Nice Shots, But Where's the Color?

"The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can’t be said in black and white… Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends." - Edward Weston

My mom has a habit of asking disarmingly "simple" questions (which usually have "simple" answers, but only after some thought has gone into addressing them). A while back, she asked me why I tend to take series of pictures rather than individual photos (that post led me to ponder the steps that all artists pass through on the way to "self-discovery"). Well, fresh on the heels of my one-day photo-safari at Luray Caverns, and after showing my mom a few early drafts of processed images, my mom came back with: "They're nice, Andy, but where is the color?"

This time, though, since the general question of color vs. black and white has been on my mind as I was preparing slides for a presentation, I was at least ready with a semblance of a real answer; and it goes to the heart of the basic difference between the forms of photography. Interestingly, the seed of the answer I gave my mom (and am now summarizing) was in my mom's own follow-up to the first part of her question. When I told her the "color" of the caverns was effectively a quasi-mono-tonal "orange," she quickly added, "But Andy, you had some beautiful orange abstracts recently, and they were all in color!" She was referring to my recent series of synesthetic landscapes, which are indeed all in color; this one for example:

So why is this in color and the caverns in black and white? The "simple" answer is that it has everything to do with intent. The whole point of the synesthetic landscape series is to communicate a certain aesthetic of color. These abstracts are not about any "thing"; rather, they are all about the tonal distributions of the colors that they depict. While one is always free to convert to black and white... here is an example of one conversion of the above color shot:

...doing so destroys the very essence of what I took the shot to convey; namely color! This is not to suggest that some viewers (including my mom, though in this case, regarding my colorful "synesthetic landscapes," I know she agrees with me) might not find the black and white version preferable - aesthetics, as we all know, is not an objective measure - just that the color version of this particular image (and others in the same series) is the best exemplar of what my intent was in crafting the photo.

Now, what about the black and white picture of Pluto's Chasm shown above (another view appears in my first post about Luray)? First, in truth, it is not a black and white photo, as I add a subtle warm duotone to all of my photos (which you can see for yourself by loading the image in any image viewer and slowly cranking up the saturation). For the record, my mom didn't "buy" my "it's not really a black and white photo" answer ;-) So, let's take a peek at what the same image might look like in color:

Again, apart from comparing individual aesthetics (you may prefer the color to the duotoned version, or you may not like either image), the point I made to my mom is that as far as my cavern portfolio is concerned, my intent is to communicate certain aesthetic qualities regarding tones, shapes, and textures. The rather drab monotone-like, all-pervasive orange that permeates the "color" image does nothing (for me) in this context, apart from likely diluting a viewer's attention from what otherwise would be her sole focus; namely, the tones, shapes, and textures. In short, color is an unwanted visual distraction (and a preattentive one at that, meaning that we cannot choose to not see it, as it is processed automatically by our brain's primary visual cortex). Thus, color - in this case (from my - the photographer's - point of view) adds nothing essential to the intended aesthetic meaning of the photograph.

Of course, in the end, how an image is viewed (and interpreted) is always a matter of personal taste and predilections. I suppose, one could (as an artist) provide a "multiverse" of aesthetic possibilities to viewers (generating not one image but dozens, hundreds, or even millions!... by creating versions in color, black and white, solarizations, alternative processes, photoshopped abstractions, etc.), thereby maximizing the probability that any given viewer will find an attractive image buried somewhere within the pile of images put on display. But that entails moving away from art as conceived, practiced, and crafted by the photographer (and the photographer's own, unique aesthetic vision) to another kind of "meta-art" that depends on the aesthetic choices of the viewer;-)

Luray Cavern Abstracts

"Into the dark beyond all light

we pray to come,

through not seeing and not knowing,

to see and to know,

that beyond sight and knowledge,

itself; neither seeing nor knowing."

- Dionysius the Areopagite

"Any man working with the medium

sooner or later impinges,

merges into, fuses with

the fringes of mysticism."

- Minor White

Luray Caverns Part III: a Harmony of Contrasts

"...an aesthetic perspective is quite at home in the realm of contradictions, for its very nature allows it to transform them into a harmony of contrasts...value entails a synthesis of complexity with order, novelty with continuity, nuance with harmony, richness with stability...the cosmos is such an aesthetic reality. Both in its constituent occasions and in its overall reality the universe is a process of synthesizing and unifying its composite aspects into novel moments of present aesthetic "enjoyment." "

- John F. Haught, Theologian

This is the third installment of a series of blog commentaries on my recent day-long sojourn into the subterranean wonders of Luray Caverns, in northern Virginia (the first two parts are here and here, respectively). In part II I discussed how I have resolved to deal with - though have not yet "solved" - the "problem" of extreme contrasts of light and form.

What makes the caverns unusual, from a compositional perspective, is not just that the contrasts that are there are so strong (and that, really, visually define how the caverns appear to visitors), but that they are both strong and fixed. The photographer's ability to craft an image is thus constrained in two important dimensions of the (typically much more forgiving and malleable) aesthetic space.

Of course, the photographer still has to journey through the familiar landscape of possibilities and aesthetic design decisions: what to focus on, which forms to include, exclude and/or emphasize, what depth of field to use, what tonal ranges to manipulate in what way in photoshop, what to sharpen and what to leave alone (or blur), etc. But the object of this exercise - the "real world" studio in which the original image is recorded; i.e., the cave - is itself fixed and unchanging. This paradoxically renders the aesthetic choices both easier and harder to make.

