The Artist’s Way

I’ve begun forming an Artist’s Way group in the last week and I’m kind of excited about it. For those who aren’t familiar with the Artist’s Way, it’s a process of creative recovery and enrichment that’s founded on the book by that title by Julia Cameron. If you’re an artist and you’re not familiar with this book, you should run out and buy it and do every exercise in the book. It’s a lot of work, but it will reward you many times over.

I’ve actually worked with the Artist’s Way many times over for several years now. I first read it maybe five or more years ago and it was a very affirming and encouraging book for me. I actually did what I suspect very few people do, which is to do all the work that the book suggests you do. It was a lot of work, but I think it was well worth it. It was a beginning of a process of growing into being an artist. It’s a process that has not stopped, and if anything has gained momentum in the last year or two.

There are a couple of basic tools that are a foundation of the Artist’s Way. One is the daily Morning Pages. I won’t outline the entire book here, but the Morning Pages are simply writing first thing in the morning three pages of hand written stream of consciousness writing. Whatever’s on your mind, that’s what you write. Simple as that.

The second fundamental tool is the Artist’s Date. This is a once a week affair where you take your inner artist out for a couple of hours, just you and him/her and do something that is fun and creatively enriching. This can be whatever you find to be fun, or whatever you think your inner artist would find to be fun. Cameron describes the inner artist as a child and I often literally thought of myself at age three or four when I went on these “dates.” A date could be anything from going for an interesting walk, picking up rocks on a beach, going to a toy store or art supply store, going for a drive on a new road, whatever you think that kid would find fun. That’s what you do.

I think the Artist’s Date was particularly hard for me and it was particularly rewarding as well. I tend toward what is called “anhedonia.” A lack of pleasure. I work hard. I’m very disciplined. I do what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t just go out and have a lot of fun. Oh, sometimes I do, but not nearly as much as a little kid might like. So the artist’s date makes me do more of that.

I’ve done this process before and I’ve gone back to the book many times to remind myself of what to do when I am feeling discouraged or frightened or whatever. But this time I’m going to be doing it because I thought it would be good for some of my artist friends. I had been looking at another Cameron book, The Vein of Gold, and had found that it was helping me dig out of a period of discouragement or burnout. I thought it might be nice to share this with my friends.

Years ago I actually took a week long workshop with Mark Bryan, the co-developer of the Artist’s Way process. It was an expensive workshop, and I took it because of the way the Artist’s Way made me feel about taking chances like it. I would never have done something like that before, but the Artist’s Way suggested to me that if something appealed to me and the opportunity arose, I should go for it. So I did. It was a very nice workshop. Very moving and affirming. We did lots of very interesting exercises and went through some of what it would be like to run an Artist’s Way workshop. I had in mind then that I might run some workshops, but never followed through with it at the time.

I think the idea of doing one now may have occurred to me because my artistic life has taken on so much more power over the last year. I feel like I finally know what it is like to be a fully functioning artist, and I want to share that feeling with my friends who are trying to make something more of their artistic lives. I’m actually pretty excited about it. I love the idea that I could contribute something toward my friends experiencing some of what I’ve experienced this last year, which has been a big affirmation of my ability as an artist and my hopes for making something of a career as an artist.

These friends are mostly members of a little critique group that we’ve been having together for a number of years now. The critique group is a monthly gathering, held at a different house each month. We socialize a bit, eat some snacks, and then settle down to sharing the work we’ve been doing in the last month. We’ve gotten to know one another well in that time. I wanted to take that group to another level and integrate the Artist’s Way process to see where it takes us.

In a lot of ways, the critique group has functioned as a form of an Artist’s Way group. We’ve not so much critiqued one another as supported one another. Now we’re going to try to arrange a time to meet weekly and do the full Artist’s Way process. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m pretty excited about it and I think they are too.

One of the things that the Artist’s Way promotes is focusing on things that you might like to do and, instead of dismissing them as impractical, consider that they may be things that you both can and perhaps should be doing. One of the things that I’ve been doing and wanting to do a lot is writing. I’ve been writing about my photography trips. I’ve been writing about my family as my Mother suffers with Alzheimer’s disease, and I’ve been writing about my own struggle to become an artist with an actual money making career.

I don’t find it very hard to be an artist any more. When I started with the Artist’s Way, I wasn’t even comfortable using the word to describe myself. Now, no problem. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy working on the things that blocked me from being an artist for much of my adult life. I’ve struggled to overcome my fears and my self doubts. I’ve spent some time in therapy dealing with the issue too. I’ve had days when it was all I could do to face going out to the studio and I’ve had times when I simply could not face some of the things I wanted to do. But I’ve stuck with it, and years later, I’m past all of that. At least I think I am.

I no longer doubt my ability. I’m not afraid of much any more when it comes to working as an artist. Sure, it’s not always easy. Maybe it’s almost never easy being an artist. You do struggle constantly to figure out what will be the next thing you do and how you’re going to do it. You can begin to doubt that there ever will be a next thing that matches the last thing, but I’ve gotten much more at peace with that struggle over the years too. I’ve found the next thing time and time again now, so I’m learning to relax and believe that it will happen again.

The Artist’s Way is about creative unblocking and creative recovery. I’m not sure I need a lot of that any more, but I do need to keep taking care of my little inner artist, and for that reason the book remains useful and I’m willing to undertake the process again. I’ll be in a different place this time, but I will still profit from the effort.

