LensWork Daily

Washington and Oregon in Infrared by John Custodio

Washington and Oregon in Infrared by John Custodio

From Washington and Oregon in Infrared by John Custodio
From LensWork Extended #85
© 2009 John Custodio. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the photographer.

Commentary
Do I dare venture into the hotly debated topic (in photographic circles, anyway) of color versus black and white? Sure, why not?

Of course, talk with 100 photographers and you'll get 100 different opinions about this, and I'm not sure mine is particularly profound and certainly not unique. Nonetheless, here goes…

I've always found black and white to be more personally expressive. Color is just too doggone realistic and tends to lend itself to the experience of normal vision. That is to say, I've always found that when I look at color photographs I tend to see with my normal eyes rather than my "art experiencing" eyes. In truth, this has more to do with a mindset than with our eyes, but I do find it a common experience. When I view a black-and-white print, I view the world through the photographer's eyes; when I view a color print, I view the world through my eyes. It's an incredibly unfair thing for me to do relative to the artistic input and integrity of color photographers, but nonetheless there it is.

There is an exception, however, and this image by John Custodio is a great example that illustrates the point. It is possible with color work to amend the realities of color and morph them into something artistic. This can be done with hand colored black and white prints, selectively colored images, psychedelic colored images, and even images that are subtly shifted toward a warmer or cooler white balance. In this portfolio, Custodio did something I'd never seen before — he selectively colored infrared images and made what, to my eye, are some fascinating pieces of artwork. He presents us with an abstracted landscape, for sure, but I'm not sure it's any more abstracted than a straight black-and-white print would be.

The challenge with this work is that he presents us with something new, something different, something we've never seen before, something that takes some getting used to. When I first reviewed his portfolio, his coloration treatment slapped me with some force. As I spent more time with his portfolio, I began to see that the contrasting cool tones and warm tones added an emotional content that I found quite realistic — emotionally speaking. For example, I've hiked in the Columbia Gorge and felt exactly what his photograph here shows us: a warm sky and a cool, even dank forest. I find his photograph does a tremendous job of expressing the emotional quality of weather in this environment.

Exploring color is a newfound option for many of us who are now capturing color images for the first time in our photographic careers. Like many of you, for decades I used exclusively black-and-white film to make my black-and-white photographs. I have a purposefully trained monochromatic view of the world. But now that all of my "original captures" are in color via my digital cameras, the possibilities of doing experimental color and, like Custodio did here, discovering new ways of using a blend of black-and-white and color imagery offers a lot of exciting areas to explore. Clearly, not all of them will be successful, but it certainly will be exciting for the next decade or so.

The portfolio can be seen in its entirety in our back issues — print (while still available) and our PDFs for computer, iPad, Android, and other devices. Plus, bonus audio commentary about this image is available to full-access members of LensWork Online.

Discussion
Add your comments and observations to the discussion by using the "Comments" link at the bottom of this post.

Announcing Sketches - A New Series by Brooks Jensen

Announcing Sketches by Brooks Jensen Short Projects as Chapbooks and PDFs
	Announcing a new series from LensWork editor Brooks Jensen called Sketches — part notebook, part sketch book, part diary, part travel journal, part random thoughts, part photographic portfolio — a mixture of images and words. They are short projects, often just a handful of images and short text that are intended as quick observations. Less than a book, more than a print, these Sketches are, well, sketches of life. Introductory video (1:42) This series is being parallel published in two media for different audiences — ePublication PDFs for digital download, and as inexpensive artist chapbooks.
	Chapbooks A chapbook is a wonderful way for artists to publish small, finely crafted handmade books. The Sketches chapbooks are from 4 to 12 pages in length containing anywhere from a few up to a dozen images and text. These hand-sewn volumes are all printed to the highest archival standards and are truly collectible publications at an affordable price. More information and a list of available titles
	ePublications for iPad and Other Tablets Unlike the physical presentations in this Sketches series (the chapbooks), the PDF publications offer two advantages for this project: unlimited no-cost distribution, and no limits on the number of images that can be included with each title. This is the perfect complement to the physical chapbooks, sometimes with a little more content — both images and text. These PDFs can be viewed on any tablet device using almost any PDF reader application. Best of all, the downloadable PDFS are all free! More information and a list of available titles
www.brooksjensenarts.com

Michael Reichmann

Michael Reichmann

I just read over at luminous-landscape.com that Michael Reichmann is having some health issues. He's a great guy and could use all the good thoughts and prayers we can muster to send his way.

Brooks' books on photography and the creative process are available in print from Lulu.com, and as eBooks for Kindle or EPUB readers. As one of the membership benefits, these eBooks are available in their entirety to members of LensWork Online via download.

