The Digital Photographer’s World

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I love post processing. In fact, I find it as stimulating and exciting as being out in the field…sometimes more so. Post processing is where the magic comes out, and I have long since lost track of how many flat, lifeless images have come off my data card that I had no hope of salvaging. The way the story goes, I often find myself revisiting a shoot months—sometimes years—after the fact, and suddenly see something that leads me to jump into the Develop panel. There, I will frequently have a vision of a finished image that I simply couldn’t visualize at the time of the shoot. Time has a way of altering our perspectives.

In this blog, I want to explore my fascination with photography, and I hope to have your input along the way. I’ll use this venue as a way to gush over images I find that I love, maybe even my own. Other times, I’ll grouse about some of the trendy trends that blow through the photography world like winter storms that sweep off the Pacific and blast the northwest coast.

I’m sure I’ll repeat myself many times, and one topic I know will come up will over and over will be the blessing and curse that the current state of digital photography presents us. In a world where “everyone is a photographer” (see the 1/19/2021 post), photo curators are swimming in a sea of content, and to my eye, 80% is mediocre at best, and while poor composition is one thing, post processing explains the majority of these images. That’s the curse part; “everyone’s a photographer”, even those who don't know what they’re doing or just have bad taste. It’s a real thing.

The blessing is that we’ve gone way past what film can do. Way past. The film photographer icons of the early and mid 20th century would marvel at what we can do to an image today. A whole new paradigm of art has been unleashed and some of it steals my breath.

So that’s what I want to do with this forum. Until next time…

And so We Begin…

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I’m not surprised that 2020 caused a new low for me regarding the human species.  While there is beauty to be found around every corner if we only just look closely enough, I cannot rest easy knowing there is so much malicious intent and hurtful behavior.  How can a species so demonstrably brilliant also be capable of so much destruction and hate?  In this context, I often ponder why I do photography—how can it possibly matter against a backdrop of so much global chaos?

As if that thinking isn’t gloomy enough, there are other headwinds to face. An owner of a local art gallery once said to me, when I inquired why she’s displayed no photography in all the years I’ve been visiting the gallery, “Everyone’s a photographer”.  Her glib response implied that a.) she does not appreciate photography as a valid art form, and b.) since everyone has a relatively decent camera at almost all times, there is little appetite for viewing, let alone purchasing, photographs.  With art curators like that, who needs critics?

Not one to lean heavily on resolutions for the new year, I do intend to make 2021 a pivotal year in this work I so obsessively pursue.  I feel the clock ticking, and though I do not have a complete idea of what I want to do with this work, I simply know I am driven to keep producing.  It would be a delight to generate income from the relentlessness of it all.

Art, and photography in particular, has brought me comfort my entire life, even though I didn’t realize it for decades.  I spend incalculable hours poring through photo social media, weeding out the often prolific mediocrity, seeking the images that have been tinkered with for countless hours to “get it right”.  I know I’ve found one when I involuntarily exclaim out loud to myself—I can’t help it; that’s what good art does.  I have a visceral appreciation of the risks and dangers involved with photographing the outdoor world.

Just like everyone else, I have no idea where any of this life is going, or what kind of calamity or rapturous celebration is lurking around the corner.  But I do know that my aim moving forward will be to focus on my refining my art, no matter why I do this.  I hope this work touches you somewhere inside, even if you may not know exactly why.  I hope that it might cause you to exclaim involuntarily to yourself—even if you can’t help it.

Happy 2021 social media mavens!  Let the future, finally, bring more justice, more joy, and more preservation of this wonderful planet that holds us so tightly.