The Bertie Project

Visual Narratives - a workshop with Susan Burnstine

2011-12-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

"A great photograph is a search for meaning. It asks questions that lead to a lot of other questions."

And so started a weekend adventure in identifying personal inspirations and motivations for the twelve photographers in Susan Burnstine's workshop Visual Narratives given this weekend at Lúz Gallery. In many ways, that lead statement was prophetic for the work we did in this class, because to make great photographs really requires that an artist understands what meaning they are searching for and that they are most strongly connected to. And finding out what that is for each individual involves asking questions that in turn lead to many more questions. It involves looking at each person's work and asking questions that dig deeper and deeper for meaningful answers.

If that sounds intimidating and raw, the kind of deep introspection that you've avoided because it makes you uncomfortable and wiggly, you're getting the right idea. It's the magic of Susan and the workshop that she's developed that you will, with her guidance and the help of your fellow workshop students, drill down and find true understanding of what you are strongly drawn to, what meaning that has for you, and how that informs the work you've done and can even more strongly inform the work that will come.

I think it's fair to say that for all of us the realization at the beginning of the workshop that this was what was in store for us was at least somewhat frightening (or a whole lot of frightening). Through careful structuring of the progression of activities in the workshop, and by being very open, genuine, caring and quietly relentless, Susan helped guide us through this daunting task. Sure there was some resistance, sure there were a few tears, but there was also a lot of laughter and good will shared by all of us, and that sense of going through something together that made for an incredible experience from which each of us will grow as artists.

I find myself reluctant to talk about the process we went through during the workshop, not because it was so traumatic (it wasn't). Although we all did the same exercises, there was enough attention given to the specific needs of each individual during those exercises that each of our experiences was unique. This was not a cookie-cutter, "one size fits all" workshop - each participant was given the time, energy and level of inquiry that was appropriate for where they are in their development as an artist. Each person had the support and help of all the other participants during each stage of the workshop. It was an incredible group of people from diverse backgrounds who contributed an astonishing array of information and insight as we talked about the current work each person showed.

In my own case, I feel that I left the workshop with a greater understanding of what is driving my photography, what deep meaning I'm connecting to and searching for in my images. I learned a great deal about how key inspirations are the foundation upon which I have, and can continue to build my own visual language. With Susan's help, I identified some key words that succinctly connect me to that deeper meaning of my work, that I can use as cues when going on to make more images. There were also suggestions from Susan of other artists that will act as further inspirations more closely related to the deeper meaning that informs my work. We were also introduced to the work of some of the most important storytellers amongst current contemporary photographers that will serve as a reference from which we can draw wisdom and inspiration for some time to come.

I have to admit that I don't feel what I've written comes close to doing justice to how great this workshop was. I've found it difficult to put into words what this experience has meant for me. I can say that as a teacher myself, I was in awe of Susan's unwavering commitment to each of the students, her generosity in sharing her experiences and knowledge, her discerning eye and ear and the empathy she had for each person during the process. If you have the chance to take a workshop with Susan, don't hesitate for a second. It will definitely change your life as an artist in the best possible way.

Another important factor in the success of the weekend was the wonderful environment created by the fine people at Lúz Gallery. Quinton, Melissa and Tom made sure the workshop ran smoothly and were wonderful company during the weekend. I've been quite fortunate this year to take four outstanding workshops at Lúz - wet plate with Joni Sternbach, photopolymer gravure with Don Messec, marketing with Lauren Henkin and now visual narrative with Susan Burnstine. Each workshop lead by not just a knowledgeable expert, but also an outstanding teacher who offered an outstanding experience. Thank you Quinton and Diana for your vision in bringing such consistently high quality workshops to my little town, and thank you to Melissa and Tom for helping to create that welcoming environment.

Influences and Inspiration

2011-11-30T16:45:00.001-08:00

I'm going to be taking a workshop at Lúz Gallery this weekend entitled "Visual Narratives", given by Susan Burnstine. In preparation for the workshop, we were asked to put together the following: a series of 10-20 images to discuss in the context of visual narratives, an image that best represents ourself (!), and one or more images that inspire us. I don't know how the other participants are finding the preparations, but at first I was a bit stumped by the second and third items. It took a while for me to realize which image best represents myself, and as I thought about inspiration I started to think outside photography. In this post I'm going to share some nascent thoughts on how artists working in mediums other than photography have influenced and inspired the work I do (and aspire to do) in photography.

Helen Frankenthaler

"Message from Degas"

I have long been a fan of Frankenthaler's work in etching and lithography. I picked this image because I learned a lot from it about proportions within space, the use of fine line to create contrast to large masses in a way that activates the composition, and most importantly that rules must sometimes be broken for the sake of composition. In this image, there is a large mass of darkness coming from the top of the frame. Our natural inclination (and one of the "sacrosanct" rules of composition) is to place such a large, dark mass at the bottom to "ground" the image. Sticking to the rules would not have produced such a strong, compelling work and would have decreased the sense of flow we feel in the yellow ground.

"Sill life with carp" E. Manet "To e.m." H. Frankenthaler

In the work on the right, Frankenthaler used the colour palette of Manet's still life, but she broke down Manet's composition to its most fundamental base - the distribution of colours and tones, thus transforming the classical still life into something far more emotional. This type of transformation is something I strive to produce in my photographic work.

Pat Steir

Starry Night: August

I've taken away several lessons from the prints and paintings of Pat Steir. If you look at this image, you can sense that it continues beyond the confines of the frame, which engages your imagination as you actively "fill out" the image. I learned that you can have an image that uses mostly dark tones with bright highlights in a way that doesn't feel high contrast but convinces you that you are looking at a normal scene with a full tonal range. The pattern in this image is random, but reads as if there is an order to it, one that can be discerned with further consideration. I also like the light pattern on dark because it makes me aware of the patterns of lichen and erosion on the coastal rocks where I live.

Richard Diebenkorn

"Cityscape"

"Ocean Park"

I've learned a lot from Diebenkorn about geometry in the landscape, how it can be used to create effective compositions (e.g. Cityscape), and not to fear having a large open space within a composition. Look at that huge expanse of blue in Ocean Park and imagine creating a photographic composition that crowds the contrasting elements into a small part of the overall image. When you look further, you realize this isn't minimalist to the point that we have basically a horizon line that fails to meet the "rule of thirds", but otherwise divides the space into two bands of tone - this composition contains several geometric and colour elements within that thin band at the top, that counterbalance the huge expanse of blue and are bold enough to hold our attention.

Gerhard Richter

"Drawing, 1999"

Drawings like these by Richter have taught me a lot about the importance of placing elements within a composition, about the importance of how the elements relate to each other, and about how information is transmitted to the viewer by these elements. Looking at this drawing, I can easily see a marsh scene, the shore with grass on the left, reeds in the water on the right. Looking at this makes me realize that artistic intent doesn't have to be sacrificed for clarity; the viewer can extrapolate from partially visible elements in either a dark or high key image to interpret the scene portrayed. Looking at this drawing makes me think of images of blade of grass in fields of snow made by Harry Callahan.

"Hanged"

Richter is famous for his blurred, photorealistic paintings. This one is made from a newspaper photo of the body of Gudrun Ensslin, a founder of the Red Army Faction, who hanged herself in prison. For me, the blurring represents a truth about photography - that it can never convey the absolute truth. Of all the visual arts, we turn to photography as the purveyor of unvarnished fact. Yet it can never fulfill that role - the person who took the photograph has made decisions about composition and lighting that blur the facts, at least a little bit. The facts are blurred further by the viewer, who rarely looks upon an image in a completely dispassionate way, but brings interpretation and opinion to that viewing. Again, there is a slight distortion of fact. Add onto that the collected viewing by many people and the resulting polarization of opinions about the image, and then the truth is blurred further, just as Richter has shown in this painting. I find this idea freeing, because I don't have to feel that as a photographer I'm constrained to make images that are completely representative of a set of facts that are before me. I can be free to interpret what I see and make art rather than just a photographic record of facts.

Richard Serra

"Sequence"

"One Ton Prop (House of Cards)"

I've learned a lot from the sculpture of Richard Serra about how objects not only occupy space, but also define space. The lines defined by the edges of the materials that he uses have made me look for edges and lines that "draw" objects and spaces in my photographic compositions. Serra also draws and makes prints, and it's interesting to see how he visualizes the transition of his three dimensional ideas to the two dimensional medium of drawing, just a photographer must visualize representing the three dimensional world in a flat object:

"Splines"

Edoardo Chillida

"Euzkadi V"

"Gravitation"

Chillida is another sculptor who also worked in drawing and printmaking. When I look at his work, I'm inspired to consider how I will produce the final work from my photographic practice. In the Euzkadi print, it is interesting to consider how he placed the image on the paper, how those decisions become part of the composition and define a larger space. In Gravitation, materials are layered, with cut outs to define space and spatial relationships as well as mark-making to distinguish different compositional elements. This work inspires me to question whether photographs must be a single layer (I'm not thinking of Photoshop here), what might be gained by combining different materials, using cutouts to reveal only parts of an image. There's also many things to take away from this work in thinking about making artist's books.

IMPRINT: Opening from within

2011-11-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

I was at the opening of the show IMPRINT at Lúz Gallery thisafternoon. Here are some of the comments people shared with me:

“I love the way theimages relate to each other.”

“The work has a reallycohesive quality, a real strength.”

“There’s a great flowto this show.”

You might be thinking from those comments that IMPRINT is asolo show. It consists of the work of eight photographers who are, in the wordsof the gallery owners “artists who have made a lastingimpression on us during the last 12-months.” A group show with such flow andcohesiveness it gives the impression of being a solo show? Yes, thanks to theskill and talent of the curator, Diana Millar. I am very fortunate to be one ofthe artists included in this show.

Millar and her partner Quinton Gordon are consistentlypresenting work at Lúz Gallery with the intention of not only puttingoutstanding photography before viewers, but doing so in a way that transformshow people think about photography. As someone else said to me at the opening:

“I always love comingto this gallery, (and I apologize if this seems like a backhanded compliment),because I know what I’m going to see is art, not just photography.”

In putting together a group show that has a sense ofcohesiveness with high visual impact, a talented curator like Millar must bringtogether several elements. The first important one is image selection, lookingover the work of the different artists and selecting the strongest images fromeach. At some point in this process, consideration has to be given to how theimages from different artists might relate to each other, although subjects,process and visual approaches are going to differ. Eventually this leads todesigning the show itself, planning how works will be hung in the gallery spaceto create a natural visual flow that creates that sense of cohesiveness.

In the case of IMPRINT, Diana successfully brought togetherthe dreamscape images of Susan Burnstine, panoramic views of seashore and skyby Karen Curry and abstract light sketches by Gillian Lindsay in one physicalzone of the gallery. From this description it might not seem that these imageswould relate to each other, but they share a lyrical quality and give theviewer a sense of passing from a internal view (dreamscape) to the externalview (panoramic widescreen) to an almost subconscious view of the abstractlight patterns. What I loved about this grouping of images was the way itinvites inquiry – as a viewer you sense the flow and relationship between theworks of these three artists before you can articulate why that flow exists.

The role of process in Gillian Lindsay’s work provides anice bridge to the second zone created by Millar within the gallery space,where lumen prints from my series Taxonomy were hung along with the Surflandseries of wet plate collodion tintypes by Joni Sternbach, the Polaroid imagesof Sea Life by David Ellingsen, the hand annotated landscape images ofLyndia Terre, the soft focus images of a fishing village by Jan Gates and theMile Zero images by Quinton Gordon. Once again there is a nice flow andinterplay between these diverse works, with an underlying link ofdocumentation: of plants (Taxonomy), a closed culture (Surfland), biodiversity(Sea Life), mapping the landscape (Terre), of a disappearing culture(fishing village), and of the daily landscape (Mile Zero). Although thedifferent processes used were quite diverse, from one to the next there wasalways at least one shared characteristic, which leads the viewer not only toconnect process to process, but also to think about how each subject matter isbest served by one process over others.

Usually openings are mainly social events held in the darkof night, where friends and family come to support the artist(s). They arecharacterized by being overcrowded, making viewing of the actual workdifficult. Most of the time people stand in groups chatting, their backs to theart work. This afternoon’s opening was a welcome change from this norm. Held ona sunny afternoon, the work was shown to its best advantage under naturallight. There was a steady flow of people, and while there was socializing forsure, I noticed that a lot of people looked carefully at the work, talked aboutit, considered it, and then went back two or three times to look again. Thestrength of the work drew them in the first time, but it was Diana’s excellentwork as curator that created the flow and cohesiveness that brought them backto consider further the work again.

Check back with the Lúz Gallery website for photos of theinstallation and opening. I apologize for not including any here, but from thestart of the opening to the finish, I was completely immersed in the experienceand gave no thought to taking photos myself. It is a deeply engrossing show –if you are in Victoria or can find a way to get over before December 22^nd,I hope you will come and see the work.

Stepping into the Abyss

2011-11-12T14:30:00.001-08:00

Last night I listened at Lúz Gallery to an artisttalk by photographer Dan Milnor, that was very personal, very insightful andvery thought provoking. It was as much about his journey as an artist as it wasabout the art that he’s made, a journey that has caused him to questioneverything he thought he knew about being a photographer.

Milnor had a successful career as acommercial and fine art photographer, when around fifteen years ago he becametired of the demands of commercial photography and took a job with Kodak. Thejob required him to sign a non-competition agreement, and in return as a Kodakemployee Milnor had access to as much film and processing as he wanted topursue his personal photographic projects outside of work. Released from clientdemands, his personal photography took off and he had the freedom to planspecific long-term projects that sometimes took years to complete. The talkbegan with a slide show of work from a project on the Easter pageants in remotevillages in Sicily. Paired with haunting music, the images had power andstrength. This project, and others he undertook in the same time period werevery focused and planned, with the intention of generating images forexhibitions and potentially books. At the end of his fifth year of working forKodak, Milnor had amassed several bodies of work that impressed otheraccomplished photographers. At this point Dan had an epiphany, equating thefreedom he had from working for clients with the ability to focus on andproduce excellent personal work. Having had that epiphany, Milnor left Kodakand once again became a commercial photographer.