Aesthetic choices are easier to make in caves because you are assured of the fact that what is front of the lens now is exactly what was there a moment, or hour, or day, ... before! Whether you turn away for a moment or walk away and come back hours later (assuming the caverns have not yet closed for the night), the "image" you first trained your camera on is still there, identical in every way to the first time you framed it. You can "lose your way" so to speak, and always backtrack to "correct" any errors in judgement, or refine a composition by just a bit, able to fully trust in the fact that "everything will be as it was" except for whatever small nudge up or down or to the left you choose to make now. You are, in fact, traversing a completely unchanging reality (at least in limited timeframes, as new deposits accumulate at the rate of roughly one cubic inch every ~120 years or so); this only adds to the surreal feel of wandering around in the caves - a feeling that is especially strong when wandering around alone.

Aesthetic choices are harder to make in caves because one of the most frequently used tools for "finding the best image" - namely, the ability to simply wait for the right conditions - does not apply. Indeed, part of my meditative state that the title of this series of blog entries alludes to (Joyful Medidations...) was induced by an incessant, semi-conscious, whispering to myself of the mantra "ciwis, ciwis, ciwis, ..." (meaning, the "cave is what it is";-) Waxing a bit philosophical, one can say that caves fuse time and space; insofar as they are (implicitly) expressed by - and compel the viewer to experience as - the spatial dimensions alone. Time is rendered inert and irrelevant. Since I cannot totally separate the left (physics) and right (photography) parts of my brain - even when out and about taking photographs! - I often found myself musing about the idea of how the caves are wonderful way to train oneself to imagine what a totally timeless physics might look like, in which reality consists of an uncountably large set of interlocked slices of "nows" (see Julian Barbour's The End of Time).

As I write this entry, I've completed a preliminary look at the 20+GB worth of raw files I recorded in Luray caverns. The aesthetic gestalt that is slowly self-organizing in my mind, is that of a "harmony of contrasts." Interestingly, and perhaps fittingly, as well, this expressive phrase happens also to be the title of my dad's first posthumous art exhibit in Taganrog, Russia; he and I, it seems, still manage to find ways to connect in the timeless realm ;-) In the first page of the flyer for my dad's exhibit (shown below), "Гармония контрастов" is Russian for Harmony of Contrasts:

Joyful Meditations in a Subterranean Cosmos: Part II

“Three Rules of Work:

Out of clutter find simplicity;

From discord find harmony;

In the middle of difficulty

lies opportunity.”

- Albert Einstein

As a follow-on to my previous entry on my recent day-long photo excursion to Luray Caverns in northern Virginia, I'd like to make a few remarks about the aesthetics of capturing the caverns in a photograph, and - ultimately - a fine-art print. The short version is that it is not easy!

There are several reasons for this: (1) light (as in "lack of control over"), (2) contrast (as in "there is too much of it"), and (3) innate dissonance (between everything and everything else that consists of light and form;-). As these are all interrelated, I'll discuss them as a group. Light, arguably the single most important component of any photographer's repertoire of "tools," is in this case unnatural (as it is due solely to the intensely locally bright orange tungsten lights), imposed (since it is installed and fixed in place by the park engineers), and fixed (because it is either on or off, never in any "in between" state or alternate projection angle). Thus, the photographer must deal with the lighting conditions as they are defined in situ; in particular, this means that there is no opportunity to "wait for the right light." One might argue, of course, that this is a general quandary all photographers find themselves in; we always "look for" shots, no matter the environment. But what renders this a particularly difficult compositional problem in a cavern is the second reason I've cited for why this task is difficult, namely contrast.

Luray Caverns' lights are bright; very bright; sometimes blindingly bright! And are often focused on relatively small patches of stalactites (dripstone formations that hang from the ceiling) and/or stalagmites (that build from the floor upwards). Again, while contrast is generally a good thing (certainly for black and white photography) and thus not necessarily a problem ("Well Andy, just find the blindingly brightly lit patches you happen to like!"), it can be a problem - certainly an aesthetic one - if what one is ultimately after is not finding the "best" composition that minimizes the impact of brightly lit patches, but one that best respects the totality of forms - including but not restricted to those both defined and hidden by lights and shadows. While visiting Santorini, Greece in 2008 with my wife, I also had to deal with strong contrasts, but at least there the contrasts were predictably variable. Since their strength and location changed throughout the day, I effectively had a degree of control over them; for example, I could decide when and where to set up my tripod (or just wait for the best conditions to arise). In Luray - and, I suspect, all other "public" caverns - there is simply too much fixed contrast to make this possible.

It was extremely difficult to find pleasing compositions of any forms larger than human-sized chunks simply because of the dizzying array of competing light sources. In those instances where I was able to find a pleasing composition of larger and more widely spaced elements (such as in the example that appears at the top of this blog entry, which is a panorama than spans about 100 ft from left to right), my post-processing in photoshop involved many more layers of local dodging and burning than is my norm. Mind you, this is not a complaint; it is merely an observation of one aspect of what makes photographing caverns difficult; difficult compositionally, and - even more so - tonally.