If I have a struggle right now, it’s the struggle of figuring out how to reach where I think I need to be in the market place. Not only figuring out how, but also trying to keep the faith that it can and will happen. It’s easy to be worn down by the constant process of marketing. I’ve spent a fair amount of time at it this past year and I’ve got to say that I’ve been pretty successful all along the way. But a part of me still half way expect there to be a glass ceiling somewhere that I’m going to bump into and will be able to go no farther.

Rationally, I don’t believe that to be true any more. I really do believe that it’s just a matter of knocking on the right doors in the right way enough times that the doors finally begin to open. That, and continuing to do really strong work that makes those doors open more freely. Oh, and keeping up the process of exhibiting and publishing and all the other things that go into building a strong resume as well.

It really is a daunting process, but I am hoping that the Artist’s Way will help me keep the process from looking insurmountable. Thus far, I’ve simply put my best foot forward in as many places as I can. I’ve gotten more and more confident in that process, and it’s gotten easier to do, but it’s no small job to get past the gate keepers at a prestigious national calibre gallery. That’s what I need to figure out how to do next, and I’m hoping that the Artist’s Way will help me get on with that process.

For my friends, I hope it helps them strengthen their sense of capability, their sense of belief in themselves, lowers the resistance to doing the things that make their work as strong as possible and take them in the direction that they want to go. These people are experienced artists. They are quite capable on practically every level. Some need to make just one more step to be where I think they’d like to be. Others need the support to begin to believe in themselves enough to make their art a priority in their lives.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. I remember that going through the book for the first time was a bit tumultuous. It introduced all kinds of ideas that I was unfamiliar with. It suggested that I needed to make some changes in the way I related to friends and family. It was, perhaps like all growing processes, a bit messy. But in the end, the result was a stronger sense of mission for myself. A stronger belief in myself. A greater ability to withstand the challenges of the studio on a daily basis. It was a powerful tool for me. I hope it will be for them as well.

Well, Maybe I Do

This morning, two days after my little shopping trip, I’ve been thinking some more. I’m referring here to looking at a smaller compact camera to supplement my rather heavy Canon 5D. I’ve been feeling a little burned out with my photography. I’ve been doing the same old thing again and again, not getting out as much as I should, and not getting much very exciting imagery when I do. I started thinking about what I could do to make my creative life more fun, in fact, make my life in general more fun.

The first thing I thought is that I need to get out and take more fun pictures. I need less pressure on each individual picture and on my photography as a whole. I need to stop looking for individual masterpieces and major themes, and get out and take interesting pictures without too much concern about any one picture. I need to feed the visual life that feeds my creative life and my life as a whole.

And what better tool to do that than a nice compact little camera that I can carry around without a lot of fuss? The images produced by the camera would be plenty good enough to make moderate sized prints, even good enough to publish a little Blurb book without any trouble. Now I’m seeing a compact camera as an asset rather than as a deficient version of my bigger Canon 5D. I like this idea a lot.

Another idea I had was that maybe I need to get out and photograph people once in a while. At this point, all of my photographs are rather serious landscape and nature photographs that never include any people. Maybe getting out and interacting with people be a good idea. Again, a smaller compact camera would be much less obtrusive if I want to carry it around and take casual portraits. It’s much less bulky. It could be stuck in a pocket some of the time. It wouldn’t make that very impressive, but a bit intimidating sound that a big 35 mm camera makes. That sound is the sound of the mirror snapping up out of the way in a DSLR. In a compact camera, that sound is not necessary. Many of them simulate the sound of an SLR to make people feel like they are using a more serious camera, but you can turn off the sound if you want, and I would want to do that.

This thought immediately led to the idea that I should take some pictures in the assisted living facility that my Mother (who has advanced Alzheimer’s disease) is living in. I’m not actually thinking of the obvious idea that this is a depressing and tragic place. I’ve actually found the place to be pretty inspiring. The care there is wonderful. My mother has been pretty happy there, despite her illness. And I’ve met some pretty interesting people hanging out in the lobby or outside smoking, or in the elevators. They are people with character. They have a lot of disabilities in some cases, but their appearances tell stories. They’re generally older people, which means there’s a lot of character to them as well, both visually and from a personality standpoint.

All of a sudden, starting from a fairly discouraged state of mind, I have several ideas that I’m pretty excited to work with. Ideas that might even be pretty meaningful. And once again, I think the little compact camera might be a better tool than the big DSLR and big heavy tripod. It would be so much less obtrusive, so much less distracting, and yet I think I can take pictures good enough to publish in smaller formats. Pretty exciting. Sometimes just a little thinking first thing in the morning can really pay off.

I think I’ll order that camera. I’ve actually figured out that I have some pretty expensive equipment on my shelves that I just don’t use. I could sell some of that stuff and not spend any money at all and wind up with a new tool that I actually would use. And it would be a tool that would expand my creative life. Something I am feeling the need of right now.

Do I Need a New Camera?

Before I even begin addressing this question, the answer on the very face of it is NO! I do not need a new camera. I already have a very fine Canon 5D Mk II and some equally fine L series lenses to go with it. But I have been craving a new camera for about a year now, maybe more. The camera, or class of camera, is a interchangeable lens compact (ILC) camera. Also known as a Micro Four Thirds camera, there are models made by Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony.

The reason I have been craving a camera of this type is that they are small cameras with decent sensors and decent optics, which are aimed at the enthusiast photographer. In short, I want something smaller than my very stout 5D with it’s massive L lenses. But I don’t want a tiny compact camera with it’s miserable little sensor and poor optics and menu driven interface. I want the controls and the handling of a DSLR camera with as near the quality of output as possible. Truth be told, I want everything from my 5D in a package a quarter the size and weight. There is no such camera, so I’ve been craving the next best thing.