Ten years later, Milnor sensedsomething missing. The first hint was a decision to visit a friend in Panamaand to take some pictures, but to just take “snapshots” rather than doing aspecific, focused and well planned project. He found the experience somewhatsurreal, in the sense that he was more aware of all that was around him, and hemade images of whatever attracted his attention. It went against the grain ofhow he’d worked before, and how he’d been trained to work and to think aboutmaking photographs. After the trip, Milnor edited his images and created a bookusing the print-on-demand service Blurb. Another part of the puzzle to hisgrowing unease with his commercial photography career came one day while he wasat home, watching planes take off from John Wayne Airport. He was thinking howhe should be on one of those planes, going somewhere else to make photographs,when he realized that a decent photographer should be able to make good imageswherever they are, including at home. Thus began the project “Homework”,defined only by restrictions on locale and how many exposures on film he wouldmake at any given time. The resulting images are abstract, raw and very engagingand again he self-published them as a book for his own reference, consideringthe images as something of meaning only to himself. It was during a visit to alocal art broker to deliver work from another series that he learned to hissurprise that the Homework images were ones that the broker felt would be easyto place with clients.

So these two personal projectsdeveloped more organically, with virtually no planning compared to his previouspersonal projects. Dan had really not planned a specific outcome for the work,nor did he necessarily see it as having the wider artistic appeal of his morefocused work like the images from the Sicily project. I think one might be ableto describe these last two projects, and how they worked out, as a second epiphanyof sorts as Milnor continued to consider the impact of being a commercialphotographer. It was at this point that the offer of a full-time position asPhotographer at Large with Blurb dovetailed with a decision to once again stopbeing a commercial photographer.

Dan turned his attention to hisabiding interest in the “wild west”. He grew up on a ranch in Wyoming, and hasbeen fascinated with the remaining vestiges of the past history of the frontierethos that exists today in states like New Mexico. His current working projectis “The New Mexico Project”, and it started out as a planned, focused projectin two parts, the first being “Wildness”. After working on the project forawhile, Milnor was driving from LA to New Mexico, his mind filled with ideasand thoughts about how the project was developing, how to pull images togetherfor an exhibition or book, when he realized that he had been passing through aninteresting landscape that he was completely ignoring. He reflected on the factthat the Panama and Homework projects, lacking such specific focus, had allowedhim to be much more aware of everything around him at any given moment. Thisrealization lead to the third and final of his epiphanies, and it was the onethat caused Milnor to turn his back on the concerns of the photographicestablishment with respect to what defines a project and what are the desiredoutcomes of a project. It also completed a long, slow process by which Milnorunlearned the patterns of thinking that go along with those concerns.

This was the point where I feltthat I was no longer listening to a great, articulate artist’s talk, I waslistening to something unique and very special. Because Dan Milnor, after yearsof being a successful photographer by just about anyone’s standards, threw outeverything he knew about being a successful photographer and asked himself thecritical question “What does photography really mean to me personally?” It wasat this key point that the lessons learned from the Panama and Homeworkprojects came together to change the direction of the New Mexico project.

Milnor found himself in northernNew Mexico where he slowly worked at being accepted in a small town that didn’tsee many gringos. He began photographing the farmers and then other members ofthe town, some who have never been photographed, and have never held aphotographic print in their hands. He wasn’t sure what the outcome of theproject would be, but he realized that the people the project was arguably mostimportant to would be the least likely to see the finished work – that is,those he was photographing. His sole concern about the outcome of this project ishow he can engage the subjects of this project with the work itself. Dan wouldlike them to be able to see and interact with the work, and to contribute theirthoughts and impressions on what it being photographed means to them. This is aproject outcome that lies well outside the understanding of the currentphotography world.

Dan described how he’d photographeda farmer who had never had his photograph taken before, who had never used acomputer. The farmer’s wife showed him his photograph by lifting the lid of thelaptop, where the first thing he ever saw on a computer was a photograph ofhimself. In this day and age of “Photography 2.0 on the Web” etc, it’s almostunimaginable. It’s not difficult to see a parallel between a subject seeing animage of himself for the very first time, and a photographer who has walkedaway from one understanding of what photography means to search for a differentunderstanding.

I sense that Milnor’s desire tohear from his subjects about their experiences of being photographed and howhaving prints of their images has brought that experience into their lives, istied into his own query about what photography, and being a photographer, meansto him. It’s a shared journey between photographer and subject, a way to deepenfurther the engagement between the two. By approaching this project in acompletely unstructured way, with no particular destination in mind, Milnor hastaken the proverbial leap of faith, and stepped off into the abyss.

In one of those odd quirks ofsynchronicity, this morning I started reading a book that’s been on mynightstand for a while. It’s “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit.In the very first essay, Solnit writes “Leave the door open for the unknown,the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, whereyou yourself came from, and where you will go.” She goes on to recount anexperience she had while giving a workshop, when a student came to her with aquote from the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno “How will you go about findingthat thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” Solnit goes on towrite that “it is the job of artists to open doors and invite prophesies, theunknown, the unfamiliar; it’s where their work comes from…”

It’s not easy to leave thecomfort zone, to stop turning the crank making work that is on the surfacesuccessful, but which has perhaps lost significance or meaning for the maker.Yet as Solnit writes, that is exactly what the job of the artist is, and it wasa singular privilege to hear Dan Milnor talk so honestly about how that journeyhas transpired for him.

Liberation

2011-10-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

Today I'm writing about liberation - from the tyranny of a bad back, from the tyranny of always having to have a reason or plan to make photographs and from the tyranny of self-contained compositions.

Today was the first time in a couple of weeks that I've been out and about in the forest after I seriously put my back out. It was glorious to be back outdoors, walking comfortably and seeing things with fresh eyes.

There have been plenty of times that I plan to go walking the trails, and find myself leaving the house hours later than I had intended. So often the delay is related to trying to decide which camera(s) I want to take with me to which location(s); deciding between digital or film or both; black and white or colour; etc etc. This morning I felt a strong urge to shoot some film, but I had a stronger desire to get out and it was liberating to just grab my little Canon compact digital camera. More important to get out walking with any camera than get frustrated by having to make decisions. And the choice was perfect for the purpose - I didn't have a specific plan in mind for what images I wanted to make, rather I just wanted to be able to document my enjoyment of the walk as it unfolded. I think this represents the most basic, fundamental motivation I have for making images - to help me record what I see and by doing so sharpen my eye to what is right before me.

Before I went out to the forest, I stopped in at Lúz Gallery to visit with my friends Diana and Quinton, with whom I've had many enlightening conversations about art. I enjoy these visits for many reasons; it's refreshing to see photographs that are physical objects, to consider the choices the artists have made with respect to size, materials, presentation and to consider why some images are more compelling than others. While talking with Diana and Quinton today, we shared a number of ideas about composition as it comes into play with single images, series of images, and book design.

In many ways, I'm glad that I did not return to photography as a medium of expression before first taking detours through papermaking, printmaking, painting and drawing. Every step of the way I learned valuable lessons about composition. One key idea that I always keep in mind is that the image should not be composed so that everything is within the frame but rather it should be composed to give the sense that the image continues beyond the confines of the frame. In most instances I want the viewer of my images to start somewhere within the frame, and follow the visual cues to the edges of the frame and then beyond the frame. Requiring the use of the viewer's imagination to complete the image beyond the frame results in a level of engagement with the image and an expanded experience of the photograph. Thinking about this now, I understand why I often make square images - without the cue of a "landscape" or "portrait" orientation of the rectangular frame, there's less chance that the image will be constrained by the frame itself, and less chance that the viewer's imagination will in turn be constrained.

Night Rituals

2011-10-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking quite a lot lately about my affinity for the landscape, one that I formed at a very early age. As a child I spent many summer days on my own exploring nearby woods, fields, ponds and streams completely at ease with my solitude. I seemed to find little spaces that were interesting and comforting, and to this day when I go out to photograph the landscape I rarely look for the big vistas, but continue to seek out these small, intimate spaces.

So as I went out for a walk this evening, I took my point and shoot just to exercise the creative muscle. At first I had the intention of making some motion abstracts down by the sea (and I did subsequently do that). But as I was walking along, I began to think of how my interest in small, intimate spaces in the woods might be expressed on a walk in the neighbourhood.

And so I kept my eyes and mind open to little spaces with a faint glow of light. As the winter draws near and nightfall comes earlier, walking in the evening is really all about that interplay between the somewhat cold, depressing darkness and the comforting light that peeks into shadows and comes as a glow from the windows of the homes.

So there I was, walking and looking - around, down and up - making images in the fading light as best I could. I like what these images say about the neighbourhood this evening and how well they reflect my experiences on that walk.

New directions (no, I have not joined the glee club!)

2011-09-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

For the past couple of years, when I've gone out to the local forests and beaches to make images, I almost always carried a Holga or (original) Diana camera with me if I was intending to expose some film. Like many before me, I became enamoured with toy cameras, slowly acquired a few different ones, hung out at toycamera.com and subscribed to LightLeaks magazine. I found fellow enthusiasts at sites like Flickr, devised a few modifications of my toy cameras, submitted images to "plastic lens" shows and life was fine in the blurry world.

It took me a while to figure out how using toy cameras would fit into my photography practice, and eventually I created two bodies of work that combined narrative with landscape. One is "That summer at the lake", which I discussed in a recent post. The other is "My beloved rises from her sleep" in which the images stood as metaphors for lines from the poem of Mahmoud Darwish. I also have in my flat files a couple of nascent series of toy camera images from the local oceanic coast, and I'm in the (slow) process of turning some Holga images I took last fall in San Francisco into a zine.

I remember her reflection in the early days,

when lightning crowned her forehead

from the series "My beloved rises from her sleep"

But recently I've been thinking about trade-offs. While I feel I used the toy cameras effectively in creating these narrative streams, I've also come to realize that this aesthetic adds another layer between me and my experience of that moment as it also does for the viewer. While the toy camera creates a sense of a dream-like or memory state it also distances the viewer from the actual "in the moment" experience. I remember a while ago musing in an e-mail conversation with a friend about this conundrum and writing to her that I wanted to explore the differences in narrative landscape images created by the toy camera and a high end optical lens. This idea has been percolating in the background for some time, and while that's been happening I've found myself drawn to work by other photographers that at first view might seem to be images of the mundane, but on further reflection is better defined as acute observation of what is right in front of us all the time, a documenting of actually living each visual moment.

It's been a while since I've walked the forest with a camera; I've been working on solidifying my wet plate collodion technique in the summer months while the UV light is strong and I can work outside easily. But this weekend I felt the urge to get out with a film camera and found myself picking up my Mamiya 6. I haven't had the film developed yet, but I remembered that while I was making images with the Holga for the "My beloved rises from her sleep" series, I sometimes carried the Mamiya 6 with me as well. So here are some images taken during the same time period as the image above. While I was revisiting these images I found myself connecting back to the moment when I made each:

Concept, Context and the Body of Work

2011-09-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about writing on this topic for quite some time, certain that writing about how I make art is of great benefit to myself but not quite sure if such a post would be of general interest to others. Just the same, if I'm not clear on how my projects are conceived, developed and brought to finality then I'm working in the dark and asking viewers of my work to take what they see on faith. I think asking that is not fair to them, and avoiding thinking (and writing) about my process is a poor decision on my part.

Two things prompted me to take some action now. One was a thought-provoking comment Lauren Henkin added to an online discussion on the differences in viewing photographic images online vs. viewing physical photographs. The discussion was started by Andy Adams in a Facebook group called Flak Photo Network. Here's what Lauren wrote:

I think we have tendencies to try and classify - black and white vs color, film vs digital, silver versus pigment, it goes on and on. As a population in general, I think we're uncomfortable with ambiguity, with saying, "everything depends on the context." But truly, that's how I see it. There are stunning examples of people using online mediums for communicating their stories while others are using objects only. It ALL depends on how it's executed. I think if we (including me) spent more time writing about how work is executed and the merits of it both conceptually and in craft, we'd all learn a whole lot more (bold text emphasis mine)

Once I read Lauren's words, I started to think more seriously of writing about my work. As it turns out, some of my projects develop organically (i.e. there is no concept at the beginning) and others develop from a specific concept. What to write about? The answer came to me while I was reading some comments posted by Diana Millar of Lúz Gallery on Twitter after she had been to an artist talk. Diana tweeted:

The question of how many rolls of film did you shoot? Gets asked at every single photography talk I attend, I still can not figure out why..

Why or what is the answer that you are looking for?? Does it change your opinion of the photograph(er) if it was 2 rolls vs 20 rolls??

I found this interesting because artists often seem to be concerned with variations of this question, which in essence is how hard was it to make this body of work? I think many artists have little faith in work that comes too quickly and/or easily. Thinking about this apparent conundrum has prompted me to write about my body of work about childhood memories of summer vacations, That Summer at the Lake.

Silver gelatin prints from That Summer at the Lake

So, how did I go about this project? Well, the first "confession" is that I did not set out to make a project, much less one specifically about childhood memories of summer vacations. In essence, my art practice is largely process-driven. By which I mean that generally when I make art, everything begins with decisions about the physical process of the making: if I'm painting, I may decide to take a large piece of watercolour paper, soak it until there is water standing on the surface and begin to pour diluted paint on that surface, moving the paint around with a hairdryer to create organic lines and shapes while the paint dries unevenly. I haven't set out to make a painting of a specific image, I've set out to experiment with different ways of diluting paints and different ways of pushing them around a wet surface. As such, I choose to follow the process where ever it leads me.

With my photography practice, I'm often concerned with ways to push a method of making images. In the case of That Summer at the Lake, everything started with a question I was curious about: what would happen if I took rolls of 120 film, first making images with a Holga camera with a 4.5X6 cm mask, then re-rolled the film and made images overtop of the first exposures using a Holga with a 6X6 cm mask? I wanted to see how the imperfectly overlapping images looked, and what kind of story they might tell. So at this point, I was just setting out to try a somewhat crazy idea with no idea if the resulting film will be printable, much less interesting. Another crucial part of the puzzle was my decision to go to a nearby lake to test out this idea.

So far, this doesn't sound like much of a project (in fact the idea of doing a project was far from my mind). However, there is a very fundamental basis to much of the photography I do. I'm consumed with exploring the landscape, not it's grand vistas but the intimate spaces the landscape consists of. I grew up in an industrial steel town back east, but since the age of 8 I have spent a great deal of time exploring whatever forests, woods, rivers, streams, ponds, lakes (and more recently oceans and the sea shore) I could find near where I live. Strangely, this was just something that I was intuitively comfortable with even as young as 8. I was alone but not lonely, I was untutored in natural science and history, but endlessly inquisitive. I sought out quiet places in the woods, and there was a favourite pond I would spend hours at, catching tadpoles and bringing them home to watch them metamorphose into frogs. As I've moved around the world since adulthood, I've still sought out these places, making photographs of them and always finding comfort in them. Living on the west coast, I've become accustomed to rain forests and the shore line. But I have a special place in my heart for lakes and the woods that surround them.