The last "problem" (both defined and exacerbated by the first two) is the caverns' innate dissonance. Nothing in the cavern is smooth, or smoothly varying. Not the light, not the forms, and not the textures. Indeed, the "forms" - such as they are - are best described as large to massive needles made of rock, arranged in staccato fashion throughout "rooms" that themselves range in size from smaller-than-cramped office cubicles to mini cathedrals. Far from a harmonious whole, the caverns are - at least at first sight - a visually loud cacophony of not-always-obviously correlated patterns. Everything is in contrast to - and in dissonance with - everything else in these caverns! There are certainly none of the smooth gradations of light and contour that one finds in the slot canyons of the southwest ;-) Yet, somehow, the photographer must craft a holistic harmony out of these ostensibly discordant compositional components.

So what to do? I chose (by deliberately going to the caverns) and now continue to choose (by spending even more time post-processing what I "saw" there) this experience as an opportunity to find ways of aesthetically balancing discordant parts. As Alan Watts reminds us, "...what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level." Yes, the forms are dissonant; yes, the lights are blindingly bright and often ill-positioned; yes, the tonal gradations all tend to yell and scream rather than sing in melodic verses; but my physics background (if not an even deeper intuition) insists that what appears, on the surface, as a confused tangle of a mess, is - at its heart - a wondrous harmony. Stay tuned...

Joyful Meditations in a Subterranean Cosmos

"Meditation reveals that

the obvious place to begin

is not in some other place,

it's right here."

- Angel Kyodo Williams

Being Black: Zen and the Art of
Living with Fearlessness and Grace

People often ask me (when I am out photographing), "You must spend a lot of time doing that, eh?" To which the answer is (and this is not a cop out), yes and no. Yes - obviously - because it is a life's passion of mine, and I "think about photography" most of my waking hours, even when pouring over equations and computer code in my day job (as a quick parenthetical aside, even as seemingly a mundane and unartistic an endeavor as putting together powerpoint slides for a technical presentation involves all kinds of compositional and graphical design elements, essentially indistinguishable from the unconscious processing going on behind the scenes of a photographer's craft). No - equally as obviously, but only after a moment's worth of thought - because, in truth, I do precious little active photographing while ostensibly engaged in photography!

Allow me to explain, and set the stage for the picture you see above and what all of this has to do with meditation. As a practical matter, the time I have to devote to real photography (i.e., not quick "point and shoot" grabs, but when I am out and about on a photo safari, mindfully settling into an area, senses tuned to visual possibilities ...) is short and comes in bursts. A few hours here and there on every other weekend perhaps; certainly more when my wife and I are on vacation, or when the family is visiting relatives in different states (hence my archive of portfolios generated in Florida's beauty, which is where my in-laws live). But even then, such as when we visited Greece and Scotland, my "real photo time" was diffused among an endless (but oh so welcome!) parade of 10-15 minute long patches of time during which we parked our car somewhere beside the highway or landmark and "explored for a bit." Then it is back in the car, and the reality of an equally endless parade of pictures that might have been captured - a common lament of all photographers - until the next roadside vista. While there are exceptions to any rule, it is generally rare to have more than a handful of minutes to do photography.

Thus the context for this post, which is intended as a short meditation on the joyful day-long photo safari I was privileged to have on an otherwise nondescript mid-week day last week. Going back a few months, I finally gathered the nerve (after pondering the issue for over a year before; I am a slow ponderer ;-) to leave a comment on the website for Luray Caverns, a popular tourist attraction in northern Virginia. I would have preferred a personal email, but I couldn't find an address on their website, so settled for sending a brief note in a "comment" post. In it, I introduced myself as a "professional fine-art photographer" (after wrestling a bit over whether I can really call myself one, since photography is far - far - from paying any meaningful fraction of my bills; I rationalized that at least the "fine-art" part was correct, since what I do as a photographer is emphatically not defined by anyone's demands but my own), and inquired about the possibility of having a "few hours to myself" inside the caverns with my camera and tripod. I heard back within a week from Luray's publicist, who could not have been nicer or more generous. Provided I choose a day other than a weekend, and one that falls before the April crowd rushes in, Luray would be happy to provide a full-days worth of unencumbered photography! A piece of heaven, I thought; and I was right.

I was greeted early in the morning by a staff member (who herself could not have been nicer or more accommodating; offering just the right mix of "Can I get you anything?" with a sincere "I'll leave you to your work" - it was not work, of course, but I guess carrying around two tripods, a bag with two DSLRs, four lenses, a speedlight, a portable drive for backup, a notebook, and an iPad, looked like it was work;-), led into the caverns, asked to wait a bit until all the lights were turned on (which took but a few moments), and then - music to a photographer's ears - told that "the caverns are all yours!" I essentially had the run of the place all to myself from 9:00am to about 5:40pm or so, armed only with a small bottle of water and a package of trail mix from Starbucks). There was a steady but quickly disappearing stream of visitors every hour or so; but they mostly hung around for a few minutes before moving on and out of eye and earshot. All told, I had over 8-1/2 hours of essentially uninterrupted "quality photography time" in the caverns; easily the longest such stretch I've had in over a decade. In a word, and I'm choosing the word carefully, Wow!

At the end of the day I was utterly exhausted (more so physically than psychically, as the strain of crouching and bending my 50 year old body in odd positions for "just the right" angle eventually took it's toll on every joint and muscle whose toll could be taken), but felt exhilarated; my inner state can best be described as a profoundly deep joyous inner calm. The kind of feeling one gets when one has accomplished exactly what one has set out to do; not to produce something, per se (the quality of which I am as yet unsure, as I have yet to start on the mountain - well, all 800+ images of a mountain - of post-processing work that awaits me in photoshop), but to simply engage in the creative process. And engaged I was. I will not soon forget these joyful day-long meditations on the visual delights I found in the subterranean cosmos known as Luray Caverns!

