Composite from collected images tagged with “half dome” on Flickr.

Central Park, 2008

I just discovered a couple of rolls of film from 2008 that I developed but never actually looked at. Crazy, right?

These were from around the time I was working on The unified theory of absolutely everything. I’m going to have to go back and see if I missed anything else, and probably re-edit that portfolio.

As you may have noticed, I have changed my focus in the last couple of weeks from the natural landscape to an urban one. Summer seems like a natural time to get started on a couple of side projects I’ve been thinking about. The first of these is an exploration of the neighborhoods along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which happens to pass near my house.

I started poking around in the Carroll Gardens/Red Hook area and am now making my way south toward Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. I am thinking I will also eventually head north into Williamsburg and Greenpoint and then on to Queens.

While my first couple of explorations have focused on the landscape and exterior details of the neighborhood, I am becoming more and more interested in the people that live and work here as well. I have not done many portraits before and I expect it to be a challenge, but I really would like to meet some people that live in the area and include them in the project.

Last weekend I spoke with a woman whose family has lived on the same block for three generations. Her grandmother watched as warehouses and factories slowly replaced their residential neighborhood. Her grandmother’s house is one of the last on the block, just a few doors down from a Department of Sanitation depot, and yet still looks like a perfectly preserved piece of the 1950s.

The photo above is from another such block: residential, commercial, and industrial all mixed together. Urban density fascinates me, as do decorative details like those lions.

I’ve been interviewed not once, but twice this week. This is a pretty weird coincidence because I’ve never been interviewed before at all.

The first interview can be found on Too Much Chocolate, thanks to Lisa Scheer.

The second interview is by Marek Wykowski, in the Landscapist group on Flickr.

Both interviews gave me the opportunity to talk about myself for much longer than should be allowed. Please enjoy.

I made the mistake of thinking that a camera would improve my photographs and it is starting to make me a little bitter.

I have been shooting 6×6 medium format almost exclusively for the last two years and, looking back, I think I was starting to get a little restless. This seems to happen to me pretty often. I started working with color film again over the winter after a long hiatus and was beginning to flesh out a some ideas for a new project. Everything was clicking and I was very happy with my progress for the first couple of months.

Somewhere along the line, though, large format started calling out to me. The thing that probably put me over the line was seeing Joel Sternfeld’s show at Luhring Augustine last fall. Although I thought the prints were too big, the luscious descriptiveness and pure beauty that Sternfeld had captured in his Oxbow Archive had planted a seed in my mind.

My 4×5 camera had been sitting up on the shelf for over a year, unused. I had fallen in love with my Hasselblad in the meantime and hadn’t given the 4×5 a second thought for quite a while. But there’s always something, isn’t there? Some magic bullet that is somehow going to push my work to the next level, and I had gotten the idea that large format was it.

I have been using my 4×5 camera quite a bit over the last couple of months months, and the results haven’t been promising. While I’m out working, things feel good. I am taking the same pictures I’ve always taken. When I get home, however, the story changes. Something is getting lost in translation between the pictures that I think I am taking and the pictures that I actually take, and what’s left feels like a pale facsimile of my original intent.

The problem is that I know that large format is probably the right tool for images I am trying to create. The lush and descriptive image quality and the methodical nature of my process are pointing me in that direction. The question is how long I can continue to struggle before I give in.

Darius Himes writes about the choice of tools on his blog:

The methodical precision required by the 8×10, I’m arguing, leads to a methodical precision on the mental level. Because a relatively large amount of time is required to simply deal with the equipment, a corresponding large amount of mental time goes into the image—the type of image—that one makes. The camera physically and mentally slows you down, makes you more attentive in certain ways.

I think that’s exactly what I need. I often feel that my photos are just a little bit too loose. I know that one can develop the necessary attention without actually working with large format, but along with the other benefits, that feels like a step in the right direction for me. So, even though I am completely exhausted and discouraged at the moment, I am not quite ready to give up. Hopefully my moment of clarity is right around the corner, and the camera will start doing what I expect it to again soon.

This is just a small sample of what it looks like in my house when I get to printing. After experimenting with several different papers, I finally settled on Moab Entrada Bright White for this photo. (Top row, third from the left). Now that I have settled that question, printing of the edition has commenced and the first batch will be shipping tomorrow.

Over the years, I have learned an important lesson about problem solving. Sometimes, the very best thing you can do when you are stuck on a problem is to take a break and get some fresh air. Stepping away for a little while gives your brain a chance to rest, and sometimes, that’s exactly what it needs. Sure enough, solutions will present themselves, often when you least expect them.

As a photographer, I have adopted a few practical habits that take advantage of this “clarity of distance”; the fact that a problem will often help solve itself if you give it a little bit of space.

One thing that I have noticed about working in the landscape is that it takes time to become familiar with a new place. My first photographs from a particular location are full of excitement and new ideas, but it can take subsequent visits to develop those ideas into something that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of the place. I have visited some of my now-favorite locations three or four times before the good pictures begin to happen.

Something special happens in that time in-between visits. Somewhat subconsciously, I synthesize a whole bunch of information about the site. When I revisit the site, I have a stronger idea of where I want to go, what I want to see, and the pictures I want to make. I have begun to think of that in-between time as crucial to the development of a project.

Another example of this phenomenon has to do with contact sheets. When I get a batch of film back from the lab, I can’t wait to tear into it and start looking at images. Often, though, the first look at a contact sheet is a bit humbling. None of the images are quite what I remembered them to be. After feeling bad for myself for a little while, a few images start to look promising and I get to work on processing them.

