I *WAS* an Anthropology Major...

"Geez, next you're gonna tell me you bought a Corvette and you're dating a 25-year old anthropology student."

--Photographer Steven Fibonacci, remarking on my sudden experimation with color in my Tales from the Underground project.

[ photograph above: Pomona, 2005 ]

Roman Loranc: California Landscapes

Roman Loranc's California Landscapes portfolio.

Industrious Clock

My all-time favorite use of black and white photography on the Internet: the Industrious Clock by Yugo Nakamura.

Everybody's an Expert

"There are three things in this world that everyone is an expert at, 1) making love, 2) raising someone else's children, and 3) taking pictures. How often do you hear someone say, 'I can take my camera there and take that picture myself'."

--Tilman Crane

Japanese Photographer

I found this web site featuring some very nice work by a Japanese photographer...unfortunately I was unable to find his/her name in English on the web site, sorry!

Levels of Abstraction, Part I

Abstract photography is not a big seller. I love it, both as a photographer and a consumer, but most people who would buy fine art photography (already a very small audience) are not going to buy an abstract photograph. Not that that concerns me in an economic sense; I'm just trying to figure out the psychology of it.

It has been said quite eloquently that the difference between abstract photography and "traditional" photography is this: traditional photography has a subject, while abstract photography is about pure form. The lack of popularity of abstracts got me to thinking, though, about the real difference between an abstract photograph and a traditional landscape or still life photograph. All photographs are abstract, but maybe it's the degree of abstraction that turns people off?

While camping by myself last August in the Eastern Sierra, I of course did a lot of photography, but you can't photograph 14 hours a day for a week; so I also did a lot of writing, thinking, and reading. Artificial intelligence/adaptive systems, fuzzy logic, and recursive mathematics are the three things I always seem to go back to of late. The fuzzy logic principals of "A is not A" and "the whole in the part", which I won't attempt to explain here but you can read all about it if you want, kept resonating through my mind. Anyway, I realized that "A is not A" is true because two things that are "opposites" are only opposites and a certain level of abstraction--the level of abstraction at which we usually view things based on a number of factors. But if you move up the hierarchy of abstraction, as you get less abstract and closer to the pure form, opposites converge and really become the same thing. I then spent an entire day working out elaborate proofs of this theory in my head. The example subject matter I used for these proofs ranged from photography to religion. Since religion is a very controversial subject, especially today, and since this is a photography web site, I'll just share my photography example here.



The hierarchy of abstraction starts with what is, moves through how we perceive it, continues through how we copy it photographically, and ends in how we perceive the copy.

Level 0: Truth, reality, whatever you want to call it. To man, this is not just unknown, but truly unknowable. The sooner you stop arguing about this and just simply accept the fact that the human mind is incapable of knowing absolute reality, the sooner you can move on to a higher level of understanding.

Level 1: Perceived reality. This is the generally agreed upon definition of reality as observed by the majority of the human race (everyone minus the "crazies", conspiracy theorists, etc.).

Level 2: Your reality. This is your own spin on perceived reality, based on genetics, upbringing, mythological/religious/philosophical beliefs, etc. Also includes anything physical which warps your sense of reality (color blindness, no depth perception, poor vision, etc.).

Level 3: Temporal/environmental factors. Full sun? Partly cloudy? Sunrise? Night time? 110 degrees outside? 12 below zero? High winds? Above 18,000 feet elevation? These can affect how you perceive things, directly or indirectly.

Level 4: The viewfinder. See, we're already four levels abstracted from truth, and this is the first mention of photography! Your level three reality takes on an entirely different character when viewed through the viewfinder of your camera. Instantly the view becomes cropped. Depending on the focal length of the lens you are using, the view can become distorted. With a digital viewfinder, you view a pixilated representation that depending on your camera may already be modified in some ways (it may even already be in black and white, like it is with my primary camera). And if you are using an SLR, you're just fooling yourself if you think you are seeing an exact representation of reality through your viewfinder.

