I have mixed feelings about whether photography can be taught or not. The mechanics of it can, the craft, but the art, the vision, the intuition… all that goes into truly expressive photography, not so much. A sensitive mentor can help guide it, can help bring it out, but trying to teach someone how to see can easily devolve into little more than a set of rules.

If I were to give a photography class, I could condense it into four steps that would easily fit on a 3×5 index card. So here, in easy to understand form, are my four steps to becoming an accomplished photographer:

1. Buy, borrow, or steal a camera, preferably one with manual controls. It doesn’t matter what kind.
2. Get familiar with said camera until using it’s controls are as natural as breathing.
3. Learn the fundamentals of exposure so you can use the controls to achieve good results.
4. Practice honing your own unique vision for the rest of your life.

Repeat step 4 diligently, and repeat steps 1 and 2 as needed. Apply step 3 at all times. Sorry… there are no shortcuts, but don’t be discouraged. Practice and you will see progress.

There you have it… end of class.

As I sat down here this morning, coffee in hand, I noticed that this will be post number 200 on photomontana.net. Not really many compared to a lot of blogs, but still… for me it’s a bit of a milestone. I seldom know what I’m going to say when I sit down here to do this. It’s been said, and attributed to a few different people, that writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down and stare at the keyboard until little drops of blood appear on your forehead. I go through that every time.

gibbon river sunrise

I’ve been thinking too that for someone who claims that photography is much like music, that it exists in a realm that goes beyond words, I sure do put out a lot of words about it. A contradiction? No. Not really…

Life is full of contradictions. The only way to avoid that is to lock yourself away… to shut yourself off from living… to fossilize. I don’t want to merely exist like that, so I’ll continue to contradict myself. I like to think that even though I’m a 60-something, I’m still growing and learning and changing.

When I first started a photography blog back in 2007 I really had no idea where I wanted to go with it or what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to show some new work of course, and thought I wanted to ‘talk shop’ with some other photographers. I soon found that I don’t really want to ‘talk shop’… I’d rather ‘talk life’.

I dumped that blog and started over with this one a little over two years ago. It’s both about photography and not about photography… another apparent contradiction. Photography is my chosen medium, but I’m not interested in cameras and lenses and various gadgets. I couldn’t care less about f-stops and shutter speeds, and never make note of any technical details like that. I’m more interested in life and experiences and thoughts and ideas. I use the camera to put that into visual form. Not in the sense of a visual diary, of here’s where I’ve been  what I’ve done what I’ve seen, but more in the sense of here’s something that struck a chord in me, that moved me to make a photograph of it. I can’t analyze it or explain it… it’s visual music, it lives outside of words.  Sometimes the song works, more often than not it doesn’t. Like I said…  I’m still learning.

After a couple hundred posts, this blog is slowly finding it’s way. It’s where I think out loud… where I can begin to flesh out where my photography comes from, why I do what I do, the living and experiencing behind it. Some of you are interested in this, many more no doubt stumble across it, stifle a yawn, and move on. That’s alright. This blog is what it is, and it will be what it will be. All I can say for sure is that it will continue to change, hopefully grow, and likely contradict itself any number of times through all that.

So stick around. I appreciate all the thoughts and ideas you bring here. We’ll see where the next 200 take us… I hope I can occasionally give you something to think about and chew on.

pj

Ah yes, these Saturday mornings at my computer, coffee cup in hand, ideas rolling around in my head… you have no idea how much I’ve missed this.

Life can be a strange, crazy, unpredictable thing. We tend to look at it as a linear thing –  grow up, go to school, work, retire, die. Straight line, beginning to end. We compartmentalize. Different aspects of our life go into different boxes — personal life, work life, spiritual life, political views, art if we practice one at all. All neatly packaged and lined up like products on a shelf. But life isn’t like that. It bends… it curves… it loops back on itself. It’s not a straight line, it’s more like the infinity sign.

After the past months I’ve been doing some rethinking about art and photography. Maybe clarifying is a better word. For several years I’ve kept my art and my activism separate. I’ll likely continue to do so, though there is obviously some overlap.

As much as I dislike labels and boxes, and I know full well that things aren’t this cut and dried, for what I’m thinking about here I’ll divide serious photography into two camps. There’s the ‘art for art’s sake’ approach, and there’s the ‘cameras for a cause’ approach.  Sometimes they can be one and the same… oftentimes not.

I’ve drifted toward the ‘art for art’s sake’ side over the years. My work has become more personal, more introspective, more abstract. It fits with the idea of equivalents that Stieglitz and Minor White among others have spoken about. It’s more inner directed, like visual music, a realm where words don’t apply, where the camera is the instrument. It really doesn’t fit in with any cause, but it’s the way I’ve come to work.

At the same time, I’m deeply concerned about things I’ve seen happening in our world, and continue to see. The rape and pillage of our wild earth, the accumulation of obscene wealth at the top of our society and the resulting poverty and destitution at the bottom. I’ve seen both, some of it up close and personal. I feel compelled to document it, to do what I can to change it as little as that may be. I don’t know how much we can effect change with our work, or if we can even do it at all, but I do know this — if we do nothing nothing will change. The ‘cameras for a cause’ approach is more agenda driven and has a long and proud tradition. It’s using the camera as a tool.

