Back to Arting
The past six weeks have been a bit wild! OR to WA to OR to ID to UT to AZ and back to OR!
The two biggest things were, in order, my computer, and all the 20,000+ un-backed-up photos on Lightroom were stolen from the back of my truck, and I went down the Grand Canyon working as an assistant.
The loss of the computer was far more impactful than I thought it would be, and in hindsight, for good reason. It held almost 100% of my the compiled, edited, and organized photos from the past four years. Most of my art. And now I no longer have access to any of it. But as clique, as it sounds, fire always creates more fertile soil.
Departing to the Grand, I was awash with sadness from the loss and unsure how I would get back to creating again. I knew I would, of course, but wasn’t sure how. Reflecting while on the river gave me needed time and space to process and find inspiration and intention for when I got back. Upon returning to OR, I have almost immediately been able to dive back into writing and drawing, as well as continue to read poetry. And then I went on another infamous photo walk. It was one of the best, most productive, inspiring, and fun art sessions I’ve had in a while. I took 89 photos and edited 23. 25% is pretty good, and while shooting it was like every other composition was exciting and felt good to shoot!
While I am very bummed and still processing the loss of most of my other artwork, I do think I am in a period of immense creativity and growth. Unfortunately, those 24 photos from my last post are gone, or at least the original files I wanted for a project are. I may hunt down low-res versions off Instagram and elsewhere someday, but for now, I am focusing on the now and the art I am creating in the present.
Okay, with all of that said, I won’t be putting any of the above-mentioned photos from the latest walk here. It would be too much. But I am going to add six pieces, two drawings, and four photographs, and do a little bit of blabbing about them.
I have paired up all six pieces. Not totally why, but it feels right. And like this curating, these pieces were created out of intuition and that’s about it. The first piece is pen and paper, then I took a photo and made all the depth go away in editing, so it was just lines on paper. This drawing feels like water. I want to do more like it, trying to flow a line into a form that expresses the essence of water. Then paired is a photo of my hand. I love the shape of the human hand when resting in a curl. I also love how my fingerprints subtly mirror the lines of the drawing, also reminding me of water.
Self-portraits. Is all expressive art a self-portrait? I do think there is an added layer of vulnerability to creating when you turn the lens (or pen/brush/clay/etc.) towards yourself. For me it is a place I can shelter in safety, behind the lens that is, but to be on the other side is different. I use it as a tool of exposure (no pun intended :) ) and discovery. What will I find if I turn it on myself? Not sure yet. But I want to do a bunch more self-portrait work of all kinds to see. Why I put these two photos together, not really sure. But I do love the texture and light in the canopy of trees. A favorite past time of mine is to stare at the blossoms and bubbles of dancing light that leaves form on the ground or on tree trunks. It is one of mother nature’s most beautiful abstractions of value and shape.
The last pair is a graphite and charcoal drawing that I photographed and slightly edited to capture deep, dark shapes and contrast; the other is another form of self-portrait with my right wrist. The drawing is dark, foreboding maybe? And I am curious how other people view the arm photo, but it feels dormant to me. So, they seemed good to go together. Bonus points if you can read the handwritten poem in the drawing. It's almost like a title and another element of the sky combined? Either way, I really like how these all turned out. They all are more in the nature of drafts than final products and I will be elaborating on the creative foundations that are here for sure.
Okay dang! I tend to write a lot more than I expect. I will be posting again very soon with a bunch of new photos, and, of course, there will be a lot of writing to go along I bet. So good on you if you read all this but looking is just as good. In the end, all these writings are just my own ideas about my own art. And remember, as the viewer/reader, you get to decide what each piece means to you.
Okay, good night, go forth into the world and look at art!
A Bookmark. + some ideas
I haven’t, obviously, posted anything since late May, over a month ago. I’ve been busy. But not uncreative in the slightest. Just without direction, yet. I have done very little photographing in the meantime, and even less editing. But I have been writing. All sorts of things, ideas, questions, narratives; I have also started to deeply explore poetry as well. I will pair a form of written and visual art in the future, not sure if it will be in this project or another, we’ll see.
I am posting as a placeholder for a thread of an idea. Kind of like a bit of visual notetaking, a quick image to capture a moment of inspiration, not necessarily of the subject, just of the moment. I'll make a post about visual notetaking later. This will serve as much the same, I hope, a physical, well, electronic I guess, bookmark in my process to keep an idea alive…
In the past two weeks, I have nearly finished reading a book other than a photo book or poetry, and it has become one of my favorites. The Lonely City by Olivia Laing is a work of memoir, biography, and art and cultural criticism wrapped up together, about the function and nature of loneliness, isolation, and solitude in art and society. Woah, scary words, huh? I agree. But it is very well written and draws together the lives of several famous artists with the principal thread being loneliness. The art of Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and more is explored in its relationship to loneliness, not only in the literal work, but through the lives and personas of each artist.
