Reflecting on Awards

Coaster Reflections is now at the Butler Institute of American Art's Midyear National Exhibition in Youngstown.  I still find it hard to believe it got into the show.  Receiving awards and being juried into shows is certainly validating, and also a lot of fun!  But the question is, why?  Why does one photograph get accolades while another, that seems to have similar qualities to me, is ignored?  

I think part of the answer lies in what the viewer, in this case a judge, brings to the table.  My first award was for a small print of an historic house.  Later, someone who knew the judge told me that his "thing" was lighting and that he had loved the way the image was back-lighted.  My award had nothing to do with the subject, just how it was lighted!  More recently, Reflecting (a study of masks) won an award from a judge who loves masks.  I understand these works have quality, but so do the other works submitted or entered into shows.  Something about an image reaches out and grabs the judge, and the artist has no way of knowing in advance what that will be.

The point of my ramblings is this.  I have been tempted to focus on trying to get into juried shows and win awards when I create images rather than creating them for myself.  I realize this is a false path.  My goal needs to continue to be to create images that move me.  If they move someone else, fine.  If not, fine.  I need to be true to myself and grow as an artist.  Okay, enough said.  I promise not to pontificate in my next post.

Creating Alternate Realities

As a photographer, I'm used to capturing reality by photographing what is.  I may present it from a different perspective through my choices of composition, exposure, lens, etc., but I'm still basically portraying what is. 

I also want to create new realities by modifying what is.  I prefer to do this "in camera" rather than using Photoshop so I recently tried a technique I had known about but never used; taking multiple exposures on the same image.  The idea is to slightly move the camera between exposures to make the subject less defined, thus creating an image that is more impressionistic or abstract.  The number of exposures, up to 10 on my camera, and the direction and degree of movement determine the results.

To be honest, I saw the technique in Tony  Sweet's Fine Art Nature Photography: Advanced Techniques and the Creative Process, a book that Lee had bought me some time ago when I guess I wasn't quite ready for it.  But when I looked at it again recently, I knew it was something I had to try.

The first photo is day lilies in my front yard.  The second is my next door neighbor's back yard.  Both have five exposures on the same image.  Lightroom was used to crop and modify color balance, which I did to focus the viewer's attention on the shapes and colors by making the subject less obvious.  I'm going to have to do more of this!

Hello!

Hi, welcome to my new blog.  After being gently nudged for some time by my wife (with a cattle prod), I finally decided to take the plunge and start a blog.  I guess Lee got tired of my constant blathering about photography and figured this would redirect me to the web, where I could ramble on and nobody would have to pay attention.  So here I am!

The photograph at the top of the page is our dog, Winston, with a new friend.  Winston is an old guy of 16 who still has a zest for life.  He was in our back yard the other day when I noticed him looking at something very intently and wagging his tail.  It was this baby robin.  Putting Winston back in the house, I ran upstairs and grabbed my camera.  After taking a few shots of the robin alone, I let the dog back outside and took this picture.  Immediately afterward, the mother robin squawked and the baby flew away.  Winston is the gentlest dog I have ever known.  Until she died last year, his best friend was a cat named Sabina.

Last Friday, I met my friend Dick downtown for lunch.  Leaving early, I stopped by Cleveland's industrial area, the Flats, to take pictures.  My favorite is Escher's Stairway, taken with my Nikon D200 modified to capture infrared light.  I decided not to convert it to black & white as I thought the red color was kind of cool.  It's a closeup of a curved stairway going up a large storage tank.  Taken in bright morning sunlight, I found the shadows very interesting.  Even though I know what it is, I find it difficult to see it that way.  The shadows often become stairs to me, or I can see some of them as shadows and others as stairs at the same time in different parts of the image.  Very confusing.  I have always enjoyed Escher's work so I named it after him as the photograph could not be the way I often see it.

Well, this ends my first post.  The good news is that I finally have a blog.  The bad news (for Lee) is that I'm still going to blather endlessly about photography.  Hope any of you who stumbled onto this site enjoyed it.