I don't see how anyone could disagree with the notion that we are seeing more small images than ever before. Statistically speaking, I'll bet most images you see these days are smaller than 8x10" because most of them you've seen on your phone, your tablet, or your laptop. And this is in the age of ever increasing megapixel cameras. My new camera, for example, has a 200 megapixel sensor ,um, in my phone! Really?

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In my youth, I'd never been anywhere to photograph so all locations were new and exciting adventures. As the years passed, my inclination was to always go someplace new because the thought of going back was always haunted by the idea that I've been there, done that. How silly! Such thinking completely eliminates artistic growth, changes of season, changes of weather, changes, period. Not only that, going back can be the greater challenge to our creativity by pushing us beyond our previous efforts.

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What does it mean when we say we like someone's artwork? Its content agrees with our view of the world? That gets complicated because, for example, I like Picasso's Guernica, but I don't like war. Does it mean we admire their technique and craftsmanship? I have no doubt that Bartok was a talented composer, but I don't like listening to anything he wrote. Does it mean they've shown me a world I've never seen? Then why do I enjoy listening to the same music over and over again? Does liking artwork mean that it meets our expectations?

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There's an old joke that proposes that people have two distinct strategies about cooking dinner. Some decide what to eat and then go to the store to buy the ingredients. Others look in the fridge and cupboards to determine what they have already, then make a meal from that. Sounds pretty much like photography, don't you think?

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LW1463 - What Have You Learned

Like most of you I suspect, I have a group of close friends who are also photographers and we occasionally have a thread of conversation in our email that is both interesting and valuable in our respective art endeavors. It goes without saying for all of us — we never stop learning, and we're always open to expanding our thinking. We are always experimenting. What got me thinking about this was an observation about YouTube.

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

and...

"How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

Here's a useful exercise for before you click the shutter. Ask yourself what this picture is about. Distill your answer to a single word. Pick a word that doesn't simply name the subject, but rather one that expresses your response to the moment. This is not as easy as it sounds, but it is incredibly useful in clarifying how you might want to compose the image and which elements to emphasize or crop out of the frame.

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It took me a decade or so in my youth to realize that the term "black and white photography" implied a mindset that had me pursuing the wrong strategies. I was so single-mindedly dedicated to achieving the maximum black and a pristine white that I failed to notice that the most important tones were in the middle. Achieving deep blacks and clean whites are important aspects of a monochromatic image, but the magic is always in the gray tones.

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I find it common during a social gathering that the conversation winds around to a topic that motivates me to want to share some of my images or a project that pertains to the topic at hand. I've learned, however, that trying to share my artwork at such moments is not only futile but disruptive. Instead, I find it more productive to wait until the next day and to email a link to the work on my website. I've found that almost everyone will then look at the work — on their schedule, away from the social scene, where they can give it more attention and almost always respond back to me.

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I'm not a fan of proprietary file formats. It seems to me that they have a way of putting our content at risk. I'm not comfortable with that. Instead, I use the open source DNG format for my working images in my Lightroom catalog. I do keep, however, all the original RAW camera files on backup hard drives just in case a future generation DNG converter adds features that I might find useful.

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Like all of my fellow Zone System photographers, I grew up and was trained with a foundational strategy known as pre-visualization. Since then, I've come to value the feedback available in digital processing as one of the core elements of a creative vision.

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