an eye in the world » creative process

Archive for the 'creative process' Category

making prints

We’re back from Desolation Wilderness. As always, it is good to be back home but I also miss the simplicity of backpacking–living on a minimum of material goods and having little on my agenda other than enjoying being outside and making photographs.

After returning from the wilderness, there was an order of prints waiting for me. It was a visually delicious experience to open the box and tack them up on the 4 foot bulletin board I recently installed in the living room.

Something beautiful happens when one’s experience behind the camera is transformed into a material work of art. Finally, after the click of the shutter is shaped and coaxed into a fine art print, I can separate myself enough from the experience I had while taking the picture and look at the resulting artwork to consider it on its own merits. Up until this stage, it is difficult not to be awash in the memory of taking the image, rather than actually looking at the image as it is in this moment.

Also, based on this experience, I can highly recommend Adorama’s printing services. They are reasonably priced and the quality is excellent. I’m especially loving the black and white images printed on Ilford Black and White paper. I wish I could post them here, but then they’d be electronic images once again!

If anyone out there is interested in purchasing prints of any of the pictures you see, here’s my current process, until I get a website set up later this summer:

Browse my Flickr images here: aneyeintheworld on Flickr
Write down the title of the image that looks like this “GMK_YYYYMMDD_1234“
Submit a comment by clicking on “comments” at the bottom of this post (this just allows an easy way to communicate with me; it will not be published)
In the comment, include: your name, mailing address, email address, the title of the image you want, and what size (8 x 10″ or 11 x 14″)
Be sure to include your email address in the comment, otherwise I won’t be able to get in touch with you
I will email you with payment instructions and get the print out to you within three weeks. Currently I except Paypal, personal checks, and money orders.

Prints come in two sizes: 8 x 10″ prints are $25 and 11 x 14″ prints are $45.

All prints are printed to my exact specifications on archival matte paper, then hand signed and numbered. Each print will have a small white border around the edge, so the image size is slightly smaller than the total print size. The copyright symbol you see on the web images is not present on prints.

Thanks for your support!

Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post

Grant :: Jul.13.2007 :: art, creative process :: No Comments »

finding the photograph

I’m taking a class this semester called “Photography as Ecological Meditation”. The basic format of the class goes like this: we read a meditation written by the professor on a particular topic, we go out and make photographs in response to the meditation, and then pick one to share with the class. Each class session is a slide show where everyone gets the chance to make comments about where the picture takes them. Then the photographer reveals her/himself and gives context and any personal feelings about the image. I like this a lot–it’s giving me a chance to approach the emotional aspect of viewing photographs (instead of just the technical) and see some of the amazing work done by my classmates.

The ecological part is pretty flexible–referring broadly to our surrounding environment. So it doesn’t have to be any specific kind of nature photograph. The picture above was for the first class–the theme was darkness (what I nice one to start with). Thankfully, the next one was light (balance is good).

It’s been an interesting process for me to figure out how to go about making a photograph under these assignments. Do I brainstorm possible images and then go out and make the one that I think will be the best? Or do I go out and explore with my camera, putting on this new filter of a specific theme onto how I see? Do I just try to make what I think will be the coolest photograph that will impress the professor or have the most impact on the class?

This one I happened upon (while not specifically looking), though I saw it because when thinking of images about darkness (particularly personal darkness in the form of depression, something I’ve dealt with) tunnels were on my mind. Will finding themed projects like this spur my creative possibilities and help me make images I wouldn’t have otherwise envisioned? It seems so, my friend. Sometimes structure is good, even for creativity.

By the way, don’t worry about what it is, just let it speak for itself ; )

Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post

Grant :: Mar.23.2007 :: creative process, seminary :: 2 Comments »

moving and shifting

Being back in school for the spring semester means that life is busy. With a more than full course load, I haven’t had much time to blog. If you’re reading this, thanks for coming back even though I take so long to update!

As with the rest of my life, I feel like my photography is growing and shifting very quickly right now. I’m using my intution more, letting compositions happen rather than trying to manufacture them. It feels very good to trust myself, rather than trying to control each element by thinking it through and planning what to do. I’m learning that often good things happen if I take the risk of trusting my capacity to respond in the moment (again, both in photography, and life in general).

Yet, I’m unsatisfied; part of me is really bored with my usually genre of nature photography. While I can make pictures that are nice to look at, they don’t seem to convey the meaning I want to get across. To tell stories, I need more of a human connection (by taking pictures of people) and to work with images that relate to each other in series, each painting another piece of what I am trying to say. This is sounding a lot like photojournalism.

I’ve realized that my creative process while doing photography has mostly been in response to my environment. While I sometimes seek out environments that I think will be particularly photogenic (just about any natural body of water, for instance), I usually don’t plan or envision a particular photograph or kind of photograph beforehand. I use what I’ve learned about photography to explore my environment and respond to what I see. This is a very individualistic process, and I find it very meditative. But I’m sure I could really benefit from some collaboration with others.

I have plans to try more street photography in the near future, so we’ll see where that takes me. (Yea for spring break next week!)

Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post

Grant :: Mar.21.2007 :: creative process :: 1 Comment »

wildcat creek

Since it’s a holiday (President’s day), we had the chance to do a little hiking up in the hills of Tilden Regional Park. Not exactly wilderness, but not like the city, either. I’m glad that I can maintain a relatively small ecological footprint by living in an urban area but still have places close by to which I can escape. Now only if there was better bus service so we didn’t have to drive the car.

I’m finally feeling like some of my photography is moderately worthy as art. I spent the first 2 or 3 years after I started photographing just pointing my camera at things I thought were beautiful and then wondering why pictures of them never seemed to capture the beauty I saw. Thanks to the vast amount of information on the internet about photography, some of it even good (particular thanks to the folks at the RadiantVista), I’ve been able to slowly grow in artistic skill. I’m beginning to understand the nature of translating a 4 dimensional experience into 2 dimensions and how the typical human brain moves through that 2D representation.

I’m drawn more and more to black and white photography. It’s more honest, in a way–because most people see in color it’s more obvious that a black and white photograph is not a small captured bit of reality, but a representation. I’ve been using the beta of Adobe Camera RAW 4 and the recently released Adobe Lightroom v1.0 software to do black and white conversions from my digital RAW files. It’s amazing how much faster one can work with a refined user interface, with results that would take 3 to 4 times as long in Photoshop.

Click on the picture to see the rest of the photographs from today on my Flickr page.

Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post

Grant :: Feb.19.2007 :: art, creative process, environment :: 1 Comment »