Things I've Learned in a Life in Photography

Old Ford pickup in auto graveyard, U.S. 27, Troup County, Georgia.

 

 One: The Thing Is the Thing

The one essential thing without which no photograph can exist is the thing itself -- the subject. As the late, great Bill Jay  wrote: 

This immediate emotional or intellectual response to the subject matter is at the core of photography. Its periphery is the photographer's manipulation of framing, focus, exposure, lighting, and all the other variables, in order that a bland record is invested with depth through the production of an intriguing image.

The photographer is, first and foremost, a selector of subjects. The photographer makes a conscious choice from the myriad of possible subjects in the world and states: I find this interesting, significant, beautiful or of value. The photographer walks through life pointing at people and objects; the aimed camera shouts "look at that!" The photographer produces pictures in order that his or her interest in a subject can be communicated to others. Each time a viewer looks at a print, the photographer is slaying "I found this subject to be more interesting or significant than thousands of other objects I could have captured; I want you to appreciate it too. "

Jay's book On Being a Photographer should be in every photographer's library. It's cheap and it's available on Amazon. If you don't have a copy I highly recommend you get one.

The photo: Made in 1996 with a Canon EOS A2 camera and (probably) the Canon EF 28-105mm lens. The film, as always, was Fujichrome 100D slide film.

 If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available for $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photograph copyright David B. Jenkins. Text copyright David B. Jenkins and the Estate of Bill Jay, 2026.  

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     film photography    Bill Jay     Canon EOS A2 camera    Canon EF 28-105mm lens   Fujichrome 100D film    art and photography

I Am an Amateur Photographer

 Louise in the "kitchen" of our first camper.

 I am an amateur photographer. The word "amateur" is derived from the Latin "amare" which means "to love." Since buying a cheap Instamatic camera in 1968 to make pictures of my newborn son, I have carried a camera with me most of the time and pointed it at what ever caught my interest. Including, of course, many pictures of my family. And although my career as a professional photographer spanned more than 50 years, I have always been an amateur. Photographing for the love of it.

I did my last paid gig in 2023 --- just three years ago yesterday. And although my mobility is limited these days I'm still looking for pictures.

One of the photographers I most admire is Elliott Erwitt, who  made a substantial living through his photography for magazines, advertising, and annual reports in the US and around the world. Wherever he went, he always carried a small camera with him -- usually a Leica, with a 50mm lens and loaded with black and white film. His "snaps," as he called them, have filled more than 25 books.

Sometimes Erwitt's wit is very subtle,

and sometimes it's like a slap in the face.

I have always sought to photograph in the same spirit as Erwitt, but he is the master. He could walk around a block -- almost any block -- and come back with more good pictures than I could make in a year. But I love what I do. I'm an amateur.

If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available for $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Text and photographs copyright David B. Jenkins and the Estate of Elliott Erwitt, 2026.  

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     amateur  photography     Elliott Erwitt     Leica rangefinder camera    art and photography

Thoughts about AI and Art

 Horse laugh. Near Riceville, McMinn County, Tennessee.

 A few weeks ago I took on the issue of "photographs" created by AI. Are they photographs, or are they not?

My position is that they are not photographs. As I wrote before, the essence of photography is that it is photographic. It is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that has objective reality onto a sensitized surface. Light rays bouncing off something that really exists go through a lens and are recorded onto film, a sensor of some kind, or something not yet invented, but whatever it is, it is "writing with light." The unique power of photography is derived from this direct connection to reality. 

My friend the graphic designer and artist Michael Largent creates beautiful work by extensively altering photographs in Photoshop. I haven't talked to him recently -- he may be working with AI by this time. His pictures are art, no question. But are they photographs? Just barely, if at all.

Could someone using AI create a picture like my Laughing Pony? Of course, if he could imagine such a thing. And that's the difference. The magic of photography is that life holds so many amazing and wonderful things that are entirely unanticipated, unexpected, even unimagined in the deepest sense; that is -- no one would ever have thought of such a thing. And then, suddenly, right out of the fabric of life, up gallops my pony.

(About the photo: This was made in McMinn County, Tennessee, as I was returning from a  barn-hunting trip in Kentucky and other points north. The camera was one of my first in the Canon EOS system, the EOS 10S. It was a really good camera for its time, although I eventually upgrades to the EOS A2. The lens was probably the Canon EF 24mm, and film, as always, was Fujichrome 100D.)

If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Text and photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2026.  

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     film photography     AI    Canon EOS 10s camera     Canon EF 24mm lens    art and photography   Rock City Barn photographs

Learning from My Photographs

 

Daffodils along West Cove Road, McLemore Cove, Walker County, Georgia.  