New Book by Godfrey DiGiorgi

New Book by Godfrey DiGiorgi

Ways Together
Studies in Distance and Closeness

This book is available in hardcover and softcover editions from Blurb.com. It is 80 pages in length and includes a foreword by Brooks Jensen, Editor of LensWork Publishing. Click here for a full preview or to place an order.

Also, this coming Thursday, August 2nd, from 5:30-7:30 pm, ModernBook Gallery will host a reception and book signing event featuring Ways Together along with new photo books by eleven other photographers.

InDesignSecrets Interviews Brooks

InDesignSecrets Interviews Brooks

Without question, the best resource in the world for learning about Adobe InDesign is the creative minds of David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion. They have a simply marvelous website and podcast about "all things InDesign" called InDesignSecrets. It is impossible for me to recommend it strongly enough to anyone who is using InDesign for layouts and PDF creation. Informative, funny, useable, entertaining, and a resource of information that surpasses even Adobe. I cannot tell you how much I've learned from these two that serve me every single day here at LensWork.

I've had occasional emails back and forth with both of them over the years and to my delight and surprise they called last week to ask if I'd allow them to interview me about LensWork for their podcast. Of course! You can hear it here.

Brooks' books on photography and the creative process are available in print from Lulu.com, and as eBooks for Kindle or EPUB readers. As one of the membership benefits, these eBooks are available in their entirety to members of LensWork Online via download.

New Online Store

New Online Store

On Friday we launched our new online store. We'd been having some frustrations with our old store and its aging technological backbone. The new store looks and performs far better, including an often-requested single page checkout. It's been a whale of a project that's kept us hopping for the last couple of weeks. Over 900 items and our huge customer database had to be imported into the new store and then tweaked ad nauseum to get it to all work properly. We're still finding things, so thanks for your patience.

The reason I mention this is because I think it offers a lesson I was (once again) given an opportunity to learn. Ahem. Change is difficult and problems simply will occur. Problems will occur. Problems will occur. I should write this on the chalk board 1,000 times because I really need to get over the idea that flawless execution out of the gate is a reasonable expectation. This time, it was our SSL certificate that had to be moved from the old store and installed in the new store. This took me almost the entire day of Friday and wasn't fully resolved until late Friday evening. For those in the know, moving an SSL certificate is child's play; for those of us (me) who don't know what an SSL certificate is, well, let's just say there were swear words involved.

As an artist, you'd think I'd know this. I've never started an art project that was smooth from start to finish. In fact, being an artist — or making anything — is an act of commitment to overcome the unexpected problems that crop up. You may quote me on that. Artmaking not so much a doing as it is a commitment to overcoming obstacles. Perhaps knowing this upfront can be helpful in preserving our cheery dispositions.

Facebook!

Facebook!

Yes, I know — we are late to the party. To be honest, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the Facebook paradigm, but it's more a comment on my brain and stubbornness than on the value of social media. Nonetheless, we are launched, better late than never. So, LensWork on Facebook is now official!

Maureen is our primary Facebook guru, so you'll probably see a lot more of here there than you will me — with one exception. We've now linked LensWork Daily to our Facebook account so our posts here will also post to our Facebook page. Your choice as to how you want to keep up with the content — and choice is a good thing!

BTW, that explains the mysterious three "Test" posts those of you in RSS land saw over the weekend. It's all working now. And yes, those are my fingers-crossed you see.

Brooks' books on photography and the creative process are available in print from Lulu.com, and as eBooks for Kindle or EPUB readers. As one of the membership benefits, these eBooks are available in their entirety to members of LensWork Online via download.

Barnyard Portraits by Janet Woodcock

Barnyard Portraits by Janet Woodcock

From Barnyard Portraits by Janet Woodcock
From LensWork and LensWork Extended #78
© 2008 Janet Woodcock. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the photographer.

Commentary
One of the gravest sins that a modern thinker can make has been called the "pathetic fallacy." This term was originally coined by John Ruskin the last half of the 19th century to describe that tendency in human thought to ascribe human emotions to inanimate objects. In the case of living beings — like cows — we call it anthropomorphism — also a philosophical grave sin. Be that as it may in important philosophical circles, aren't we glad it doesn't equally disparage the whims and fancies of artists?

In fact, this entire portfolio by Janet Woodcock is an exploration into this exact subject. Her project is called Barnyard Portraits, but in truth it's not nearly so much about the animals as it is about our interpretation of their expressions. How can Abigail be anything but innocently inquisitive? I have no doubt that this is nothing more than my projection onto her expression, perhaps nudged by the playful tilting of the horizon that parallels the slight cock of Abigail's head.

What makes this portfolio fun is us. Out of the no doubt hundreds of exposures, Woodcock has specifically selected for inclusion in this portfolio those that arouse the most powerful anthropomorphic tendencies. By doing so, she's opened up a relationship — on a human emotional level — between these barnyard animals and all of us. It's anything but serious. It's fun! And that's the point.

