Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These short 2-4 minute talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 35 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work and building an audience. Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. His latest books are "The Creative Life in Photography" (2013) and "Looking at Images (2014).
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Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These short 2-4 minute talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 35 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work and building an audience. Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. His latest books are "The Creative Life in Photography" (2013) and "Looking at Images (2014).
I'm a fan of Sergei Rachmaninoff's piano compositions. I was not aware, however, until last night, of a composition he wrote titled Variations on a Theme of Corelli. The backstory of this work is simple. Corelli wrote a short piece of music in which there is a central tune. That tune captured Rachmaninoff's imagination. Rachmaninoff then took this short musical theme and composed 20 variations that are different in every regard, but still identifiable because of the basic tune. As I listened last night, I couldn't help but think how we could use this idea in our creative photographic expressions.
I'm certainly not the only photographer who looks back at their earlier work and feels a sense of embarrassment. What was I thinking? Of all the negatives or digital captures I had to choose from, why did I think this one was worth printing, matting, and (God forbid) framing? Isn't it equally odd that a few images from those early years seem to have held up pretty well? Can I trust my own aesthetic judgments? Will the images I'm producing today seem ridiculous 5 or 10 years from now? Each finished artwork is a product of its time.
When we say that one photograph is better than another, how do we arrive at that conclusion? When we are processing our images, what is the criteria we use to take the next step in processing? As I've thought about this, one answer keeps reoccurring: all of the decisions we make have the intention of revealing an ideal. What do we mean by "the ideal"? Why is our goal not the truth? When did photography change from a sensitive pursuit of truth into a technological and aesthetic pursuit of a fictional ideal? Now that AI makes the ideal so accessible, will that change our aesthetic objectives?
The core of artmaking is the twin fusion of learning and producing. It's easy to see that if there is no producing there is no artwork. It's not so obvious that if there is no learning there is no artwork. Learning comes from many sources, One of the most important is our past decisions. Here is a simple exercise that can amplify the importance of learning with every capture.
Borrowing a phrase from Carl Chiarenza and his book, Pictures Come from Pictures, I'd like to propose that "projects come from projects." We may not be aware of the threads that run through our creative life as we are living it, but in retrospect we can often see how one artistic effort begets another. This is precisely why preserving creative momentum is so important. But, how to do it?
In 1989, I commissioned a metal shop expert to create an adapter for my Arca Swiss monorail view camera that would allow me to use Polaroid 3¼ by 4¼ film packs. This led to a summer-long project that today exists as a box of matted Polaroid originals that are all unique prints. I recently found this box of prints and reviewed that 37-year-old work, completed half a life ago when I was 34. A lot of those prints are wonderful, but what do I do with them?
Time has a way of filtering out the unimportant. Think back 500 years ago. We don't remember local politics, but we do remember the great art from that era. What will people, 500 years from now, look back at our era and find most remarkable? I'll guarantee you it won't be your work or my work, nor even the photographs of the masters like Ansel Adams or Edward Weston. No, they will look back at the images the astronauts captured while on the moon, the Voyager, Cassini, and Juno expeditions to the distant planets, the Hubble and Webb telescope images of distant galaxies.
There is no question that prime lenses have a reputation for being superior in comparison to zoom lenses. The most expensive lenses are often the very best primes. They are often faster, sharper, and many photographers swear by them. There is a trade-off to a prime lens, however, that's not always obvious but one that persuades me convincingly against primes. Think "optical cropping."
Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These short 2-4 minute talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 35 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work and building an audience. Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. His latest books are "The Creative Life in Photography" (2013) and "Looking at Images (2014).
