Driftwood Beach State Park, Oregon

Living here in the mountains, distance and scale are understandable to me. My mind can grasp that mountains off in the distance can be 40 or 50 miles or more away. There are enough features between me and those distant mountains to give it a sense of scale.

Not so on the ocean though. Where we were you could stand on the beach, and if you stretched yours arms straight out to your sides, there was nothing in that 180 degree arc other than a strip of sand, a lot of water, and a huge expanse of sky. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around the immensity of it. It was simply too overwhelming for me to grasp.

The only way I could begin to comprehend the sheer size and power of the ocean was to look for familiar objects on the beach that would add some perspective to what was in front of me. Things like this driftwood log helped establish a sense of scale I was much more familiar with.

I don’t know… is it just a peculiarity of mine, or does everyone who hasn’t spent much time near the ocean feel that way?

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Here’s a passing thought for a Saturday morning…

We all tend to think of our work as unique. Normal enough I guess — we all like to feel like we stand out to some degree. We think of our photography as art, whatever we may mean by that much maligned term, and think that it stands apart from all the other photography being shown. Sometimes it’s true, but how often? Can we honestly look through our files and see a solid body of work that represents our own individuality, that stands out as work that truly shows our own style? Or rather, do we see photo upon photo that looks much like the millions of others we see day after day? I can go through the photographs I’ve done over the years, and if I was to spend a day with them, I might find a couple dozen that really strike me as being uniquely mine. That’s not many, but studying that handful of photos would reveal a common thread, it would point to a direction my vision is taking. That’s important, and key to building a meaningful body of art photography.

Those of us who don’t shoot professionally enjoy a great gift. We don’t have to shoot to please anybody but ourselves. We don’t have to shoot a particular subject in a particular way to please a particular client. We have the freedom of choice. What we do with that choice is what will define us as photographers. We can make the most of our uniqueness, or we can imitate others. The choice is ours to make.

More and more I find myself paying close attention to those things that grab my eye, that stop me in my tracks, that demand a closer look. That’s where my images lie. I don’t always end up making a photo, but more often than not, if I take some time to explore those ‘stopping points’, I come across something that makes me trip the shutter. Occasionally something works.

All of this of course points to that other much abused word – style. Styles in photography change, though I’m not so sure that they shouldn’t properly be called fashions. Your style is you. It’s your uniqueness. It’s what makes your work different from the millions of others prowling around out there with their cameras, and it’s worth spending some time digging into. Your style can’t be adopted. You can’t put it on like a new shirt. It’s what you are, it’s what you see, and it’s how you translate what you see into a two-dimensional rectangle called a photograph. You can only discover it, unearth it, and nurture it with constant practice and searching. With time and plenty of work your individuality will shine through, your style will emerge in a body of honest, compelling work. To me that is the heart and soul of photography as art.

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Sand and Shell #2

When you go to the coast and walk along the beach, it doesn’t take long to realize that there is a whole world of subject matter right at your feet, and it’s constantly changing.

Here’s another shell in the sand taken at Driftwood Beach State Park on the Oregon coast.

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I’d better be careful. This Saturday morning thing might get to be a regular and expected feature on this blog. Anyway…

Though the version of this blog that you’re seeing now has only been around since January, I’ve been blogging about photography since March of 2007. I’ve experimented with various looks and titles and hosting platforms and what-not, and finally settled on this self-hosted beast called photomontana.net. Though I’ll no doubt continue to experiment with other sites and other ideas, this one is pretty well set the way I want it. It’s kind of my home base now.

One of the titles I played with before was ‘a camera, a laptop, and a life’. That’s been my dream — nay, not dream so much, but goal — for some time now. Finding a way to support myself with photography, using a camera and computer, has been my mission for the last year or two. It’s becoming increasingly urgent since I lost my job in June and am quickly burning through my meager cash reserve. No simple task when, like me, you’re not inclined to go the professional photography route. I know it’s possible, in fact likely, that I’ll have to do a few things I don’t particularly want to do to keep this thing going. I’m prepared for that. Nothing is perfect.

I work on the old desktop computer I’m sitting at right now for the most part, but I have a laptop that I use occasionally when I’m not here at home. I set it up, along with a camera, on the desk in the bedroom my daughter uses when she’s here with me as a visual prop for myself. Along with that, I’ve burned a question into my little brain — if that’s all I owned, if that camera and computer were my only earthly possessions, and my only means of survival was to support myself with them, how would I go about it? How would I make a living with a camera and a laptop?

