Where is the Art?

I was pleased this last weekend that I got out and took some pictures. That entailed going out with just my dog Elmer who has grown accustomed to me hopping out of the car at a moments notice and spending what must be for him an eternity taking pictures of the same thing over and over. Elmer is also used to having his leash attached to my belt while I carry camera gear down a trail, set it up, and again spend an eternity shooting pictures. He sometimes just sits near me, other times he's wandering around to the extent his leash allows. I think he enjoys being in the outdoors with me, except for when he gets thorns in his feet.

This last weekend's excursion was pleasant. I enjoy driving in the dark even though my eyes don't do as well at it now as they did years ago. I like getting hot coffee. I like the breakfast burritos, hash brown, and orange juice from McDonalds, and so does Elmer. I like Elmer sitting in the seat next to me.

I like setting the tripod and camera up in the dark. I like the solitude. I like the anticipation that persists from the moment I leave home until the first shutter release.

I did those things again this weekend and I liked all of it.

But I didn't like it when I get back home and pull the pictures off the camera. They were okay but they're still not capturing how I felt about the place. The pictures just fall flat for some reason. I think they were technically okay, sharp, exposure was as expected, etc. But especially now, after an extra day or two of living with them, there's no emotion captured in them. They could be postcard pictures, I guess, and they perhaps capture what the place looked like. But I want them to capture what the place FELT like to me.

That, in my opinion, would separate the pictures from a postcard contender to fine art.

 

Keep Trying

I have said before that I don't claim to be a guru with the equipment or post processing software, but I think I've become competent. I don't struggle with that end of things like I did a year ago.

Now I want to strive to capture images that have some uniqueness or impart some emotion.

A Navy shipmate of mine, Mike, recently moved to Arizona from back east. He shot some pictures of Jerome, Arizona that included a number that I find very artistic. Mike has been artistic since I was around him during the first Gulf War years or earlier. He is always finding unique or artistic shots that I wouldn't have thought of. That bothers me. I've read a number of other authors that have said you can learn to take pictures but you can't learn creativity. I hope that I actually have some amount of creativity but it's just not unleashed yet.

I've written and recorded rock and roll songs for many years (since the early 1970's in fact, using cassette recorders). I truly think I've had moments of creativity in some of my songs, and I've been told that by others at times. So I hope that I can carry whatever amount of creativity I have over to visual arts.

Mike recently posted a picture of an old fence post. But what he did was look straight down on the end of the post. The circular wood grain was in focus. The depth of field (DOF) got fuzzy by the time you got to the ground. The few barbed wire strands were in various stages of blur due to the DOF. He rendered it in black and white. It looks cool to me. It looks like art to me. It looks like nothing I'd have thought to shoot and I've been around similar, weathered fence posts. I'm jealous.

This last weekend I looked around at the locations I went to trying to find my own dilapidated fence post shot (okay, not literally a fence post, but something I could shoot in an unusual way). I didn't find it. I'll bet Mike would have found it. I'll keep trying though.