camera.  I took several shots of her looking out of the window – I wanted to capture her silhouette in a neutral pose.

I like to think that although luck was on my side when I tripped the shutter to capture  each of these images, I was ready to capture the lucky (decisive) moment.

I hadn’t been out with my camera for a little while and was getting itchy fingers. I decided that since I could photograph the images that I was starting to create in my mind at home it would give me a good opportunity to use my camera. I am now slowly working through my collection of things. The images here are shot in natural light with the object placed on a piece of black felt, which just seems to suck in the light, creating a terrific contrast with the object itself.

When taking photographs I work hard not only to capture the image, but also to capture the experience and atmosphere. These are important elements of my work and I want to be sure they are included in the final image. Therefore I also need to be in the right frame of mind when I process the images. Unfortunately, processing the images doesn’t always occur immediately after, or in some cases any time soon after the photographs were taken.

I have lots of images that I have taken during photo shoots that I have just not started to process yet, simply because my frame of mind hasn’t been quite right to create the final look that I want to achieve.  In some cases the raw files can sit on my hard drive for many months before the time feels right to work with them. I usually know what I want the final images to look like when I make the exposures, but if I am not in the right frame of mind when processing them, the images loose some of what I tried to include when the photographs were taken. They feel flat. Being in the right frame of mind throughout helps me add dimension to the final images and create a certain feeling.

Once the images have been processed I need to spend time with them before I consider them complete. This is also an important part of my workflow. I need time to experience the images. I need to look at them often and see if they take me both to a  physical place and an emotional place. In other words, I try to make sure that the images not only remind me of the place but also the mood that the place imparted in me. Photographing the place is much easier to achieve than the mood. If an individual image or a group of images can emotionally return me to the place then I consider the work complete.  

By way of example, towards the end of last winter I took two trips to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. I had seen some amazing work by others and saw some opportunities that I wanted to explore. ESP was closed down in the early 1970s and efforts have been made in recent years to maintain it in an arrested state of decay. It is a massive place and the cold, hard stonework only added to a sense of confinement, isolation and desperation. I wanted to capture these feelings in the images that I took. However, the images have sat on my hard drive for several months and I have only just started to process them, mainly because I have been working other projects and I wanted to focus on the ESP project without distraction – I wanted to be in the right frame of mind. I have processed several images, and am now starting to “live with them”.

A while ago I started to hear a term that photographers use in the context of the “El Dorado” of photography. They call it “being in the zone”. This is in not the Zone System that Ansel Adams made famous, but apparently, you are in the zone when an alignment of circumstances occurs that allows you to focus entirely on creativity, which, when it happens flows freely and your vision is accurately reproduced in the images that you take.  Sounds exciting! However, I never heard how you know if you are in the zone  and therefore I was a little disappointed since I had no way of knowing if I had been or would ever be “in the zone” when taking my photographs.

This concept came back to me recently when I was preparing for a trip to photograph at Coney Island, NY. I knew that I was only going to be there for a long weekend and wanted to make the best of it that I could. I wanted to be “in the zone” when I was there and I figured that I could influence the “alignment of circumstances” by making some decisions that would help me. The following list is what I came up with.

1.    I wanted to experience the Coney Island that people call home all year round – not the Coney Island that visitors see for only a few short months each year. Therefore, I wanted to go in the winter months.

2.    I wanted to stay in Coney Island to maximize my experience of the sounds, smells and sights, with the hope that I would somehow use these in my images.

3.    Although I only had planned a long weekend, I wanted to be there for a sufficient amount of time that would allow me to go back to the same place again and again at different times of the day (or night) and in different weather or lighting situations.

4.    I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be responsible for myself and didn’t want to have to worry if anyone else was having a good time, if the weather was miserable what other plans would have to be made, meal arrangements, etc.

5.    I also wanted to take equipment with me that I was familiar with so that I wouldn’t be distracted with trying to figure out how to use my cameras features etc.

Well, as is often the case, even the best laid plans fail. The weather forecast for the weekend wasn’t good and true to its word I drove for 4 hours in torrential rain and winds gusting at over 75 mph. When I finally arrived I quickly discovered that there are no hotels in Coney Island and therefore I had to stay in the nearby Brighton Beach area. The rain didn’t let up for the rest of that day and the hotel that I was staying in actually swayed in the wind. It was miserable and I was feeling very sorry for myself that the few days that I was going to be there were going to be a total washout. After talking with my family back home that first night I felt very alone. I was ready to drive straight back home. But it was already late and I didn’t want to drive for another 4 hours in the rain and in the dark. So I decided to stay and set off back in the morning.  I awoke before day break and the winds had gone. The torrential rain had been replaced with drizzle and fog. I can photograph in this and so I decided not to beat such a hasty retreat back home. I set off at daybreak to see what I could find. Coney Island was deserted, except for a few diehards who were braving the forecasts of more wind and rain. I was still feeling a little disappointed, miserable and lonely. But I decided to make the best of it and so I pushed on. The morning quickly turned into afternoon and just as quickly into evening and I remember sitting alone in some rundown restaurant eating dinner thinking that although the day had gone by quickly I was pretty sure that I didn’t have much in the way of memorable shots.  Although this added to my disappointment it gave me sufficient motivation to sit it out for the next day and the day after that. But each evening, when reflecting on the day that had just passed, I continued to feel that I didn’t really have any good images to take back with me.

And so, when my 3 days were up I came back home and although I didn’t expect to have any good images I decided to download them and then over the next couple of weeks I slowly looked through them. And then it hit me. I noticed a pattern in my images, a theme. Although I had gone to Coney Island with some ideas about the subject matter that I wanted to capture there was something in the images that I had taken that reminded me of how I felt during my time there – the feeling of being alone. I realized that I had taken many images of other people, also being alone.

And so to me, being “in the zone” isn’t really so much about a feeling as it is about putting a piece of yourself into the images that you are making to express a feeling.

Coney Island embodies the American Dream for a few months each year.  During the winter months it slumbers in anticipation of the approaching summer.  There is a certain irony in that like the American Dream it requires a frequent injection of life to remove it from a suspended state.

But Coney Island is disappearing.  In recent years many of the attractions have closed and despite the efforts of many, what is left is slowly yielding to the developers wrecking ball.  I wanted to photograph Coney Island before the dream fades into distant memory.  But I didn’t want to photograph the Coney Island whose problems are suppressed during the few months of the year when those seeking an escape from their ordinary lives navigate the arterial network of the subway to bring the lifeblood that allows it to survive for another season.  Instead I wanted to photograph during the winter months and capture the preserved state of anticipation that exists during that time.