I imagine that with a smaller camera, I will carry it more and will be more likely to experiment with it, thereby feeding my creative life. I tend to leave the 5D at home unless I’m making a specific trip for a specific purpose. It’s just not something that you want to walk around with. It’s not something you want to heft around unless you’re on a mission. If I’m working with the camera I also have to use a tripod, which makes another heavy thing to haul around and fuss with. The whole rig really hinders your likelihood of messing with it unless you’re really working at being a professional photographer.

Now I consider myself a professional and so I do take the camera out and haul it around and set up the tripod and use it, but I don’t use it casually and I am concerned that that’s limiting what I’m doing and that’s starving my creative side. That’s not good for an artist, so I’ve begun craving one of the little ILC cameras again recently, for the umpteenth time in the last year.

But there is a big problem with the ILC camera. It will produce pictures of much lower resolution and much poorer quality than the 5D. It’s doubtful that I could ever use any of the images that I took with it for any professional purpose. I might be able to if I started doing work that involves smaller images or smaller reproductions, but that’s not what I do now. I would almost certainly need to re-shoot anything that I came across and felt interesting with the 5D anyway, and I know from experience that re-shooting things is not always easy. Conditions change, weather changes, light changes, and things are never the same as they were when you were attracted to them in the first place. So this is a big stumbling block to my desire to buy one of these little cameras.

Nonetheless, today I went on a little outing to look at ILC cameras. I had no plans to buy, and to my credit, I didn’t, but I wanted to look; to actually lay hands one some of these little things to see if they really feel like something I would use. I wanted a feel for their size, and the workings of their controls. I wanted to see what it would feel like to work with a camera using a screen on its back (as most of these cameras have) instead of looking through a viewfinder as I do on my Canon 5D. There’s a big difference between looking through a darkened portal (5D) and framing an image in that dark window, versus holding a camera up in front of you and moving it around while you watch a screen on it’s back.

I looked at an Olympus Pen Pl1 first. I was actually pretty favorably impressed. It is compact, without feeling like a toy. I liked the feel of the lens in hand. It’s balance was decent, and using the screen didn’t bother me much at all. All in all, it was a fairly attractive package and at only $449, it seemed affordable to me. But I wanted to move on and look at the Panasonic cameras. They offer a wide range of choices in a variety of designs ranging from small DSLR types, to the more boxy little compacts like the Olympus.

I was only able to find a couple of the DSLR type Panasonics. They did not appeal at all. They’re just not small enough. They just turned me off. At the same store, I did look at a high end compact camera, the Canon G12, which has an outstanding reputation for image quality and has excellent controls. It too held absolutely no appeal to me. It’s just a big clunky bar of soap. There’s no lens out front to hold on to to steady the thing. It just didn’t appeal to me at all, even though it would fit into a pocket reasonably well and might compete well with the image quality of the ILC’s. An ILC is small, but with a lens attached, it won’t really fit comfortably in anything other than a large coat pocket. Nonetheless, I liked the feel of cradling its lens as I zoomed to frame a shot.

I also looked very briefly at a true compact camera, the Canon S95. It too has a pretty good reputation for image quality, but it’s a much smaller bar of soap, and doesn’t look or feel like a camera at all to me.

My reactions to these cameras tells me a lot about what I am attracted to in the ILC and it gives me some concern. I’m afraid that I really just want this cool little piece of hardware. They look pretty cool. The lenses feel like real optics, whether they are or not. They just feel like real cameras. My attraction to this suggests to me that I’m more interested in the hardware than in any potential increase in photographic exploration that might occur if I bought one. A compact camera would offer at least as much potential for experimentation with a lot more portability, but I have no interest in one. They just don’t feel right or attract me at all.

Despite the fact that I am a burgeoning professional photographer, or perhaps because of that fact, I really can’t afford to be fooling around spending money on hardware that I don’t need. There are a thousand ways that I could spend $500 that would benefit me far more than buying a little piece of hardware that may add little or nothing to my creative or productive life.

So, on my drive home from the camera store I tried to think clearly about when I might use an ILC that I would not use my 5D. I was trying to cut the fog of desire with the searchlight of the intellect. Good luck with that! Anyway, I thought about whether I would carry the ILC on my morning walks where I tend not to take the 5D. Answer, maybe, but would it really be at all difficult to take the 5D? No, not really. I have a shoulder strap for the 5D that makes it comfortable and relatively inconspicuous to carry. Really, I just need to have the discipline to take the thing. It’s not a problem that requires a $500 solution.

Then I thought about whether I would take the little camera on walks in other parts of town or on more casual travel than I do the 5D. Again, I came back to the idea that what was required was more discipline in using the 5D, not another camera. Then I thought, well maybe I’d take the smaller camera on travel when I would be unlikely to take the bulky 5D. That sounded pretty plausible for a while, especially if I were traveling internationally, but once again the issue of image quality came back. Would I really be able to use the images from the ILC? Probably not.

So by now I’m nearly home and I’ve pretty well talked myself out of buying one of the little cameras. I’m commending myself on resisting this useless little bit of expensive equipment. But then, all of a sudden, I had the thought that the truth really is that you just do not want to take a camera as heavy and bulky as the 5D and play around with it. You just don’t. You don’t even want to lift it up to frame a shot. It’s not a toy. It’s a tool. It’s something you use because it does the job at a very high level, not because it’s a pleasure to use. Even though I could carry it around well enough, would I feel like using it experimentally, the way I hope to use the ILC? Would I use it to take a picture of a puddle or a cloud or a flower or a wall, the way I might with the ILC? The answer is probably not.

