An Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Smoky Mountain Homestead

At the Cherokee, North Carolina Entrance

to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Mamiya C220 twin-lens reflex, Kodak Ektachrome film

 

For 35 years I was a film photographer. My skills in using film were carefully developed and polished by many years of practice. I usually worked with slide film, which is the most difficult to expose properly, calculating exposures with a hand-held incident meter, which is more accurate than the meters built into cameras because it reads the light falling on the subject rather than the light reflected from it. To be ultra precise, exposures were bracketed by making additional ones a half-stop brighter and a half darker, then choosing the best one after the film was developed. I had a well-equipped darkroom and enjoyed processing color slides and black and white film myself. To this day I believe the majority of my best photographs were made on film.

In 2003 I made the switch to digital imaging with great reluctance and only because I felt it necessary to remain competitive in professional photography. I soon found that there were some skills common to both film and digital photography, but there were also new skills to learn. At the ripe age of 66 I began to teach myself Photoshop! And not just Photoshop, but numerous other software programs to learn. Learning software is not something I enjoy, but necessary to do digital photography at a high level. Even the film photograph of a Smoky Mountain homestead had to be scanned into a digital file before it could be posted on the internet. 

Sometimes it seems as if all I've done since 2003 is learn software! An old dog may learn new tricks, but that doesn't mean he will enjoy it.

 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 copyright the estate of Tony King. 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.

Image Quality or Quality Image? (Repost)

   The White Dress

(Copyright estate of Tony King)

 

From time immemorial photographic equipment manufacturers have propagated the myth that owning a better camera will make one a better photographer. Consequently, many photographers spend time and money seeking what I call abstract technical quality: full-frame sensors with high pixel counts or even digital medium format, paired with lenses of the highest definition to create photographs of extreme sharpness and clarity.

Sharpness and clarity are certainly desirable qualities, although few people will notice a difference in any size enlargement most of us are likely to make. But those demanding photographers have a right to like what they like, and they help keep the camera manufacturers in business, which helps us all. So blessings on them!

There is, however, more than one way to think about photographic quality. For myself, I believe the most important quality in a photograph is the quality of its content. (Although I once did have someone, a lab owner, no less, inform me that image quality is more important than content.) 

The two are by no means mutually exclusive, of course, and there are many photographers who produce photographs with high-quality content using equipment capable of the highest image quality. 

The whole discussion is a carryover from film days, when some of us used 35mm extensively while others swore by their medium format Hasselblads, RB67s, Rolleis, and the like. This is not to disparage medium and large format cameras, because many great photographs have been made with them. Yet people like Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka, Elliott Erwitt, Tony King, W. Eugene Smith -- the list is almost endless -- turned out volumes of poignant, story-telling photographs with their 35mm cameras.

A case in point is a print which the late Tony King gave me, which is at once one of the simplest and yet one of the most satisfying photographs I have ever seen. It's just a young girl's white party dress hanging on the bare wooden interior wall of a New England beach cottage. That's all. Just a 35mm available light shot, probably on Tri-X. How can it be so good? You have to see it. And yet, it's only about 6x9 inches, printed on 8x10 paper.  

Would it be better if it were larger? I don't think so. The quality of this photograph is the quality of its content. I doubt that it would enlarge well beyond 12x18, but this picture does not need to be large to be  eloquent. The technical quality is sufficient to carry the message of the content. No more is needed. 

It's nice if you can afford the latest and the best. But for those of us who can't afford or don't choose to spend the money, don't want to carry a load, or simply want to keep things simple, remember that reasonably good equipment, reasonably good technique, a reasonably good eye, and a reasonably good idea of what you want to say can add up to very good photographs.

It's what's in your photographs that counts; not what you use to make them. 

 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 copyright the estate of Tony King. 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.

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.