Changes, Changes. . .

 

Louise and David in the Grand Tetons

Fuji X-T1, Fujinon XC 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OISII lens

 

Two years and a few days ago we sold our home and small farm in the northwest Georgia mountains, moved into a new fifth-wheel trailer, and became full-time RVers. It has been an interesting experience, and we have been extremely comfortable and happy living in our camper. But now we are in the process of buying a home in Knoxville.

"Why?" you may ask.

We love our trailer and many aspects of the full-time RV life, but we are not accomplishing our goals in RVing. We have traveled, but not as we had hoped. Travel has mostly consisted of going to a campground somewhere, staying a month or so, then moving on to another campground for another month or so. It's been interesting to have our tiny home on wheels in a variety of different places, but we had intended to travel much more.

Our plan was to be footloose, as we were when we went west in 2018 in a smaller camper and light truck, covering 7,000 miles in 30 days. (I wrote about the trip in August and September of 2020.) But travel is cumbersome in a big rig. Setting up and breaking camp is a much slower process. And diesel fuel is prohibitively expensive, especially for a heavy-duty truck that gets 10--11 miles  per gallon.

 

The valiant Chevy and our Starcraft travel trailer at Badlands National Park.

So, we are buying a condo in a pleasant section of Knoxville, near the church we attend. We plan to sell our trailer and truck and buy smaller ones that will enable us to resume the more mobile kind of travel we enjoy.

We have a lot of travel left in us, God willing, but we need to change the way we do it. (But maybe not 7,000 miles in 30 days again!)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

The Three Stages of Photography: Stage Three (Repost)

 

 Early Snow. McLemore Cove, Walker County, Georgia

Canon EOS 20D, 70-200 F4L lens

 

The third and ultimate stage of photography is involvement with the subject. 

The things we've learned about equipment and the photographic process in earlier stages are not forgotten or set aside; they are relegated to their proper roles as means to an end.  And that end is the presentation,  the revelation of the subject.

The great 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."

Contrary to what you've probably been taught, photography is not an art of self-expression.  Photography is above all others the art of self-effacement. Photography reaches its highest plane when the photographer has so mastered its tools and processes that he is able to use them to take himself out of the way and allow the subject to speak, to reveal itself through his skill. Paradoxically, it is only then that the photographer fully and truly expresses himself.

Another paradox is the fact that looking at a photograph of something is often the best way to see it. "...the camera's innate honesty...provides the photographer with a means of looking deeply into the nature of things, and presenting his subjects in terms of their basic reality. It enables him to reveal the essence of what lies before his lens with such clear insight that the beholder may find the recreated image more real and comprehensible than the actual object." (Edward Weston, "Seeing Photographically," The Complete Photographer, January, 1943.)

The Watchers. Fayetteville, Indiana

Canon EOS 20D, Canon EF 24-85 f3.5-4.5 lens

 

Our work as photographers is to isolate and clarify so that others may through us see the things that are around them. Our expensive equipment and our skill at using the processes of photography are enjoyable in themselves, but are ultimately pointless unless they become the channels through which we empower our subject to reveal the essence of itself.

What subject?  I can't answer that question for you. Edward Weston found his universe in peppers, shells, and rocks. Steiglitz found his in clouds, Ansel Adams in the forces of nature. Dorothea Lange found hers in the faces of the poor and dispossessed, and Cartier-Bresson found his in the patterns of everyday life. I have found mine in the play of light across a human face, and across the face of the land. Ultimately, your answer will come out of your world view.

I believe that this world was created by a loving and sovereign God, and is filled with both beauty and mystery. I believe he created man in his own image, and although man has fallen and that image has been broken and marred, it still exists. Man is thus both savage and noble, and the world is a place of both darkness and light, of chaos and order. I want my photographs to show a world of beauty and mystery, of light and darkness, of nobility even in the midst of savagery. There is chaos, but underlying it, there is order.

Rooted in the Past

Armuchee Valley, Walker County, Georgia

Olympus OM-D E-M5, Panasonic Lumix 14-140 f3.5-5.6 lens

 

Your way of looking at the world may be different from mine. If it is, your photographs should show that difference. Your photographs must be yours.  They must come from your heart, your way of seeing life and the world.

So what subject?  The whole world is before you.

What are you waiting for?

(This series of posts was originally published in 1999 as an article in Rangefinder Magazine titled The Three Stages: Photography as the Art of Self-Effacement.)

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

The Three Stages of Photography: Stage Two (Repost)

 

Chicago Skyline

Olympus OM2n, 35-70mm f3.6 Zuiko lens, Fujichrome 100

 

Blog note: This is the second installment of an article I originally wrote for Rangefinder Magazine more than twenty years ago and posted on this blog in January, 2020

The second stage of progression in photography is involvement with photography itself.  For the more senior among us, it may have been learning to develop film and make prints. More recently, many have come into photography by way of computers and software. Either way, there's a whole new world of things to learn and do. Some people begin at this stage, rather than at the equipment stage, perhaps hooked by the magic of seeing a print come up in the developer for the first time or the gift or impulse buy of a digital camera. They may partially or completely bypass the involvement-with-equipment phase, intuitively understanding that equipment is only a means to a end.

