LensWork Daily

Kokoro, Vol. 3, No. 2 September 2017

Newly redesigned for 2017!

 

Kokoro

Wandering Through a Photographic Life

An Image Journal with Commentary, Meditation, Philosophy, and Unanswered Questions

Also check out Backstage Kokoro — a behind the scenes look at selected images. Regularly available at www.brooksjensenarts.com and also via RSS feed

Kokoro, Vol. 3, No. 2 September 2017 A single PDF 4 chapters 48 pages 44mB Newly redesigned for 2017! Designed for landscape orientation viewing Now using 4:3 aspect ratio for tablets like the iPad or Samsung S3, but fully compatible with computers/laptops, too! Larger images Easier-to-read text Previous monthly compilations: Vol 3, No 1 Aug 2017  Vol 2, No 2 Feb 2016 Vol 1, No 9 - Dec 2015 Vol 1, No 8 - Aug-Nov 2015 Vol 1, No 7 - Jun 2015 Vol 1, No 6 - Jun 2015 Vol 1, No 5 - Jan 2015 Vol 1, No 4 - Feb 2015 Vol 1, No 3 - Jan 2015 Vol 1, No 2 - Feb 2015 Vol 1, No 1 - Jan 2015

On Vacation - A Bunch of Days

As is so typical of vacation days, they race by and the next thing you know you've not posted any updates for Days 4-9. Today, however, I have a break in the action so here is a quick update from my week away from LensWork and out in the field.

Day 4 - Back at Dakota Creek. https://adobe.ly/2xmFUt8 I owe a big thanks for this idea to Walt Stricklin. I met Walt in China a few years ago and we published some of his work in LensWork Extended #93. A wonderful idea to join images in a massive overlay to show connections. He might have learned this from David Hockney, but I'm not sure. I think Hockney called them "joiners." Made sense to play around with the idea in the shipyard where they essentially do this same thing to build ships. Fun, but I'll need a lot of practice before I'm as good as Walt. 

Day 6 - My old friend, Fort Worden. Scene of many of my best images. This time, some new things. Always a challenge to try to see old locations in new ways. Fortunately, the folks at the State Park have helped me by painting over most of my old abstracts. You can't go back. Some new things in this collection. Lipka is giving me no end of grief for the spider image. Sometimes you just have to give in to a cliche and have fun with it: https://adobe.ly/2xltIIQ

Day 7 - The Port Townsend boatyard. Lots of wooden boats come here for repair. I've photographed here several times and always find it fun and productive. Another "joiner" and a few others I like - particularly the ones with the sine wave reflections. https://adobe.ly/2xmLP17

Day 8 - A day in Seattle as Maureen had another chemotherapy session. While she was occupied, Lipka and I went to the Seattle Japanese Garden. An unexpected addition to our schedule, but what a great place. Love it. I'll definitely be going back. A very smoky, hazy day in Seattle from all the forest fires in the Cascades made for some unusual sun reflections. I'm tempted to title the one, "Fish eating the sun" but I'll resist it. https://adobe.ly/2gSOPrp

Day 9 - Up to Vancouver BC for a day at the Sun Yat Sen Chinese Garden. I've photographed there a couple of other times. I might be getting tired because this day I didn't find much. Only a few worth sharing. https://adobe.ly/2gSW9mH

That brings me up to date. Tomorrow we start on the Olympic Peninsula and the Hoh Rain Forest. Three more days of photography and then back to work.

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On Vacation - Day 3

Dakota Creek Shipyard - Day 3

One of the great challenges with a place like the Dakota Creek shipyard is developing a strategy that guides your work. For example, a logical approach would be to photograph the building of a vessel — after all, it's a shipyard. That kind of literal photography leans heavily on the documentary tradition and is, obviously, a perfectly valid approach.

It's not, however, the only approach. For purely personal reasons, I find I'm not motivated to tell a story about shipbuilding. Instead, I find myself drawn to the industrial abstracts that are so plentiful in a place like the shipyard. The resulting images have almost nothing to do with the shipyard itself, but only use what I find there as a launching point for a much more personal project. It's taken me a long time to become comfortable with the idea of letting go of the documentary approach, but the benefit of having done so is that I no longer need to explore an interesting place to make images. I find interesting images are everywhere. They are, however, sometimes to be discovered in greater density in places that are in sympathy with my natural eye. I'm not opposed to the documentary image when I see one, but it's not the yardstick by which I measure my success. I gather the assets and move on, searching for the next abstract.

Here are the best images from Day 3. https://adobe.ly/2gA26sm

On Vacation - Day 2 at Dakota Creek Shipyard

Dakota Creek Shipyard - Day 2

One of the shipyard security guards asked me why I was photographing a hunk of discarded metal. How does one answer that question? "I'm making artwork" although truthful, sounds lame. "I have no idea" although truthful, sounds silly. I settled for "It looks interesting" and hoped he'd find that satisfactory. "Oh," he said, "Don't hurt yourself." I have no idea if he was offering safety advice or poking fun at me. 

Somewhat later, one of the workers asked, "Are you getting paid for this?" I told him that it was strictly personal work and I wouldn't be paid because no one would be interested in it but me. "What kind of photographer are you?" he pressed. I wanted to say I was an art photographer, but thought it might be better to just say I enjoyed making industrial abstracts. "I'm a welder," he replied. There was no question that I'd been one-upped. I didn't know what else to say other than, "Cool" with a nod of my head. 

Here are a few of the Day 2 images. https://adobe.ly/2gxDZe3

On Vacation - Day 1

 

Lightroom Mobile and the Shipyard at Dakota Creek — Day 1

I'm on vacation this week, out photographing with my friend Joe Lipka. This is our 31st year photographing together for a week in the fall — but only the second time I've attempted to blog about the experience while having it. For the next few days, we'll be photographing in the shipyard at Dakota Creek Industries across the street from our old LensWork office. I've been photographing in the shipyard off and on for years, but this is the first time back there since 2014. Great to find myself again in familiar and amazingly photogenic turf.

I thought I'd share a few images and thoughts, this time about Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom Web. There are plenty of "how to" videos on YouTube, so I won't go into the methods of using the technologies. Instead, let me simply point out the immediacy of the workflow — photographing, uploading images to the Adobe Cloud using Lightroom Web, which then sync back to Lightroom Desktop. Post processing on my Android tablet; making and sequencing in a synced collection. I remember the old days when it used to take me months just to develop the film!

I've done an initial survey of the Day 1 limages, a little initial processing, made a collection, and am sharing it via Lightroom shared collection folder. https://adobe.ly/2gvN5b3

I started at the paint booths. Here are snapshots of the location, just for contextual reference.

 

 

Then we found some large brass propellers that were staged to be installed on one of the Washington State Ferries. Again, here is a "context" snapshot of the location.

 

Most of you are probably familiar with my approach that leans heavily toward project-oriented photography and away from "greatest hits" shots. And then there is the associated philosophy of just "gathering assets" in the field for future, as yet unknown projects. I'm doing that here, too — just shooting what strikes my eye. I've reviewed the initial captures from Day 1 and played around with a couple dozen images just to get a feel for what I might have. Here is the Lightroom Mobile "shared collection" of those images you can view in your browser (and comment on if you login with your Adobe ID) from the paint booths, the propellers, and a few other locations. Heavily leaning toward industrial abstracts — a genre of work that is a personal favorite of mine. I'll post more tomorrow.

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