The National Gallery • Washington, DC

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Went to the National Museum of Art last Thursday to see the Dutch Cityscape paintings. Pity they refused photographic permission in that show. They were all examples of the mid 1600's Golden Age of the Dutch. And they were astonishingly photojournalistic. Interesting that this sort of razor sharp drawing no longer has much market today. By the mid 1800s photographers had wiped out the market for that craft almost completely. And now, with the arrival of digital tools, photographers are closing in on the impressionistic imaginings of today's fine artists. Hmmmm..... Wonder what's next?

The Artist

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Regardless of what art is... there's another question: Why do people do art?

Hmmmm.... I've got three reasons:

(1) They have an instinct to gather parts of life for themselves or,
(2) They want to save parts of themselves for the future or,
(3) They want to stuff a market in a bottle cast into the tides of time...

You want to add more?

New Link Under Ted's Essays!

Lookit! Yippee, Vonne from The Fine Arts Composite Group at the explosively popular RedBubble forums interviewed ME! And she probed into my photo/art influences, what triggers and maintains my inspiration, what I want to get across artistically, the hardest obstacles, my plans, and my advice to the novice.

I'm psyched. If you've wondered about any of that stuff that I wonder about... just click on the link under "Ted's Essays" in the right hand column and enjoy... and gimme your reactions here... K? That'd be reeeeeely cool and visitors will get a chance to react to your reactions and on and on... Kew-el!

The Second Largest Fantasy

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There are studies which show that the second most frequent fantasy of both men and women is time travel. And overwhelmingly the travelers want to explore history. They want to walk yesterday's streets.

I'm guessing that's why cities try to preserve large swatches of their downtowns. They're like living Disney Worlds. I call them 'squint streets'. You know, if you squint into the light just right, well you can can imagine that abruptly people are dressed differently. That the signs, and streets morph back into time. And... and... see... see... I have not squinched my eyes to peer back reeeeeely far, just to the 30s in Florence. But I'm guessing the next time you walk through this place, you can squint yourself way back farther, eh?

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Once again, I've posted here the virgin images direct from my memory cards. The first was taken with my old Canon 20D through the 17-85mm at f6.3 at 1/100. The ISO was 800. It was still early morning at around 8:05 looking generally northeast. The 1930s Ford pickup truck is a utilitarian beauty. Built Ford-Tough when that meant something - these babies worked their way through the depression on both sides of the Atlantic.

And the street wending it's way through Florence has watched vehicles evolve for hundreds of years. Not sure what car's actually sitting half onto the ancient sidewalk. Is it an Audi? A Bugatti? Anyway, here's my tabletop shot grabbed in my office with direct light. I shot it with my new Canon G10 at an ISO of 400, f2.8 at 1/13th of a second. Handheld as usual (you know I have that tripod phobia). It's part of an antique miniature vehicle collection I keep on my office shelves. Why? It's a man-thing. If you want to see larger images, click on the thumbnails.

Image Compositing

One of my favorite images is "The Spirit" which I made last summer
<- and you may enlarge this tutorial by clicking on it.

Recently I entered 'Spirit' into a challenge on a forum where it was initially rejected because the moderators felt that the rules required that all entries be photographs. As you can see, Spirit does not have a traditional photographic look. And that is the wonderful thing about being a photographic artist today. Just like composers, novelists, poets, sculptors and painters... we are totally free as photographers to create anything we can imagine. This is wonderful but sometimes confusing to visitors.

'Spirit' is completely a photographic composite. It only differs from the wet darkroom technique of sandwiching negatives into an enlarger in nuance. But that nuance is magical, eh? I've invited the judges to visit this site, and to look at my explanation here, showing how I made Spirit soar.

Academic Freedom

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Actions have consequences
Rights have responsibilities
Unless... You have...
Tenure.






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I'm still experimenting with my new Canon G10 so again - for the geeky folk like me who enjoy this sort of thing... Direct from my HD card, here is the virgin photograph of my professor just as I caught him at ISO 400 in the existing light "on campus" in Adamstown yesterday afternoon. Nice automatic color balance, eh? And the painting effects? All done with assorted brushes in PhotoShop... Enjoy.

Chick Magnet?

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Parked outside of Madison Square Garden my Mercedes 500K Special Roadster glimmers in the city, huh? It belongs there with its top down and motor purring. Purring.... it's a sound that attracts, right? :-)

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Okay, here's another shot, a virgin photo of that 1936 Mercedes on my office desk top pulled right from my HD card. Sigh, I like it better in NYC. Whadaya think?

