This last week, one of the YouTube photography gurus announced the impending doom of fine art photography. He had observed that during his travels in the last year he hardly ever saw a serious (i.e., interchangeable lens) camera being used. Everyone was using smartphones. And for some reason, he concluded that the disappearance of a particular kind of equipment would bring about the demise of a certain way of life.

Yesterday, I was out shooting in the Olympic National Forest. I spied a composition in a grove of red alders and made the exposure. Then I saw another composition. At that point, my mind flipped into project mode.

I'm not a particular fan of jigsaw puzzles, but I am sensitive to the fundamental philosophy behind them. In fact, I kind of think the paradigm of the jigsaw puzzle is akin to doing project-oriented photography. It's a matter of fitting pieces together in an order with a larger objective that creates a whole that is bigger than the sum of the pieces.

As an overly generalized assertion, photographic compositions tend to consist of either right angles or diagonals. Right angle compositions emphasize stability, solidity, timelessness, or rectitude. Diagonals emphasize movement, life, change, the flow of time.

Have you ever noticed, as I have, that the number of roadside pullouts and parking spaces is inversely proportional to the photographic potential. I can't recall how many terrific photographic scenes I've come across which I leave unphotographed because they're simply no place to park the car. Damn. Why don't these road engineers keep us photographers in mind when they plan their pullouts?

During my college years when I was studying Chinese calligraphy, I learned one of the key principles of that art is encapsulated in the phrase "Chi Yun Sheng Deng" - - Heaven's Breath Vitalizes Movement.

One of the philosophical premises to Lightroom's virtual copies feature is that any give RAW capture can be processed in different ways to create different images with different moods and intents. This is not at all what I learned in the wet darkroom.

If I only had enough influence to push sensor manufacturers to produce more dynamic range rather than ever more pixels! More dynamic range would be more exposure latitude, more detail in the shadows, which would allow us to better control highlight exposure. But alas, the megapixel wars still ruled the roost.

Is the purpose of art making to create an artifact? If so, then AI might be something we need to pay attention to. On the other hand, if the purpose of art making is to engage a personal path of exploration and discovery, then AI is non sequitur.

Not infrequently, while processing an image, I discover some previously hidden option that I'd never thought of. Assuming that processing with change A will imply a change B, I'll be surprised that A implies something other than B that emerges and an idea from nowhere. Or is it nowhere?