And therein lies the rub. I do think I would use an ILC differently. I would shoot different things because it’s a different tool. I would feel differently about the images I shot and the process of shooting them. It would be fun. It would be something to experiment with. It’s light in the hand, not a “serious” tool. It’s not quite a toy, like the compact cameras felt to me. It’s serious enough to enjoy using and take some pride in the images I was making, but not so heavy that you don’t want to raise it to your eye unless you know that a shot will be worth it.

So here I am again, pretty much right where I started. I don’t really know if this thing would be a worthwhile tool for me or a waste of time and money. But there’s something that has been nagging at me for over a year now about these cameras, shouldn’t I trust that instinct a little bit? I usually find that when I buy something I’ve been putting off for a long time, that I am very glad that I finally did buy it. It usually adds a dimension to my life that I wonder why I waited so long to add. But boy do I mistrust this instinct. When I hunger for these little cameras, I’m not thinking about doing photography. I’m just thinking about the camera.

Well, the store where I looked at the Olympus today does offer a 14 day money back guarantee. If I am disappointed in the image quality or just find that I think I won’t really use the camera, I guess I could take it back. Oh well. I guess I’ll read some more reviews of ILC cameras online. I don’t know how I’ll make this decision.

So this is what success feels like?

Well, it’s early to say success perhaps, but I’m getting a pretty good taste of what it would feel like to be successful in reaching my goal of having my work exhibited and profitably sold in art galleries around the country. I say it’s early because, although I’m selling a fair amount of work at better prices than I might have imagined possible, I am not yet making a profit. I am investing a lot. I’ve bought some pretty substantial equipment and placed a lot of inventory with a few different galleries. I expect that, if I am fortunate, I will begin to make a profit in the next year or two, so I haven’t entirely reached my goal. But I am farther down that road than I had any hope of being just one year ago.

Just one year ago I began this undertaking with absolutely no idea of whether my photographs would be of interest to any art gallery. Now, one year later, my work is currently on exhibit in a two person show at the gallery that has represented me as a painter for several years. I am having great success selling my work at another gallery a couple of hours away. I just signed a licensing deal with a company out of Atlanta to reproduce some of my paintings from a few years ago. I am in discussions with a very substantial gallery in a neighboring state to show and sell my work. I’m working on submitting my work to a very prestigious national publication, and I have at least some hope that it might be published. I’m also working on landing my first solo show at a very nice college gallery. And I am brimming with the confidence that all that validation has conferred upon me.

In addition to all these successes, I have managed to create a body of work this year that exceeds anything I have ever done before. I love this work, and I feel like it is speaking to me and for me in a way that nothing I have ever done before has. That work gives me almost complete confidence that I will do more solid work, that it’s just a matter of my devoting my time and attention to doing it. I now know, where I previously might have hoped, that I have the ability to do masterful work, work that speaks from the bottom of my heart and touches other people. I’ll insert here an image from that body of work just to give you an idea.

Rocks and sand with shadows, from Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

At the opening of my current show, I was treated to a tremendous outpouring of support from family and friends. I also had complete strangers come up to me and tell me how much they loved my work. A couple of them were art professors, whose opinions carry a lot of weight for me. I saw looks of pure admiration on people’s faces. I literally had my eyes opened for me. It occurred to me for the first time ever that I might actually have more ability than I had ever imaged I had. What a shame had I never had that thought before!

Now, having dared to say all of the above, I feel like I have to insert here that none of the above is meant to suggest that I now think I am something wonderful or that I am somehow uniquely talented or “special”. I don’t, at least not in the sense of having gotten a swollen head. I’m not at all comfortable with the idea of a big ego. I’m actually a very self-effacing kind of guy. What I mean to suggest by all of the above, is that by sticking my neck out and doing the best work I possibly could and presenting that work to a bunch of people as well as I possibly can, I have been blessed to receive all of this encouragement.

What I mean is that if you were to do the same thing that you might have the blessing of receiving all this encouragement as well. I’ve actually come to the point where I feel that any person who works seriously at their art could have this kind of experience if they apply themselves and give themselves a fighting chance to have it. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I believe that if you had what I’ve gotten in the last year, you would look at your work and your self differently and you would have a much better chance of developing your own work into the wonderful thing that it potentially is.

That is what I want to share with you all here. I hope you can hear me and take this to heart. I want you to have what I have begun to have; the feeling that I really have something to offer, something to say, and all of the ability I need in order to say it. And that, furthermore, there is an eager audience for my work and the possibility that for the first time in my 55 years, I might make my living doing what I have always wanted from the bottom of my heart to do.

I can not possibly tell you what that means to me. Or perhaps I can. I will at least try here in the weeks and months ahead, so that you may have the blessings that I am beginning to have.

A Little Adventure

 This is a little story about my last photo shoot. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think with comments and ratings, please…Too long and boring? Interesting? Engaging? Let me know.

Lake Michigan Photo Shoot

I decided to get up early in the morning and go down to Lake Michigan to see what the shore line looks like. I am picturing blocks of ice jostling near the shore, perhaps making nice shapes for pictures. Small blocks of ice, perhaps a foot or two across. I set my cell phone to wake me at 6:30. It’s a luxury of the winter that the sun doesn’t get up very early. The forecast is for very cold temperatures; perhaps ten degrees. The wind is up a bit too, so it might be pretty bitter. I lay out all the long underwear and fleece layers I have so that I won’t be too cold when I’m down there. Standing around taking pictures is not very active work and you need to make allowances. I don’t want to be cold or I’ll never be able to focus on the pictures. It’s still pretty early, but I was up early this morning so I fall asleep pretty easily.

