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Infants read long before they speak or understand a single word. They read expressions, body English, light, color and darkness. Most of us have continued our visual learning with daily exercises in literal interpretations of what we see. We all want to understand the Who, What, Why, When Where and How of an image while neglecting the more enriching potential of the non literal world. This program will explore the basics of visual literacy and help us find a more satisfying balance between the literal and non literal. It will rekindle the instinct we all have to understand and read fine art I images.
Here’s a collection of some of my photographic notes related to this project:
Yellowstone National Park is a truly remarkable place. It's huge in size with an uncommon diversity of natural phenomenon and wildlife. I captured "Wild Ride" (cover photo) right from the boardwalk that skirts the Grand Prismatic thermal pool. I have since returned to that same camera viewpoint only to find that particular "volcanic-like" shape no longer exists. The thermal run off apparently changes its course ever so slowly dissolving one path while creating a new one.
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I feel that the aerial view of the Grand Prismatic titled "Alien" was well worth its considerable effort. There is no such thing as a sightseeing flight available, so I had to charter a plane and pay strict attention to all the National Park regulations governing such flights. The rich colors and the size of the Grand Prismatic are very important to visual impression I'd like to convey. The people on the boardwalk in the lower part of the print provide the scale needed to visually read the size.
I have to tip my hat to those explorers who first discovered slot canyons. On the surface, they just appear to be narrow cracks of various widths along a rocky terrain. Someone had quite a bit of nerve to be the first to crawl down into those rather deep crevasses to discover some of the most remarkable natural sculptures on this planet. The images titled "Peace" and "Shell" were taken in a part of Antelope Canyon often called "The Cathedral".
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For me, the snapping of the shutter may not define the only moment of truth for a fine art photograph. An equal part of this creative process may happen while editing, cropping or printing negatives in the darkroom. I only exposed two negatives of the image titled "Rejoice" which usually indicate that I was not all that impressed with the subject. I may have been "put off" a bit by bird droppings that seemed to deface a critical part of this sculpture. The creative shutter finally snapped for me much later in the darkroom when I was able to enhance the lighting on that graceful curve and "spot out” the bird droppings.
Sadly, a flash flood apparently washed this particular formation away and it no longer exists. Two years after I made this photo, a flash flood (perhaps the same one) ripped through this canyon and killed 11 hikers. I did not know any of the hikers but I often think of them when I'm working with the "Rejoice" photo. The photo titled "Danger" seems to emphasize the unimaginable power generated by these flash floods.
I must confess that I rarely think about poetry while taking photos but I often have the female form in mind in composing subjects with graceful lines. We may often think along the same lines, but KC Francis brings words that I would never think of in her poems, especially for photos such as "Teats," "Rejoice" and “Hope".
When I was studying fine art photography at RIT, I heartily disagreed with Professor Minor White for attempting to get us to look at subjects for whatever else they may represent. I made a decent living and had a lot of fun and rewarding experiences with literal photography but those creative seeds, sewn by White, were stirring within me. I just had to find a way to allow them to grow. Several other classmates and I owe the late Professor Minor White a salute of appreciation for planting the seeds of future artistry. This Music For The Eyes project has stimulated a lot of creative growth for me.
The photo, "GUILIN" could very easily be just another postcard or illustration in a travel brochure tempting tourists and supported by lots of examples of the five "W's". The fine art darkroom and/or computer process is very labor intensive, so I have to be selective in choosing images to print. My fondness for the little person on the shoreline made me decide to print "GUILIN" , but the image really came alive when KC wrote:
GUILIN
One man reaches
for a pebble.
The River Li
flinches.
Does he know
what he is doing?
Trees creak,
hush themselves
lest giants
stomp
a curious man.
Now, the combination of poetry and image goes beyond the five "W's" and begs for your compassion (understanding). Notice how the trees hunch over, mimicking the posture of the little man as they study his actions. These trees are more than just living things; they are a committee and they have an attitude! The mountains in the background can be icons of authority if you choose. Can this simple landscape make an international political statement?