I’ve had no great lightning flashes of insight yet. In the meantime I’ll keep doing what I’m doing here, improving on it the best I can, and trying out different ideas. I’ll probably play with different ideas for sites, though I don’t want to spread myself too thin, to see what might have possibilities and what won’t. That’s how you find out. Some things might work well and others might fail miserably. If that’s the case I’ll cheerfully admit it and move on.

Some of you may be aspiring to the same sort of life, so in the spirit of play I’ll leave you with that same question this morning. Pitch in with your two cents if you’re so inclined. If all you had were a camera and a laptop and had to support yourself with them, how would you do it? It might prove to be an interesting exercise, it might be a total waste of time, but go ahead and have at it.

Cheers,
pj

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pond abstract #5

It’s been awhile since I’ve added to my series of abstract photographs from the duck pond across the street. Here’s the fifth one in an ongoing series.

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I just have a few short notes I’ll pass along this morning from here in my little corner of the blogosphere.

First off, I’ve made a couple of minor changes of my own. I’ve been blogging for a little over four years now, and have been involved with a handful of various sites, some now defunct. When I started, I adopted the screen name pj finn and have been using it ever since. Anonymity was never an issue, I just liked the sound of it better than my given name, Paul Johnson. To put it mildly it’s a common name. I think at least half the people on this planet known at least one Paul Johnson. When I first started in photography, and started contacting others with my work, the conversation would generally start with “no, I’m not that Paul Johnson”. So I decided to become pj finn when I started doing this, which is fine, only now that I’m doing so much of my everyday activity online, and have so many accounts, both under my real name and my screen name, I’m starting to confuse myself. Besides, I believe in honesty in my work and my photography, and have been growing increasingly uneasy working under an assumed name. It’s not a big lie, but rather than continue sitting here and wondering if I should drop the pen name, I’ll just do it and be done.

So, for what it’s worth, I’ve started blogging under my own given name with a small difference, My name is still as common as dirt, so I’ll just use my first initial rather than my first name, and keep it lower-case as I am wont to do. From here on out I’m p johnson, and the name pj finn is no more. I will still post as pj though, as they are my initials.  All clear?

I’ve pointed out before here that I started a sister site to this one a couple of months ago that’s about working with simple equipment, in my case a garage sale special that cost two bucks. I set in up on a dormant free blogger domain I had to try it out and to see if it was something I wanted to continue doing. It is, I think it has a lot of possibilities for me, so I moved it over to this hosting account, onto another domain I had sitting around collecting dust. It’s still in it’s infancy, and hasn’t really grown legs yet, but the idea appeals to me and I think it’s a blog I can have a great time doing. Stop on by and take a look, it’s right here, and let me know what you think.

*      *      *

Okay, enough about me. One of the pleasures of blogging is to discover a new site and be able to give it a shout out, to be able to say ‘hey, check this guy out’. That’s what I’ll take a moment to do here.

Eric Leslie started a photography blog about a month ago, and I stumbled onto it yesterday.  He does some very good work, but rather than rattle on about him I’ll send you over there to let his work speak for itself,  so ‘hey, check this guy out’.

*      *      *

On a similar note, Derrick over at my sight picture put up a piece about post processing, manipulating photos in Photoshop, and gives his take on it all.  I’d recommend heading over there and giving him a hand opening up that can of worms.

And that’s all for now folks…

Cheers,

pj

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My recent trip showed me a few things about myself. Or rather, it reaffirmed a few things I already know. For one thing, I’m not a very prolific photographer. I was gone a little over two weeks and came home with maybe ten or twelve photos that I like enough to use on my blogs, and maybe two or three I consider worthy of making prints of. I’m fine with that, it’s the way I work, but it points out another thing. I make a lousy pro. I’m simply not wired for it.

I’ve subtitled this blog ‘carving out a life as an artist’. That’s the way I need to work, and that’s the approach I need to put my energies into now. Why wait? I’m fast approaching 60 years old. Too damn fast — if I could find a speed control on this thing called life, I’d turn it down several notches right now. I don’t have time to waste on things I don’t want to do. I did the professional thing back in the 80′s and early 90′s, but flat out quit. It’s one of those things I don’t want to do.

I don’t look at photography solely as a way to make a living, but rather as a way to live a life. It’s about being alive and awake and aware, and about giving visual form to that awareness. It’s about slowing down, recognizing those visual moments that stop you in your tracks, working with them, and making the strongest images you can from them. Now and then I succeed, and if I can turn that into a living so much the better.

I don’t see photography being about equipment either. Though I do shoot digitally these days, some of my favorite moments come with the simplest camera I own in hand. There are times when I’m tempted to put the digital stuff on the shelf and just work with that one simple, basic little film camera. I could do everything I want to do with it, and never outlive the possibilities. It’s an interesting thought, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

I could ramble on here all day, but I won’t. Maybe I’ll dig into some of these thoughts in more depth in future posts. If any of you have any thoughts or ideas or observations or insights, they’d be most welcome. Let’s consider this something of an open thread.