So every time I go out into the landscape with a camera, these connections drive what I see and what I make images of; this in turn provides for the opportunity to produce a cohesive series of images even when everything begins with a process-driven "what if" question.

On the day this all began, I went to the lake and first made images with four rolls of film in the Holga with the 4.5X6 cm mask, choosing views and subjects that reflected my concerns and specific affinities for the lake. Everything did not go smoothly - the re-rolling of the 120 films was problematic because the end of the film is not taped to the backing paper, and tended to bunch up when I re-rolled the films. However, I carried on with the idea by overlaying fresh images on top of the exposed films using the 6X6 cm mask in the Holga. Once I developed the films, I could see they were very dense but likely printable, and I could see that there were interesting things happening from the overlapping frames.

One of the decisions I made about two years ago was to stop scanning black and white negatives in favour of producing silver gelatin prints. I am far from being a great darkroom printer, but I love making hand-crafted prints and enjoy the time I can spend in the darkroom. It was only as I started printing the images that I became excited by the possibilities for meaning that they held, and after a few prints were made I began to see a connection between what I was viewing and my memories of family vacations from my childhood.

My dad preferred a vacation where we either rented a cottage (rarely) or camped beside a lake with a sandy beach. He would sit out in the sun all day for two weeks, and I remember playing in the water, on the beach and going off into the woods to make up stories and adventures. As more of the images were printed, this connection became stronger and stronger. The physical process of producing the prints and being able to hold them as physical objects to ponder over, strengthened the meaning of the work considerably. In the end, those four rolls of film yielded 15 images that formed a cohesive body of work.

When I first saw the developed film, my inclination was to plan to make more images this way - after all, four rolls of film couldn't possibly be sufficient to produce a strong series of images. One day, four films - not possible. Yet my decision to hand-print the images instead of scanning the film slowed everything down. I work full time, so I'm lucky if I can get into the darkroom twice a month. As the images unfolded slowly during the printing process, I had the time to see the series build up and to "be" with the images. By the time the printing was finished, I completely understood that this project that wasn't a project was complete - I could not honestly see any gaps requiring new images. In fact, I have not gone back to use this method of double-shooting film for any other project so far.

Naturally, this was not the end of the process of completing the body of work. Works were titled as they brought to me fragmentary memories of those childhood vacations mixed up almost certainly with other experiences and stories I had made up for myself when I was a child. I scanned the prints, wrote a brief artist statement about the images and posted the work and statement on my website. I haven't had to make decisions about exhibiting this work yet, although I know that if it is exhibited I will keep the prints small and intimate. I suspect that the best presentation of this work will be in the format of a book that can be held and pondered over for a longer period of time.

Coming back to the title of this post, this body of work came about from a concept that was all about the process of making the images - re-exposing film, using a toycamera, using different film masks. To understand the meaning of the resulting images requires some knowledge of how they are positioned in the context of my continuing exploration of the landscape and my connection to it as a place of intimate spaces, an exploration that spans from my childhood to the present day.

Art needs to exist off-line

2011-08-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

The internet is great for disseminating one's work, and it's great to learn about work being made by people you would probably never meet. I'm also learning that it's a useful networking tool within certain limits. But recent experiences confirm that for me (and others), it's important that art have a physical presence because of the ways that physicality can expand the experience for both artist and viewer.

I was recently discussing by e-mail a project that a photographer friend from San Francisco was working on, which involved taking a single subject (a tree) and exploring its form and meaning by different photographic approaches. She had initially been inspired to do so by the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird". I suggested that she look at Jennifer Bartlett's work "In the Garden", which was a year-long project Bartlett did where she explored a somewhat mundane garden in the house she lived in for a year in France by making a series of paintings and drawings using different media, different perspectives and different scales. My friend found Bartlett's work to be helpful as her project developed, and she recently posted her first series of images as a 4X4 grid (as a working model for the presentation of the work). As we discussed the work further, I was struck by how rigid and limiting on-line presentations of images can be - there are very few decisions to be made with regard to final size of the work, differences in scale, differences in materials. We had an interesting discussion of how the impact of the work would change if it was hung as a series of installations in a gallery, with different scales, printed on different papers, some images isolated while others were grouped - all of these possibilities opening new avenues to explore the meaning of the work. Few of them are available with on-line presentation. Our discussion made me think a great deal of how these factors play into the presentation of my own work. Making the image, whether digitally or on film, is just the first step in a process that leads to the actual work whether its an online presentation or a physical one; there are just a lot more options to give meaning to the work with physical presentation.

I recently took some of my gravure proof prints and tintypes to a dinner party with friends. Two of the friends are collectors who have generously acquired a couple of pieces from me in the past. As they looked over the work, it was interesting to see how they appreciated the works as physical objects. We had an interesting discussion about the differences in scale of the gravure prints, Alex commenting that he actually preferred the smaller images that allowed him a more intimate feeling in looking at the work. Since both the 8X8 and 5X5 images were printed on 11X15 sheets of paper, this lead to a discussion of scale of the image within the scale of the substrate. As it turned out, because the gravure proofs were made in a workshop, I didn't have control over the size of paper available, and I found the discussion thought-provoking and timely as I have started printing a small series of kallitype images - what size should the image be, and on what size paper. These decisions affect a viewer's experience of the work in important ways.

During an e-mail correspondence, another friend mentioned that she really liked a tintype image I had posted on this blog of cherries in a copper bowl. I dropped in to visit with her a few days later, and brought that tintype along with a few others. It was wonderful to watch her pick them up and play with different angles of viewing them in the light. She mentioned that at first she had expected, really wanted them to be larger (the plates are 3.5 X 4.5) but that as she looked at them further she was beginning to like the smaller scale. She then went on to make a little mini-installation of 3-4 plates, which lead to a discussion of how one might display these tintypes that I found very useful. I enjoyed talking about the work with her, and learning from her reactions to the work how I might continue the project in terms of making additional images and ways to present the final work.

For me, these two experiences were far richer as a way of receiving feedback on my work, and of learning more about how my decisions on scale and presentation affect the viewer experience than any online interaction I've had over my work. It was the physicality of the tintypes and prints that were the foundation for this richer experience. I'm not about to abandon what the online platform offers in terms of interactions, broadening the audience for my work or finding interesting work by other artists. But I sense that for me and my work, that could never be enough.

Seeking Answers to an Unknown Question

2011-08-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

from "Ten Kallitypes for a Rainy Day"

This weekend I began selecting floral images to make into a series of kallitype prints. I started with ten images which I had previously made during my "Daily Practice" exercise from last year, and converted them into digital negatives for printing. Yesterday when it was raining and I didn't feel like going to work, I played hooky and made small proof prints of the negatives. Although the finished body of work will be more than these ten images (and the final prints will be on larger sheets of paper), I quickly sequenced the images and began internally referring to them as ten kallitypes for a rainy day. You can see the complete series of images at the end of this post.

But something odd happened during this process - I began to feel a bit of uncertainty and anxiety about this series, which I've been trying to puzzle through. For one thing, it was a different way of working for me - I usually have some objective or definition in mind at the start of a project (although that may change as things progress), but in this case I was pulling images together from an archive. So the working method here was different, and perhaps explains part of the uncertainty (do I feel like this is cheating in some way? will the final work be cohesive or will it be disjointed?). Yet when I look at the little series of images I've come up with, it seems to flow well and I like the different perspectives, the emphasis on patterns, negative space, flowing lines and shapes, different textures and tones.

One problem with flowers as a subject is the fact this is a subject that's been done to death. It's overworked and difficult to make images that say anything new about flowers. They're beautiful, we know they're beautiful, we hardly need reminding that they're beautiful. Artists who've tried to find the dark side of flowers (can it even exist?) only make them seem even more beautiful. In our house my wife likes to announce "these flowers are ready for their portrait" when the cut flowers in the vase are dried and drooping (this is a joking reference to my love of such a subject). So flowers as photography subject - so cliché, so over, so done. Yet I constantly come back to them as subject matter - am I crazy to do so? I wonder.

I think this not knowing why I come back to flowers is what's causing this anxiety and uncertainty about this work. I know there's a question I'm investigating, trying to answer by making these images - but I don't know what that question is. So perhaps I've solved my dilemma - I'm compelled to make images of flowers because I'm seeking answers to an unknown question. What I do know from making these images is that I'm drawn not to the "conventional" beauty of flowers - the brilliant colours. I'm drawn to a tension between their superficial uniformity within a type, and their uniqueness - i.e. the little things that make one red tulip (for example) different from all the others. I also seem to be exploring ways to accentuate the characteristics that I personally find beautiful - those curving lines, delicate tones, the patterns within a grouping and the negative spaces defined by the grouping, formal compositional relationships between individual flowers or plants within the frame, differences in textures. Images of flowers often invoke an emotional response in viewers, and I'm learning how that response is related to these characteristics of flowers and how they are brought together in the composition. When I am photographing flowers I'm look at them as if I was drawing them, and it's those qualities of flowers I want to present to viewers of my images.

Perhaps that sounds as if I know what the question is, but I don't - I constantly return to make images of flowers, but I'm not sure exactly why. And with a bit more time to reflect on that, I'll be fine with it. I might come to like this idea of seeking answers to an unknown question.

Ten Kallitypes for a Rainy Day

A sublime Sunday - Wet Plate and Friends

2011-08-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

The Stone Diaries I

wet plate collodion tintype

This morning as I was drinking tea on the studio porch, I was thinking how my day might unfold: make some new tintypes; meet with a dear friend Jan for coffee; make some kallitype prints. Here's how the day has progressed so far (it's late afternoon here).

After a brief ride on the bike, I came back to find the sun full and bright in the back yard - perfect tintype conditions. I made four plates in total: two still lifes and two garden views, working in partly cloudy direct light, full on direct light and open shade. At this stage of my adventures in wet plate collodion, I like to mix and match conditions so that I become better at reading the light for determining exposure times, and also so I can get a better feel for how differences in light change the qualities (depth and contrast in particular) of the resulting images.

For the first plate of the day, I set up a table for still lifes, and picked up two rocks my wife had brought home. Elena has a strong affinity for "special" rocks and often picks up unusual examples based on shape, colours and textures. Once I saw the image on the ground glass, I imagined doing a series of images ("The Stone Diaries"), so I may well have another theme to work with as I continue to deepen my experience with wet plate. I then set up a still life with zucchini, watermelon and a half of an avocado in bright direct light:

Still life with zucchini, melon and avocado

wet plate collodion tintype

Now that I have more experience, I knew based on the still life images I made last week that I should stop down the lens for a 5 second exposure. Creases in the canvas ground provided a geometrical element to the composition that accentuates the organic shapes of the vegetables.

Finally, I did some work in open shade, making two views of the garden: the graceful bend of a japanese maple, and a rock element within the fern bed. I'm learning from these plates that open shade seems to lead to a higher contrast image:

Japanese maple

wet plate collodion tintype

Fern bed

wet plate collodion tintype

I decided to stop and clean up at that point, keeping to this principle of doing "just enough" to strengthen the consistency of my plate pouring, exposure and processing before I get to the point where I lose concentration.

A short while later, my friend Xane called to invite me over to his place for lunch with Jan. Jan is a mutual friend who moved away to Vancouver, so it's always a treat to catch up with her when she comes over to the island for a visit. Such impromptu invitations are unusual in this town, but we're all comfortable enough with each other to get together at a moment's notice. And Xane's place is a little bit of Tuscan peacefulness in the heart of the city suburbs.

We started with a throw back to our childhoods: grilled cheese sandwiches that Xane made with local cheddar and a hearty full grain bread, beans straight from the garden freshly steamed, then small sweets and watermelon. We talked about our childhood memories around food, family gatherings and picnics. After lunch I did a little show and tell of some of my tintypes and photogravure prints. Both Jan and Xane are experienced artists whose knowledge and work I greatly respect, so it was wonderful to get some feedback on this recent work from them. We finished the afternoon draped over the furniture, napping and conversing in complete relaxation.

With coffee turning into a delightful lunch and time spent in conversation, I've only just now returned home. I still hope to complete my pre-visualized day by making a few kallitype proof prints.

Zucchini for Edward and Charis

2011-08-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

Zucchini

(wet plate tintype)

Yesterday I felt somewhat recovered from the photopolymer gravure workshop, and felt an urge to round out the experience by making a few tintypes. When I walked into the kitchen after getting up, I was confronted with five zucchini freshly harvested from the garden by Elena, including several that were gigantic. After the end of my last wet plate session, I had been thinking that I'd like to embark on a series of still life images as a way solidify my technique and as a visual exercise. The zucchini seemed an ideal subject to work with.

At the moment I'm happy to restrict myself to making about 4-5 plates per session. This restriction allows me to work while I'm still fresh (i.e. before I succumb to the ether fumes! [it's actually not that bad]) which I think is important to strengthening those neural networks and muscle memory I'm building by using consistent technique. Working to the point of being tired will inevitably lead to making mistakes, which come from deviations from consistent working habits and work against the reinforcement of the neural pathways. I'm not worried about making bad plates or having failures per se, but I want to first get down a really consistent working method.

The plate above is the last plate I made yesterday - after working on the wider compositions shown below, I wanted to get in tighter to really emphasize the textures, lines and colour patterns of the zucchini. One of the zucchini had a shape that made me think of a famous nude photograph that Edward Weston took of Charis stretched out sinuously on the sand dunes at high noon. I was making these images at that same time of day, setting up the still lifes on the south facing deck behind the house in bright direct sunlight. So I made this plate as a memento mori of Weston's famous image:

Zucchini for Edward and Charis

(wet plate tintype)

While I was working with the zucchini, I remembered that I had a large etched copper bowl that I had made in a workshop a number of years ago (if you're beginning to think I'm a workshop junky, I understand). I used the bowl as a back drop for some luscious cherries to make this image:

Cherries in a copper bowl

(wet plate tintype)

I think it would have been interesting to make a plate of this set up in open shade, similar to the lighting of the first plate above. However, as I look at these last two images, I'm struck by how much I like this harsher, direct lighting of these still lifes. It reminds me of the lighting one sees in images Weston, Tina Modotti and Manuel Alvarez Bravo made in Mexico.

I'm not pushing any great photographic boundaries by making these still life images, but it is a new way of working for me and I am excited by the endless possibilities. I like these elegant, simple compositions which I think match the seductive qualities of the wet plate process quite well. Looking at the plates a day later, I feel a strong desire to keep making these types of images.