Rocco Redux

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Yeah... I've been to this place before. If you click here, you can see my first (award winning) visit to this image. But as a result of a lot of Australian School influence at the RedBubble Forums... texture techniques are becoming more interesting to me.

Okay... okay... they can be a gimmick. And yes, as April has commented on PhotoSapiens.com, they frequently are used to correct what was otherwise an average image capture. Just recently I actually took what I thought was an average snap shot and purposely lathered on the texture

But, like any filter, lens, POV, or enhancement... texture can also be a useful tool. In this case, I was pleased with the original and wondered if a texture could add some additional wonder to the image. Like a lot of you, I don't take pictures, I make images. So techniques which might reinforce the mystery, resonance, or delight I want to communicate are always interesting.. as long as the technique does not wag the dog... so to speak. Soooo..

With all of that in mind, I've revisited Rocco's Adventure. And? Does the texture deepen the story, or pull water out of the emotional pool leaving a more shallow experience? Thoughts?

Birds

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Get set for this.... okay... here it comes.... READY??

Wonder is a perishable commodity - interest, like bread, can go stale.

So? did I get that right? Huh? Huh?

And if I'm correct, then the challenge we face is in keeping our wonder engorged. And that's one of the reasons why photographers are generally gear heads. It's not that we expect to find the silver bullet in each new lens, filter, or tripod. Nope, we're not looking for the ability to be creative... uh-uh. We've done that before, know we can do it again, just as soon as the mood hits. Trouble is the pesky lengthening time between moods.

So gear isn't a substitute for creativity any more than Viagra is a substitute for sex. We don't want gear to make a picture, but we want it to stimulate one.

Which is probably one reason I just bought this new little point-and-click Canon PowerShot G10 that I showed off yesterday. Cameras don't make art, artists make art. But I figure if I can carry a full function camera in my pocket which will do more than the Leica M series could do back in the 60s... Hey... I ought to carry that camera around. If I'm going to walk about framing all the time, why not have a camera close by to exploit those frames?

So here today I'm posting the second image from my new G10. Yesterday visitors commented on the G10, but they wondered if yesterday's image was direct from the camera. Nope! Neither is this one. I don't want a camera anymore which will produce final photographs. I have lost my faith in a camera's ability to create images which express what I think or feel. But I've used cameras which cannot produce photos which I can enhance into the wonders or ideas that I want to communicate.

So the question I have about the G10 is not whether it will produce perfectly rendered moments, but whether it will give me material which is indistinguishable from the stuff I can gather with my DSLR and its lenses.

So here's my second try from Friday afternoon's shoot at the Amish farm. This bird house sat exactly to the left of the corn cribs on yesterday's image. I wanted to find wonder in that little spot. So? Does this create a sense of place? Is this G10 capable of doing what I've been doing for over half a century with my lenses and cameras?

Whudaya thihk about that challenge for the G10, and whuddaya think about "Birds"?

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For those who are interested in reeeeely geeky stuff (like me), here's the virgin image direct from the HD card without any enhancement of this image. You can judge for yourself how much opportunity the G10 has provided me in kneading out my own feelings about the moment. I think this Canon machine's a keeper. Do you agree? I can see a lot of situations in which it could replace my 40D and my three lenses. There's only one problem though. It sure doesn't give me any authority. I doubt anyone will give me the respect that comes when I screw my Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens onto the D40. It sure doesn't feel like a serious camera. While it's about the size of the M series Leica's, well, with the large LED in the back and the just-slightly-clunky body... It sure won't get me into any place that excludes beginners. Which is a topic for another day, eh?

Suffice it to be said, this box, and its user (me) will probably be dismissed by other dedicated photographers. It makes it look as if I have failed to pay the dues for admission into the club... either in terms of gear or in terms of experience. Hmmmm.... that could be an important consideration here. But again, that's a whole new topic.

Amish Farm In Winter

NEW CAMERA TEST - WUDAYA THINK?

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My new Canon PowerShot G10, point-and-click came this afternoon. So at 4:30 I raced about five miles out of Lancaster and on a back road found this Amish farm vista. It's shot in RAW mode at f11 and 1/500 with an ISO of 200 with the sun low in the sky behind me. The thing allows for full automatic override and it's got a 5X zoom that seems pretty well made to match the camera. It fits into my pocket and, oh yea, most importantly it's got a range finder and a 17.5 mxpl sensor. I think that few P&Cs still have range finders which means heavy battery drain, and glare problems. However the range finder suffers from gordo parallax chopping.