They’re two different mindsets. Some can combine the two approaches, but I’ve always had great difficulty doing that. But now that I’m trying to carve out a life for myself with my camera and computer I need to learn to wear both hats, that of artist and that of activist. Both are valid… both are important…both are necessary. As far as I know there’s no rule against doing both. If there is I’ll break it.

Thoughts?

My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.  –  Edward Weston

I started these bits and pieces posts, which are mostly my quick takes on quotes about photography, some time back, but have been a bit remiss in keeping up. This is a good time to remedy that and get back with the program.

This one by Edward Weston appeals to me more and more as the years go by. My photography isn’t about photography. It isn’t about cameras… it isn’t about subject matter… it isn’t about definitions or categories or fitting into certain boxes labeled ‘landscape photography’ or ‘street photography’ or ‘documentary photography’ or ‘abstract photography’ or any other genre. It’s about life.

There are countless definitions of art. Some are quite profound, others are little more than exercises in pomposity. I can sum up mine quite simply. My work is my attempt to translate my life into visual form.

How about yours?

Beartooth Mountains

Alright then… I’m back and I’m situated in an apartment in Los Angeles. If someone would’ve told me a couple of years ago that this would be the case I would’ve just laughed. Now here I am. Sure beats living in the car though…

I got the few things I kept out of storage last week — books, my desktop computer, some kitchen tools. I hadn’t seen any of it for a year now, and I’m having a great time getting reacquainted with some of my books and with photos I’d forgotten I had. Just for old time’s sake I thought I’d post this one from a foggy snowy day by a lake in the Beartooth Mountains on the Wyoming/Montana border. It was done about 25 years ago, and the neg is long lost. This was scanned from the only print that exists of this photo, a work print I made back at the time. It’s a bit rough, but it will suit it’s purpose for this blog.

I’m also going to recommend a book. It’s one I picked up in a used book store in Missoula shortly before I left, and I re-discovered it the other day when I was unpacking. It’s a compilation of the working lives of well known documentary photographers like Mary Ellen Mark, Eugene Richards, Sebastião Salgado, and several others. I haven’t finished it yet, but I can already see it’s well worth reading. It’s called Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers. Check it out.

I’m also going to get back to my schedule of doing two or three posts a week here. My posting has been kind of erratic lately due to circumstances, but it’s time to get this show back on the road. Stop on by any old time and see what’s going on.

I have much to muse about this Saturday morning, but I also have much to do. I’ll keep it kind of brief. This post is mostly for those of you who have been following my escapades here in LA.

A little over a week ago I was looking at losing my phone and internet service, and facing imminent repossession of my car. I was literally hours away from both, and I was sweating blood trying to figure out how to stall what seemed inevitable. I was looking at true homelessness… the real thing… with no apparent relief in sight. I was as close to total collapse, and panic, as I’ve ever been in my life.

Things can change fast. Now, a short week later, my bills are current, I’ve put down a deposit on an apartment, and I’m signing the lease and moving in on Tuesday. February and March will be a bit of a scramble yet, but by early April I’ll be in a position to live comfortably without immediate pressure to find a job for a month or two. I can work on these sites that I’ve been struggling to keep going but have had limited time for. I can even buy a new pair of shoes. The last few days have been a blur of activity — I feel like I just took a week-long ride on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

I just spent the last eight months homeless in LA, living in my car. It’s an experience I’m not likely to forget, nor do I want to. I got a street level view into the dark underbelly of our society in one of the world’s major cities. There have been heartwarming moments, but much of it is very disturbing. The real LA bears little resemblance to what you see on Hollywood Tonight.

I can put more time and effort into these blogs again. They need the attention, and I can work on some of the things I’ve wanted to do but haven’t been able to. I’m also going to start going through my notebooks and putting together a journal of my months as an LA homeless.

I haven’t photographed it much for various reasons, but I plan to keep prowling the streets and to put together a series of photos of what I’ve seen over the recent months. Life on the streets goes on for many people. I don’t like to intrude on the private hell so many are going through, but much of what is happening deserves to be seen.

I’ll probably do that with my phone, both to give the photos the gritty look the deserve, and simply to be less obvious and intrusive. Over the next weeks and months one of my projects will be to put it all together in a book, maybe an ebook or an actual Blurb hard copy book. Or maybe on a blog. A simple blog — no sidebars, no clutter, just a series of journal entries. Maybe I’ll do all of the above. We’ll see.

Anyway… so much for brevity. My next post will be done from the comfort of my own apartment with a cup of coffee in hand. Just like it used to be.

To those of you who have been following me here I’ll just say thanks, more than I can say, for your encouragement and support. The recovery is underway. Stay tuned.

pj

I wasn’t planning on doing a post like this, but it was pointed out in a comment on an earlier post that it might be interesting for others to see what I would select as a few of my best images from the past year. So… with great gnashing of teeth, and for sake of discussion, here are four photos taken during 2011 here in LA.

palm bark

hinges -- koreatown alley

eucalyptus trunk

leaf abstract

There you have it. Four photos that I think worked out pretty well. Good?… not so good?… why?… why not?…

Say what you will…