Photopolymer Gravure Workshop with Don Messec

2011-08-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Elk Lake, New Year's Day 2011

Paul Romaniuk

Photopolymer gravure print

How do I judge whether a workshop I've just taken was successful? By the level of fatigue I feel the day after it ends. If I've become totally engrossed and engaged in the process being taught, I find I barely sleep for the entire length of the workshop because I'm over-stimulated (occupational hazard of the introvert). It's the day after a 5 day workshop with Don Messec on photopolymer gravure that was held at Lúz Gallery and I'm totally wiped. It was just that outstanding!

Tanya's plate on the press, ready for printing

Don is gregarious, opinionated, sharp-witted, extremely knowledgeable and simply an excellent teacher. He has done extensive research into methods of printmaking from the position of always questioning whether there is a safer and better way to make prints. His research into gravure printing has resulted in a safe process using photopolymer "solarplates" (that are developed in water and are non-toxic) and soy-based Akua intaglio inks. Don's process results in prints that exceed the quality achieved with traditional gravure methods that involve working with extremely hazardous chemicals and toxic ink formulations. So not just safer, but better prints as well.

Some of the plates from the workshop

I knew right from the start that this was going to be a great learning experience. Don began by telling us that he was definitely going to teach us how to make photopolymer gravure prints, but his top priority was to give us the information and teach us the skills to get the process up and running in our own studios with our own equipment.

In a nutshell, the process involves printing a positive image on a transparency using an inkjet printer, and then laying that transparency on top of a photopolymer plate to expose it to UV light, which hardens the emulsion on the plate according to how much light each area receives as it passes through the image on the transparency. Success relies on two key aspects: knowing what the optimal exposure time is, and knowing how to adjust the image before printing the transparency to hold detail in the shadows on the exposed photopolymer plate. It would have been far easier for Don to do all the pre-testing of the equipment to determine optimal exposure time and tonal adjustments the day before the workshop, so he could just "dial us in". Everyone would have immediately begun making good prints using the parameters he had pre-determined, but we would have been completely clueless how to accomplish that same level of achievement once the workshop was over and we were in our own studios.

Instead we worked as a group to make the test plates that were used to determine the optimal exposure time with the simple UV unit on hand, and then followed that with the necessary testing to determine how much to adjust the black point of the digital image to get a full tonal range on the final print. Don involved us all in the analysis of the test prints and explained the criteria that he uses to determine the optimal exposure and black point adjustment. It helped clarify the process for all of us.

Heather and Lynda inking plates, Tanya at the press

Would you agree to teach a course on stripping down and reassembling a diesel engine to a group of people who ranged from those who barely knew how to start their cars to others who had designed engines for decades? Pretty daunting task isn't it, not something most people would contemplate. Then add in the ringer that you aren't teaching this class in your well equipped shop, nor in some other garage, but in a pizza parlour with a good set of wrenches. It takes a special person to pull that off (and a good set of wrenches).

That's close to what Don agreed to do - come from his world class studio in Santa Fe to teach photopolymer gravure in Victoria, except not at an another artist's printmaking studio, but in an art gallery. The gallery is owned by Diana Millar and Quinton Gordon who together have a passion for building local capacity for making fine prints by a variety of methods - inkjet printing, traditional darkroom work, such "alt" processes as platinum/palladium printing, and also photogravure. The owners in question had a "good set of wrenches" - an etching press donated by a local artist, a space that could be dedicated for a week to the purpose of giving the workshop, and a ton of expertise in photo editing and printing with computers and high quality printers. Don drove up from Santa Fe carrying whatever else he could think would be needed to give the workshop.

The people taking the workshop were pretty evenly split between those who had never made an etching or other printmaking-type print in their lives, to several artists who had significant printmaking experience. Add in the differences in the level of expertise with editing images on a computer (as one student announced at the start of the class "I almost blew up my computer putting my images on that thing-a-majig" aka usb stick drive), and perhaps you can appreciate why I think Don was incredibly brave to take on the task of teaching this workshop.

Everyone went away with successful plates and prints, which is a testament to how effective Don is as a teacher, and how successful Quinton and Diana are at finding and attracting outstanding instructors, and how resourceful they all are at doing whatever is necessary to make a workshop like this succeed. For example, I know that Quinton arranged this workshop in part because he wants to be able to add photopolymer gravure printing to his personal artistic practice. However, when it became apparent that several participants would need expert assistance with image preparation, he took off his student's hat and gladly took on the role of expert image editor which basically occupied him for the entire workshop. In addition, several of the more experienced printmakers in the group helped out less experienced students with their inking, plate wiping and printing questions when Don was busy helping other students expose and process plates.

Heather pulls a gorgeous print off the press

Well - sounds like everything went swimmingly, doesn't it? Yes, yes it did although by a very circuitous route through initial failure and intensive problem solving. We were using 8"x10" solarplates with a simple gravity contact method - place solarplate face up, place transparency face down, cover with 1/2" plate glass and expose. The first couple of plates made gave very promising prints which were a bit dark but otherwise had good tonal range and outstanding line detail. Then an interesting problem arose - images with larger areas of light grey tones showed "measles" - random, small darker toned circles within the large grey area. In printmaking, large "flat" areas of light tones are always a technical challenge, regardless of whether printing by screen, litho plate or etching plate.

Well, as strange as it seems, this turned out to be one of the most effective learning opportunities we could have hoped for. Being a teacher myself, it was a privilege to watch the way Don got everyone involved in discussing and testing possible solutions to this problem. I think a large part of the "buy in" by the group was the atmosphere in the workshop - there was lots of lively discussion, witty repartee, back and forth teasing between Don and the students that was both entertaining and conducive to a relaxed environment. It took a day and a half and some late night testing by Don, but the problem was solved - the gravity system we were using wasn't giving complete contact between the transparency and the solarplate, leading to random differences in exposure in the large areas of flat tones. The solution was simple - just use plates smaller than 8x10, since the gravity frame provided good contact at smaller sizes. At that point everyone's work took off. More importantly we had all learned a great deal about the process and how to troubleshoot it if the need should arise in our own studios.

Just two of the many luscious prints pulled by other students in the workshop

Once this problem was solved, the plates were coming out of the processing room at a steady rate, and beautiful prints were flying off the press. In his own studio workshops, Don has students use a vacuum frame to ensure perfect contact between transparency and print. Quinton had been searching for a vacuum frame for some time, and fortuitously on the last full day of printing, he got a lead on one locally. He took Don with him to evaluate it, and with a little TLC Lúz Gallery will have it up and running shortly. As the workshop came to an end, I think we had every surface in the space buried under plates and prints. Diana and Quinton have learned that printmakers are like an insidious fungus that rapidly grows to cover all available surfaces.

I'm sure other students in the class will share their prints on their own websites or blogs. As for my own experience - absolutely sublime. I came with a range of images to test the process with, and have a valuable resource of prints to work from in my further experiments with this medium:

Lauren Henkin Workshop on Marketing

2011-08-06T18:01:00.000-07:00

Today I attended a workshop on a topic that until recently I never imagined I would ever sign up for - marketing for artists. I will confess up front that as an extreme introvert, the idea of meeting strangers, particularly with a request such as asking for a portfolio review, amps up the sweaty palms and nervous ticks. Even the idea of joining a group of strangers in a workshop environment can be a challenge for me. While my basic personality hasn't changed, what changed is my realization that if I want something like our nascent publishing idea Studio Centralé to get off the ground, marketing is something that I need to learn about. And fortunately an opportunity presented itself to me with Lauren Henkin's workshop at Lúz Gallery, a venue that I'm familiar with (they consistently host great workshops) where I have come to know Diana and Quinton, who own the gallery.

Well, as has often been the case in the past in this charmed life of mine, the decision to take this particular workshop on marketing for artists was precisely the right thing at the right time. Lauren is an extremely knowledgeable, energetic, open person who quickly engages the entire group in the enterprise of learning about marketing. As a photographer and self-published author (her handmade artist books are exquisite), Lauren has directly experienced and dealt with the challenges facing the participants, which makes her a very relevant and effective leader for this kind of workshop. The group itself consisted of 15 people with an extremely broad range of backgrounds, interests and experience which is a testament to the high quality of the Lúz workshops - they attract a great cross section of people. And that in turn enriches the learning environment, since so many different points of view are expressed during discussions.

Early on, Lauren recounted an anecdote that explained her approach to teaching. It involved a math teacher who taught her how generally to construct theorems rather than memorize specific ones. As she recounted, this vastly opened up her understanding of mathematics. The story resonated with me because I had a similar experience - I slogged through organic chemistry as an undergraduate, robotically memorizing all the different functional groups and the reactions they could participate in. Then when I was a graduate student a chemistry prof taught a course that focused on reactive species (there are only a few main ones) and how to recognize which is likely to form under any given conditions - that greatly simplified and expanded my understanding of organic chemistry. I base my own teaching philosophy on that experience, trying to instil in my biochemistry students an understanding of the general applicability of underlying concepts, which in turn allows them to see relationships and applications in unexpected contexts. So I felt an immediate connection to Lauren's method of teaching.

In the case of the workshop today, Lauren's goal was to get us to think of how to approach marketing in a more general, broadly applicable sense rather than in a rote, rule-bound or stepwise approach limited by conventional thinking about photography markets. She accomplished this with a combination of a well designed, comprehensive handout, specific discussion of some key aspects of marketing and case studies that clearly demonstrated how what seems like a "round about" approach is often much more effective than a direct approach.

Lauren shared an anecdote that illustrated how an initial meeting with a person who wasn't a gallerist (but who liked her work) and who couldn't ostensibly directly help her resulted in an introduction to a gallerist, an impromptu show after pitching the idea of a book opening to that gallerist, which in turn lead to establishing a relationship with a collector. Does it seem convoluted? Perhaps. Does it seem unpredictable? Absolutely. Yet when Craig Semetko talked at Lúz Gallery two weeks ago, he told a similar story that wound its way from an initial meeting with a gallerist in Colorado, to a two person show with Henri Cartier Bresson, to travelling shows at Leica galleries in the US and Europe, to an introduction to one of the premier photobook publishers in Europe. In both Lauren's and Craig's stories, one important characteristic was their persistent work at keeping in touch with people and following up all opportunities that arose from that.

What I particularly appreciated about Lauren's fresh take on marketing was its very basic underlying principle - that a gallerist/publisher is first and foremost a human being and should be treated respectfully. In Lauren's case, she has approached such people with an offer to voluntarily lead a critique group, or to give an artist talk, to go to lunch after an initial introduction; in other words, to simply establish a relationship with the person in question without requests for a portfolio review or a studio visit. And to do that sincerely with the intent to get to know this person better and to become a contributing member of the local arts community. This idea was a very welcome one to me, the introvert. I'm only going to be comfortable trying to ask someone to look at my work or consider carrying my books in their gallery or shop if I have been able to get to know them.

Another important aspect of the workshop was navigating the question of "when are you ready for the next step", be it going to a portfolio review, approaching a gallery, self-publishing a book. Here Lauren's advice was to keep in touch with other artists, give careful consideration to your work and the feedback it receives (both positive and negative); to ask for the guidance/advice/critique of a few people whose work and opinions you respect. This idea was encapsulated very succinctly and effectively by the educator Sir Ken Robinson in a TED presentation, and in his book The Element, in what he refers to as finding your "tribe" - that is a group of people who share your passion. These are the people who can share your experience and who can hopefully be open and honest critics of each others work. While I've been part of tribes who shared my passion for printmaking and for painting, I need to establish a good group to work with in photography and book making/publishing.

This summary really only touches on a few of the highlights of a very excellent workshop. Lauren is wonderful at connecting with each person in a group, listening to their needs and concerns and responding in a helpful and supportive way. If you have an opportunity to take a workshop with Lauren, I'd highly recommend that you do.

Weekend Wet Plate Adventures

2011-08-05T10:26:00.000-07:00

In the garden

Last weekend I started on my solo wet plate collodion adventure. The day before the weekend arrived, I received a package in the mail from Niles Lund containing my silver bath, developer trays and modified film holders. I was excited about getting started, and in anticipation of getting these final items, I had mixed a batch of salted collodion the day before. It was still quite cloudy, so I also mixed a small batch of a "quick clear" collodion recipe that I found on-line.

Before I could get started, I needed to source some glass plates and black trophy aluminum. A friend of mine owns a framing store, and I stopped in to ask if they would cut some 4"X5" glass plates for me. He was happy to do so (at no charge!), which pleased me no end since I was assured of having something to work with. I next went to a local trophy store - the people there were very nice and helpful, and I ordered plates in 3.5" X 4.5", 4" X 5" and 7.5" X 9.5" to fit my various holders. No problem, and they would be ready in 30 minutes. That was a pleasant surprise - I was expecting the usual "two to three business days". When I returned the plates were ready, but came with a shocker of a sticker price! At $0.30 per square inch, my order was over $200 before taxes (each 4"x5" plate was $6, each 7.5"X9.5" plate was $20!). Pleased to have material to work with, but resolved to finding a less expensive source in the future. It's good though to know that there is a local source that can help out in a pinch.

Later in the afternoon, I picked up the glass plates that my friend's assistant had cut, and lovingly interleaved with mat board off cuts - 20 sheets to play with! The euphoria lasted until I arrived home to discover that all the plates were larger than 4"x5" by 1/8" in one or both dimensions and wouldn't fit into the holder. Lesson learned - take the holder with me when I want glass plates cut so that the requirements are fully understood. I'll have to individually grind each plate down before I can use them. Still, they were free and a kind gesture from a friend.

Another problem I'll have to deal with is pouring, sensitizing and developing plates. Collodion is a mixture of volatile, highly flammable solvents. Since my darkroom is in the basement of the house, which also has gas furnace and hot water tank, pouring the plates in the house is just not going to work. In addition, my wife is extremely sensitive to odours (which can trigger horrible migraine headaches). I plan to build a dark box to do the plate pouring and processing outside in the garden. For this weekend, I was able to take advantage of my wife being away to try a process where I poured the collodion onto the plate outside (it doesn't have to be in the dark), then sensitize the plate in my darkroom and develop it there after exposure. This keeps the level of volatile fumes (and particularly flammable materials) to a very low amount - not a permanent solution but one that let me do some playing this past weekend.