So... here's the first image I tried. I'm impressed with the palette information re. sky to shadows. I've cranked this out so that I can easily print it at 4 feet on the horizontal edge (someone want to convert that to meters?) The dynamic range seems very strong. But ... well... what do you think? It's hard for me to carry this sissy little thing. It seems to challenge my man-hood. I feel girly or amateurish or... well, both. And yet I can see that I can carry it about in my pocket and consequently get image material that I'd never other wise get since lugging my normal kit is a challenge..

Okay... if I hadn't mentioned it was a P&C... would you have guessed? Be brutal... okay?


BTW.... note the date. This is THE DEAD OF WINTER here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Note the (missing) snow cover! Hmmm...... Yesterday it was about 50 degrees. This may just be a belated January thaw.

Lunch Time

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Everywhere I look
I am framing.
You know?

And since everything has
multiple explanations
I try to frame questions.



And if they glow
like windows to
another place.

Then the result makes me
wonder. So that's
what I look to frame...
And finally capture.
You know?

Wonder.

Texture Addiction

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The texture rage is cresting. Im not sure why textures seem to add additional dimensions to otherwise ordinary snapshots. Any thought?

The Violinist

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Hmmmm.... can art be entertainment? If it is, is it then a 'lesser art'? Is the intention to entertain too shallow for a serious artist? Maybe... maybe the word 'serious' is automatically negated by the word, 'entertainment'? Which makes me wonder if I should be entertained by Mozart? Picasso? Tennessee Williams? Fellini?

Here's an image... my image... of a violinist, a woman who is quite gifted. She wields her bow like a fencer's foil. It darts, stabs, dnces, and glides cutting feelings from the air. Her training was serious, so can her performance be entertaining?

Is this image entertaining? The jaws of my camera bite a moment free from the blur of time. And that provides me with an opportunity to express my feelings and thoughts about the frozen instant. So? How much is art, how much is entertainment. Or can it all be entertaining art, or artistic entertaiment?

Particularly when it is an image of an entertainer interpreting art?

Grumble, once again, my head hurts from all of this. Goodnight.

Yellow

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We have a huge common inheritance. I tend to lurk among the supporting scaffolding.

The Horror Of Wealth

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An archetype is a kind of cliché. It lets the artist let the visitor do most of the work. For example if I wanted to quickly develop a warm romantic mood I could start with a dreamy, golden sunset. That's one archetype. Want determination? How about a sweating blacksmith... And so on. But... but... what happens when you smash a couple of archetypes up against one another? Suppose I took a haughty dowager and a stumpy admiral? And suppose I suggested mystery with some heavy texturing?

Wouldn't the elements all steeped in a dark, even murky light, kick your brain into gear to work out the pattern? Wouldn't they crank up the engine of your imagination to explain how this stern babe related to this little guy?

I knew the answer when I planned the whole thing. See, I wanted to show a relationship which could be explained only one way. I wanted to show a pairing that nature alone would never make. One that only culture would create. And here it is. Let me ask you now, would these two be a couple if humans had never invented ---- wealth? Money? Inheritance?

And just think, in a brief three or four generations they'd produce a great grandchild... named Paris.

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Here are the originals from my flash cards.

Did some flea market exploration and among the junk found the babe hanging on a garage wall and the admiral on a rickety table. Realizing their ability to explain the power of 'Old Money' I hunted for the right texture screens and thanks to RavenSoul I suddenly had not one, but four options Seems that she discovered the textures as devices for an artist's challenge at redbubble.com for the Fine Art Composites group. And each of the textures brought depth to different parts of this final image.

I really like it when filters, effects, brushes, textures, and other tools allow us to pull out components of our intentions from different sectors of an image to create a whole that was simply impossible a decade or so back.

"Wheeeee...." And it's terrific when someone else does the work for you in discovering just the right textures, huh? So everything's come together nicely here... my idea filtered in part through the feelings of Raven Soul's textures. All powerful archetypes, huh?

Got A Question For You

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I've been wondering... What is the use of art? Matching the couch? Covering a hole in he wall? I know that a large number of furry little rodents decorate their burrows. Ditto the way a lot of birds weave stuff into their nests. Hmmmm.... are some animals driven to decorate? How do they decide between worthwhile decorations and junk?Are there more, um, fascinating decorations? Do some decorations resonate more than others? Is there a collection instinct? If there is, upon what is it focused? How do collectors of decoration decide? Do they have advisors? Are there experts? Critics? Educators? Analysts?