One of my biggest takeaways was how much influences an artist’s work. Each artist, like all artists, had endless influences and inspirations, both external and internal. It got my mind in a groove of curiosity surrounding how my internal self influences my own art. What is my art saying that I don’t even know? Well, a lot, I’m sure. But that’s the wonderful thing about art, it exposes, expresses, speaks the ideas, thoughts, emotions, and things that aren’t necessarily known, or acknowledged. This extends out of the self and into community, family, and society/culture as well.
What is art so good at? It is a powerful tool of change. It changes the artist, the artist grows, learns, transforms, and through art, the viewer learns, grows, and transforms as well. Art can expose injustice and harm, it can speak for the unheard, and show the unseen. As art does this, the individual grows, which aids in growing relationships with others and their community. Positive change is not possible without individual change, and a catalyst for this, in my opinion, is art. It impacts people in ways most mediums don’t. This is the power of art!
I don’t know what to do about it yet though, except to keep creating, “alchemising terror into art”, as Olivia Laing said in Funny Weather. For now, I also am reflecting on my influences, I am revisiting older work and listening to what it has to say, what I can learn from it. In doing this, I hope to come away with a better understanding of how I can use my creativity to inspire positive change, even if it’s just in myself, or one person, it is an act of good, nonetheless.
So that’s one of the things that has been on my mind this past month. Quite the rant, but I guess I am probably just writing this more for myself anyways… I think I will have some new photos soon maybe? We’ll see. Maybe even some poems on the side? I do know that I have gathered up 24 of my favorite images from the past two to three years and am going to do something with them. Probably just think about them for a while, but it’s also another placeholder, a bookmark of an idea for a thread of a project.
Last but not least, a poem for dessert, as well as my Apple Music profile. Go listen to my playlists dang-it! :)
Untitled 4, McMinnville Spring '22
Hello!
I have another post. It is composed of all new photos. If you want every new post and an occasional old one that’s really good to be delivered straight to your email, sign up over to the left or at the very bottom of the post! Thanks!
In this series I experiment with trying to approximate memories and encourage narrative, using sequencing and pairing to suggest a potential narrative. Or not. It’s in the eyes, or mind, of the viewer. To be completely honest, I purely put these photos together in an intuitive and aesthetic manner, not with a specific narrative, memory, or truth in mind. I do think I was somewhat successful in creating the atmosphere, or feeling, of memory perhaps. A bit flat, grainy, and out of context. Could be warm, soft, and colorful, or cool, dark, and hazy. But that’s just what I think. What do you think? What narrative speaks to you?
I also figured out how to make it so you can comment. Please do if you feel so inclined. I would really like to know what, you, the viewer sees, and what narrative plays through your head. No pressure though, now back to the art.
(tip: click on the image to see full size!)
Presence. Untitled 4, 2022
This one is probably my favorite of the two. It feels the most balanced, both dark, and light, empty, and full. I like the feeling that the background image brings, with the leaf-filtered evening light glowing against the twisting form of the tree. It grounds the other two photos in their contrast. The bottom image is shadowy, the only light is warm but the image is cold in nature. Contrasting with a cool blue and sharp form of the top image, that is somehow much softer and inviting. The overall temperature of the light in this spread is warm, but it possesses a nuanced contrast.
This spread is a bit more neutral to me. The background sets a darker and hazy tone. The trees cool, lost in gray light. The right image is one of my favorites from all of Untitled 4. I just really love the balance of color and light in the composition. The right photo feels more memory-ish. The softer colors, warm light, and graininess are very a bit dream-like to me. Reminds me of some photos from Robert Adams’ American Silence book in composition and subject, but contrasts wholly in colors and editing, which affect the impact so much.
Slipping By. Untitled 4, 2022
I have really enjoyed the challenge of stepping out of my comfort zone to try and pair these images in a spread and try to encourage narrative through the entire process. I was, once again, inspired by my favorite contemporary photographer, Todd Hido. I recently watched a presentation and discussion he gave at the School of Visual Arts in New York called ‘Working in the Vicinity of Narrative‘. It was an hour 45, but was very good and very much work the long watch. He walked through much of his artistic career, and I came away with lots of thoughts to chew on and inspiration to direct.
