We gather, we collect, all around us grows, and seems to have a momentum that is perpetual. Every gardener knows that the essential activities they must engage include not just planting, but pruning, shaping, clipping with a sensitivity to a garden aesthetic. Is it just coincidental that artmaking contains the same essential activities? We capture, our image base grows, but our essential job is to prune, shape, and edit our way through the image jungle to a visual aesthetic.

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I'm wrapping up my month in Oregon and reflecting on what I've seen and photographed here during these last few weeks. There is so much left to do, but time is running out. Come to think of it, that sense of the incomplete is a lifelong reality for every photographic trip I've been on. Perhaps that is just the nature of being an artist; we live in the intersection of life and scene. We accumulate moments with a little luck and happenstance. Our work is the map of our life, a record of chance encounters with subjects and weather.

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LW1456 - Too Much of a Good Idea

A frequent characteristic we see in submissions to LensWork is when a photographer develops an interesting idea but then carries that idea too far with not enough image variations. The single image, a trilogy, perhaps even a Seeing in SIXES might be sufficient, but the photographer has explored the idea for 60 or 80 images and then neglected the all-important editing and selection process. Our old friend FOMO once again.

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

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When someone looks at a collection of my chapbooks or PDFs and says, "I like that one" I know I've failed completely. The statement, "I like that one" is a statement about them and their values with which my artwork just happens to agree. My artwork succeeds when they say, "I've never thought about that" or "I've never looked at it that way."

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You've probably all heard that old canard that they call it fishing, rather than catching, for a reason. The exact same thing exists in photography. When I'm out in the field I prefer not to think that I'm making art, but rather that I'm exploring the world. The artwork comes from that exploration, but rarely takes place simultaneously. Being out there with our antennae in full use is its own reward.

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She asked, "What is so special about photography?" I see photography as a means to explore the world, and that includes exploring our deeper self. I'm not sure photography is any better than any other expressive medium, but it's at least equal to any other artistic pursuit.

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Every image you finish was completed because of some purpose you had in mind. You have chosen to share something you feel is important enough to photograph and work into a finished project or framed image. Why? Doesn't it make sense that somehow that intent needs to be shared with viewers? We are all so bombarded with images these days that they are far too easily ignored unless we have a strong motivation for spending time with them. Why you made the photograph is more important now than ever.

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Nothing in a photograph is quite so bothersome as when the black are crushed or the whites are blown out. I can understand in certain occasions when this is a desired aesthetic, but those are rare occasions. When we see it in a picture, it almost always seems to be a processing mistake. I find it's most often the result of bad monitor calibration.

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Every the time we stop our travels, get out of the car, and start looking for photographs, there will inevitably be a few that are easy, immediate, obvious, and likely cliché. I've come to accept the fact that I have to shoot those images — even though I will probably never use them — just to get them out of the way and move past them. It's only then that I can start working a location for its subtleties.

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One of my lifelong regrets about photography has been that the audience for most fine art photography, particularly for contemporary photographers, are other photographers. Who shops in the photography section in your local bookstore? Assuming, that is, that it has a photography section.

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