Level 5: The captured image. No matter what kind of camera/viewfinder you have, this is the moment where you take a 3-, 4-, 5-, 6- or more dimensional experience and translate it down to a 2-D interpretation. This 2-D interpretation is the image as captured in a JPG, TIFF, or RAW file and saved in your camera. For the sake of simplicity, from this point on we'll talk strictly about digital photography. But the quality of your camera, lens, imaging chip, etc. all play important roles in how the resultant file differs from what you saw in the viewfinder.

Level 6: The displayed image I. The captured image is displayed on your computer in an imaging program like Photoshop. How much modification you do to the image is a matter of personal preference; the digital file you possess is already so far removed from truth that you can't make it much more abstract. Saying that a file unmodified in Photoshop is more pure than one that has had some modifications done to it is, well, quite a stretch when you consider how abstracted both images already are from truth.

Level 7: The displayed image II. This could be a small JPG file on a web page, or a mounted print. The JPG is a re-sampled version of the sixth level abstraction; the printed image also varies greatly from the "original" file, whether printed in a tradition darkroom or on an inkjet printer, whether on RC paper or platinum/palladium.

Level 8: The viewed image. You look at the finished product. Your perception of the image is tainted by some things we discussed previously: perceived reality, your reality, and temporal/environmental factors, etc.

Level 9+: You send an unmounted print to a magazine, and the editor scans it and reproduces it and it gets printed on red paper and someone views it under a black light wearing sunglasses...



This could go on and on, but the point is this: by the time you display a "finished photograph", whether on Internet or a mounted print or some other method of display, arguing about how abstract the image is or is not is about as practical as "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." When you think about this, what's the difference between a precisionist image like Ansel Adams' "Moonrise", one of the most famous and admired photographs ever taken, vs. a so-called 'abstract' work like "Rock, 1973" by Wynn Bullock? Is the Adams image less abstract than the Bullock image? Only in terms of someone being able to clearly identify the subject matter. But technically both images are at the same level of abstraction. Don't confuse our human ability to recognize and identify with certain shapes to mean that some images are less abstract than others.

Looking at photographs—or any artwork, for that matter—with this hierarchy of abstraction in mind can really put artwork in context. Whether you recognize the subject matter of the artwork or not has little or nothing to do with how abstract the artwork actually is. By its very definition, all artwork is an abstraction of truth.

[ photographs above: Pomona, 2004 to 2005 ]

Thomas Baechinger: Paris 2005

Thomas Baechinger's Paris 2005 portfolio.

What Doesn't Matter

"I feel there's little value in 'art-speak', self-indulgent analysis or pseudo-intellectual rhetoric."

--Larry Wiese

Beginning of a New Era?

While black and white fine art photography is an amazing, wonderful creative outlet that is very difficult to adequately describe in words, for the last two or three years I've been thinking obsessively about something else: getting back in to painting.

Last August, when I spent a week mostly alone camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains on what turned out to be a incredibly productive photographic outing, I had almost left the camera at home. I had an elaborate plan to stock up on paints and canvas, and spend the trip getting back in touch with painting as a form of artistic expression. But that never happened. Why? Fear of the unknown? Too easy to just take the camera and stay in the comfort zone? That may be part of it. But also, consider the only kind of painting I'm interested in: abstracts. While camping in the High Sierra wilderness would be the perfect setting for someone painting watercolors of beautiful mountain meadows and crystal-clear alpine lakes, it didn't seem like the ideal inspiration for unleashing the dark abstractions that have been lurking deep in the hidden recesses of my mind for the last 20 years.

In January, I visited the studio/gallery of a local Pomona artist, Bill Moore or "Father Bill". His work simultaneously excited me and depressed me. Excited me because it was the closest thing I had seen to the visions haunting my brain. Depressed me not just because he was so good and I would have a long struggle to get even close to his skill level, but because now I worried if attempts to put my visions on canvas would be at all original. If you're curious, Father Bill doesn't have a web site but you can see a few examples of his work here.

For the last three months, I've been spending a lot of time making sketches, the purpose of which is to crystallize some of my ideas before I start painting them. My wife has been very encouraging, but I've been putting off getting this started. Partly because there are too many things going on in my life right now, and partly because the time didn't quite feel right.

