HT2172 - A Personalized Colophon

I recently received a lovely email from someone who had purchased one of my chapbooks. He wasn't expecting a personalized colophon which, truth be told, is one of the reasons why I do so. A personalized colophon ads to the relationship component when sharing my artwork.

HT2171 - Their Life Experience

Everyone who looks at our images brings with them a suitcase full of their life experiences. I think it was Anias Nin who said, "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." We need to remember this when people are critical of or downright insulting about our images.

LW1441 - Sized for the Emotional Impact

A prevalent and often repeated question is how big should we make our prints? Some say that's determined by the subject. Others propose that print size is determined by the market. For what it's worth, my thoughts on this have to do with the emotional impact our image can make on the viewer.

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

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HT2170 - Stop, Look, and Listen

This is not just advice for 4-year-olds learning to cross the street. It's pretty good advice for us photographers, too. I've been thinking about this as function of how we manage the ratio of drive time to photographing time by stopping, looking, and listening.

HT2169 - Keylines and Other Edge Treatments

There was a short-lived fad in the days of film when photographers would file out the negative carrier for their 35 mm film so that the edge of the film would be a part of the enlarged image. Sometimes this worked great, other times it looked like a silly gimmick. Here in the digital age, edge treatments are so easily accomplished and offer unlimited creative potential - as long as it doesn't become a gimmick.

HT2168 - Enlargement Limits

In my film days, I did extensive research about enlargement factors for my film negatives. How much enlargement was possible before the image started to break down, soften, reveal grain, and in general turn yucky? Regardless of film size, the nature of gelatin silver was that the limits of enlargement were universally 4X. What about digital images?

HT2167 - Stop Looking for Shortcuts

For reasons I suspect are deeply held inclinations, it seems that photographers are always looking for shortcuts. The demand for plug-in, one click "treatments" grows with every generation of both software and photographers. We want to arrive without having taken a journey. What if the journey was the point? What if the art life is not a destination, but an ever-unfolding process that we engage because of the challenges and surprises we uncover along the way?

HT2166 - Meeting Expectations

What is it that differentiates a good photograph from a lesser one? I'm asking this question seriously. If we can't answer it, how can we expect to make good photographs? When I press this question further, the answer seems to be that a good photograph is one that meets the viewers expectations. In my way of thinking, meeting expectations is the worst thing we can do with our images.