Which, strangely enough, brings me to an odd comment about photography in general: I wish there was more humor and more fun in our too often dourly serious pastime. Laughter is the best medicine, so why is it so absent from photography? Of course, as any performer will tell you, laughter is one of the most difficult things to elicit from an audience — far easier to bring them to tears than to bring out a spontaneous belly laugh. Perhaps the relative lack of humor in photography is simply an extension of this reality and all performing arts. That's precisely why I appreciate this portfolio of Janet Woodcock's so much — it tickles my funny bone. How easy it would have been for her to present photographs of barnyard animals that were descriptive, accurate, beautifully lit, anatomically correct, and completely devoid of any personality. Thankfully, she saw the potential for a far more interesting art project by embracing the pathetic fallacy in bringing us a bucket full of smiles. I'll go even farther than that: the genius of her artwork is to recognize the potential for bringing forth this emotional response by her viewers. The key to this work is not her photographic excellence, but her understanding of human nature. Come to think about it, that may be the key for all successful artwork.

The portfolio can be seen in its entirety in our back issues — print (while still available) and our PDFs for computer, iPad, Android, and other devices. Plus, bonus audio commentary about this image is available to full-access members of LensWork Online.

Discussion
Add your comments and observations to the discussion by using the "Comments" link at the bottom of this post.

Head Alignment and Paper Thickness

Head Alignment and Paper Thickness

This may well be one of those "slap the forehead" moments, but I learned a valuable lesson this weekend I thought I'd pass along.

Things were chunking along beautifully with my Epson printer as I worked on the final production flow of my new chapbook series — at least for a while. This is the first time I've done more than simply experiment with the idea of two-sided printing, so I've been on a fast learning curve to get up to speed. One of the challenges is that by printing on roll paper it's absolutely mandatory to eliminate the curl before printing the backside. At Michael Reichmann's recommendation, I purchased a D-Roller and have found it to be a terrific tool. However, like every tool, improper use does introduce the possibility of pilot error. In my case, I found that I wasn't always aggressive enough and occasionally there would still be a bit of curl that became problematic. When printing the backside of the sheet, the head on the Epson printer would slightly clipped the edge of the paper — tick, tick, tick — a sound I've now learned to recognize with a cringe.

What I did not realize is that little bit of contact between the print head in the paper has the potential to throw the head alignment out of calibration. I started seeing some odd banding in the highlights, particularly noticeable in smooth skies. Easily enough remedied, I thought, because I've seen this before. I executed a head alignment and things got back to normal. And then, doggone it, tick, tick again — just twice and the head was out of alignment again. It made no sense to me that the head alignment could be thrown off so easily, so I decided to do some research. After scouring the Epson manual I came across one aspect of the head alignment process I had overlooked — paper thickness. Doh! Of course the thickness of the paper would affect the head alignment!

In my naïveté, I didn't realize the paper thickness in my printer was set 0.1 mm. The paper I'm using is actually 0.39 mm. I'm surprised the head could even align with this much difference, but it did. It also, however, appears to have been just on the edge of functionality and the tiniest little bump will get out of alignment. With this knowledge in hand, I did a corrected head alignment with the paper thickness measurement set properly and 0.4mm. Not only did the calibration correct the banding, but I find the prints ever so slightly sharper. Even more important, the occasional tick does not throw the head out of alignment. Now that I know, I'll pay more attention to that paper thickness business in the future.

It's the little things that always zap us.

Learning by Doing

Learning by Doing

For the last couple weeks I've been particularly focused on the production issues of my new chapbooks series. It's one thing to make one thing; but when the challenges to make 100 of them, it becomes paramount that one thinks through even the tiniest little aspects of production.

In the last two weekends I've made several dozen chapbooks specifically with the intent of looking for economies of motion and flaws in our production workflow. In the process of doing so, I've developed an incredibly painful case of tendinitis in my right elbow — the result of bad posture while applying pressure with the bone folder and the tedious process of sewing. Thankfully, we've found several shortcuts and unanticipated improvements in the workflow that will prevent this from reoccurring.

My point is simply this: until you've done it, you can't know how to do it better. Theorizing is a wonderful thing, but theory and practice are not the same thing. As Yogi Berra put it, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is." Said another way relative to my current project, the theory of producing lots of chapbooks is no different than producing one, except that it is. This is precisely why it's so important to go through the process looking for small ways that workflow improvements can help. Even the tiniest thing done unnecessarily 100 times adds up to a tremendous waste — or pain in the elbow.

Brooks' books on photography and the creative process are available in print from Lulu.com, and as eBooks for Kindle or EPUB readers. As one of the membership benefits, these eBooks are available in their entirety to members of LensWork Online via download.