As it was a holiday weekend, I had three days to get my first "solo" experience with wet plate since taking the workshop with Joni Sternbach. I started with the smallest aluminum plates, using a modified 4X5 holder and my Shen Hao field camera. The image you see above is the second plate I produced using the camera. With this exposure as a guide, I made two additional plates using simple subjects from the garden:

Mexican planter

Studio rain chain

I was quite pleased with these plates - the collodion pour was pretty good, exposures were good and processing went well. I cleaned up, aired out the basement to push any remaining fumes away.

The next day, I continued experimenting, this time using a small studio building in the garden for setting up still life subjects. The studio had two windows and a north-facing skylight, so gets beautiful even illumination. The day was partly cloudy which made judging exposures a bit of a challenge, and I had no idea how UV-light transparent the skylight is. So there was quite a bit of guessing and experimenting going on. The first image I made using a dollar store magnifying glass as a lens - it gives an interesting effect, but I'll need to make an aperture for it to get to a reasonable exposure time (it lets in too much light for shutterless exposure).

Avocado and lemon

I then went back to the Fuji lens I was using the day before to revisit the same still life:

Avocado and lemon redux

If you click on either image to enlarge it, you'll notice the highlights are very "grainy". This puzzled me because wet plate is known for giving virtually grainless, continuous tone images. I had noticed that when I pealed back the protecting film on my aluminum plates there seemed to be a residue left behind on the surface of the plate. With subsequent plates I wiped the surface with some isopropanol to remove this residue, and the problem went away.

Black Pears I

Black Pears II

I finished my plate making with these two images of pears in a deep dish we bought years ago in Taos. Fun images to make because of the poor sensitivity of collodion to yellows, but I did feel a bit sheepish since pears seem to be one of those cliché images that get made a bit too often.

The third day I wanted to try out my Ansco 8X10 camera with a Dallmeyer Perfac brass lens. I had Niles modify two 8X10 film holders for me, one to take a 4"x5" plate. I made several plates - the first in open shade seemed somewhat underexposed, the second taken in open sunlight looked like a good exposure (exposures were quite long for an f6.3 lens, although the bellows extension contributed to that) and the third in mixed shade/direct light was overexposed:

Planter foliage

Foliage and flowers

Planters on the studio porch

Overall I was very pleased with how the weekend went. I'm already thinking of what projects I would like to pursue in wet plate, while at the same time recognizing that I have many more plates to make before I become consistently proficient with this technique. For the moment, I think I'd like to do a nice series on the garden planters we have. Each year, Elena puts together about a dozen planters in these funky, fun mexican pots and I think it would be fun to do a "formal portrait" of each planter. I also would like to explore still life some more. And I'm already feeling the excitement about taking things "on the road" to do some landscapes - for that I'll need to finish that dark box!

Weekend Kallitype Printing

2011-07-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Untitled kallitype print, untoned

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first prints of the series "Richard Serra's Garden"

palladium toned kallitypes

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I recently purchased a new UV light box so that I could make cyanotypes, kallitypes and salt prints with a known constant UV source useable all year round, day and night. Up to this point, I had been relying on the sun, which of course varies in UV strength from day to day, and is useful for probably 5 months or so per year.

Getting the new light source required some recalibration of exposure times and adjustment curves for making digital negatives. I spent last weekend working on the calibration/curve problem with only limited success, and wasn't feeling very happy about things. However, as I often say in these situations, thank goodness I'm a scientist, because I've been trained to expect and handle frustration! This weekend I was working on other things, and on Sunday afternoon decided to go back to working on the kallitypes. And finally, success! I now have a workflow that I feel confident will help me turn out kallitypes with good tonal range on a consistent basis.

The second image shows three toned kallitypes that I see as the beginning of a series "Richard Serra's Garden". I've long been a fan of the American sculptor; for me, his work in sculpture, drawing and printmaking is all about mass, volume and the way they play off each other in defining spaces. I remember when I made these images I was drawn to the rocks because their juxtapositions and mass immediately made me think of Serra's work. These prints are 4"X4" on 5"X5" paper, which I think would make an ideal size for a limited edition artist book of kallitypes. I also want to use one or more of these images in a polymer photogravure workshop I'm taking in a couple of weeks.

Testing Boundaries

2011-07-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Between waking and dreaming

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I've been thinking recently about work that lies in the space between sharply defined artistic disciplines, particularly when photography is one of those disciplines. These recently thoughts started after I received the new book Orchard Volume 2, a collaborative effort of Ray Meeks and Wes Mills entitled "Not Seen | Not Said". The book consists of photographs taken by Meeks with the addition of tipped in drawings by Mills - this sets up an interesting dialogue between the two bodies of work, with the drawings sometimes partially obscuring the photograph underneath it, and at other times keeping a respectful distance. There is an exciting energy in this book, a catalyst of ideas for exploring the interface between drawing and photography.

When I was at Lúz Gallery last night, I saw some gorgeous prints of the work of Thomas Bartlett. Bartlett explores the world through abstractions of colour and form. Printed large and hung simply with magnets on the gallery walls, it was possible to envision the works as pastel drawings with beautiful tones and a strong sense of flow.

I like this idea of blurring the lines between photograph and drawing, and I did do a few experiments last year along these lines. Today, when I walked in the forest, I played with long exposures and then tried various of processing the images as an exercise in looking at the range of possibilities for further exploration. Here's just one example from the day's work, which I find attractive because it seems to connect to master drawings of artists like van Gogh and the pictorialist photography of Alvin Langdon Coburn.

The Unexpected Moment

2011-07-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

Unposed Office Chair, Victoria Avenue

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I was out this evening to hear Craig Semetko give a talk about his street photography at Lúz Gallery. The images I saw were compelling in their strong combination of geometric compositional elements as a context for people engaging in the many different actions that make us human.

Semetko approaches his street photography by constantly looking for characters with stories to tell through their actions. He talked about the contributions of design, information and emotion to making a strong image. Someone in the audience asked about how his experience of the moment transforms what might otherwise be an unremarkable snapshot into an image that pulls us in, that becomes in some way magical. Semetko shared that his strongest images are made when he is alone, and feeling lonely; this combination leads him to seek out connections to others through the making of images.

Much of street photography happens in split seconds, when a variety of human elements come together (the famous "decisive moment"). Beyond a certain element of luck, a lot depends on having a well developed eye and an instinctive sense of impending action while bringing together strong compositional elements. Semetko ascribed his own ability to do this from careful and long study of the work of the masters of street photography, particularly Henri Cartier Bresson. I found this idea really resonated with me; as I've written before an artist must go beyond knowing that they "like" or "dislike" an image. It's important to think more deeply and come to an understanding of why certain images are strong and others don't work well. In discussing his images, Semetko would point out the components that made for an effective composition, adding information on how the image developed from that point, and why the image shown succeeded for him when others he took before and after that moment did not. I learned a great deal from his presentation, even though I am not myself a street photographer.

Craig was very open and sharing during his presentation. He had many wonderful stories to tell about his journey as a photographer and it sometimes seemed that he has lead a charmed life. He spoke about how big an influence Henri Cartier Bresson's work was for him. After making images for about six years, the first gallery show Craig was offered was a two person show - 25 of Cartier Bresson's images along with 25 of Semetko's. I think we all had goose bumps thinking about that.

As I was driving home, I came upon this scene which oddly went well with the evening. I have no idea why or how an office chair came to be in the middle of the road. But it was if I was being invited to at least tentatively dip a toe in the street photography waters. I think Craig Semetko must have arranged for this!

Ambrotype Prints - Channeling Chuck Close

2011-07-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity yesterday to get into the darkroom to try printing the ambrotype negative I made last weekend. I have a 4X5 enlarger, but no carrier for glass negatives. I took apart a spare 4X5 negative carrier, and used cardboard to build a glass negative tray on the top half of the carrier. It was an incredible moment when I first saw the enlarged negative, with its continuous tones.

the modified glass negative carrier

in the enlarger

the projected negative

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I started by making a proof print on Ilford MGIV paper, at grade 2. The print had the rich tones of the tintypes I had made, but seemed a bit cool. So I made a print on Ilford warmtone paper:

fractured self (Ilford Warmtone Paper)

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One of the things I was interested in trying with the negative was lith printing. I started with a lith print on Fomatone MG Classic paper, which was interesting but a bit too orange in tone. I think I might investigate this paper further by following up with selenium toning to see if I can tame the colour.

fractured self (lith print on Fomatone MG Classic Paper)

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I had made a second print on the Ilford warmtone paper with double the correct exposure so that I could try a process called "second pass lith". The idea is to overexpose the print, process normally, then bleach the print partially followed by a second development with a lith developer. I chose to use copper sulphate bleach because it can cause a split-tone or pseudo-solarization with second pass lith. I like this image, it feels as if it references the experiments of Man Ray:

fractured self, rayified (second pass lith print on Ilford Warmtone)

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Finally, I tried a straight lith print on Kentmere Fineprint warmtone paper. I've had hit and miss results with lith printing this paper, it seems very slow to develop and doesn't always give interesting results. However, this print is for me the most successful - it has the creamy tones of a cyanide-fixed tintype combined with shadow detail that has the feel of a charcoal drawing:

fractured self (lith print on Kentmere Fineprint warmtone)

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In future, I have a couple of other paper choices to investigate with lith printing. I'm also looking forward to printing this negative as a salt print and a kallitype. I'm excited about getting everything together to make more ambrotype negatives in my studio so that I can keep pushing this process.

Adventures in Wet Plate

2011-06-27T18:07:00.000-07:00

Double Vision

(my first wet plate tintype)

I've been learning and working with so-called alternative photographic processes for some time now. I like the idea of using processes that were developed in the first 25-40 years of photographic history, I like the physicality of the resulting prints and I like the fact that by doing these processes I can protect my photographic vision from the potential future loss of currently available analog materials. Whenever a workshop becomes available locally for a new (to me) process, I jump at the chance to take it. So I was very excited when Lúz Gallery announced back in December that Joni Sternbach would be coming to Victoria this June to give a workshop on wet plate collodion. And a good thing I did, since the workshop filled up within a few days.

Tintypes and Ambrotypes from Day 1

It's the day after the workshop, and I confess I'm totally in love with wet plate. And with Joni and her assistant Lisa. I've taken quite a few workshops over the years, and this one was without doubt the best I've ever taken. And in terms of the group of students, definitely in the top 3 of the various groups I've been part of. High level of interest, energy and excitement combined with a great cooperative spirit (important when sharing 2 cameras and 1 darkroom between 9 students), with a wonderful mix of ages and experience.

Elissa Marie self-portrait

Candace - self-portrait

Ottilie - self-portrait (zombie)

tied for the "Sally Mann" award

Lindsay - self-portrait

I think the experience we all had with the wet plate process is perfectly summed up by Lindsay, who posted a photo of her first wet plate result on facebook with the comment "I think I just died and went to heaven like 50 times over and over again. self portrait ambrotype!" I felt pretty much exactly the same.

Susie - self-portrait tintype

Richard - self-portrait tintype

Every student had successful plates, which given the complexities of the process, the chaotic nature of a workshop environment and the two day duration is quite an achievement. All possible because the course was well organized, and both Joni and Lisa are patient, generous teachers who shared their amazing knowledge of wet plate through clear instruction and with a good dose of humour.

Joni exposing the first plate of the workshop

David, Elissa and Ottilie look at the first plate with Joni

The first plate - David, self-portrait

In her book "Mindful Learning", Ellen Langer, a Harvard professor makes the case that students learn more effectively when they are presented with information in shades of grey rather than a cut and dried black or white approach. In any other wet plate workshop of such short duration, students would stick to making plates on trophy tin which doesn't need to be prepared in advance and is slightly easier to work with. And there is a strong argument to be made for such a "KISS" approach to teaching a process like wet plate.

Joni repairing a tear on a plate

Joni and Ottilie discussing equipment options

What was great about our workshop was the built-in "shades of grey": we were exposed to the ideas and working methods of two instructors; we worked in groups of three and could see how each student coped differently with the plate pouring and processing steps; we were encouraged to work with both tin and glass plates to get a range of experiences. I think these design details of the workshop really accentuated the learning process along the lines that Langer describes in her book. And by working not just with tin, we were confronted with problems with emulsion pealing, and making decisions about exposure and developer dilution in deciding between making a positive or negative ambrotype that lead to discussions of what went wrong and how to possibly solve it.

My second tintype - channeling René Descartes

One unexpected fun thing for me was discovering that I like taking portraits. I'm still not crazy about my own self-portraits, although I do like the way wet plate self-portraits look. Gave me new understanding of Chuck Close's longtime fascination with his own self-portrait. We worked in teams of three, so I had a chance to compose and focus selfportraits for both David and Shannon. There's something very breathtaking when you see the image on the ground glass come up with the sharp focus on the subject's eyes.

I have one additional plate, a clear glass ambrotype exposed to be used as a negative. I'm going to make some prints with it, and will post those results later.

Finally, I have to laugh at myself and a case of caveat emptor. During the meet and greet the first night, when we were each introducing ourselves and saying a little bit about why we were interested in wet plate, I specifically mentioned liking the accidental defects that can happen. As it turned out, I ended up with everything I had asked for (and more). My first plate ended up being double exposed because we were testing a camera and the shutter malfunctioned. I do like the double image. My second plate had quite a journey - it fell off the dipper when I was removing it from the silver tank, and Lisa had to work some magic to get it out, but the plate suffered a scratch (that ended up right across the top of my head in the end). After development (a perfect exposure), the plate had a few oyster shells. Joni was helping me remove them with a small piece of cotton ball, but a bit more emulsion was lifted off than should have happened (around the forehead/eye area). So I have a great plate with "additions" by Lisa and Joni - a keepsake for sure. And my ambrotype negative had a bit of peeling, so I have my own version of a "zombie" plate.

To sum up: the workshop was massive fun, I definitely will set up to do wet plate on my own, and if you ever have a chance to take a workshop with Joni Sternbach - do it!

Savage and Impenetrable

2011-06-22T22:08:00.000-07:00

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The surrealist artist Max Ernst described the interlacing terror and enchantment evoked by the emblem of the forest as "savage and impenetrable, black and russet, extravagant, secular, swarming, diametrical, negligent, ferocious, fervent, and likable, without yesterday or tomorrow..."

