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“It’s like obituaries, when you die they finally give you good reviews.” Roger Maris The first “real” critique I received as a professional photographer occurred in 1980 at the Rochester Institute of Technology Color Photojournalism Workshop. I was a very young and inexperienced newspaper photographer attending my first workshop. I didn’t know most of the teachers but I knew the publications they worked for: Associated Press, National Geographic, Washington Star, and Louisville Courier Journal. The ...

"I haven’t failed; I have found 10,000 ways that don’t work." Thomas Alva Edison Failure. Not a word any of us likes, but it is an important word nonetheless. Our failures as artists are important. Our failures mean we tried, we searched and we risked something. It can also mean we have a sense of discernment; we can look at our work either as individual pieces or as an entire project and discover success or ...

Seeing the World Softly This month you will see a new portfolio of soft focus images on the web site. This work is quite a change for me. Although Fredrick Evans was my earliest inspiration in photography, I emulated the work of modernists: Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Minor White. In the beginning, I was an f/64 guy, using view cameras, making silver prints, and always seeking the sharpest lens available. Yet tucked away in ...

Opportunity = Choice Early this summer I had an unusual experience.  I scheduled a few days to photograph with a student I had worked with a number of years ago. He was retired, an avid photographer, rekindling his passion for working with his view camera, and he was recovering from a stroke. I spoke with him about what he wanted to photograph and with his wife about his physical limitations. It was agreed that with ...

I have been repeatedly invited to be a “friend” on Facebook and consistently decline the opportunity. The subject came up again at a recent photographers’ retreat in New Jersey with the conversation focused on the wonderful marketing tool it was. Though the discussion was lively and instructional it only served to reinforce my position on Facebook. Instant Reaction I am drawn to well thought out ideas and arguments. I read newspapers and magazines and follow ...

What a great button the “delete” button is. I am sometimes envious of photographers using digital cameras because the equipment allows for instant feedback as well as removal of images that don’t work. For myself, working with traditional equipment and film I don’t see what’s on the film until long after I’ve left my subject. As I’ve written before, for me this is a good system. I like (and need) the separation of time and ...

For me, beauty is optimism made visible. In earlier newsletters this year we have talked about working within ourselves, using what is at hand and making images close to home, giving ourselves permission to take an hour out of our busy weeks to make photographs, to be aware while we are making images perhaps finding new images in our “mistakes”, and celebrating the fact that we are creative people. Every one of us is creative ...

The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little. Jon Kabat-Zinn I’ve been thinking on this quote for a few weeks now and as with most things wise, these words serve to teach us on numerous layers. On the surface the words call us to pay attention, to our relationships, to our work, to our daily lives. What exactly does this mean and how do we do it? The answers are as infinite as the differences ...

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. - R. Buckminster Fuller What is your working method? It doesn’t matter whether you are a photographer, painter, ceramicist, chef, or writer. Regardless of your creative medium we all have to discover how we work best, and from ...

Paying Attention We are so anxious to achieve some particular end that we never pay attention to the psychophysical means whereby that end is to be gained. So far as we are concerned, any old means is good enough. But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end. - Aldous Huxley It’s foggy out this early morning, my wake up ...