Gates and Journeys

"Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it. Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate." - Huang Po

"The longest journey

begins with a single step."

- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Beauty and Wonder

"Both the grand and
the intimate aspects of
nature can be revealed in
the expressive photograph.
Both can stir enduring
affirmations and discoveries,
and can surely help
the spectator in his search
for identification with the
vast world of natural beauty and
the wonder surrounding him."
- Ansel Adams
(1902-1984)

"Beauty is eternity gazing
at itself in a mirror."
- Kahlil Gibran
(1883-1931)

Self-Assembled Interdependence

“The farther and more deeply

we penetrate into matter,

by means of increasingly

powerful methods,

the more we are confounded by

the interdependence of its parts...

It is impossible to cut into the network,

to isolate a portion without it becoming

frayed and unravelled at all its edges.”

- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Philosopher

(1881-1955)

“There is a constant
and intimate contact
among the things that coexist
and coevolve in the universe,

a sharing of bonds
and messages that

makes reality into a
stupendous network of
interaction and communication.”

— Ervin Laszlo

Systems Theorist
(1932 - )

Seeing Order by Forgetting Names

"When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order; Unlike the world of events and actions, whose permanent condition is change and disorder." 

- Aaron Siskind Photographer (1903 - 1991) 

"To see is to forget the
name of the thing one sees."

- Paul Valery, Poet / Philosopher (1871 - 1945)

Meta-Musings on my B&W Photography Workshop

The graphic illustration you see above is a wonderful visual depiction of some of the key differences between how the left (analytical, logical) and right (creative, artistic) sides of our brain process information (it is part of a Mercedes-Benz advertising campaign). The point of my posting this image is not to engage in a dialectic on what is known, unknown, or merely believed about how the brain functions (though the popular distinctions are largely correct, the functional division is not nearly as "clear cut" as they purport, and much is still shrouded in mystery); rather it is to simply show it (because I think it is a really beautiful visualization) and to use it as a conceptual backdrop to asking myself a "meta" question about my experience of giving the B&W photography lecture this past saturday: "Just what did I actually convey about doing black and white fine-art photography?"

Let me go back a step, and begin again by recalling a chat I had with an artist friend at work (who was unable to attend my talk). When we met on the monday after my lecture, and as we sipped coffee together while viewing the slides I had used, my friend made the kind comment, "Andy, you've done an incredible job at elucidating exactly what's on your mind when you're out taking photos...what you look for, what the best compositions are, how to put feeling into your shots. Just beautifully done!" While his praise means a lot (my friend is a prodigiously gifted artist, and his "eye" is second to none), and I thanked him for his kind words, my immediate reaction - and the origin of this blog entry - was a giggle, followed by outright laughter.

It struck me that, far from elucidating exactly what is on my mind when I take pictures, there is nothing on my slides that speaks about what is really on my mind - on a conscious level (of which there is, in truth, very little) - as I take pictures (which is not to take anything away from the information about photography that the slides provide). Nor, I believe, can anyone expect there to be. This point is both a simple (almost trivial) one, and very subtle (possibly deeply subtle): when I am out with my camera, I am emphatically not thinking about shapes, or tones, or patterns, or textures, or any of the other things I talked about during my talk. Of course, I am mindful of light, of lines, of shadows, of planes of focus, and of a myriad other things that go into the "gestalt" of the process, but am so entirely on an unconscious, preattentive level. I've written about this timeless-state experience before, and of the mystery that surrounds it, psychologically, cognitively, and spiritually. But my talk has made me appreciate another aspect of this experience, and how it may contain certain universal truths about engaging ourselves on any boundary between cognition and artful creation.

In my case, the boundary was cognizing about photography; or, more precisely, attempting to communicate something about what "doing photography" is about by describing what one end result is (namely mine) of having done it. As a speaker, I was allowed (rather, constrained) to use only words, images, and short animations to convey something - i.e., cognize about such concepts as tone, shapes, texture, principles of design, and so on - that describes what "doing photography" is about. Only that's impossible!

The speaker's constraint is rendered inert at best, and self-negating at worst; and - if you think about - assumes this Pythonesque-level absurd form: "You are allowed to use any and all means of expression except those that are equivalent to what you are trying to describe." More succinctly, you can only use left-brain cognitions to convey right-brain creations. Even more simply: "Explain photography by not doing photography." Absurd. DOA.

I cannot "explain" photography using words (or images, or even giving an impromptu "demo" of what it's like for me to go out and take pictures) any more than a chef can "explain" what making a gourmet meal is really like (or what is on her "mind" as she prepares one); or any more than Baryshnikov can explain what is on his mind when he dances, or what "dancing is like" in general. One cannot convey anything meaningful about any process of "doing" via lifeless "symbols of doing," however elegant their form and manner of presentation.

Of course, the Zen masters have known this all along. For that is why they have long "taught" by not teaching. The master can point the student toward the path; he can supply the shoes, the books, the camera and lenses, as it were, even offer hints on where to look, why and how to look, give advise on what do afterwrads when the images are viewed in a darkroom or computer; but no words, no teaching, no "follow these easy steps" tutorials, will ever - ever - convey the essence of what it is like to experience what stirs in your soul as your finger clicks your camera's shutter.

