Fire In The Grove

Over the course of an average day I get to interact with a fair number of people. I go out for breakfast most mornings and the typical conversations about weather and politics (mostly local) occasionally give way to discussions about art. Who is showing where, “What is art?”, etc. It never fails when Photoshop is mentioned that someone says: “Hey, isn’t that cheating?”. I’ve even gotten that questions from fellow photographers. You know the ones I’m talking about. The sometimes self-righteous “film” photographers totally in love with the process of processing film and developing prints by hand that they haven’t created a memorable image in a decade. I guess every media has these folks but it seems photography has more than its share. They feel that using digital cameras and processing images in software on a computer is somehow “selling out” and not real. They feel that sending a carefully crafted image to an electronic printer can not be art.

I always wonder when talking to these folks if they feel this way because the digital photographers don’t suffer enough. I’ve suffered enough! I not only did the darkroom thing for myself for a bunch of years but, running a commercial lab, I did it for a lot of “them” too. The quality of art does not increase with suffering. That could be the quote of the day!

Advances in technology have been steady since the dawn of time. I wonder if cavemen accused other caveman-artists of cheating when they attached a stick to the rock so they could hold it better? Or what about when they started using their own blood to paint with? (Back to suffering?) Were painters accused of selling out when their paints and brushes became commercially available or were they better at their art because they made their own?

It’s true that the digital photo revolution happened pretty fast. Technological changes in general are happening faster all the time. I’m still trying to learn how to use my two year old phone! Photography enjoyed very few remarkable changes for quite a long time. From the advent of the roll-film camera to the next big thing; auto exposure and auto focus, nothing really changed much. There were a lot of years in there. Was auto focus cheating? Was auto exposure cheating? I don’t think they got accused of cheating because it took quite a while before they were good enough for reliable use. There was a period of suffering if you will. Digital cameras went through the same growing pains. So has the software. Believe me when I say there has been suffering along the digital way too.

Today it is relatively easier to create a photograph with greater technical precision than in times past. The auto focus and auto exposure parts of the process are pretty darn good. The camera’s automatic image processing is pretty good too. The photo printers available for a few hundred dollars will make prints that will last a lifetime and that look terrific. It’s never been easier to create a technically proficient photograph.

There are still a few things that the cameras can’t do. Neither can the computers or the software inside. They still can’t tell you what to point them at. They still can’t describe an emotional response to a scene that you’ve experienced. They can’t interpret or pre-visualize a landscape (or any other subject) in a way that will get viewers to say “Wow”. When the software engineers and camera designers can accomplish this feat then using digital cameras will be cheating and the camera artist will be irrelevant. Just because modern technology has put good quality photography into the hands of the masses doesn’t mean the camera artists are any less artistic. In fact, I would offer that technological improvements have raised the craft of photographic art to an all-time high. While it’s true that the capture of the image is easier and more reliable, the artist must still bring his vision to the process. There are still obstacles to overcome. CCD chips, internal and external software, lenses, cameras, printers etc. all have their individual idiosyncrasies which must be learned and either accepted or defeated by the artist to fully express his or her vision. It’s still difficult to create a two dimensional representation of an event or scene in a manner that will generate the same emotional response the artist had in mind. That’s what artists do. Technology, if anything, has provided artists with an even greater ability to express their vision. It’s also provided more ways to fail. I am happy to suffer at the computer instead of in a darkroom. I’m also happy to create images I can share worldwide instead of only in person. I’m thrilled to be able to print my color photographs on real paper instead of plastic. I’m thrilled that I can archive my images so they will live longer than I will. Now that’s progress! Now if I can just figure out what it is I’m trying to say………

Old mining truck in Colorado

In the past couple of years photographers have seen an overwhelming number of new digital tools and techniques for “enhancing” and manipulating their images. One of the most popular techniques is called High Dynamic Range photography. Most of you have seen images using this technique and most of its users are producing images similar to the one seen here.

Like most new things we have to play with this technique has been used too often and to poor effect far too much. But that’s the way of new tools. They are overused at first until the artists work through the mechanics and positive and negative effects of the tool. Only after playing with and exploring the tool for a while are we able to fully embrace the usefulness of the technique and understand when we should, and more importantly, when we should not use the tool. Like other photographers, I think its fun to play with.

