HT2665 - Recovering Shadows Is Easier Than Recovering Highlights

When determining exposure, especially in high-contrast scenes, we often need to bias our settings to protect either the shadows or the highlights. With my cameras and the way I tend to process images, I'd much rather underexpose and protect the highlights after which I can always pull up enough in the shadows give a hint of life in the darkest tones.

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HT2664 - Our Attachment to Stuff

In the early 1980s, I fumbled a lens swap and dropped an expensive view camera lens into the Pacific Ocean. I grieved then and still grieve to this day. Why is stuff so important? Every photographer I know has a piece of gear they lament selling — or losing. Isn't it silly that we can be so attached to stuff? I used to think this had something to do with the loss of potential, but now I'm not so sure. I once had a client who owned a Western store and I learned a great deal about stuff and our sense of self-identity from that experience.

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HT2663 - How Each Image Contributes

Although they are both forms of music, listening to a piano recital is a completely different experience than listening to a fully orchestrated symphony. The same can be said when comparing the single, standalone image and the multiple-image project. In the orchestra, each instrument contributes its part to the whole. In the multi-image project, each image contributes its uniqueness yet still exists in harmony with all the others. This is the key to selecting the images to be included in the project.

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HT2662 - One Grain of Sand

It's difficult to admire one grain of sand while we are standing on the beach. I offer this as a metaphor for photography today. You and I sweat bullets to make a photograph we can be proud of, but if we look about a bit, we see trillions of photographs being made every year here in the digital age. Even if our masterpiece is spectacular, it is difficult to get it noticed in the tsunami of images being produced every day.

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HT2661 - Images That Changed My Life

Knowing my love for photography, a non-photographer friend of mine recently asked if there were images that literally changed my life. I fumbled an answer at the time, but I've thought a lot about this in the recent weeks. I realized I have two sets of answers: images I produced that changed my creative life, and images others produced that have had an enormous impact on me. The most interesting part of this thought experiment is to compare the two sets of images.

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LW1510 - Deeper Questions

It seems to me that the fundamental aspect of viewing art is inquiry. Every work of art is a mystery until we start asking a few questions. When you look at a painting or a photograph what are the questions that come to mind? For example, what questions come to mind when you see the Mona Lisa? A Rembrandt portrait? Wouldn't they be the same questions you would ask the first time you saw migrant mother by Dorothea Lange? Who? What? Where? When? These questions, however, just scratch the surface. It is the deeper questions that bring meaning to artwork.

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You might also be interested in. . .

Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com.

and...

"How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

HT2660 - The Drama of Good vs Evil

Can you think of an artistic expression that doesn't involve, in some way, the drama of good versus evil, innocence versus the diabolical, the weak vs the strong, dark versus light? (You don't suppose I slipped that last one in for a reason?) If the central themes of art are rooted in drama, why would art photography not also be rooted in drama? If so, that leads us to the question How do we build drama into a photographic image? Perhaps even more informative is the question How do we build drama into a photographic project?

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HT2659 - Perfection or Enthusiasm

Deep in the heart of an artist is the pursuit of perfection. It goes with the territory. Creating artwork is the one thing we do in our life without regard to time, expense, or even effort. We pursue perfection because we have faith that achieving perfection is a possibility with each creation we make. Is it? I'm not sure pursuit of perfection is the healthiest option. What if we change the measurement of success? What happens if we pursue enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion rather than perfection?

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