I’m excited to announce that ELEMENTS Magazine has published my article on “Death Valley National Park: Photographing the Desert Landscape” in their August 2022 issue. It is an honor to have my photography and writing appear in the company of work by photographers I admire.
For some time I have been thinking of writing about a particular challenge that comes with doing creative work. It is a complicated subject, but sometimes writing about such a topic “primes the pump” for further consideration, so in this post I’m going to take a first — and almost stream-of-consciousness — look at the issue.
(As such, don’t expect a complete coverage here. That would take a book. Or several books. And I’m not about to write them! Also, I’ve updated this post by adding a wonderful reference to the subject through the perspective of composer John Adams.)
The day after writing this I read an article about composer John Adams, in which he responds to essentially the same question that I’m dealing with here:
While many things may be gained from experience, Adams says he is sot sure if the very act of composing gets any easier with age.
”It depends on the day you ask me. Today, I could say it’s very difficult. But I can say that the one benefit of growing older is that you have a personal history of your own struggles. “
“If you have fought the battle in the past, when you have a block, you know it likely will not last, if you keep working. When you’re thirty years old, or twenty five years old, and you have a block, you think that’s the end of the world. You just can’t imagine success for yourself. So that’s the only thing I can say.”
It has been my good fortune to live and work in and around two creative fields: music and photography. (For those don’t know, my academic background is in music and I had a long career as a college music faculty member.) I have had plenty of opportunities to observe and experience the creative life, with all of its rewards and challenges. It is the relationship between some of the rewards and challenges that will figure in what follows.
If you do creative work, it is almost certain that you hope to experience the intense “high” that may come with it, a kind of intensity and exhilaration. Perhaps you have felt that in the work of others and you hope the work you create will evoke that response. You want to feel the sense of competence and even transcendence that can come from successful work. Perhaps you want to be like creatives who have influenced you.
Continue reading On The Nature of Creative WorkThis is the first of what will be a series of articles looking at steps you can take to improve your chances of producing compelling photographs.
A recent stay in Yosemite Valley during my Yosemite Renaissance artist-in-residency reminded me again that while many aspects of photography are out of our control, there are things we can do to increase the odds of success.
On this visit I had three late April spring days to photograph in the park, which mostly means “in Yosemite Valley” at this time of year when the high country is still snowed in. By non-photography standards, the Valley was beautiful — if a bit crowded. The sun was out, the sky was blue, temperatures were comfortable, rivers were full of early snowmelt, the waterfalls were flowing, there were hints of green in the seasonal vegetation, and too many tourists were already showing up!
I did the usual things: I got up before dawn to find the early light. I stuck around until the last light faded. I returned to subjects that I knew from past experiences to be promising. I considered where the light would be at different times of day. I went looking for new subjects in likely places. I wandered. I kept my equipment with me at all times. I made photographs, and some of them are even pretty good, but at times it was hard to “see” something special in these conditions.
What’s not to like, right? From a photographer’s point of view these are not ideal conditions for photography. As pleasant as nice weather is for hiking and camping and picnicking, it can be hard to find exceptional photographs in such everyday light. I and many of my fellow Sierra photographers prefer interesting and unusual conditions — precipitation, broken light, mist and clouds, some haze.
On the final morning I was up and heading into the Valley well before sunrise. The light was unspectacular, with thick overcast cutting off the morning light. But then I caught sight a bit more light in the east, and soon I saw some breaks in the clouds. Within fifteen minutes the conditions opened up and I was treated to an exceptional spectacle of light and clouds and landscape that lasted for several hours, during which I photographed continuously. I made more interesting photographs during these few hours than during the rest of the visit.
To state the obvious, “exceptional” and “unusual” conditions are not the norm. The blue-sky “blah” light is. If you show up on ten randomly selected days, nine of them are going to be, literally, unexceptional, and if you are looking for something unusual and beyond-the-norm you aren’t likely to find it.
The basic lesson is simple: The more you are out there the more likely you’ll be out there for something great. Continue reading Improving Your Odds: That’s Why They Call It “Exceptional”