As I’ve said before, I think most images need an incubation period where the artist comes back and looks at it repeatedly over a period of time before sharing it with the world. This incubation period helps me to view the photograph without being affected by the emotions present when the image was captured. It helps me to see the photograph the same way a viewer in a gallery would see the image. Most of my HDR images don’t stand this “test of time” very well. While they look pretty cool the first few times around they eventually just look strange and lose their coolness.

I think I have a few exceptions though. The image to the right is one.

Black Canyon Lupine

Sometimes the range of contrasts within a scene are far too great to create a printable image using traditional techniques. This was an even greater problem when we photographed with film. Today’s digital techniques provide much greater opportunities to create successful images than the “old days”. The most aggressive of these techniques is HDR and, as I stated earlier, usually gets out-of-hand. However, with patience and some practice, the technique can be controlled in a way to create an image that looks much more “normal”. These more normal looking photographs stand my “test of time” much better than those wild and crazy photos. The image at right was made in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Even though the park is only 100 miles from my home I don’t get to photograph in the summer there very often.

The color of the Lupine was amazing and I had to figure out how to save this image. The picture was made in the middle of the day with harsh and boring light. Direct light on the flowers was intolerably harsh and contrasty but when clouds came over they became too dark considering the direct light on the canyon wall and the distant clouds. What to do? I photographed a series of exposures from two f stops underexposed to two stops overexposed using a split neutral density filter to pull the exposure of the clouds in the distance down to a manageable level. The bracketed exposures were accomplished by changing the shutter speed, not the aperture. These were combined and blended in Photomatix software. The results were terrible! But I couldn’t give up. Through much experimenting with the many controls of the software I was able to create an image that captured the full tonal range in a way that could actually be printed.

I love to travel and discover the visual treats the world has to offer. Unfortunately, this often places me and my camera in an awsome location with mediocre light or at an unflattering time of day for the subject at hand. Good HDR technique can help provide interesting images when I can’t come back to a location at a better time of day or even time of year. By controlling difficult shadows and highlights this tool can save the day but like many of our digital solutions it can be overused. Like Vincent Versace says, Photoshop (and other software) should be used like an emery board, not a jack hammer.

Fall Fantasy Panorama

I must apologize for being absent for the past month. July and August are the only times of the year that I’m truly “busy” and when these months arrive I’m not as organized as I seem the rest of the year. Plus, when it’s warm and the weather is nice it’s tough for me to get excited about sitting at a computer with a picture window five feet away. Oh, and there was a week of teaching photography classes every day with the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival. So I’m not without my excuses!

But, here I am again. This weekend is the annual Crested Butte Festival of the Arts and I’m thrilled to be invited back to show and sell my photographs. Each year I try to show a few new images and the one above, “Fall Fantasy” is new this year. I have been reluctant to print this one because there isn’t a clear “subject” or focal point. I captured this scene last fall and after revisiting the photo over the winter and spring I’ve decided that I still like it despite its alleged shortcomings. Actually, it’s that “shortcoming” that I like. I’m trying to give myself permission to like some new approaches to old images. I have lots of photographs that don’t have a particular focus point or subject. Not all of them are necessarily successful. Some are. Over the years I’ve gotten away from printing these types of photographs for lots of reasons. Most of the reasons are purely commercial. That’s a problem! Not presenting an image simply for the reason that a gallery doesn’t have space or that an image wasn’t created using the same formula that my other images enjoyed is not a good enough reason to abandon new viewpoints. In fact, I think the opposite is true…within reason.

The fact that an artist has an apparent “style” may be reason enough for that artist to try something different. Our sanity demands it. Every experiment isn’t destined for success. But some are. If we don’t try new approaches and techniques we are doomed to become stale. Although there are lots of financially  successful “stale” artists most of us don’t set out down that path on purpose. God knows I haven’t achieved that level of “staleness” yet. And I hope I never do.

So, if you can, drop by booth 48C on Elk Avenue in downtown Crested Butte this weekend and support at least one artist trying to stay out of his “box”. Support doesn’t even require a purchase. But those are greatly appreciated. Here’s another new image just for tolerating my rant.

Fire In The Grove