I’ve noticed over the past few months that the readership on this blog has been steadily climbing. To those of you who come by here, I want you to know that I greatly appreciate it. It’s nice to know you’re not working in a total vacuum. Hopefully, when I visit your sites, I can offer even half the encouragement you bring me. Stick around, and let’s see where this journey takes this contrary old photographer. It may prove to be an interesting ride. Bumpy at times, but interesting.

Cheers,
pj

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Sand and Shell -- Driftwood Beach State Park, Oregon

I’m writing this from my stepson’s studio apartment in San Francisco. This is the first time I’ve been in this city since 1987, and then it was only for a few hours. I almost feel like I’ve gone blind — I can see the hustle and bustle all around me, but I can’t see the photographs in it yet other than the obvious San Francisco shots that you take home as memories. I’ll be here for a couple of days yet, so we’ll see what comes of it.

My daughter and I spent a day along the Oregon coast Friday, and it was much the same there. We were right on the beach with our feet in the ocean, and I felt about as big as a gnat. The open ocean pounding in right at our feet was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen, but my mind couldn’t wrap itself around the sheer size and power and scale of what was right in front of me. I found myself looking right down by my feet for photographs that I could get a handle on. To my notion this one worked, but I need to take a closer look at the rest. That may have to wait until I get back home.

More later.

pj

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One question I’ve been sitting here pondering this morning is if photography galleries, particularly small individual or group galleries, are still a real option in today’s world.

I’m not referring to economic conditions and downturns here, I’m more interested in the impact of the internet. These days anyone with an internet connection and a collection of photographs can set up an online gallery with very little effort and send their work out to the world at light speed. Are traditional galleries doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs, much like the big video outlets have with the advent of Netflix? Is trying to move your work through a gallery simply pissing in the wind?

I’m not saying this to be a smart-ass. Many photographers still work through galleries. Guy Tal recently opened his gallery in Utah, and David Leland Hyde is doing heroic work bringing the work of his late father, Philip Hyde, to gallery walls, to name just two. I applaud their efforts, and sincerely hope they meet with the greatest of success. I’d be interested in hearing their thoughts.

My own feeling is that galleries play an important role and always will. Meeting an artist in person, seeing the work in the flesh, and the social connections made in a gallery setting are things that can never be experienced over an internet connection and have always been important reasons many people visit galleries. On the other hand, being able to purchase damn near anything we want with a few clicks of a mouse and not have to leave home to do it appeals to more and more of us all the time.

Will traditional galleries remain a viable avenue for photographers? I would certainly hope so.  I’ll leave you with this question.  Are galleries going to fade away into irrelevance, or are they an important part of an artist’s presence that can and will work side by side with the internet? What do you think?

pj

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A number of changes are happening here at photomontana.net, and my other photo sites, as I work on making the most of my limited abilities to try to turn my photographic interests into some kind of workable gig. Here are a few of them in a nutshell:

• I’ve mentioned it earlier, but I started a sister site to this one. It’s called adventures with a two dollar camera, and it’s an ongoing project of work I do with a camera I got at a yard sale years ago for two bucks. The point of it, besides simply being a fun way to work, is that much can be done with minimal equipment. Your vision is what counts, not so much the camera you use. Stop on by and check it out.
• I’ve put up another website, finn photography, as a place to offer prints for sale.  So far it features two galleries, each with a small but growing selection of available prints.  One is for small prints from the negatives I shoot with the two dollar Silette, the other is for larger prints, some from my past but mostly new stuff I’ll be doing. The film negs will be drum scanned, and both film and digital files will be printed on high end printers. I’ve also created an email mailing list to keep those who sign up informed on latest print releases.

I’m going on a road trip to California in about two weeks. My daughter has been staying with me since the end of May, and rather than fly her back to Burbank, I’m going to drive her there myself.  We’ll spend a few days driving down the coast, a few days in San Francisco visiting with my son, and then on to Burbank where I’ll spend a few days letting my daughter show me around where she lives now.  Then I can poke around the West on my way back to Montana working on building up my photo files. I’ll take a laptop and a couple of cameras, and call it a working trip. I’m looking forward to it.

Last, but not least, I’m changing the look of this blog. I’m giving it a new theme and a new paint job, something more open and spacious. If things look weird around here for awhile, fret not — it’s just me tinkering.

On that note, I’ll get back to it. Keep those cards and letters coming.

pj

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