"The purpose of a fishtrap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to." - Chuang Tzu

You will know that you are "doing photography" precisely when you are out and about with your camera (or just with your I's eye), with nary a thought in your head, or memory of someone pestering you with a bunch of slides about tone, light, gestalt, .... pontificating on how photography is done ;-)

Postscript: My wife reminded me of an incredible (and incredibly apropos) presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor at TED. Taylor is a neuroanatomist, and author of Stroke of Insight, which describes her experience of living through a massive stroke (!)

B&W Photograph Workshop II

This is just a quick note as a follow-up on the B&W talk I gave at Belnavis Art Gallery & Custom Framing in Springfield, VA on Feb 26; and to announce that I will be giving a second (repeat performance) at the same gallery on Saturday, March 26 (same time: 1:30 - 3:30 pm).

Though fewer people showed up than either Michelle (the gallery owner) and I had hoped for, I want to thank those that did. However, the intimacy of the small group made for a great informal class, where lots of ideas were discussed back and forth. Indeed, by group request, the "2 hour" class effortlessly grew to 3 hours, and all involved enjoyed the collective musings.

Speaking for myself, I was yet again reminded of the truth behind the cliche-ridden "time flies..." adage. Without taking so much as a minute's worth of a break during the entire session, I was shocked when I glanced at my watch near the 2 hour mark to discover that the class was ostensibly over! When one is truly in Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's flow, time stops, and the world assumes both a simpler and deeper local structure. It is also the meta-pattern that connects all art and creative acts; whether they consist of being out with one's camera, oblivious to everyone and everything save that which one's "I/eye" is drawn to, or speaking about a subject one is impassioned about (in my case, photography and art) with a group of people who are just as interested. Art is its own wellspring of energy and nourishment.

Here is the outline of topics covered in my talk, along with the approximate number of slides for each subject (most slides have multiple transition elements, so that "one page" in reality ranges from a single page to, in some cases, eight or more):

All of you, dear readers, who are within earshot and/or a stone's throw away, remember... I give a repeat performance at Belnavis Art Gallery & Custom Framing in Springfield, VA on Saturday, March 26,1:30 - 3:30 pm. And, as before, as an added inducement to attend, I am offering the first 10 people who sign-up for the workshop - free of charge - signed copies of a portfolio / booklet I won in the British B&W Magazine's book contest a few years back, along with issue #76 of Lenswork magazine (that contains 16 exhibit-quality duotoned reprints of my Micro Worlds portfolio).

Please email Michelle, the owner of Belnavis Arts, to register as early as possible if you'd like to attend.

I'd love to see you there!

B&W Photography Workshop

I am delighted to announce an upcoming workshop I'll be conducting on black and white photography. It will be held on Saturday, Feb. 26th, 1:30pm to 3:30 pm at Belnavis Art Gallery & Custom Framing in Springfield, VA.

Geared to beginners and those with an intermediate-level understanding of photography, this will be a 2-1/2 hour class on the "art" of fine-art black and white photography. My hope is to convey the difference between taking "snapshots" and creating images of lasting value; how to "see" the world in black and white (and all the tones in between!); offer tips on how to "find" B&W images (and how to "look" as a photographer in general); how to use basic design principles to "focus" a viewer's attention; and how to take your photography to the next level (beyond "point and shoot").

As (what I hope is ;-) an added inducement to attend, I am offering the first 10 people who sign-up for the workshop - free of charge - signed copies of a portfolio / booklet I won in the British B&W Magazine's book contest a few years back, along with issue #76 of Lenswork magazine (that contains 16 exhibit-quality duotoned reprints of my Micro Worlds portfolio). Please email Michelle, the owner of Belnavis Arts, if you'd like to attend.

Hope to see you there!

Strange Loops

"To make an 'I' you need meanings, and to make meanings you need perception and categories... The closing of the strange loop of human selfhood is deeply dependent upon the level-changing leap that is perception, which means categorization, and therefore, the richer and more powerful an organism's categorization equipment is, the more realized and rich will be its self. Conversely, the poorer an organism's repertoire of categories, the more impoverished will be the self, until in the limit there simply is no self at all... In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference."

-Douglas Hofstadter
Consciousness Researcher
Author of Godel, Escher, Bach
(1945 - )

The Aleph

"All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same problem, fall back on symbols...Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency...I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me...I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe."

- Jorge Luis Borges
Author / Essayist
(1899 - 1986)

Sacred Space

“Sacred space is a space

that is transparent

to transcendence,
and everything within
such a space furnishes
a base for meditation,
even for the youngest child.

When you enter
through the door,
everything within such
a space is symbolic,
the whole world
is mythologized,
and spiritual life is possible.

This is a place where
you can go and feel safe
and bring forth what you are
and what you might be.

This is the place of
creative incubation.
At first you might find
that nothing happens there.
But if you have a
sacred place and use it,
you will eventually
find yourself
again and again.”

— Joseph Campbell
Mythologist / Author
(1904-1987)

Time as an Illusory River

"When you touch one thing
with deep awareness,
you touch everything."
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhist Monk / Author
(1926 - )

"Time is the substance
from which I am made.
Time is a river
which carries me along,
but I am the river;
it is a tiger that
devours me,
but I am the tiger;
it is a fire
that consumes me,
but I am the fire. "
- Jorge Luis Borges
Author / Essayist
(1899 - 1986)

"One"

Having, with my last post, reached 200 blog entries over the seven years that I've been posting - and apropos of nothing in particular - I was curious to see what form a word cloud of my blog would take. There is a site that allows users to link to the URL of any blog (or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed) and then automatically generates a wordle. The wordle may be loosely tuned by selecting the font, color, visual layout, and toggling on/off the use of common words.