At this level, pictures become more than a by-product.  Good photographs are an earnestly sought goal, and occasional successes whet the appetite for more.  We attend workshops, read books, and find it all endlessly fascinating.  Influenced by photographers we admire or who we have been told are masters of the art, we try to make photographs like theirs. There's a lot of emulation, imitation, and even some outright copying as we seek to master the medium and find our individual place it.

 

As our skills increase, we may find ourselves making photographs which are considered excellent by others.  They may even win prizes.  Yet, in the deepest sense, they are not really our own.  "Son of Cartier-Bresson," maybe, or perhaps "The Return of Arbus."  Excellent, but not spoken with our own voice, as it were.  Many technically-capable amateurs and not a few professionals arrive at this point and never go any further.

In fact, it could well be argued that professionals are especially susceptible to topping out at this level.  We are involved with photography on a daily basis, most of us are deeply in love with photography,  and some of us find that we can be reasonably successful by producing photographs according to rules and formulas.  In addition, any number of seminars and workshops stand ready to teach us to make photographs just like the hot photographers of the hour.  Imitative photography is actively encouraged by trade associations such as the Professional Photographers of America, with its print judging system which awards merit points to photographs made according to the standards they have established.

 

My Brother Steve

Olympus OM2n, 85mm f2 Zuiko lens, Kodachrome 64

A skillful promoter/salesman with moderate camera skills can have a financially successful career as a professional photographer without ever having an original thought or making an original photograph.

But that's okay.  It's all good fun, and harms no one.  Even if a professional sells hack work, what of it?  Are his customers harmed?  No, they're pleased.  Kathy the new bride is happy because her wedding pictures look just like Jennifer's and Karen's.

Involvement with equipment and with the photographic process itself  are necessary stages in the development of most photographers, but they are not what photography is about.  To learn the true meaning of photography, to come to a place where we can make photographs which are truly our own, we must advance to the third level. (To be continued.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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

(Repost) The Three Stages of Photography: Stage One

Canoes, Cumberland Mountain State Park, Tennessee

Olympus OM2n camera, Olympus Zuiko 60-200mm f4 lens, Fujichrome 100 film

 

Blog Note: Because of the number of comments on my previous post, I'm reposting in three parts an article from the early days of this blog. It was originally published in Rangefinder Magazine more than 20 years ago.

 

While some undoubtedly take up photography because they are attracted by the possibilities of the medium, I suspect most of us go into photography bass-ackwards: we fall in love with the equipment first.

No question, of course, that photographers have a deeper involvement with their tools than practitioners of most other arts or crafts. It's probably necessary in the nature of the case. Only in music is the art so inseparably linked to the instrument used to produce it.

I'm sure painters talk shop from time to time about brushes and paints, and writers may sometimes compare notes about their word processors. But nobody, except perhaps computer geeks, talks so endlessly about equipment as photographers. We have a love affair with cameras that just won't quit.

And that includes me. I love cameras. I can easily count more than 200 of the critters I've owned in my lifetime, and I'm not even a collector. (Well, maybe a little bit.) I like using cameras, handling them, playing with them, even just thinking about them, imagining what I could do if I had a Fuji GFX100 with a hundred megapixels, or even a 100-400mm zoom for my X-H1. But c'mon, tell the truth. Wasn't it plain old love of gadgets and tinkering that first got a lot of us hooked on photography? I mean, who could resist those miniature mechanical (or electronic, nowadays) marvels with their enticing whirs and clicks? A real grown-up toy for sure.

 

 

Christian woman, Madras, India

Olympus OM2n, 85mm f2 Olympus Zuiko lens, Fujichrome 100

In our equipment-happy stage, we search the internet and visit brick-and-mortar  camera stores, if we're lucky enough to have one nearby, to find the best camera for our money. We eagerly learn which lens does what. We search out blogs, online fora, and books to learn how to use our new cameras and master the technical aspects of photography, including learning to choose and use the necessary software. We believe the camera manufacturer implicitly when he says equipment makes the photographer. And fun...!? A little expensive, maybe, but man, what fun! In fact, it's so much fun that some stop right here and never go on to become photographers. We would never admit it, even to ourselves, but sometimes the pictures are only the by-products of the real fun: playing with our gear. There's a name for this phenomenon: it's called GAS -- Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

And there's nothing wrong with that. The people who make and sell cameras will love you and the money you spend keeps the ball rolling for all of us. To be fair, probably most photographers are at least slightly infected with GAS, and playing with photo equipment is good, clean fun.  But it's not photography. Photography is something else. (To be continued.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

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

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