I saw this quote when visiting the exhibition "Surrealist Revolution" last week at the Vancouver Art Gallery. This exhibition really opened my mind to the incredibly ambitious reach of the Surrealists in terms of the topics of their investigations and the many approaches and media they used in fully exploring those topics. The most well known images by Dali and Magritte in many ways do a disservice to one's understanding of the Surrealists; this exhibition does much to correct that (and as my friend Jan said - it rehabilitated Dali for her). A number of Surrealists made photographic images;  I was particularly taken by a series entitled "La subversion des images" by Paul Nouge. I left the exhibit with a desire to learn much more about the Surrealists - I feel that I may find considerable inspiration in their very broad, comprehensive approaches to art.

Photographs are Objects

2011-06-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

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I've been thinking recently about the gulf that seems to exist between viewing images online, on screen and what I consider to be the true test of an image's strength - as a physical object. I recently was reminded of how big that gulf can be when I first looked at the work of Lis Bailley's work New Horizons on the Luz Gallery website. The images when viewed on the web didn't seem to have much substance to me, so I was very pleasantly surprised at how powerful those same images were when I encountered them as prints on the gallery walls. They had a richness and pull that was completely absent when viewed on screen.

A couple of years ago, I made a decision to stop scanning black and white film after I developed it, and return to traditional printing of the images. I was craving the opportunity to work in the darkroom, and to hold finished prints in my hands. Over time, I find I'm evolving an odd hybrid workflow for black and white - shoot film, process and print in darkroom, scan print and then post on blog/flickr etc. There's a certain rhythm that's developed in this workflow that really resonates with me. At the moment, I'm laying out a zine of Holga images I took on a trip to San Francisco back in October. All of the images were first printed in the darkroom, then scanned and now printed out with a laser printer. I'm in the process of culling and sequencing the images, and will produce a low-tech zine with the laser printer. It will be the first publication of my newest venture Studio Centralé Press, which marries my long-standing love of books with my conviction that my photographic work (and that of others) is best viewed as physical objects.

The website is currently under construction, but if you are interested in learning more, I am starting a blog for Studio Centralé which I will update with news of progress and publications.

Hamlet's Blackberry

2011-06-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

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Today I took a restorative walk in a local forest - it was warm today for the second time this summer, and I felt embraced by the coolness of walking in the trees.

I just finished reading the book Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers, which is an in depth look at how to find balance in this ever-more-connected world. I had previously read The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein and The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. These two books are extremely thoughtful investigations into the negative impact that the internet has had on our lives, but say very little about the benefits and how to maintain them while minimizing the negative. I think both the Bauerlein and Carr books have their place - when people are unaware of the dangers of their behaviour, it is necessary to first get their attention by shouting. And I think the Bauerlein and Carr books very effectively get people's attention on this issue.

Where Powers' book differs is in his acknowledgement that we have undoubtedly benefited from the extended connectedness that the internet has brought into our lives, while at the same time highlighting that we often feel a loss of control, and unknowingly are giving up important habits and ways of relating to one another in the process. He uses historical references from Plato, Seneca, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Franklin, Thoreau and finally McLuhan to illustrate the challenges that each of these individual's respective times faced when a new technology was introduced that increased the busyness and information overload of lives, and the measures they took to counterbalance that impact. There's a great deal of food for thought in this book, and Powers ends with some general suggestions for finding a personal prescription for balance in this ever-more connected world. He ends by giving a specific example used by his own family to place the usefulness of the internet within the context of living in a way that allows for deep thinking and doing meaningful things together.

Reading the book caused me to reflect on my strongest memories of happy times. They revolve around periods of time such as when I was in graduate school, immersed in research and writing my thesis. Without computers and the internet, literature research was done by hand, and I summarized the key points of each paper I read on 3x5 index cards. When I came to write my thesis, all the information I needed was organized on the cards and I wrote the thesis out by hand in 3 week (I recently found the original handwritten manuscript). A secretary typed it all out on an IBM selectric typewriter. It sounds cumbersome in today's world of on-line searching and downloading of citations and pdf files into Endnote; yet I know I had a better command of the information back then that was facilitated by the writing out of the information on those cards and the physicality of the organized cards was something that I could visualize while looking for relevant information. When I tell today's graduate students about writing my thesis in 3 weeks, they are stunned - it typically takes them upwards of 12 months to write a thesis these days (my own writing skills have deteriorated through computer use as well).

I also have many fond memories of our postdoctoral experience living in Germany in the late 1970s - we kept in touch with family by letters; stores were open only a half day on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays, so we spent many weekends walking in town, visiting nearby places, having coffee and pastries, getting together with friends and sitting on the sofa together reading. And my favourite recent Christmas memories are from years when it was just the two of us, and we would spend the days with a cozy fire reading books we'd given each other as gifts, going for walks, making good meals.

The great thing is that my ability to do these things is still with me (really, with all of us). Powers suggests that bringing these things back into life is best done in a positive way - doing it because it feels right and will be beneficial, rather than doing it for negative reasons. And in doing so, it also leaves room for retaining the benefits of the internet in our lives while clearing out the mindless habits that internet use often invokes.

By the Sea

2011-05-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

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A few images made while exploring the shoreline at a favourite park.

Photowalk with Jan

2011-05-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

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For a few years, my dear friend Jan and I would go on "photowalks" on a semi-regular basis. We'd meet up and decide on a locale, spend a few pleasant hours chatting and making images and then stop afterwards for a drink or a light meal. Then about 18 months ago, Jan upped sticks and deserted our island paradise for the bright lights of the big city on the mainland.

Jan came over to visit this weekend, and we headed out to a favourite spot. There's something alien about the landscape of this ancient Garry Oak meadow, something compellingly appealing about its palette of burnished golds and vibrant greens. At this time of the year, the palette is augmented by the blues and purples of the camas lilies. It was a wonderful opportunity to see this familiar place through the eyes of a returning friend.

At this time of year, the park is marsh-like in places from the spring rains, and we had a few instances where one or the other of us almost ended up ass over tea kettle in the slippery mud that spanned some of the trails. And in the midst of this, we crossed paths with a lovely little old lady, out in her best finery for a wee stroll in this "country in the city" park, who somehow magically had not a single spot of mud on her. It was the most unexpected vision, and we (who were covered up beyond the ankles in mud) were feeling quite self-conscious while we talked to her. However, shortly thereafter we stopped for lunch a Pure Vanilla, a fine local bistro, and soon revived our spirits.

In the Garden

2011-05-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

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These are few images made during the past week. Through doing them I discovered several things. I have been berating myself for not getting out with my 4X5 camera on forest walks - I never seem to get everything organized in time to do it. Then last weekend I was sitting on the studio porch while the sun was diffused by the morning cloud cover, when I realized I should just grab the tripod and camera and explore the back garden in the soft, even light. Several of these images are from that little epiphany, although I've cropped them to a square format. Then yesterday I was grabbing a couple of quick shots during light rain to test my camera connector for the iPad. I wasn't sure if the iPad would display the RAW files from my little Canon point and shoot, so I made a couple of images in RAW then some in RAW+jpeg. At which point I discovered that the 1:1 format setting on the camera, which isn't selectable in RAW mode, is selectable in RAW+jpeg mode. For no good reason, that made me quite happy.

The most important thing I got out of this week is the idea that photos are always around and waiting to be made. Although I eschew the straightforward "beautiful" flower shot, there are still endless possibilities to find compositions right at home in the garden.

And now I'm heading out for a photowalk with my dear friend Jan - we're heading over to a favourite location - should be tremendous fun!

Walk

2011-04-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

Just like the birds and trees, you will blossom

2011-04-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Surge

2011-04-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

One Day at the Lake

2011-04-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

Sea Suite

2011-03-27T14:53:00.000-07:00

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It's been a strange start to 2011, with much goings on with family, work and illness. Today there was a brisk breeze blowing off the water, and I was encouraged to grab a camera and visit some favourite haunts along the shore. The combination of familiar places and a cold, invigorating wind gave me the feeling of awakening from a too-long, deadening sleep; to wake up to the ancient stories written in etched lines and weathered wood.

With each passing storm

2011-03-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

Title: "When dialogue turns to argument"

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Through the thin veil of the sky

2011-03-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

Title: "Looking west towards the Golden Gate"

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On the question of origins

2011-03-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

Title: "From deep within time"

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Subsumed by the push and pull

2011-03-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

Title: "Into the turmoil"

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The moodiness of the sea...

2011-03-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

Title: "A sense of self"

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Lurking II

2011-02-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

Title: "A deepening stillness"

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The shadows whisper, reluctant to reveal their secrets but burdened by the deepening mystery that surrounds them.

In the cooling shade

2011-02-24T18:55:00.000-08:00

Title: "Gleaming"

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It is such a relief to stand in the cooling shade after a long, hot climb; to see the intensity of the sun condensed into one glowing point reflection.

Lurking

2011-02-22T18:09:00.000-08:00

Title: "Shadowtalking, Coit Tower (Oct 2010)"

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I love the distortion of shadows - the world seems familiar and strange at the same time. To me one of the interesting things about shadows is how often we inherently recognize what is casting the shadow, even in the absence of the actual object. I'm also captivated by the indirect stories they tell of our existence.

A Unseemly Sense of Scale

2011-02-20T10:48:00.000-08:00

Title: "Coit Tower, Mid Morning"

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There is something about towering objects that invokes ambiguous feelings - on the one hand, there is a sense of majesty and wonder; on the other hand, the erection of a towering object seems overly egotistical. In this case, the tower (even with its marvelous views) is overshadowed by the incredible murals in the base building - so marvelous that one can excuse the excess of the tower.

Too much yak

2011-02-12T19:39:00.000-08:00

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I dislike as much as anyone any implication that the Zone System is an esoteric end in itself. To begin with, I did not 'invent' it. It is a simple codification of sensitometry.... There is far too much 'yak' in photography. Too many people talk and write; too few make photographs of personal and enduring quality. (emphasis mine)

Ansel Adams, 1982

Beyond a Gnomic Existence

2011-02-12T18:59:00.000-08:00

Title: "Class struggle, Filbert St. Stairs"

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This statue was an unexpected find while climbing the Filbert Street stairs to the Coit Tower. It reminded me of statuary I saw many years ago in the former Eastern Bloc of Europe - a writhing mass of naked bodies in some way meant to epitomize the class struggle against oppression. Transported to a well tended English-style garden, it seemed to have acquired a faint whiff of eroticism.

An Uncertain Majesty

2011-02-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

Title: "Palm Bifurcating Frame, Filbert St. Steps"

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It's interesting to work with these negatives several months after the images were made. In looking them over, I found what was for me a rather high proportion of images with the subject firmly centered in the frame. I usually consider placement carefully when composing an image, and I have no reason to think I wasn't working carefully at the time. I have always had a strong affinity for the square format - back when I was painting in watercolour and acrylics, the vast majority of my work was on square fields. Many painters dislike the square format, but my feeling was always that once I made the first mark on the paper or canvas, the square had inextricably been divided into rectangular spaces. I think with these images from SF, I was simply finding that middle placement of a subject works well with a square frame.

A Journey Measured in Inches

2011-02-08T17:48:00.000-08:00

Title: "In the shadow of the Golden Gate"

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This was a hard-won view. Our friend Stephanie offered to drive us over the Golden Gate bridge after we'd all visited the De Young museum. Unexpectedly, what should have taken 15 minutes by car ended taking us over 2 hours - we hit the mother of all traffic jams, on a Sunday afternoon no less. Stephanie was baffled by what could possibly cause such a congestion, and we constantly dithered between hanging in there, or trying to find an escape route. Well, we hung in there and were rewarded by this late afternoon view of the long shadow the bridge casts over the water.

Geometric Oddities

2011-02-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

Title: "Triangular View, DeYoung Museum"

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I was entranced by the architecture of the DeYoung museum in Golden Gate Park. I was drawn to make this image by the intersection of the edges of the building and the shadow, and the way the rectangular window is divided into light and dark. I find myself vacillating between thoughts of impending doom (as if trapped in a deep dungeon) and eternal hope when I look at this image.

Iconic Cliché

2011-02-02T18:12:00.000-08:00

Title: "Palm Tree, DeYoung Museum"

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What, a holga image of a palm tree? Such a cliché you might say, but it's my cliché and I'm glad to have it. After all, it seems silly not to make an image of a palm tree when in California with your holga. I think it's the unpredictability of the plastic camera and film development that can make even such a cliché image unique. I have certain modifications I use to soften the image captured on film by my holgas, and in this case part of the modification has clearly scratched the film along the top edge. Also for some reason, I have a lot of "bromide drag" in the negative from the development process. I absolutely love these imperfections, the slightly quirky character they bring to the image that seems so appropriate for the subject, which seems to be listing precipitously towards the building behind.

Old School Snapshot

2011-01-30T17:43:00.000-08:00

Title: "Sisters, Golden Gate Park 2010"

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Besides the fact that I love the subjects of this photo dearly, I love how this image connects to the long tradition of the family vacation snapshot - subjects posed in front of a water feature, image taken with grainy film, and printed in the darkroom with slightly high contrast. There are photo albums all over North America filled with images like this, and without the date in the title I think it would be easy to think this image was made in to early 1970s.

I was happy to get a bit of time in the darkroom this weekend. I shot 6 rolls of film with my Holga on this short trip to SF, and I've just made prints from two of the rolls. I want to get the rest of the frames printed, and then make a selection of them to use in a zine or chapbook. I'm looking forward to converting these into a precious, low-tech object.

Walk On

2011-01-29T18:34:00.000-08:00

Title: "Golden Lines"

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Early evening's

golden lines,

the briskness sharpened

by smoky fires,

each astringent breath

a wave.

Whispers

2011-01-25T17:58:00.000-08:00

Title: "Thoughts swaying to the rhythm of the waves"

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Standing there,

enveloped by the warmth,
mind in suspension,
thoughts swaying to
the rhythm of the waves.

In spite of evidence to the contrary

2011-01-23T15:18:00.001-08:00

Title: "An Unkindness of Ravens"

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The first glided from out of the sun,
wings spread for maximum coast,
landing spot judged from uncanny experience.
Back on terra firma, folded
up and strutting forward like a well
fed prosecutor sure of victory.

More rained down,
the sun glistening on their lampblack feathers
as they ambled forward for a closer look.
The glint in their eyes not
just a trick of the light,
representing their lust for the work.

A violent argument ensued as to who
should take the first tasty morsel that
would precipitate the frenzied feed.
Each squawked louder to drown
out the others like overheated children fighting
over the last swing in the park.

But one inched
closer and closer to the prize,
the others too intent

on arguing the merits of their case.
Then all was decided

as he picked up the tiny rodent,
judge flying off to the astonishment of his jury.

