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Well, whaddya know. I won third place in the nature/other category of the Px3 Prix de la Photographie Paris competition for my Artifacts of Nature series.
This is pretty cool, because Px3 is one of those rare competitions where I look at the winners and actually like what I see. The jurors have selected an excellent range of styles, subjects and attitudes, and there is some amazing art in there. It’s nice to have been selected to be among them. What can I say, I’m pretty stoked.
In my last post, Angela was curious about how I carefully refine and polish the photographs I take, as opposed to just trying to capture the ‘decisive moment‘ in the camera. While I plan to write more about this, I stumbled across an article written by Rosanne Cash about songwriting, which helps explain my attitude towards photography:
“Twenty-five years ago, I would have said that the bursts of inspiration, and the transcendent quality that came with them, were an emotionally superior experience, preferable to the watchmaker concentration required for the detail work of refining, editing and polishing. But the reverse is proving to be true. Like everything else, given enough time and the long perspective, the opposite of those things that we think define us slowly becomes equally valid, and sometimes more potent.” [link]
I love that… the emotional potency of “enough time and the long perspective.”
I have been working diligently for the past month on improving my website, making sure that all of the photographs I show on my site are ones I am proud of. I started doing this when an art buyer inquired about one of my photos, and the one she picked was one I was a little surprised I had online. The photograph was ok, but not one I’d consider selling. I realized that when I updated my site last year, I had picked a few photos at random to test the design, and, well… forgot to replace some of them. Argh!
But from stupid mistakes come great opportunities. (Didn’t Ben Franklin say that? No? He should have.) I decided to go through every photograph on my site, and not only make sure it was good, but make sure it was the best it could be. A big task unto itself. But when I started, I quickly discovered some annoying organizational flaws in my photo library. I realized that before I could review my photos, I needed to be able to find them. So I had to buckle down and clean up my library — a task I’ve been putting off for a long time. Sigh. (For you asset management geeks out there: I had some photographs stored in iView catalogs, and others in Lightroom. I decided to take this opportunity to finally move everything into Lightroom. Maybe I’ll do another post on this experience.)
Four weeks later, and it’s finally done. It’s been a lot of hard work, but I am glad I did it. Like all good spring cleaning, what started out as an annoying chore ended up being a good experience. I got my photo library in order. I was able to remove a lot of the clutter in my photo library, getting rid of images that I knew weren’t any good, but held on to for nostalgic reasons. I discovered new photographs that I had taken a while ago, but forgotten all about. And best of all, I ended up working on and improving a significant number of my favorite photographs. It’s a good way to start the spring, and a nice foundation to begin my big goal for 2008: getting these photographs in front of buyers. Stay tuned.
I wanted to show an alterate version of the photograph of the Japanese maple leaf I had in my last post. This version shares the same balance between colors, and between sharp and soft focus. But in this one, the sharpness falls on the center of the leaf and the stem instead of the outside edge. While I prefer the other version, this one does have a good feel about it.
These photographs are from a small tree in the back yard of our old house. While I do most of my photography in the studio, this was a ’safari’ shot, handheld in the wild, as the wind blew through the leaves. It required some degree of patience, since the leaves never sit still in the breeze! I just stood there, swaying a little to match the movement of the tree, staring through the lens, and waiting for the right moment. This style of photography is part planning, and a lot chance. It can produce some great work, although it is very tough on your back! (Zak, the lens I used was my just trusty ol’ 105mm macro. No PC lens, extension tube, etc.)
I love it when I revisit an old photograph, and suddenly I see how to make it better. It always amazes me when this happens. A photograph that I’ve printed tons of times, and have been very happy with, will suddenly reveal new depths, new possibilities. I’ll see how to make it better, truer, closer to the way it looks like in my mind. An adjustment here, and a tweek there, and this old photograph has new life.
Sometimes these moments are inspired by new tools or techniques. Other times they are inspired by the way the light changes in my studio as winter turns to spring. Whatever causes them, I usually have to drop everything and pursue that change, until I feel that the photograph is “right” once more.
P.S. All children of the 80s should immediately click here to relive the soundtrack of their youth. It’s been playing non-stop in my studio for days! (Thanks Wil.)
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