The resulting wordle for my blog - as of Feb 2011 - appears at the top. It is amusing to learn that - despite (or, perhaps, because of) my predilection for philosophizing, blending art and science, and general musing about all kinds of Borgesian and Kafkian realities, the most common words / phrases that fall out (i.e., are rendered in the largest font size) are, in order:

one
another
image
the whole
spiritual
part
fixed
prison
reality

As to what the cosmic significance of this particular list is, and what deeper truths it reveals - if anything - either about my past intellectual / aesthetic meanderings and/or the likelihood of specific future trajectories, I haven't a clue ;-)

Time, Space, and Mystery

“A human being is part of the
whole called by us a universe,
a part limited in time and space.

He experiences himself,
his thoughts and his feelings,
as something separate
from the rest,
a kind of optical delusion
of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind
of prison for us;
it restricts us to our
personal decisions and our
affections to a few
persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free
ourselves from this prison by
widening our circle of
compassion to embrace
all living creatures and the
whole of nature of its beauty.”
—Albert Einstein
(1879 - 1955)

“We know that behind every image revealed there is another image more faithful to reality, and in the back of that image there is another, and yet another behind the last one, and so on, up to the true image of that absolute, mysterious reality that no one will ever see.”

— Michelangelo Antonioni
Film Director
(1912 - 2007)

Order and Simplicity

"The obvious is that
which is never seen
until someone
expresses it simply."

- Khalil Gibran
Poet / Mystic
(1883 - 1931)

"Order is not pressure
which is imposed
from without,
but an equilibrium
which is set up
from within."
- Jose Ortega y Gasset
Philosopher
(1883 - 1955)

Harmony and Attunement

"Broadening our attunement beyond the horizons of the individual self awakens one to the meaning encoded into existence - a kind of cognitive "super-logic" that reveals a different purpose, a larger pattern, than anything we might previously have imagined. That is exactly what a spiritual awakening is - shifting from one perspective to another, until we finally glimpse meaningfulness where our mind could not perceive it before."

- Vilayat Khan
Sufi Teacher
(1916 - 2004)

"In studying ourselves,
we find the harmony
That is our total existence.
We do not make harmony.
We do not achieve it
or gain it.
It is there - all the time.
Here we are - in the midst
of this perfect way,
and our practice is
simply to realize it
and then
To actualize it
in our everyday life..."
- Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi
Japanese Zen Rōshi
(1931 - 1995)

Patterns and Transformations

"All fixed set patterns

are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns." 

- Bruce Lee (1940 - 1973) 

 "Our bodily food is changed into us, but our spiritual food changes us into itself." 

- Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1327)

Reflections and Illusions

"You have heard much of this world
yet what you seen of this world?
What is its form and substance?...
You are asleep and your vision is a dream;
all you are seeing is a mirage.
When you awake up on the morn of the last day
you will know all this to be fancy and illusion;
When you have ceased to see double,
Heaven and Earth will become transformed;
when the real sun unveils his face to ou,
the moon, the stars,and Venus will disappear;
if a ray shines on the hard rock
like wool of many colors, it drops to pieces."
-Mahmud Shabistari
Sufi Poet
(1288 - 1340)

"Reflect: is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object?

I should certainly say that such a one was dreaming.

But take the case of the other, who recognizes the existence of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor the idea in the place of the objects-- is he a dreamer, or is he awake?"

-Plato, The Republic

Boundaries, Mysteries, and Eternity

"Every man takes

the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." -Arthur Schopenhauer Philosopher (1788 - 1860)

"Man is the great mystery of God, the microcosm or the complete abridgement of the whole universe... a hieroglyphic of eternity and time." - Jacob Boehme Mystic / Theologian (1575 - 1624)

Implicate Order, Enfolded Centers

"As a mountain (a whole structure) moves forward in time, old centers are preserved and new centers are generated; centers will always tend to form in such a way as to preserve and enhance previous structure. Beauty will occur without effort in any world where the wholeness is allowed to unfold smoothly and truthfully, without disturbing previously existing centers. Everything becomes a single system and a single way of understanding."

- Christopher Alexander
Architect
(1936 - )

"Because the whole is enfolded in each part, so are all other parts, in some way and to some degree... The more fundamental truth is the truth of internal relatedness - the implicate order... in this order the whole and hence all the other parts are enfolded in each part."

-David Bohm
Physicist
(1917 - 1992

Pattern of Patterns

"What pattern connects
the crab to the lobster
and the orchid to the
primrose and all the four
of them to me?
And me to you? ...
The pattern which connects
is a metapattern.
It is a pattern of patterns."
- Gregory Bateson
Anthropologist
(1904 - 1980)

"A pattern of events
cannot be separated
from the space
where it occurs."
- Christopher Alexander
Architect
(1936 - )

Path of Paths

"You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path. Each path is only one of a million paths. If you feel that you must now follow it, you need not stay with it under any circumstances. Any path is only a path. There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping a path if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on a path or to leave it must be free of fear and ambition. I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same. They lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush or into the brush or under the brush of the Universe. The only question is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then it is a good path. If it doesn’t, then it is of no use."

- Carlos Castaneda
Anthropologist / Author
(1925 - 1998)

How Many Unknown / Undiscovered Artists Walk Among Us?