I awaken to the light of my cell phone as it turns on. It starts beeping and I fumble to turn it off. I’m feeling pretty groggy and my commitment to go down and take pictures wavers for a moment, but I decide to get showered and dressed and get moving. After showering, I put on the long underwear and fleece shirt I’ve laid out. On top of that goes a medium weight fleece jacket and my jeans. The jeans aren’t ideal, but they’re all I have with me. On top of the fleece jacket I add a down jacket. I know from experience that the down will keep me from even thinking about the cold. I have only a pair of low hiking boots to wear. I should have brought my high boots, but we have less snow at home than they do here in Grand Haven. I didn’t realize I would need them. I put on my wool hat with ear flaps that was given to me by my in-laws from Kurghistan. It’s not heavy, but it’s remarkably warm and the ear flaps are great for the ears. I’m wearing a pair of thick fleece gloves that combine a mitten with fingerless glove. I With the mitten folded down over the fingers, the gloves are quite warm, but you can pull the end of the mitten back to reveal bare fingers when you need them.

Fully girded for my little expedition, I head out to the car. When I step outside, it’s not as cold as I expect. When you live in Michigan, you gain a highly developed sense of outdoor temperature. I can almost immediately sense the temperature to within five or ten degrees. Does the air bite the skin when it hits you? Do the hairs in your nose freeze when you breathe in? It doesn’t feel like that kind of biting cold to me, so I’m pleased. On top of that, there’s no wind, so it’s not bad at all outside.

I hop in my truck and head to Panera for coffee and a bagel. Okay, so I’m a latte drinking expeditioner. I don’t care how early I have to get up to do something, I want to have a cup of coffee and a something in my stomach before I go out. Other people might roll out of bed, stumble into their clothes and head out the door in five minutes. Not me. I want my shower and coffee and bagel. I don’t care if I have to get up an hour earlier. It’s worth it to me to be clear headed when I start shooting.

When I was up at Pictured Rocks this past fall, I had a couple of experiences that highlighted why I prefer this. On my first morning there, I woke up hours before dawn, fully awake. I got up early, had a hot breakfast and went down to the beach to shoot the moon in the dark. It was probably an hour and a half before sunrise. I wound up having a relaxed time and getting wonderful pictures as the day slowly lightened in the East. The next day, I must have been tired, and I awoke with a start at near sunrise. I dressed hurriedly and stumbled down to the beach to try to catch the sunrise. I felt awful, and almost none of the pictures I took that morning were any good at all. It was the same beach, similar sunrise, and nothing was worth a thing. Creativity is a delicate thing, and it doesn’t happen for me with a muddled head, when you’re half asleep and in a hurry.

I have my bagel and coffee at Panera and head down to the beach. The parking lot is barely passable, with about a foot of snow in the entrance. It’s not bad once you get into the lot itself, but the snow plows have nearly blocked the entrance. This beach gets a lot of lake effect snow, as does all of Grand Haven, and the wind blows unobstructed all the way from Wisconsin, so there’s a lot of drifted snow around.

I get out the camera, mount it on the tripod, sling on the backpack with the other lenses and filters and stuff and head for the beach. It’s still almost dark. There’s a hint of light from behind me where the sun is thinking about rising in a while, but it’s still early enough that I don’t need to hurry. The lights are still on on the pier. It’s always a striking sight, the string of brilliant white lights with the red light on the lighthouse on the end. It’s beautiful, but I’m not here to shoot the pier, I’m interested in the ice and the water.

Even from the parking lot, I can see that the beach is not what I expected. There are big mounds of what appear to be snow covered sand well out into the water. My first thought is that these are piles of sand that the city has dumped along the water line in their perennial battle to keep the sand from drifting across the road along the lake. Now that I’m closer, I can see that in fact, these are big blocks of ice. I start heading for the beach. There are snow fences lining the parking lot to keep the aforementioned sand at bay, so I walk around the end of the fence to get to the beach. The snow has drifted pretty heavily along here, and I am immediately post-holing in to the deep snow. I’m wishing I had brought my tall boots, but I figure I’ll be alright because I won’t be out too long and I can always head for the car if I get too wet or cold. I can feel the snow getting in around my ankles, but I’m wearing good wool socks, so it’s not too bad.

I make my way down to the beach. The snow thins out after a while and there’s bare sand down along what I know to be the edge of the beach. I stop for a moment to take a quick shot of the lights of the pier. It’s not what I’m after, but it’s pretty cool looking and I might as well record it. At the the edge of where the water normally begins, instead of the water gently jostling little blocks of ice, there are perhaps 75 feet of jumbled ice out into the lake. The far outer edge of the ice has big blocks of ice with a lot of sand stuck in the frozen ice from the action of the waves. It’s not a smooth outer edge to the ice, but rather a series of promontories with deep cuts in between. The cuts are as much as 30 feet back from the face of the farthest points. This looks pretty interesting visually, so I’m eager to work my way out there.

The ice at the edge of the beach looks absolutely solid. It’s not smooth ice, but more like a frozen slush with a mixture of frozen snow and little chunks of ice. It looks as if it must be frozen right down to the sand, with no sense that there’s any water underneath it. It’s not moving and looks completely solid. I test the idea a bit gingerly, but it feels rock solid. It’s pretty slick, but since it’s not smooth, I can walk on it with a little care, without crampons. But crampons would be completely appropriate here. After crossing this frozen slurpee of ice and snow, I step up onto what appear to be thicker blocks of ice. They also seem to be frozen right down to the lake bed and seem completely solid. I clamber over higher and lower blocks of ice, working my way out to the crenelated edge of the ice where those deep cuts are making very interesting shapes where they reveal the water in between walls of ice.