Apparently all human cultures collect art just like those cute rodents. Even ancient peoples seem, well, driven to decorate their graves with shiny things, drawings and statues. Decoration seems to be almost a necessary condition of human-ness.

So what are the uses of art? Body decoration? Balancing the palette in a bathroom? Is the value the picture, or inside the picture? Is art an object or a package?

Okay... my head is hurting now. Think I'll go find a Rolling Rock.

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Oh yeah, the picture here: I took it at dawn in Wellfleet on Cape Cod as the tide gurgled in under my feet. It actually does gurgle and hiss, oozing seemingly out of the muddy ground. Charming though, and it makes the sort of picture that blown up and framed... Well it goes pretty damned well with the couch, huh? :)

Pink Challenge

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Have you heard of RedBubble.com? It's a photo forum and social community for artists. They have various groups dedicated to specific interests. The Fine Art Composite Group announced a Texture Challenge. Members post their work that meet the rules. In this case the moderator of the group posted four textures. Entrants had to use at least two of the textures when creating an image.

I'm not good at assignments. One of the reasons I chose not to pursue a career in photography was the understandable directive, "He who has the gold makes the rules." And since most of those "he's" were really "she's" who were brides... well it got old reeeeeely fast for me. Ditto the photo editors at newspapers and magazines. And then the art directors. Look I can follow orders and have no real difficulty with authority. But the reason photography seduced me was the creative outlet it offered. But my ideas of creativity were only rarely the same as those of the folks with the gold... so I finished economics school and never returned to photography directly for pay or at least to pay the bills.

Which gets me back to the point, I'm not good at assignments. It's rare that my interpretation of the assignment's the same as the assigner's idea. But every now and then the folks involved get get me interested. And textures are fun to use to crack open ideas.

Problem is, most textured images are dark, evocative, and moooooody. And I know that there are a lot of RedBubble artists who can probe into those concepts deeply and with a bunch of power. Sooooo.. I decided to go in an entirely different direction. Surprised? Of course not, right?

I decided to go high key, bright, and whimsical. So I grabbed three photos I took of a perky young girl, and went after everything that was NOT moody, dark, and deep. Which means, I think, that I will get no votes in this challenge.

If you study textured images, generally you'll note that the texturing is usually applied to the setting of the primary feature/person/object. Okay, so using one texture of plastered wall, and a second of an icy crust atop snow, I used the extrude filter in PhotoShop to alter the backgrounds so that they dramatically set off the child's personality. I simultaneously altered the palette so that the background picked up the blues in the child's objects. Hence everything set off the pinks of the girl's outfit and her skin tones.

Comedies never get Academy Awards, even though comedy is at least as hard to do as tragedy. Hopefully you'll smile at this young girl's play. I did. I want to communicate joy. I think I have. But joy, like comedy, rarely get the big awards, or even serious consideration.

This image does what I wanted it to do. The texture is not the star, but it makes the star burn brighter. I think that's what artistic texturing should do. I also think that I'll be lucky to get even one vote as viewers choose a winner of this challenge. If I could vote for my image though... I think I would.

Getting Ahead

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I've figured out that in life we have to deal with loud noises, abrupt bangs, and metal lumps like this that can trip us up if we're not looking down. Which of course is a problem if we walk around looking up.Hmmm... There's a moral here, right?

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The way I look at it, a photographic artist works backward from a painter. See, a painter starts with an empty canvas and edits it full, we start with a full frame, and edit down. Or at least that's the way it used to be. Now we start with a full frame and fill it up more even while we toss stuff away like in this image. It's a lot more complicated what we do today. Painters sure have it easy.

Brandywine Mist

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Andrew Wyeth died this week. We were there again... at his place... the Brandywine Museum, a month or so back. We go there often. The river is really a creek, a wide one though. And it overflows into the museum a lot. The permanent collection of the Wyeths' is all on the upper floors. Oh, it's quite nice. So is Chester County. And thinking about Mr. Wyeth, I thought of those mists that tailed around your ankles and the benches and ferns. Ghosts from the Brandywine, and great people who lived nearby.

Allegory 2:

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Hmm.... so in the rear view mirror, what do you see back there? And is it getting closer? Are you careening ahead of it? Who's at the wheel? Huh? Huh?