I'm glad I waited. Because on Friday afternoon, while sitting at Gallery 57 Underground, the dream of abstract paintings and the reality of fine art photography collided in a small big bang. I took a small skull (probably a bobcat) I had found out in a remote area of the desert a few years ago, and was using the textured concrete floor as a backdrop. Then I remembered a dark patch of floor in the back of the gallery where a reddish tint from some old paint was visible on the concrete--a situation where a black and white image doesn't capture the beauty of the situation. So on a whim, I switched my camera from black and white mode to color mode and started shooting. A few hours later, I had quite a few color images and left the gallery.

Yesterday evening I sat down at the computer and started working on the images in Photoshop. And a wonderful thing happened. The abstract visions bouncing through my mind for many years suddenly found an outlet--not through painting, but through the familiar act of photography. But this was very different from my existing body of work in one respect: it was color.

This is an exciting new direction for me, but it doesn't actually change much. I'm not suddenly going to start photographing landscapes in color. Color photography for me is an outlet for my abstract visions--and right now it's just confined to the Tales from the Underground series. I look forward to producing more color photographs that look like abstract paintings, and showing a mixture of both black and white and color images at my Tales from the Underground show in January 2006.

[ photograph above: Pomona, 2005 ]

Roman Loranc: Valley Oaks

Roman Loranc's Valley Oaks portfolio.

Soul

"The human body is the best picture of the human soul."

--Ludwig Wittgenstein

Brett Weston: Europe

From the Brett Weston archive, his Europe portfolio.

Open for Interpretation

"I do have strong convictions and political opinions, but I don't think it's necessary to imbue my photographic work with them. I use photography as a vessel for visual material to flow through, to encourage conversation with the viewer. I try to present a catalyst and invite viewers to tell their own stories."

--Michael Kenna

Martha Casanave: Coastal Pinholes

Martha Casanave's coastal pinhole images.

Big Bear Lake Water Level

The drought over the last few years in Southern California has exposed a lot of shoreline at Big Bear Lake, making for some spectacular subject matter for photography. But the recent rains have resulted in the lake level rising dramatically--according to this Web site, it has risen more than 12 feet since October! And with more rain on the way, we might see Big Bear Lake at capacity for the first time in a very long time. Grout Bay, which used to be one of my favorite places to kayak, has been a dry meadow for about two years; no more! And the level is high enough that Treasure Island is really an island again! I'm looking forward to a long Spring/Summer/Fall season of kayaking and photography on the lake. Now if it would just stop raining/snowing...

[ photograph above: Big Bear Lake, 2004 ]

Security

"The ultimate security is your understanding of reality."

–-H. Stanly Judd

Finding Your Vision

Michael Reichmann's article "Learning to See" is a good read.

Selling Art on eBay

Nice article on CNN.com about the differences between selling art on eBay and in a gallery.

The Man-made Environment

"The man-made world, our environment, is potentially a work of art, all of it, every bit of it."

--David Pye

Sequences II

"Sequences originate for me from some hidden place. Though I habitually play photographs against each other, or words against images in pairs, triplets, or rows of four with expectations of magic, sequences originate from within. And I prefer to let them. In fact I cannot seriously do otherwise than photograph on impulse and let whatever words will, flow spontaneously."

--Minor White

Brett Weston: Landscapes

From the Brett Weston archive, his Landscapes Portfolio.

Sequences I

"A sequence of photographs is like a cinema of stills. The time and space between photographs is filled by the beholder, first of all from himself, then from what he can read in the implications of design, the suggestions springing from treatment, and any symbolism that might grow from within the subject itself."

--Minor White

Brett Weston: Photographs and Sculpture

A nice collection of Brett Weston images is on display on Randy Efros'Web site. While your at it, be sure to check out Brett's
sculpture.

Companionship

"Photography is generally a solitary pursuit, but I enjoy company on the exploration."

--Tilman Crane

More Tales from the Underground

Twenty additional images have been added to the Tales from the Underground page. I'm also planning a show around this body of work for early 2006.

[ photograph above: Pomona, 2005 ]

Brett Weston: Alaska Portfolio

From the Brett Weston archive, his Alaska Portfolio.

More Claremont Images

Ten new images, taken yesterday on the east wall of the Claremont Packing House, have just been posted.