I make my way out to the root of one of the deep cuts and can see the waves coming in being funneled down these narrowing fjords and splashing against the ice at the end of the cut, sometimes spraying water out onto the surrounding ice. I set up the tripod and start framing the first shot. The irregular funnel shaped openings look really cool set off against the white of the ice and snow. There are nice irregular clouds all the way out to the horizon that look great also. I zoom in and out and frame the first shot and take the first exposure. It’s still nearly dark, so it’s a thirty second exposure just to get a fairly dark image. I’m surprised that the camera is able to focus in this little light, but it does.

Here, I’m standing right at the edge of the ice. The wide angle lens makes it look as if I’m farther back from the edge than I am.

I begin moving around to frame more shots. I want to get as close as I can to the end of the little fjord that I’m shooting. The snow and ice in the foreground and not helping my composition, so I need to get closer. I have to be a careful here, because water is splashing out of the end of these inlets as the waves get funneled into the narrow end near where I am standing. The waves are making a vaguely disquieting sort of a galumphing sound as they slosh around and splash up under the ice I’m standing on. The ice along these fjords is undercut from the action of the warmer water, and there are visible cracks several feet back from the edges of the fjords where the ice is clearly in danger of collapsing into the water. I gingerly creep up as near the edge of the ice as I dare. I set up and take another couple of exposures, experimenting with composition to get the right proportions of sky and ice. I find that the widest angle I can shoot is the best and I wish I had a wider lens even than the 17-40mm zoom I’m using. Still, the images look very promising in the viewfinder with the dramatic sky hanging over the water and the dark water cutting these interestingly shaped notches into the ice in the foreground.

I take several exposure, moving the tripod around a bit to get as close to the edge as possible. I’d like to be right at the pointed end of this particular inlet, but water keeps splashing out of the end of the fjord as the waves come in. I don’t want to get soaked, so I stay just off to one side. All of a sudden, a particularly large wave runs in down the inlet I’m shooting, slamming up into the undercut end of the inlet. I’m in the middle of another long exposure, but I’m shocked to see the wave punch a foot and a half diameter hole through the ice not three feet from where I’m standing. A big chunk of ice is thrown out of the hold and dropped on the ice next to the new opening. I hadn’t realized just how undercut the ends of these inlets really are. I carefully take my tripod and move back a few feet from the edge of the ice. At the moment, I don’t really processed just how incredibly dangerous this is. It will come to me later, as I’m looking at the pictures and it comes back to me again later that night as I am trying to fall asleep.

The hole and block of ice at front popped out while I was standing immediately to the right of the hole, near the end of the fjord. See the previous photo to appreciate my position.

Had I been standing maybe two feet to my left when that wave came in, I would have been dropped down through that hole into the icy water. The water is probably more than chest deep, possibly over my head. If it’s over my head, I’m done for. There is no possible way I could have climbed up out of the overhanging ice walls, which are perhaps four to six feet above the surface of the water. If I were even able to tread water with my heavy boots and saturated clothing, it wouldn’t have been for long. The constant wave action, even though it’s fairly calm out, would have dunked me repeatedly in the ice water. Waves were building up to three or four feet as they reached the narrow end of these inlets, which is where I would have been. Even if I had been able to stand on the bottom, it’s very doubtful that I could have found any purchase on the face of the ice without an ice axe and crampons. Note to self. Buy ice axe and crampons.

Even with an ice axe, no two ice axes and crampons, it would have been extremely difficult to pull my wet and frozen body up out of those overhanging ice walls. If the shock of the ice water didn’t kill me, it seems unlikely that I would have had the presence of mind to remain calm and work out a way to get myself out of there. I can imagine myself attempting to rescue my camera and tripod from the water before even thinking about saving myself. I have a strange confidence in my ability to remain calm in emergency situations. Years of high risk rock climbing have probably created that innate confidence, but I suspect it might have been seriously shaken once dropped over my head into seething ice water. I say that here, but the truth is, at some level I still believe I would have more or less calmly gone about the business of trying to get myself out of the water.

None of this thinking actually happens while I’m out there taking pictures. For the most part, I think “Huh, look at that! That water actually knocked a block of ice out of there and made a hole. Good thing I was standing over here.” That’s really about it. Mild surprise. I’m a little chastened, but not really scared. I never even think about what it would mean to fall in that water. I give the edges of the holes a little wider berth, but I go about my business, moving about the ice and looking for different compositions along the edges of these little ice fjords.

The entire shoreline is a series of these water carved inlets and each one is a different shape and gives me a different look in the viewfinder, so I move along the ice for a while, shooting different inlets. The light is coming up slowly, so now the exposure are a few seconds and moving toward a second or two. In several places, I shoot multiple exposures, trying to catch particularly large waves as they come in and splash spray into the air. The timing is a little challenging as I’m using a two second timer to help eliminate any shaking of the camera from my pressing the shutter button. I make several efforts at a few different places.

At one point, I’m moving between one inlet and another and I’m clambering over the uneven ice. I’m standing on what appear to be larger blocks of ice and I need to step down onto a lower surface, which is that same frozen slurpee looking stuff. It’s a couple of feet down so I have to take a big step down on one foot. It has not even occurred to me that this surface might not be stable. I’m well back from the outer edge of the ice and everything appears to be locked solidly in place. I take the step down. I land pretty hard on that one foot. It immediately punches through the frozen slurpee and into the water below. I feel my boot fill up with water instantly.