One thing that impacted me greatly was the nature of narrative and ambiguity in photography (or just art). If you are telling your viewer how to interpret or direct the narrative in photography, it is often less impactful. This doesn’t necessarily look the same in all types of photography or art though. I guess I am not really sure how it looks yet, but I am learning. I do know, though, that when you are encouraged to create your own beginning and conclusion to a narrative incepted by the piece and not get handed a whole story, neatly packaged, it is much more powerful in its ability to do what art is so good at: revealing and speaking truths. Talking about truths, Todd also spoke on the relationship between fiction and truth and how they often are far more complimentary of each other than many people realize. Some of the most important lessons are told through fictional narratives. They can be no less truthful than a journalist’s photography or a historical record, they are just fictional. The line between created reality and the real world blurs a bit here. I believe this can be seen well in music and poetry, both using words and/or sound to construct a narrative or image or emotion. They are not real like a documentary or nonfiction literature, but they often can describe our world, reality, far better. In conclusion, I guess I will say that it sure seems that the more fundamental the art is, the more universally it connects, fiction or not.
Okay, enough philosophy! Here are the individual images of the spreads and a few more from the series and shoot. I will add a few words on the technical side of this series, as well as process, alongside the gallery explaining my editing and the slight shift in style that can be seen in this series compared to earlier work. They are in chronological order of time captured. Don’t forget to click on them to slide through the full-size images.
This was my first time shooting with intention during the day, and not dusk or night since I got here. I purposely set out with my camera to capture something. Not sure what, but something. This was after listening to part of the presentation mentioned above. I did what I always do when I shoot, especially at night, and just observe. Look for things that speak to me as a good photograph. Shooting with intuition, not thinking. But still with intention. It seems to work in the day to… Once I got the photos onto the computer, I once again edited most of these in pairs but still tried to maintain continuity to the series. The standouts are -1, -2, and -8. I included them because I think that, while they have aesthetic and editing differences, they complement the overall feel of the series. And while they aren’t sequenced in a certain order, those photos would deliver a mood, and break from the rest of the images, much like an interlude. I ended up using a lot of grain and desaturation to soften the colors and textures, trying to add to the dream, memory feel. I did want them to feel a bit flat, with color being the main driver of depth.
I do think that -10 and -12 use light and shadow, and perspective to add depth more than the rest of the photos. Those are probably my favorite images if they were in a vacuum. I believe that the flat, soft colors and the far-off feeling lines are the things that power much of the feel. I definitely want to experiment with that moving forward. Next project/post, since this is already super detailed and long, I want to explore the role of influences on my photography and process. I am really curious to learn more about that…
Lastly, of course, the contact sheets. They may be a bit enlightening to the process of shooting with intuition, a sort of visual notetaking. They also reveal how dramatic some of the edits are compared to some of my photography, especially my ski or other ‘outdoor’ photos.
Wow! If you made it all the way down here, good job! Thanks so much for reading all of that. I hope you didn’t fall asleep in the middle there. No worries if you did though. Well, the bonus is some links to explore more! I highly recommend the presentation video if you can just throw it on in the background while doing something mindless like Excel or dishes… Or just watch it if you have the time. Todd’s work is incredible, House Hunting is likely the single biggest inspiration for most of my photography outside of skiing and ‘outdoors’. American Silence is also quite an amazing collection that is an integral part of American photography.
Leafs, McMinnville Spring '22
Hello all. Here are some more photos from a recent walk around town. I wasn’t originally doing a series on greenery and such, but it kind of happened by the end of the shoot, as you can see by the contact sheet. I have always enjoyed full images of a single texture/color, especially of plants or rocks. I don’t have too many photos like this as well, the closest being photos like the ones I took in Yellowstone last May. If you are so inclined, there is a link at the bottom of this post to the Yellowstone post so you can see some cool colors and textures. But back to Oregon. I really like all the different greenery here, as well as the sheer quantity of greenery compared to somewhere like Silverton or the high desert. It does get me inspired to shoot a series of photos of the textures and colors of the high desert; there may not be a ton of leaves or greenery, but there sure are a ton of textures and colors to be found in the high desert.
I do think that I will continue to shoot photos like these in days/weeks to come because they are so fun to look at and the subject matter is seemingly endless here. We’ll see where the creative winds blow me, but it’s a path for now…
Here are the final images, and down below is the contact sheet:
Yay you made it to the bottom. You get two rewards!
I did ‘Leafs’ on purpose. It sounds more fitting to the image series.
The Yellowstone link:
May-uary, Bozeman Spring '21
Oh, and I totally forgot in all of the computer chaos getting this together, I have a whole series from a May powder day near Big Sky last Spring. I know I said new stuff from here on out, but… I really like some of these photos so I am going to post them. I have an Instagram for one shot, and I will pair them, but I will also have a number of the other edited photos from that tour, along with contact sheets.
Here is the caption and the included shot:
Not quite the spotless hero turn photo but pretty good for May! Had to bail on three objects before we ended up on some low angle pow. Better safe than sorry, especially when safe is knee deep pow in May!
Here are the rest of the shots plus the contact sheets. I didn’t actually include the shot above because I like another one, shot just before, better. It has been a year since I last review these images though… The photos below should are also in story-graphical order, with the 6th B&W image being a bit of a centerpiece. Definitely my favorite image from the outing.