[ photograph above: Claremont Packing House, 2005 ]

Improvisations at Gallery 57 Underground

"Improvisations", a new show featuring paintings from Vic Zuniga and metal sculpture from Tom Bill, is open this month and next at the Gallery 57 Underground. It's a wonderful show. You can see a few of Vic's paintings here.

Eccentric Photographer

"My goal in life is to afford to be a full-time eccentric."

--Steven Fibonacci

Oleg Moiseyenko: Last Harbor of Flying Dutchman

Oleg Moiseyenko's Last Harbor of Flying Dutchman portfolio.

Tales from the Underground

I spent several hours yesterday afternoon at Gallery 57 Underground, composng abstract images based mostly on stains, patterns, and textures in the old concrete floor of the gallery. It was enough to convince me to combine the work I did yesterday with the images captured inside of the Progress Space gallery next door back in December, and create a new section on my Web site called Tales from the Underground. All of these images were taken in the basement galleries (hence "underground") of the building at 300 South Thomas Street in Pomona. And I hope you're not sick of seeing these kinds of images, because there are many more on the way...

The top two rows (10 images) on the Tales from the Underground page were taken yesterday afternoon at Gallery 57 Underground. More images from this session will be posted to the page over the next several days.

[ photograph above: Pomona, 2005 ]

Seeing the Hidden

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist."

--Oscar Wilde

Seth Godin on What is Real, Pt. 2

"What we experience is far more driven by what we believe than by what the objective truth may report. Stories come first. Authentic stories hold up under scrutiny. Manufactured stories dry up and fade away. But stories come first.

"The story is the truth."

-- Seth Godin

Roman Loranc: Central Valley Wetlands

Roman Loranc's Central Valley Wetlands portfolio.

Seth Godin on What is Real, Pt. 1

"If someone believes something is real, then the effect on them is the same as if it were real."

-- Seth Godin

[ photograph above: Pomona, 2004 ]

Denial

"How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality."

-–Norman Douglas

Roman Loranc: New Images

Roman Loranc's New Images portfolio.

Something Only a Photographer Would Notice...

"Have you ever noticed how often bathrooms have the greatest light of any room in the house?"

--Tilman Crane

[ photograph above: Mens Room @ Starbucks, Los Angeles, 2005 ]

Tye Hardison: Landscapes

Tye Hardison's Landscapes portfolio.

Sea and Landscapes Group Show

Three of my photographs will be on display this month as part of the "Sea and Landscapes" group show at the Gallery Soho in Pomona, California.

[ photograph above: Scripps Pier, La Jolla, 2004 ]

Clouds

"It is well to remember that by the time-scale of the universe the shapes of all things and systems are as fugitive and evanescent as those of clouds driven before a gale, which coalesce and dissolve as they go."

--David Pye

Fire Photos

I had forgotten about this, but my fire photos were reproduced on a site about the "urban interface".

[ photograph above: Self Portrait, Scotty's Castle, Death Valley National Park, 2003 ]

Marc Doyon: Mineral

Marc Doyon's Mineral portfolio.

Death Valley Story in the Highland Community News

My little write-up of the recent Death Valley kayaking trip made it on the front page of the Highland Community News yesterday! Mike is now a published photographer!

[ photograph above: Badwater, Death Valley National Park, 2005 ]

Intimate Landscapes

"Parks and gardens are the quintessential intimate landscapes. People use them all the time, leaving their energy and memories behind. It’s what’s left behind that I like to photograph."

--Michael Kenna

Miguel Mealha: Seascapes

Miguel Mealha's Seascapes portfolio.

Photographers have Urges

"The urge to create, the urge to photograph, comes in part from the deep desire to live with more integrity, to live more in peace with the world, and possibly to help others to do the same."

--Wynn Bullock

Corpse Art?

This is a strange story...

Death Valley: More Photographs

My recent trip to Death Valley motivated me to post about 35 additional images to the Death Valley section of my Web site. There are now more than 50 photographs on this page, taken during a number of trips to Death Valley National Park between 1991 and 2005.

[ photograph above: Scotty's Castle, Death Valley National Park, 2003 ]

Brett Weston: Abstractions Portfolio #1

From the Brett Weston archive, his Abstractions Portfolio #1.