This is the hole my foot made in the ice. You can see the surface is not that thick.

I’ve fallen down on the ice, of course, my tripod and camera sprawling across the ice. I pull my foot up out of the hole I’ve made as quickly as possible and get myself up, collecting camera and tripod and looking for damage. My pant leg is wet well above the ankle. My boot is filled with ice water. At the moment, it does not really occur to me that I might easily have punched through the ice with my entire body as I crashed to the ice from up on that higher block. I look at the hole. It’s pretty neatly shaped exactly the size of my foot. The surface I’m standing on is apparently about six inches thick. It is a conglomerate of frozen snow and little chunks of ice. It’s not as uniform as a slurpee, but not too terribly different in consistency. Even as I stand and look into the hole, it does not occur to me that it really didn’t take too much force for me to punch through. All I did was step down off this higher block. It was a hard step down, but not that hard. I could easily drop through the ice anywhere just for standing there. I can’t see the bottom in the hole I’ve made. I don’t think it’s that deep. I’m probably thirty feet offshore, but I have the sense that the ice goes all the way to the bottom. Obviously it doesn’t. Nonetheless, I calmly walk off to examine the next fjord.

I shoot for another twenty minutes or so, moving around the ends of the fjords, composing photographs. I’m liking what I’m seeing. The sun has apparently now come up over the horizon, because there is a brilliant fuschia color to the clouds to the south down the beach. I try a couple of shots of this, but there’s really nothing to hold the composition together and I doubt that the shots will be of much interest. I’m monitoring my right foot to see if it’s freezing. The boot is still filled with water, but I’m wearing pretty good wool socks and I note that wool really does seem to insulate fairly well when wet. Really wet.

I take a last couple of exposures. The light is starting to get less interesting as the sun comes up and I’ve got what I wanted from here. My pant leg is starting to freeze into a big donut around my ankle, so I head for shore. I walk over the same kind of frozen slurpee concoction on my way back to shore without a second thought. I do stop to take a couple of pictures of the hole I made in the ice, just for kicks.

I make my way back to the beach proper. As I head in, I look up at the dark windows of some condos on the beach. It occurs to me that if anyone had been watching me from their bedroom window, they would have seen me step off of that block of ice and disappear, as if into the water. Anyone with any sense at all would have called 911 immediately.

One more shot from out at the edge of the ice. It has a truly eerie quality to it.

I cross the sand and wade back through the snow drifts to get to the car. My pants look pretty funny as they move rigidly up and down my leg with each footstep in the deep snow. I’m almost to the car now and I know that I’m in no danger of freezing my foot. It’s cold, but not numb. I’d probably be good for another half hour if I had to stay out.

Back at the car, I load the camera and tripod and backpack into the back of the truck and climb into the driver’s seat. I start the car, and turn up the heater. I’m flushed with the pleasure of having been outside and seen and done something that most people wouldn’t bother to do. I’m so glad that I got up this morning and resisted that moment of wavering in my commitment. This has really been worthwhile.

Lying in bed last night, after returning home, I think back over my little morning adventure. I’ve looked at the pictures a couple of times during the evening. It’s hard to tell if they’re really good enough. They look pretty cool, but I think they would have been better if I could have gotten a little closer to the edge of the water and filled the frame with more water and less ice in the foreground. Obviously, that would have been unwise at best, but I’m not sure the pictures are as good as I’d like. I’ll find out as I do my editing. There ought to be at least one decent shot in the bunch. It’s a scene I’ve never seen shot before. It’s alien and unfamiliar and pretty dramatic. It has that sense of mystery and vastness that I love in my photographs.

But lying in bed, a little of the fear comes up that should have occurred to me while I was out on the ice. I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my body. I’m hyper-ventilating a little bit. It’s subtle, but I can feel the rush of fear. The surging of the water, the eerie galumphing sound the waves made as they sloshed against the underside of the hollow ice, come back to me. I realize that my subconscious heard that sound and was alarmed. My conscious mind just heard the sound and noticed it. My subconscious knew it was a sign of danger. I’m a little afraid I’ll have nightmares tonight. Surging, greenish water, smooth ice walls well over my head.

I’m turning over scenarios in my mind. What if I couldn’t climb up the walls? Would I swim out of the fjord and along the face of the ice, looking for another way out. I think about whether I could make it to the pier and whether there might be a way out there. No way. It’s a quarter mile away and that would be hard enough in warm water. I probably wouldn’t make it out of the fjord I fell into. I would only have a couple of minutes before my muscles were too stiff and weak to do anything. My mind would get fuzzy and I would lose the ability to think rationally about what to do. I’d wind up a popsicle in a matter of minutes. I’d be frozen into the ice.

They would probably find me before I wound up spending the winter frozen out there. My Dad would get up in an hour or two and eventually wonder where I was. I told him I might go take pictures. My car is parked in the lot and would be easy to find. It’s bright yellow, after all. But I’d be long gone, that’s for sure.

I try to relax. I won’t be able to sleep if I keep turning these kinds of thoughts over in my head. I don’t want to have nightmares. It’s time to take a few deep breaths and turn off these thoughts.

The Cycle of Creating

After doing some very nice work over the last year around a single important theme for me, I am at a point where I need to take the next step and either deepen what I’ve been doing or start moving in a new direction that will be related but different from what I’ve been doing.