History is replete with lists of names and memorable biographies of the many gifted and talented artists that have graced our world. Indeed, these lists are so long and voluminous (and only growing ever more so), we may sometimes wonder if there are perhaps too many names already on them! But, of course, though not every artist is a Picasso, and not every photographer a Cartier-Bresson, each of us has our own story to tell. Still, very few of us who have - publically at least - accomplished "little" - will ever get mentioned on learned lists that include such names as Picasso and Cartier-Bresson. But what of the "Picassos" that share in Picasso's pool of talent but who no one knows by name, because the output of their creative life was / is confined but to a handful of family and friends? What of the prodigiously talented but utterly unrecognized Uber-geniuses that walk among us? As history also attests, the only real difference between "known" and "unknown" is luck.

I recently ran across a remarkable story about a nanny - and prodigiously talented but utterly unrecognized (until very recently) street photographer from the 1950s - named Vivian Maier. In 2007, real estate agent John Maloof bought a box of 30,000 of Maier's negatives for $400. Having soon realized what a "find" that box was, he has, by now, acquired over 100,000 of Maier's photographs! (only a thousand or so of which have so far been made public; see here and here for a sampling of her images). An exhibit of her work opened at the Chicago Cultural Center earlier this month. Sadly, Vivian Maier did not live to see her day; she died at age 83 in 2009.

It is hard to do justice to the quiet, soulful, graceful, and poignant (and sometimes spontaneous, funny) images that flowed from Maier's eye (and "I"). Using a Rolleiflex camera, Maier would head out into the Chicago streets on her days off as a nanny for rich North Shore clients. What she captured was nothing short of extraordinary! Her best work - IMHO (after sampling the images from the links I gave above) - approaches that of some of the "best known" street photographers of the 20th century. Her images (and overall approach) remind me of (in no particular order) Lisette Model, Walker Evans, Harry Callahan, Dorothea Lange, Robert Doisneau, Andre Kertesz, and - the more humorous ones, at least - Elliott Erwitt. I should emphasize that its not just that her images remind me of the best works by these great photographers; it's that her best work is just as good as theirs!

One image (of two boys standing side-by-side on a cobble-stone road) could arguably be inserted into a Diane Arbus portfolio with no one being the wiser. Another, of a vagabond curled up on a street, is a surrealistic fusion of human pathos and Weston's famous Pepper #30. Another (one of many!) exudes a Cartier-Bresson-like "decisive moment" feel. Still another echoes Kertesz's geometric meloncholy. One could go on and on, comparing this image to that, and illustrating how certain parts of her portfolio are similar to this photographer or that (Jacques Philippe has posted an interesting analysis of Maier's work); in the end, Maier's work is uniquely hers, and hers alone, and it is astounding in its breadth, depth, and meaning! The photo-history books, I suspect, are already being appended - and amended - with Vivian Maier's story!

I wonder, just how many other gifted artists are quietly walking - and creating extraordinary works of art - among us, unknown to all but a few lucky friends and family members?

Postscript: Click here for info about a feature-length documentary film about Vivian Maier that is in the works (for a 2012 release); the producers - John Maloof, Anthony Rydzon, and award-winning Danish documentary film maker, Lars Mortensen - are asking for pledges on Kickstarter.

The Spiritual World

“The spiritual world is one single spirit who stands like unto a light behind the bodily world and who, when any single creature comes into being, shine through it like a window. According to the kind or size of the window less or more light enters the world. The light itself however remains unchanged.”

- Aziz Nasafi
Sufi Mystic

"We are born into the
world of nature;
our second birth is into
the world of spirit."
- Bhagavad Gita

Minds, Mirrors, and the Universe

"The Mind like a mirror

is brightly illuminating
and knows no obstructions,
It penetrates the vast universe
to its minutest crevices;
All its contents,
multitudinous in form,
are reflected in the Mind,
Which, shining like a perfect gem,
has no surface,
nor the inside."
- Yoka Daishi
Zen Master
(665 - 713)

"Your eye has not strength enough
to gaze at the burning sun,
but you can see its burning light
by watching its reflection
mirrored in the water.

So the reflection of Absolute Being
can be viewed in the mirror of Not-Being,
for nonexistence, being opposite Reality,
instantly catches its reflection.

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans."
- Mahmud Shabistari
Sufi Poet / Mystic
(1250 - 1340)

Dreams and Phantasms

“The objects of sense in the world ever changing — These we adhere to as things of reality; But in the ocean of birth and death, they drown us. How long shall we wander in this path of dreams? This world to us! Indeed seems permanent and fixed, yet after all, what is it but a road of dreams to which life after life we must perforce return?”

- Zeami Motokiyo (1363 - 1443)

Aesthetician / Playright

"All things are to be regarded as forms seen in a vision and a dream, empty of substance, un-born and without self-nature; that all things exist only by reason of a complicated network of causation which owes its rise to discrimination and attachment and which eventuates in the rise of the mind-system and its belongings and evolvements."

- Lankavatara Sutra, VII

The Castle

"The young man apologized very politely for having awakened K., introduced himself as the son of the Castle steward and said:

'This village is Castle property, anybody residing or spending the night here is effectively residing or spending the night at the Castle. Nobody may do so without permission from the Count. But you have no such permission or at least you haven't shown it yet.'

K., who had half-risen and smoothed his hair, looked at the people from below and said: 'What village have I wandered into? So there is a castle here?'