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There are images that can do well with both the five "W" like captions as well as stimulating poetry. There are also images that will not respond to five "W" type interrogations. These are usually abstracts such as "Stone-Washed Jeans", "Stone Sunset", "Puzzle", "Chance Remark", "The Swoosh Poem", "The Weight of Winter", and "In A Rearview Mirror".
When I'm working with abstracts, I find a variety of inspirations depending on the orientation of the image. There is no such thing as "right side up" with most of these abstracts. It's much easier to rotate prints than stand on your head to take a picture so, feel free to rotate and crop these images and see if it can tickle your imagination into recognizing a variety of associations related to your own experiences.
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Some areas can recede or protrude or appear convex or concave depending on their orientation (reference thought: Rorschach Ink Blot Test). Rotate "Puzzle" 90 degrees clockwise and you'll see how it is actually a cropped portion of "Stone Sunset". I printed "Puzzle" with a different emphasis of highlighted areas. I'll generally rotate an abstract so that more diagonal lines prevail, then I tend to print the base or bottom a bit darker and highlight a dominant shape that is rarely in the center of the composition.
The color of any subject depends on the color of the lighting, so I feel that I can change the color of abstracts to suit the intent of the image. Sandstone is generally presumed to be a sort of orange/red when illuminated by sunlight but I don't feel limited to that color especially with abstracts. "Chance Remark" is an image that plies most of the visual illusions I've mentioned. Different portions seem to protrude and retract at will; what was convex becomes concave with just a slight twist of the viewer's head. The subject can be any size to fit comfortably into the imagination. The blue color makes this shape feel at home at the bottom of an ocean, so KC's poem takes us into an oyster to enjoy a bit of dirt that grows into something beautiful and coveted.
Music For The Eyes includes a lot of different subjects; mostly landscapes, still lifes, a few animals, very few people and no journalism at all. KC's poetry, however, brings a wealth of human interactions to these images, involving our sensitivities, fears, emotions and prejudices. "Family of Ventriloquists" pictures a herd of migrating bison but the poem relates to understanding a somber side of teenagers. "Mai Pen Rai, American Style" pictures a Meerkat but the poem is a juxtaposition of the Meerkat with a teenager on the phone. The combination strikes me as hilarious!
I am always willing to include wildlife in my collection of subjects to photograph especially when I encounter unusually good opportunities such as the herd of bison in Yellowstone. Capturing head-on views of migrating animals is sometimes dangerous and always difficult because they tend to shy away from photographers and offer only views of their tails or they may get hostile and charge. I noticed that these bison were heading for a curve in the road, so I drove to that area and picked a camera angle with the geyser basin as a background and patiently waited for them to approach. I, of course, used a telephoto lens, resting on a bean bag on the roof of the car and when bison got too close I had plenty of time to get in the car and watch them brush by and head for the other side of the road.
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I didn't need any strategy or safety planning to photograph the herd of elk in "Not to Remember". There was only one camera angle available and the elk seemed content to stay in that stream for enough time to set up a tripod and compose the scene.
I photographed the Snowy owl and Timber wolf at one of many wildlife farms in North America. These animals are raised to understand and tolerate humans, especially photographers. These farms often rescue injured wildlife and keep them in great shape in a natural environment with ample space to roam. The handlers are equipped with an electric prod in case the animals get testy. The prods have never been needed on the animals, but they could have been used every now and then to keep overzealous photographers in line.
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I took the blurred white horse and rider "The Butterfly Effect" in the 70's while our family was on our way to my summer job as a photographic interpretative ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was an evening small town rodeo somewhere in Nebraska and I used a slow shutter speed and the technique of panning to create the blurred motion effect.
The traditional darkroom printing plays an important creative role in my fine art photography but it involves techniques that are resting on the threshold of change. Film will be the quality benchmark for many years, but the computer is already playing a dominant role in preparing images for publication. Most journalists, for example, have already abandoned film and darkrooms and are now using digital cameras, computers and printers.
Fine art photographers will always be concerned with excellent image quality, enlargements and the longevity of prints. The digital community has already demonstrated very good print quality and it is making great strides with longevity. All this means that my next fine arts project will involve considerably more digital than I used for this project.
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