Alien Contingent

2011-01-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

Title: "Nob Hill Voodoo"

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One morning I went out early for a walk around the neighbourhood of our hotel. As I climbed up a hill, I came across this display in a shop window. There were stately buildings all around, and some very expensive hotels a block away. Not to mention the Masonic Temple! It all seemed a bit spooky....

Big Alma

2011-01-18T17:29:00.000-08:00

Title: "Victory, Union Square"

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"Big Alma", Alma de Bretteville (also known as "The Great Grandmother of San Francisco") met her future husband thanks to modeling for this monument to commemorate George Dewey's victory in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish American war. This statue was selected from a number of entries and only barely made the cut, thanks to the crucial vote of the chair of the Citizen's Committee, Adolph Spreckels. Although he was twice her age, she was smitten by him and eventually after a five-year courtship, they married on May 11, 1908. Because he was head of the Spreckels Sugar Company, Alma often referred to her husband as her "sugar daddy"

It is good to know the truth, but it is better to speak of palm trees

2011-01-17T18:44:00.000-08:00

Title: "Two palms facing outward"

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The title of this post is apparently an Arabic proverb. I think a good proverb, like good art, is somewhat enigmatic or ambiguous, allowing for personal interpretation.

Little Blue Box

2011-01-16T17:28:00.000-08:00

Title: "Tiffany & Co."

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One of the casual images I made during our short trip to San Francisco in the fall. I had never used the holga for "travel" photography, in fact I've rarely used the holga for urban photography and felt a bit out of my element. Unsure of what I'd get, unsure of what to look for in terms of subject. There was a lot of hit and miss....

My Beloved Sleeps II

2011-01-15T21:40:00.000-08:00

Title: "I remember her reflection in the early days, when lightning crowned her forehead"

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Time and perception seem shifted in the forest, laying to rest all the weight of the world.

My Beloved Sleeps

2011-01-14T20:01:00.000-08:00

Title: "I searched eyes for her, but didn't find her. I didn't find in the trees her greenness..."

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There is something about old, veteran trees that is so alluring. Even at times of day, or types of weather when they might seem threatening or frightening, I find myself drawn to them, aching to hear their stories. More often I find a quiet comfort in the company of trees, the smell of the loamy earth underneath them evoking my own memories of stories that have gone untold.

Why Read?

2011-01-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

Title: "View Alcatraz", San Francisco, October 2010

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I've recently begun reading Harold Bloom's book "How to Read and Why", and he writes a number of things in the prologue that I think apply equally well to making art as they do to reading. Bloom writes:

"It matters, if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their own judgments and opinions, that they continue to read for themselves...why they read must be for and in their own interest...one of the uses of reading is to prepare ourselves for change..." Bloom goes on to fuse the wisdom of Bacon, Johnson and Emerson to say "find what comes near to you...that addresses you...then weigh and consider the nature it shares with you; its closeness to yourself."

It's not difficult to see that these are wise words to be considered by artists, or anyone interested in art. In order to educate ourselves to be able to form judgments and opinions, we need to be making art or carefully looking at and thinking about art. Being immersed in art as an artist or a viewer is an important part of the process of change, of expanding our understanding of the world and ourselves. Making art that speaks to us (or viewing art that speaks to us), and carefully considering how and why it makes that connection to us, is a way to deeper self-understanding. I think that in my own case, it is these common threads between reading and making art that bring me to constantly consider what story an artwork conveys to me - I often get a sense of narrative when looking at work I've made, even though it's been made without a specific narrative in mind.

Bloom goes on in the prologue to numerate five principles he feels are important to restore the way we should read. Again, I can readily see how these apply to making art:

1. Clear your mind of cant

(Cant referring to pious platitudes, the peculiar vocabulary of a sect or coven. One of the reasons I have reduced my interaction with internet sites like Flickr was to do exactly this, because I found myself being influenced too much by thinking of how work I posted would be "received")

2. Do not attempt to improve your neighbor by what or how you read

(In essence, rather than evangelize, spend the time making art. Here I see the analogy as being one of spend precious time making work rather than spend countless hours looking at other's work on the net, commenting on the work of others, evangelizing a specific point of view of how to make work)

3. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light

(Bloom says that one's development as a reader is not selfish because it acts as an inspiration to others. The same can be said of the time taken for making art - good art inspires others to make art)

4. One must be an inventor to read well

(Bloom says "we read, frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own". I take this principle to mean that we make art, often unknowingly, because we are constantly trying to realize the potential we each have to invent a new view of the world that surrounds us)

5. Recovery of the ironic

(Bloom mourns the loss of irony, because he sees it as the death of reading, and of that which has been civilized in our natures. In making art, there is plenty of scope to be ironic, or to accept the ironies that the process of art making constantly throws at us. Bloom goes on to state "Irony demands a certain attention span, and the ability to sustain antithetical ideas, even when they collide with one another". Just exactly what it takes to make art (attention span) that holds true meaning (antithetical ideas), with great excitement and satisfaction in the process (the collision of ideas))

Second verse, same as the first...

2011-01-02T16:16:00.000-08:00

Another lazy, beautiful day as the holidays come to an end:

It was the kind of day for walking without purpose, to take opportunities to sit down, enjoy the brisk air and the sun on one's face. I took a route through the neighbourhood, stopping at a hill top park and down at a secluded beach. The frost was still evident wherever there was shadow, the rough edges of melt a record of the sun's passing. The water was still, reflecting the intense colour of the sky.

A summing up of sorts

2011-01-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

Now that my "daily practice" or "365" project is finished, I've been reflected on the lessons learned.

Doing the project has certainly connected me more strongly to my surroundings, has made me more aware of quality of light, the interesting lines made by shadows, has made me sensitive to the incredibly rich prospects for making images, has resulted in improved compositional skills. In looking back at the images, I can see certain subjects/themes that arose, some which I will likely pursue more purposefully in the future. I like the fact that these subjects/themes came out of the process naturally, reflecting a sincere conscious or unconscious interest on my part. I also appreciate how doing the project as I did (i.e. blogging daily) encouraged me to think more about some of the philosophical issues of photography, also to think more about why I made certain images and what those images expressed to me, and to write about these thoughts.

There were a few things I didn't like about doing the project. The first was the length - after about 7-8 months, I felt that I had absorbed the various lessons to be learned, and seen the improvement in skills that consistent practice provides. I was ready to abandon the project at that time, suggesting that for me projects spanning about 6 months are more ideal. I also feel that by its very nature, a "365" project imposes a quota mentality - that my focus was in many ways on getting that image done for the day to fulfill the "quota". Finally, because I wanted to keep an up to date blog on the project, I was for the most part using a digital camera, and pretty much have not shot any film (which I love) for the past 6 months (except for our trip to SF). The daily project was not the only reason I haven't been using film recently - the presence of a couple of furry guests who have free-range access to the area where I develop and dry film has made it more difficult to get the films developed and dried in pristine condition.

Overall I think it was a worthwhile exercise. Today I went for a walk by the lake, and I immediately picked up my camera before I headed out the door. I'm pretty sure that I'll have a camera with me every day when I leave the house, a lasting legacy of doing the project.

Eleven

2011-01-01T18:03:00.000-08:00

11 Images for the first day of 2011:

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It was a beautifully cold, crisp first day of the year - perfect for a walk along the lake. When I first arrived, I heard a loud whistling noise that sounded like some kind of high-tech air horn. But it turned out to be the sound people were making by taking up thin sheets of ice from along the shore, and skimming them on the skin of ice covering parts of the lake. As the skimmed piece of ice shattered, a high-pitched squeak/whistling noise was made from the friction of ice on ice. Walking further along the path brought a peaceful quietness, many lovely vistas and wonderful shadows cast upon the icy lake.

And in the end....

2010-12-31T17:57:00.000-08:00

Images from the shore on the last day of 2010:

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It was cold but beautiful today, and I went down to a favourite spot along the shore to make some pinhole images, using expired instant film. I sunned myself against the rocks as I waited for each exposure to develop, just enjoying the quiet day. The pace of making the images was perfect, and I realized that I'd like to explore the possibilities of both pinhole and large format more extensively in the coming year. Just a great day all around!

Daily Practice 365/365

2010-12-31T17:50:00.000-08:00

Title: "Full Circle"

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For the final image of my Daily Practice project, I went back to the site of where it all started. I wanted to have a sense of closing the circle, so I took my 4X5 pinhole camera, expired Fuji FP100C45 film and went down to the same location I went to on January 1st, a favourite spot of mine. The wonderful thing about making instant images with a pinhole camera is the way it slows down time; especially in the winter when development times are longer. I felt a great sense of calm and serenity, sunning myself against the rocks of the shoreline while waiting for each exposure to develop. The experience today was quite sublime.

Daily Practice 364/365

2010-12-30T16:01:00.000-08:00

Title: "Vague messages from a shadowy world"

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In this penultimate image for the Daily Practice project, I've returned to a common theme, shadows. This morning I was sitting on the studio porch, admiring the quality of the morning light, and the shadows being cast on the sides of the house. I'm continually attracted to make these images by the quality of the light at particular times of day, the way it is enhanced by the shadows, and also by this idea that shadows represent a slightly off-kilter alternative world. I always get a sense that there is a story to be heard, of daring or mundane events, told in a way never experienced before. It reminds me that when I first started printmaking, I had coopted a cast of figures and shapes from ancient rock art, creating compositions with them that only in retrospect I realized enacted scenes of confrontation. I sense a certain tension between the organic shape on the left of this image, and the strong, rigid geometrical shape on the right. Hopefully it will all end peacefully.

Daily Practice 363/365

2010-12-29T21:09:00.000-08:00

Title: "Yearning for change"

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There's something about a body of water receding beyond view, the sun glistening on its surface with foggy hills far off in the distance. It tugs deeply within the soul, creating a yearning for what is around that bend, what is really unknown. Yet when looking at a scene like this, a sense exists that truly spectacular adventures await; a feeling that can be captured each time one looks at such an image.

Natural Inclinations

2010-12-28T15:10:00.000-08:00

Title: "At the hands of the casual sculptor"

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If this was a sculpture, what might we say about it? Well, there is the interesting decision to use two very different materials - rock and wood. The textures of rock are often on the cold side, while the textures of wood add warmth. Both are etched with lines, the flat rock races at the top having almost a grid, while the driftwood has many different, often parallel, short lines. There is the interesting repetition of the arched shape of the rock in the centre left in the arch of the driftwood in the centre. The mass of rock predominates over the mass of wood, but there is a tenuous balance between the two. Overall, the sculpture succeeds in conveying the sense of a dialogue between rock and wood, where each is equal to the other.

Daily Practice 362/365

2010-12-28T14:57:00.000-08:00

Title: "A reflection of all things past"

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When my dad came back from his morning walk today, he was telling me about some sad news he'd had over the past couple of days. Friends of his had gone to pick up their mother on Christmas morning only to find her dead in her bed; another friend had had a mini-stroke on Christmas evening. As he turned to go into the house for breakfast, my dad remarked "these are the things that happen to your friends at my age" (he's 79).

As the year comes to a close, we typically look back for memories or to get some sense of context for our lives. On Christmas eve, my sister-in-law shared stories of Christmas' when she was a girl growing up in Slovakia, and also memories of her formative years living on her grandmother's farm. These memories often seem to come sharply to us, as if we stumble upon them in the foggy mists of lost and half-remembered times past, thoughts that came to me as I caught this reflection of the sky today.

Daily Practice 361/365

2010-12-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

Title: "Multiples"

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I'm always fascinated by the shadows cast by sculptural objects. It was the blue colour of the wall and the shadows cast by the ornaments that drew me to make this image. It was only afterwards that I found a total of 7 shadows cast by the three balls. It must be the "new" math!

Daily Practice 360/365

2010-12-26T16:36:00.000-08:00

Title: "Whispering to the clouds"

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This time of year offers the opportunity to delve into the secret life of trees. The intricate paths of both main and secondary branches is generally hidden from view during the summer months, yet it is these paths that tell of the life of each tree. Contemplating these twists and turns inevitably leads one to consider the paths of one's own life. I find that like the tree, I accept all the consequences life has offered with equanimity, since they have woven as rich a structure for me as life has woven for the trees.

Up on Blueberry Hill

2010-12-25T16:53:00.000-08:00

Title: "The Christmas Ramble"

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This qualifies as being in the right place at the right time. As I climbed the path to the top of the park, these people were placed just so, out with family and dogs for an afternoon ramble. Although the park is officially called "Anderson Hill Park", locals refer to it as "Blueberry Hill" (why I'm not sure, since there is no evidence of any blueberry bushes).

Daily Practice 359/365

2010-12-25T16:50:00.000-08:00

Title: "The two shepherds"

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I come from a religious family, but am not religious myself. But I love the Christmas story, that idea of an epic event heralded to the most humble of people. While I reject religion, I am thankful to have been raised with values such as treating others as you would like to be treated yourself. Today we have family with us, and it is this opportunity to share a meal and laughter that embodies the holiday season for me.

Lifting the Shroud

2010-12-24T16:38:00.000-08:00

Title: "From unknown depths"

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Looking at this image as I'm composing this post, I'm struck by how well it reads as an abstract composition, with three distinct bands of varying tones and shapes. Viewed larger, the representational interpretation will undoubtedly be more dominant, but it will definitely be strengthened by those abstract elements. It makes me realize that there isn't an absolute division between abstract and representation, but a sliding gradient from pure abstract to pure representation, with very effective mixes of the two existing in the large space between the poles.

Daily Practice 358/365

2010-12-24T16:32:00.000-08:00

Title: "Deep from the well of knowledge"

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I was just leaving the house to go for a little jaunt, when I spied the crown of the oak tree across the street. I love the curving sweep of the top of the crown, defined by all the intricate lines of the branches. It acts as a nice geometric form against the more organic shapes and tones of the clouds.

On the surface

2010-12-23T15:28:00.000-08:00

Title: "Underlying all reason"

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No matter how busy the world, there always exists small, quiet spots for contemplation. I see here the two sides of water: the way it reflects the world we are most enthralled with on its surface, and the clarity with which it reveals what lies below. Surface reflections are not real, no matter how they may seem to be; what we see as we go deeper brings true meaning.

Daily Practice 357/365

2010-12-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

Title: "Culmination"

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A furious invasion from distant shores, repeatedly pounding and degrading the beach. One feels helpless, in awe, invigorated, mesmerized. A overwhelming demonstration that we have only the most tenuous of leases on this world.