Do you look deeply at your photographs after you've made them to see what they are truly about? I'm not talking about things like composition, exposure, focus, and such, although those are necessary and important. I'm talking about meaning and message. Those elements are often not evident at first glance. We may have to live with a picture for a while to understand its full meaning. There may be much more there than we saw when we snapped the shutter. (Although sometimes we feel it without realizing what we're seeing.)

I have a number of photographs printed on canvas in 24 by 36-inch format which I hang  over my fireplace and switch  out according to the season. This one, as you were probably able to guess, is my spring picture.

When I made this photograph I was deliberately looking for something that said "Spring." I made quite a few photos on my farm and around the Cove, but this is the one I chose. I like the picture very much, obviously, but I had never looked at it deeply to understand what it was that I liked.

Until . . . a few weeks ago, I was sitting on my sofa, looking at the photograph with my mind in idle, when it began to come alive to me. There is incredible life and action in that still picture. Tiny golden trumpets looking to their creator, fairly dancing as they blow their hearts out in praise to the God of the universe.

Study your photographs. There may be a lot more "there" there than you realize. As the great New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a whole lot just by lookin'."

The photo: Olympus E-M5 digital with the Panasonic Lumis 14-140mm lens (probably the most useful combination I've ever owned. Should have kept it.)

Please Note: My granddaughter Jennifer set me up with my own domain for this blog so my web address is now alifeinphotography.com. The blogspot identifier is no longer needed.

If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Text and photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2026.  

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     digital photography     McLemore Cove     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm lens    flower photography

AI? Not I!

Dragons in the Backyard. Clarkesville, Georgia.

One pleasant early fall day as my son Rob and I were wandering around northeast Georgia to see (and photograph) whatever of interest we might find, we were driving along a street that ran by the backyards of some houses, when Rob suddenly exclaimed "Dad! Look at that!" It was  a cast metal dragon and an eagle in someone's backyard. So of course I stopped and made a few photographs.

Could this picture have been created by AI? Of course. But who would have thought of it?

The essence of photography is that it is photographic. It is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that has objective reality onto a sensitized surface. Light rays bouncing off something that is really there go through a lens and are recorded onto film, a sensor of some kind, or something not yet invented, but whatever it is, it is "writing with light." The unique power of photography is derived from this direct connection to reality. When a photograph is altered, digitally or otherwise, it becomes no longer a photograph, but something else: perhaps a subset of painting or collage. Rauschenberg, for instance, creates work that I would categorize as collage. It may be artistic in itself, it may use photography as an element or a point of departure, but it is not photography.

The photographer Dorothea Lange kept a quotation by the English essayist Francis Bacon on her darkroom door: “The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention." As Fred Picker said in the March 1994 issue of Shutterbug, "This Koudelka (print by Czech photographer Joseph Koudelka) on the wall contains the most amazing combination of things that I know happened, because when he made that photograph there was no electronic imaging. Here are two horses, standing in a certain position, a boy sitting on a bicycle wearing an angel suit with angel wings, here's an old lady scolding him, all in magnificent light and beautifully composed. Today, that picture could be made by some guy sitting in front of a computer. Knowing that would take all the wonder out of it."

In actuality, it isn’t likely “some guy sitting in front of a computer” would make such a picture, because those who alter and/or combine photographs are limited by their imaginations. They can only do what they can conceive. But photography goes beyond human imagination. As novelist Tom Clancy has said, “The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to make sense.” The magic of photography is that life holds so many amazing and wonderful things that are entirely unanticipated, unexpected, even unimagined in the deepest sense; that is -- no one would ever have thought of such a thing. And then, suddenly, right out of the fabric of life, there it is. "I can do a beautiful illustration, but it doesn't have that 'instant of wonder' that a photograph will have."  (Art Director Tony Anthony, quoted in "Photo District News," February, 1987.) Photography shows us things that lie beyond our imagination and compel our amazement because they really happened. It revels in the beauty, the mystery, and the strangeness of life. It is the most powerful purely visual medium ever created.

AI is great for things like commercial illustration and advertising (although it's putting some commercial photographers out of business). But not for the photography that matters to people like me. I want my photographs to be real. To show the world as it actually exists. People can use AI to alter and "improve" their photographs, but if their creations are presented as real photographs, I think that is destructive to the art of photography.

So. . .AI? Not I.

The photo: Olympus E-M5, Panasonic 14-140mm lens

If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Text and photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2026.  

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     AI     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm lens    Clarkesville, Georgia