Taking a look at that same contact sheet a week later, after I’ve had some time to digest, things tend to look a little different. There are often one or two photos that didn’t jump out at me on first glance, but have stuck with me for one reason or another. After a little bit of time and space, the possibilities begin to emerge. Many times it is these images, and not the first ones that I selected, that end up being my favorite from the day.

There are other times when a little bit of time and patience has it’s rewards. I find that if I take a few days between first processing an image and coming back to it, I will always have some some ideas about fine-tuning. When editing a series of photos, a second or third pass a week later makes all the difference.

Developing patience and persistence has been one of the most difficult things I’ve had to learn as a photographer—much more so than acquiring the technical skills necessary to make a picture. It has required a fundamental shift in my methods of thinking and working, and at times can be at odds with how the world expects things to be done. But I have come to realize that creative work is a luxury, that quality should be rewarded over quantity, and that I am working on things that I want to be proud of in twenty, thirty, forty years from now, and all of that requires time.

Do you have any suggestions for habits and skills that have improved your creative workflow? Please share them in the comments.

I found this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert to be brilliant and inspired. I think any person who has ever struggled with the creative impulse will understand exactly what she is talking about.

One month into my Outer Lands project seemed like a good opportunity to make a rough edit and take stock of my work so far. Here’s a link to the gallery. I apologize if it takes a long time to load—it’s about 4MB worth of photos. I am working on a better Flash based system so things load more quickly.

This selection of 23 is from 60 edited images, culled from 18 rolls of film shot in late December and January. A month from now I’m sure I will have a different opinion about some of them, and I might find one or two more hiding in my contact sheets, but for now this is a good representation of how things are going. I started shooting large format again this weekend, I can’t wait to get that film developed and see how it looks.

To follow up on yesterday’s post, I wanted to explore the concept of the “body of work” a bit more, especially questions I still have about defining a project, sharing work-in-progress, and knowing when you’re done. On Conscientious yesterday, Jörg talked a bit about how he experiences art, specifically in the context of comparing new work to previous work from the same artist. He uses the body of work as a way to distinguish the new from the old. Books or gallery shows are an easy way to think about this: Uncommon Places is clearly a single, cohesive body of work. Every image is related to every other image in some way or another, they explore the same themes, and there is a point where Shore said to himself “I am done with this work, I am ready to send it out into the world.”

Of course, twenty years later, a new edition of the Uncommon Places book was released with twice as many images. So which is the definitive piece?

Jörg says “I tend to think that as an artist you should really only show a body of work once you’re done with it (and whether or not you’re done with it is up to you to decide).”

Now, by default I tend to equate the body of work with the series, but there is no reason that a body of work couldn’t be one image or three images or one hundred. But it is a discrete way to say that a work is conceptually of a piece and when you consider it, you should consider the whole.

I bristled a bit when I first read Jörg’s statement. After all, I have always enjoyed sharing photographs as I create them, having “come of age”, photographically speaking, in the world of blogs and Flickr. It has become second nature for me to go out and take some pictures and upload my work for the world to see. So far, my notion of a project has been nebulous and open ended, and if I followed that kind of thinking verbatim, work that I am proud of would never see the light of day. But then I came across the following statements from Amy Stein and Alec Soth that I’ve excerpted from Two Way Lens:

Michael Werner: In your opinion and experience, how can emerging photographers evaluate themselves as ready to start promoting their works and seek broader exposure for their photographs? What is one vital action you would recommend photographers undertake to find their audience, be included in exhibitions, and gain professional representation?

Amy Stein: I think it is important to make the distinction between beginning photographers and emerging photographers. Emerging photographers have already created an impressive body of work and received some level of recognition. Too many beginners consider themselves emerging and try to jump ahead before they are ready.

Beginning photographers should just produce work and learn. They should go to every photography exhibit on the calendar and read every photography book they can get their hands on. They should look at the work of people that inspire them and explore the many levels of thought the artist brought to each photograph. They should be extremely honest with themselves about where they are in their career and brutally honest with themselves about their photographs. Put in the time and don’t show the work until you have a lot more than just a couple of good photographs.

And the same question put to Alec Soth:

What I like about this question is that you acknowledge that emerging photographers often aren’t ready to start promoting themselves. I find it aggravating that so many young photographers busy themselves with self-promotion when they should just be taking pictures. Let’s use the analogy of the young novelist. When you are writing your first novel, you don’t try to get it published based on a single chapter. First you need to write the book. Too many photographers are shopping for galleries and publishers with unfinished portfolios.

It is a long process getting the first project together. And it often leads to failure. Not only does the novelist need to finish the first book, she might need to write two or three before she hits the target. But here is the thing – when the work is good, you will know it. And when you believe in the work, you can promote it. In the end, good work will find an audience.

Original interview with Amy Stein here, original interview with Alec Soth here.

Would Sleeping By the Mississippi have had the same impact if Alec had been blogging photos from the road every day? I suspect that a lot of the power of that project comes from the editorial selection, and in a way I am glad I’ve never seen the images that didn’t make the cut.

So I seem to be leaning toward agreeing with the idea that a project/series/body of work really needs time to gestate, that every outtake and editorial decision does not need to be made for the whole world to see. That allows you to experiment, make mistakes, and fail without the fear of the public eye.