LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process

Here's a Thought… #2765 with Brooks Jensen

Way to Go, God

When does a scene/subject become worthy of making a photograph? After all, we don't just point our cameras at anything, but we pick and choose those scenes or subjects that we think are worthy of capture and processing. Why are those captures worthy? I've asked this question for years in workshops and conversations. The most common reason photographers give for making a photograph boils down to a variation of "Way to go, God!" I love a pretty picture as much as the next person, but certainly there are more reasons to produce a photograph than a pretty scene.

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Here's a Thought… #2764 with Brooks Jensen

Archive or Burden

We spend our life amassing a pile of prints that form our archive. It can also be said that our archive is a burden that our heirs will be responsible for whether or not they want it. We can't take it with us, unless the software engineers figure out a solution to this pesky problem of mortality. Maybe we should be buried with all our art like ancient Egyptian kings, taking all our important possessions with us to the next world.

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Here's a Thought… #2763 with Brooks Jensen

Visual Syncopation

Structure in a presentation of images can be both good and bad. Structure can provide form and consistency to a presentation. It can also become predictable, repetitious, and boring. This where visual syncopation can come to the rescue.

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Here's a Thought… #2762 with Brooks Jensen

Understanding Fatigue and Exhaustion

There are times when I try to go photographing in spite of feeling exhausted. It never works. This week is one of those times. I just can't bring myself to get excited about grabbing my camera and getting out there. Worse, I feel guilty about it. As I've thought about this in the torpor of my fatigue, I think I've had a flash of insight about this.

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Here's a Thought… #2761 with Brooks Jensen

The Immersive Challenge

We all have art we love and art that leaves us cold. In thinking about my own responses to artwork, I've come to the conclusion that the artwork I like the most are those pieces that create in me the largest immersive response by pulling me into the world that the artwork makes for us. This is, for example, where the novelist has so much to teach us visual artists. What if I were to propose that Tolkien and Ansel Adams are essentially facing the same creative challenge in different media?

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