Marks of having lived

2010-12-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

Title: "Dark stain on the soul of time"

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There's a delicious dialogue happening between those thin, fine lines which look as if they were delicately drawn with the finest nib, and the large stain the engulfs some of the lines. I just like the way this image invites the mind to slow down and become quiet.

Daily Practice 356/365

2010-12-22T16:56:00.000-08:00

Title: "Stream of Consciousness"

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I love this location because there always seems to be many compositions open to interpretation. I like the interface between the solid and the liquid, the aging lines etched on the rock surfaces, the shades of green in the water, particularly when it is in shadow. Each composition is made as if in a stream of consciousness, a never ending narration without breaks, full of meaning.

Remembering what went before

2010-12-21T16:55:00.000-08:00

Title: "A path of memories"

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If my memory is serving me well, a year ago today I met the lovely JM Golding in person, after a protracted correspondence of sorts on Flickr. Jacki was visiting my town as part of a family vacation prompted by the acceptance of her wonderful toy camera images into a gallery show here. She wrote to me suggesting we meet up, and we spent an afternoon together exploring the coast and this local park with our cameras in hand. It's an interesting experience to take a fellow artist to some of your favourite locales, and to observe how that person views the landscape that is so familiar to you. Whenever I walk in this park, I remember the time we spent here - I was focused on the trees and bushes for the most part, while Jacki was watching for interesting reflections in the pools of water, which made me start to consider the possibilities of those reflections as well. We've maintained an active correspondence on art and life since that day which I've really benefited from. Yesterday I found myself in the same park, with fond memories of a year ago inspiring this image.

Daily Practice 355/365

2010-12-21T16:42:00.000-08:00

Title: "Riding the King Tide"

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The extremely high "king tide" occurring at the moment because of the sun-moon alignment, combined with very windy conditions has resulted in beautiful ocean vistas along our south coast. This morning was relatively calm by recent standards, yet one gets a real sense of the awesome power of the ocean when the tide is this high. Every day along the coast is the same, and different. It seems an apt metaphor for life.

Primal Urge

2010-12-20T21:11:00.000-08:00

Title: "Raw emotion"

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There's a sensation of answering a primal call, looking out at the surging sea with the bitter cold wind blowing in your face. A tension exists between the exuberant feeling of being alive at that moment and the desire to seek shelter and warmth.

Daily Practice 354/365

2010-12-20T21:08:00.000-08:00

Title: "Walking out after all thoughts have gone before"

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Thoughts without a thinker, a mind without thoughts - just the rawness of being human, visceral appreciation of being alive.

Daily Practice 353/365

2010-12-19T18:56:00.000-08:00

Title: "The awakening of curiousity"

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In his book Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about indicators of future creativity in childhood. Children cannot be creative because by definition creativity involves changing a way of thinking or doing things, which first requires mastery of the old or conventional ways. Children can of course show tremendous talent, and if there is a concordance between that early talent and what they go on to become known for in later life, we have a tendency to mistake that early talent for creativity. As an example, Csikszentmihalyi cites Mozart: as a child Mozart was a piano prodigy, but it was only after he learned conventional music and learned about composition that his creativity was born. So what is the best indicator in childhood of the potential to go on to a creative life? It is a prodigious curiousity, which may or may not be on the subject that a person ultimately becomes creative in. It's a need in the child to explore and understand some part of the world around her or him. It makes sense that prodigious curiousity is an indicator of creativity, since being creative involves understanding the world by changing our way of thinking about it. And it makes sense that art is a natural outlet for creativity because it provides a way to express new thinking about the world.

Daily Practice 352/365

2010-12-18T17:38:00.000-08:00

Title: "Releasing pre-conceptions"

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Making art is all about challenging yourself, questioning the rules, even quesioning the physical laws of the universe. It is impossible to observe without causing a change, in both the world and oneself. Making art is about defining how you perceive the world, it's about understanding yourself and how you see yourself within that world; creating something new that blurs the lines between the real and perceived to achieve a unique view.

Daily Practice 351/365

2010-12-17T15:41:00.000-08:00

Title: "Transcendant life"

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As my daily practice project comes to a close (but not my daily practice itself), I'm starting to reflect on what I've gained. This image illustrates one of the gains, because (1) I am more aware of my surroundings, and the play of light and shadow, and (2) I always have a camera with me, and am far more likely to document these little moments. That being said, there's much more to learn. Besides the pattern of shadow on the wall, what caught my eye in particular was the quality of light, both direct and indirect on the wall. I wasn't happy with the image as it came straight out of the camera, and do not have the requisite post-processing skills to really achieve the look as I remember it. So I have more to learn on that end of things. But something else I've learned from my daily practice is to consider the raw image as simply a starting point from which I will bring the image to a resolution. In this case, I decided to emphasize the patter of shadow, how it moves from middle left to top right and is anchored by an architectural detail. These are some of the elements, besides the quality of light, that made me decide to make an image in the first place, and I like how those compositional elements are resolved in the final image.

By the light of the moon

2010-12-16T20:14:00.000-08:00

A series of "moon drawings"

Daily Practice 350/365

2010-12-16T20:11:00.000-08:00

Title: "Random periodicity"

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Our lives are usually governed by periodic events, the things we come to rely upon. But what makes each day interesting is that one random event, completely unpredictable, that overlays the routine and makes it seem fresh again.

History in a Glimpse

2010-12-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

Title: "Colour coded message"

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The intersection between painting and photography, where each informs the other.

Daily Practice 349/365

2010-12-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

Title: "Caught in a reflection"

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Just one of those days that was busy - my dad arrived for Christmas, and we were sitting in the living room talking. One of Z.'s cats seemed a bit leery of him: the last time she'd seen him he'd packed her into a carrier and took her to the airport for transport out to us. I glanced over from my chair, and caught her reflection in the living room door. She was keeping a careful watch from the hallway, and the low light provided this impressionistic image.

Twisting/Turning

2010-12-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

it was bitterly cold at the shoreline today, and

the kelp wisely huddled together to keep warm:

The endless sea

2010-12-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

Title: "The giant's footsteps"

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I think it's interesting that we are so fascinated by water; it generally hides so much more than it reveals. Perhaps it's our ancestral link to water, or the role it has played in human exploration and travel, or our childhood memories of summers at the shore. As kids, we would leap from rock to rock, trying to get as far out into the water (without being in the water) as we could. Oh to be a giant, to leap from rocky outcropping to outcropping, disappearing beyond the horizon.

Daily Practice 348/365

2010-12-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

Title: "Thick as thieves"

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I've written before of my love for the inter-twining lines of kelp on the shore. I always see a drawing lesson in these images - here the lines vary in thickness, change directions, cross each other, run on out of the frame, vary in tone, create interesting negative spaces. I may go on to other subjects from time to time, but I always come back to kelp.

Daily Practice 347/365

2010-12-13T16:24:00.000-08:00

Title: "Awakening to the world"
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I think of this image as a metaphor for those times when one has been in a funk, when suddenly it begins to lift. I'm thankful that the weather here is often changeable - from storm to sun to storm at this time of year, which keeps things lively and interesting.

Found Still Life

2010-12-12T20:30:00.000-08:00

Title: "Carefully considered, but uncontrived"

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I was at an artist's talk a couple of weeks ago given by my friend Dave Aharonian for a show of his at the Lúz Gallery. The show contained two bodies of work, both printed in platinum: beautiful, isolated views of the west coast landscape, and figure studies in the rainforest. An audience member commented that the figure studies seemed contrived, and asked whether the photographer had placed the models in these positions. Dave replied that he worked with professional models who usually came up with the poses themselves. Actually, I was surprised by the question because I've long felt that most figure in the landscape images suffer from the "garnish" syndrome as I've come to call it: the model seems to be draped like a garnish over some feature of the landscape. One of the strengths of Dave's work is how he successfully integrates the figures into the landscape, and the interesting thing about the images he had in this show was the disparity in the scale of the landscape (huge) compared to the figure (quite small and in some cases almost unnoticeable).

I was struck by the sobriquette "contrived", since it is difficult to imagine any figure work (other than the voyeuristic, à la Miroslav Tichy) that wouldn't be posed (and thus contrived), nor most still life studies. Indeed, in the case of still life paintings, art history is rife with explanations of the symbolism in the elements chosen and in their placement within the composition. Modern artists often work very hard to construct still life compositions that look random and natural (although they by definition are not). One of the joys I find in photographing the local coast is the rich source of "found" still life compositions. The objects and their placement is to some extent random, although subject to the forces of wind, sun and ocean surges. As a photographer, I have to be aware and looking, and make considered choices in composing images from these seemingly random collections of flotsam.

Daily Practice 346/365

2010-12-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

Title: "The meaning of solitude"

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I'm sure that I'm drawn to photograph the landscape because it demands quiet contemplation, something that I revel in. Although I am generally alone when I'm out photographing, I'm not lonely; I seek the healing solitude of the landscape. It is no accident that people, or even evidence of people, are absent from my photographs. I go out into the landscape to balance the time I have to spend with people. I'm not talking about loved ones, or close friends, but the people that daily life and work constantly bring me into contact with. I most likely am particularly attracted to photographing seascapes, because they seem even more desolate and untouched by humans than even the surrounding landscape is here.

Another problem with including people in landscape photographs is the way people in a photograph, regardless of scale, draw the viewer's attention. I personally feel that all landscape photographs offer narratives to the viewer, the best doing so in an indirect, and undirected way. When people are included in the frame, the narrative becomes very narrowly focused, the viewer either deciding exactly what the humans are doing or speculating as to their purpose in the image. When Emily Carr, the grand doyen of Canadian west coast landscape painting first came back from Europe and started painting the local landscape, and defunct west coast native villages, she was advised to include figures in her paintings. She did this for awhile, but soon came to the conclusion that they detracted from what she was attempting to portray with her uniquely impressionistic paintings of rain forests and totems. Her later paintings of only the landscape are definitely more mysterious and powerful.

One thing that is certain is that viewers will definitely stop and look at a landscape photograph that includes figures (such is the strong draw on our psyche). Whereas the straight landscape image may be glanced at in passing, the way most people simply move through the landscape day by day. So the challenge for the landscape photographer is to create images that are so compelling, they are impossible to walk by.

The endless line of reason

2010-12-11T18:36:00.000-08:00

Title: "Multiple plot lines"

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I am always happy to come across these multilayers of lines within the landscape. I imagine the stress lines in the rock to be ancient narratives, which have become overlaid by the more contemporary narratives plotted by those sensuous curving lines of kelp. The curving lines are more complex than the straight lines in the rock, mirroring an increasing complexity in language and vocabulary from ancient times to the present. Within the ancient narratives, we may stumble across little jewels of wisdom that seem prescient; within those lush curving lines of narrative we may find intellectual stimulation, or titillation, a feast for the senses but not necessarily greater wisdom. The lines seem to be conversing across time, integrating their narratives rather than remaining aloof and separate.

Daily Practice 345/365

2010-12-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

Title: "Primal comfort"

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Staring at a fire, and warming ourselves with the heat of a fire, is a comfort we never tire of. There is something about firelight that keeps a winter night at bay, unlike the artificial lights we usually rely upon. No matter how sophisticated and complex our society becomes, we never lose the response to this most basic of comforts.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere

2010-12-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

I've recently been reading a book by Nicholas Carr titled The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains. It is a well researched book that offers a great deal of insight into how the explosion of internet use is changing how we read and think. Carr references many research studies, one of the ones that struck me in particular today was a study carried out by Gary Small's group at UCLA. The study compared two groups of individuals: those who were veteran internet users, and those who were relatively new to internet use. Using an MRI, Small's group showed that when asked to conduct internet searches using a popular search engine, the experienced group showed broad brain activity, using a network in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex extensively, while the novice group showed little activity in this area. What was quite striking was the change in the novice group's brain patterns 6 days later, after doing 1 hour of internet searching a day: the brains of these individuals had re-wired to extensively access the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Given that neural plasticity changes usually take several weeks of repetition before they begin to take hold, this quick change in brain activity after 5 hours of internet use is staggering.

Carr goes on to write that according to a number of experts, reading web pages on the screen overloads working memory and decreases cognitive function because we are constantly interrupting our reading to make split second decisions whether to follow the various links that are offered on the screen. A number of cognitive scientists quoted in the book agree that the rapidly shifting attention the internet demands improves our multitasking skills, but "the more you multitask, the less deliberative you become; the less able to think and reason out a problem" according to Jordan Grafman at the NINDS. According to David Meyer from the University of Michigan, a leading expert on multitasking "except in rare circumstances, you can train until you're blue in the face and you'd never be as good as if you just focused on one thing at a time", adding that multitasking "is learning to be skillful at a superficial level". Carr concludes that Seneca summed it up best in his Letters of a Stoic, remarking that "to be everywhere is to be nowhere".

The more reading I do, the more I realize that if I want to retain (or regain) the ability to read and think deeply, I will have to balance book reading and research (and similar off-line activities) with on-line activities (and choose those on-line activities more carefully). In terms of my continuing art practice, I think that careful, thoughtful consideration of art books will be a more productive and enriching use of my time compared to looking at lots of images on internet sites like Flickr. The number of images on Flickr is staggering, and there are many links and side paths beckoning constantly. I hadn't read this section of Carr's book before I decided to leave Flickr, but I can see that I had an intuitive understanding of why continuing with Flickr would be counter-productive to my desire to continually improve as an artist.

Daily Practice 344/365

2010-12-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

Title: "Work day morning"

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This morning the whole world felt freshly scrubbed, new and exciting. I caught this view on the walk in from the parking lot, the warmth of the sun on the concrete wall offset by the dark shadows.

The Flood

2010-12-09T17:39:00.000-08:00

Title: "It all came rushing back"

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There are times when fuzziness in memory is not amusing - you can't remember someone's name, you feel it's on the "tip of your tongue" but the harder you try to remember, the more frustrated you become. Remembering cold, hard facts leaves no room for empathy. Yet many of our childhood memories are woven from things that really happened, those we imagined happened (or were exaggerated in our minds at the time), and those we only have the vaguest recollection of. We usually don't mind this imprecision, in some ways perhaps we welcome the opportunity for embellishment that the fuzziness offers. I look at this image, and I am immediately transported back to childhood walks in the forest; not one walk in particular but an omnibus impression of them all. There is a great deal of comfort in this memory.

Daily Practice 343/365

2010-12-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

Title: "The Epiphany"

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There's something about those pink-tinged clouds that make me think of the angels and cherubs that populated the sky in the large scale religious paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries. When I walk out from work as the darkness begins to fall, these little signs hold great emotional content, although their precise meaning is obscure.