'Why, of course,' the young man said slowly, while several peasants here and there shook their heads at K., 'the Castle of Count Westwest.'

'And one needs permission to spend the night here?' asked K., as though he wanted to persuade himself that he hadn't perhaps heard the previous statements in a dream.

'Permission is needed' was the reply, and this turned into crude mockery at K.'s expense when the young man, stretching out his arm, asked the landlord and the guests: 'Or perhaps permission is not needed?'

'Then I must go and get myself permission,' said K., yawning and pushing off the blanket, as though he intended to get up.

'Yes, but from whom?' asked the young man.

'From the Count,' said K., 'there doesn't seem to be any alternative.'

'Get permission from the Count, now, at midnight?' cried the young man, stepping back a pace.

'Is that not possible?' K. asked calmly. 'Then why did you wake me up?'"

-Franz Kafka (The Castle)

Stuart Sweeney's Debut Album 16:9

About a year ago I received an email from Stuart Sweeney, who introduced himself as a U.K. based (and Scottish born) musician. He said that after years of working behind-the-scenes for other musicians, he was in the process of releasing a debut album of his own music and that he was looking for images to feature on the CD and album case. He asked if he could use one of the images in my Spirit & Light portfolio that both he and his wife were both strongly drawn to. After a few exchanges via email (during which an "over the pond" friendship soon emerged), and my listening to samples of (what were at the time, unmastered) tracks from the album, I quickly gave my permission. After hearing Stuart's music, I can say unreservedly say that I am honored to be featured on this enormously talented musician's debut album, which is now available for purchase (in both physical and digital form: click here for the official order page from Stuart's label Oomff, based in Corby, Northants, UK; an mp3 version is also available directly from Amazon, which contains links to samples). While it is always difficult to attach meaningful words to music (particularly when relying on "conventional" labels and descriptions) - one must always listen and judge for oneself; click here for sample tracks - Stuart's style is best described as ambient music, with a mix of classical, jazz, and new age (electronic / synthetic). On a more gestalt level, Stuart - as an artist - may be described as an impassioned painter of richly textured sonic landscapes. To my ear (an untrained musician, though I used to play the piano, even before I ever touched a camera), Stuart's aural excursions touch on territories visited by Brian Eno, some early work by Klaus Schulze, and (if an analogy can be drawn between Stuart's electronic creations and the tones of the human voice) Arvo Part. But all of these are but acoustic cousins, which are useful for context but do not do service to Stuart's own creations; for Stuart has carved out a unique - and uniquely beguiling - blend of ambient textures. Each short, self-contained piece transports the listener to other worlds and ethereal dimensions. The soulful interplay between quietly developing melodic strands and rhythms, generates a moodily meditative and contemplative atmosphere. As each piece gently takes hold of your imagination, you are compelled to co-create fantastic acoustic landscapes in your mind's eye as waves of music unfold - and enfold - around you. If I seem to speak of Stuart's music in almost reverentially spiritual terms, it is because that is the effect it has on me. For Stuart has created some of the most beautifully ethereal - and intellectually mesmerizing! - music I have heard in a long, long time. For anyone who likes to listen to ambient music, I urge you to download some samples and listen to this extraordinary new artist for yourself. Congratulations to an amazing start of what I am sure will be a stellar public musical career! And thank you Stuart for featuring one of my photos on the inside of the case, and the CD itself!

Cosmic Ripples

"If a stone is thrown into a pond, waves are produced that travel throughout the pond. Every wave produces effects in every part of the pond, resulting in some influence or other. Similarly, the wave of individual life through its activity produces an influence in all fields of the cosmos." - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Science of Being and Art of Living "We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."

- Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)

Polarity, Paradox, Perception

"Everything is dual;
everything has poles;
everything has its pair of opposites;
like and unlike are the same;
opposites are identical in nature,
but different in degree;
extremes meet;
all truths are but half-truths;
all paradoxes may be reconciled."
- Hermes Trismegistus
(The Kybalian: A Study of the
Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, 1908)

"Every perception is an
awareness of contrast,
of a right/wrong, is/isn’t,
bright/dark, hard/soft situation.
If this is the very nature of
awareness, any and every circumstance,
however fortunate, will have
to be experienced as a
good/bad or plus/minus
in order to be experienced at all."
- Alan Watts
In My Own Way (1972)

Ethereal Light & Color

"I almost never set out to photograph a landscape,
nor do I think of my camera as a means
of recording a mountain or an animal unless
I absolutely need a 'record shot'.
My first thought is always of light." 

- Galen Rowell (1940 - 2002) 

 "Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet." 

- Paul Klee (1879 - 1940)

Trees as Sacred Bearers

"Trees are the teachers, revealers, containers, companions, and protectors of the sacred, and our relationship to them, whether we meet them gently in a forest or, muscled and equipped, cut them down for the price of lumber, touches on our deepest values, emotions, and sense of meaning."

-Thomas Moore
The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life

"The tree bears its thousand years
as one large majestic moment."
- Rabindranath Tagore
Philosopher / Poet
(1861 - 1941)

Longing for Light

"...far from light emerging gradually out of the womb of our darkness, it is the Light, existing before all else was made which, patiently, surely, eliminates our darkness. As for us creatures, of ourselves we are but emptiness and obscurity... Radiant Word, blazing Power... reach us simultaneously through all that is most immense and most inward within us and around us."

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Philosopher (1881-1955)

"The longing for light is the longing for consciousness."
- C. G. Jung (1875 - 1961)