Last spring, I had an opportunity to show some work to a new acquaintance. They were complimentary and then asked where the images had been published. I found that a curious question. When I told them the work had never been published, they expressed a visible dismissal as though without publication the work was unworthy of their attention. How and when did publication of a photograph become the high water mark of accomplishment in the eyes of the public? I found it doubly curious when I later realized they had not asked if the work had ever been exhibited.

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LW1484 - Persistence and Longevity

I'm a believer in sustained effort. I know this puts me in direct conflict with today's instantaneous culture, but I'm first and foremost a pragmatist. My 50 years in photography have provided evidence over and over of the virtues of longevity. What do I mean by that? Simply this: if you stick with something long enough, good things will result.

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

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When I go out photographing, I often begin with the sense that I need to shift mental gears from everyday thought to artmaking thought. I feel the need to begin the process of "seeing aesthetically." What does that actually mean? How is my aesthetic Self different than my ordinary self? Is it possible that my aesthetic self is simply more in touch with the rules and conventions that define the medium throughout history? If so, is it possible that "shifting gears to art making mode" is actually a barrier to creativity?

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Lynn and I have been watching a series on Netflix that has become totally predictable. Every plot twist, every character reaction, every conflict between characters has become so predictable that it has turned into a game for us to make such predictions as we're watching. Curiously enough, its predictability has us slowly becoming less interested. Does predictability play a role in all other art media as well? Turning this to our chosen medium, does a perfectly predictable photograph become less interesting because it lacks an element of surprise?

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In my life, I've owned and used an 8x10 camera, a 5x7 camera, a medium format monorail camera, 35 mm cameras, twin lens reflex cameras, and over a dozen different digital cameras. To that list I should add a half a dozen phones that have been pretty good cameras. Isn't it interesting that when I look in my finished artwork I rarely remember anything about which cameras used? More to the point, when I go out photographing today, does it make a difference which camera I bring with me? As long as I have enough camera for the purpose, do I need to put any more thought into which camera I use?

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My generation, like most generations, had their own music. As a child of the '60s and '70s, I had no idea that rock and roll was following the well-established patterns that had been established for decades. I was thoroughly unaware that popular music had a 3½ minute barrier based on the recording medium of the day, 45 RPM records. When The Doors created their extended version of Light My Fire, it exploded a limitation whose ripples still affect my thinking today.

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One of my favorite quotes about the art life comes from Anaïs Nin who advised "Do not speak unless spoken through." This captures my philosophy of photography in its entirety. I think of myself as a conduit rather than a source; I find it useful to imagine that inanimate subjects have a way they would like to be portrayed; the task of the artist is to feel, not to preach; that photography is about listening to the whispers rather than "chasing the light." I'd rather the light seduce me than be some sort of prey that I hunt.

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We all know the bumper sticker wisdom that can be politely translated with the phrase "poo poo occurs." That's the sense with which I titled this commentary, Depreciation Happens. The other day I opened a box in the attic and found a Minolta Hi-Matic 9, a 35 mm camera that was originally manufactured in 1966. On eBay, if I were lucky, I might get $20 for this used piece of gear. That got me thinking about all the things I've purchased in my photographic life, not a single one of which has appreciated in value, not even my artwork. The art life is a privilege we must be willing to pay for.

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With the turn of the weather, we photographers in the northern hemisphere can start thinking about snow photography. I've always found snow to be one of the trickiest things to photograph because I think of it as being white but photographically it's not. It's bright, but bright and white are not the same thing. What makes snow look like snow are the very delicate gray tones that give pure white its three dimensionality. Snow is an example where ETTR fails us.

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Photography has the ability to lead us to two completely different relationships with existence. We can use photography to postpone our relationship with the world, or we can use photography to intensify our relationship with what is right before us.

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