The theme I’ve been working on for the last year or so has been what I’ve taken to calling The Pastoral Landscape. I’ve done a self-published book by that title at Blurb.com. You can find it at http://www.blurb.com/user/store/chmiller. I love the landscape that I’ve been photographing. I love what the photographs are saying and I know they are speaking for and about me, which is my ultimate goal as an artist, to speak with my own voice.

But now, beginning to try to become a working artist, I need more and more new imagery to continue to strengthen and deepen the theme I’ve been working on. I will need new things for my existing and for new galleries and I have less time and focus on my photography because I’m focusing my time and energy on marketing and supplying work to galleries. My mind is not centered on the creative life like it was before I was doing this.

Apart from this dynamic, I think this cycle is a part of any creative life. You get a new idea. It speaks to you and you quickly and easily create a bunch of nice new work. But then you need to keep following this thread a while longer and now you’re self-conscious about what you’re doing. You’re stretching to try to do new things rather than being pulled along by new interest and curiosity. Then you need more work to take to your gallery. They want to see more of what you’re doing now, so you stretch harder and harder and now you’re not working from curiosity or from your heart at all any more and things slowly grind to a halt.

And that’s probably about where I am right now. I’m trying hard to keep developing the idea that has drawn me so naturally for some time now but I’m definitely getting self-conscious about it and I’m trying really hard but maybe not accomplishing much. So it’s time for something new to happen. And this is a difficult time for an artist. You don’t know what the new thing will be. You’re thinking hard about it but that’s probably not the solution. You probably need to just be doing what catches your eye and your attention. You’re really laboring and maybe getting fearful that you’ll never do such nice work again or that maybe you’re a fraud or a one-shot wonder. Now you’re really getting a little shook up. You’re spending all this time showing people beautiful work that you’ve done in the past and you’re not sure if you’re ever going to do work that good again.

So that’s kind of where I am right now. I’m not panicking or anything. I’ve been through this before and I’ll go through it again. It’s a little painful, like giving birth somehow, but it will pass and I’ll catch ahold of the next thing that speaks for me and I’ll be on my way again. But right now I don’t know what that will be.

I’ve been trying to continue with photographing the rural landscape just as I have been doing but I don’t seem to be seeing much that catches my eye. When I do see something that catches my eye, the photographs seem disappointing to me. They don’t seem to be as compelling as the scene was. There’s a big difference between something you love and something that makes a good photograph. It’s not just pictures of the rural landscape that I love. It’s pictures of a very particular kind of landscape, in a very particular mood, in a very particular kind of weather and time of year. As we head into spring, the tone of the rural landscape is changing from the moody brooding of winter, something that speaks to me somehow, into the bright, sunny days of early spring. It’s kind of weird to say but I’m not sure I am cut out for happy landscapes or happy images. I like the beautiful weather as much as the next person, but when I’m trying to speak from my soul, I guess that soul sees things as being harder, bleaker, starker.

This seems funny to me as I don’t see myself as a bleak or unhappy person. I enjoy life immensely. I’m a very enthusiastic person with lots of different interests and a lot of energy. But I love that landscape that suggests that the world is a big place and your place in it is small. Like this image:

But, as I said, right now the landscape is saying something different and I’m not finding it very interesting. And that means I need to find that new path, which means I need to get out with the camera and photograph what catches my eye, go new places, think in new ways. And that’s not as easy as it sounds!

Back after too long an absence

I haven’t written here in a long time and I feel badly about it. I’ve been immersed in the process of moving back to Michigan and working hard on marketing my photographs. That’s not really something I want to write a lot about here since this blog may be read by my potential customers but I will say that the experience thus far has been really fantastic. I’ve contacted a lot of galleries by email. I’ve visited several cities in Michigan and I’ve already acquired a couple of new galleries as well as a very strong response from my existing gallery. It’s all been very gratifying.

Since we work in a void, only having our own thoughts and perhaps those of our friends and spouses to rely on, we never really know whether other people “get” our work or how our work stacks up against others who are out there trying to make a living from their work. I have been very pleasantly surprised to find that my work has received a very strong and positive response. It has been better than any other work I’ve seen in the galleries I’ve visited and people have been eager to handle it.

I started just a few weeks ago feeling almost too nervous to walk into a gallery and extremely doubtful of the quality of my work. Not that I doubted it from my perspective–I just doubted whether it would be well received by the marketplace. With a few weeks of this under my belt, I no longer feel particularly nervous when walking into a gallery. I have had nice conversations with most of the people I’ve met. They’ve liked my work a lot and my confidence has grown by leaps and bounds as a result of that, making the next steps all that much easier.

If you have ever wanted to sell your work but have been too frightened to put your stuff together and put it out there then I would encourage you please to give it a try. The worst that could happen is that you find out that your work is not ready to compete with what’s out there already. That should give you motivation to get back to work, to sharpen your vision and deepen the quality of your work and go back again. But most likely, you will find that your work is comparable to what other people are showing and selling right now. And wouldn’t that be nice to know.

I’ve concluded that the main difference between an artist who’s successful and one who is uncertain and fearful, is the willingness and ability to market your work. Get out there and try it. It could open new worlds for you.

But enough on that subject. On to the next post, which goes more to artistic issues.

Artist’s Statement Continued

In the process of getting ready to market my photographs, I’ve finally put together an artist’s statement. I’ve written on the subject a couple of times here before but this time I just sat down and wrote the statement out pretty much right from my head and it sounded good to me. So here it is:

The Pastoral Landscape Series

The photographs in this book are born of my love for the landscape surrounding my home. It’s a landscape of rural farms and orchards, wide open spaces dotted with farm houses and buildings. These winter photographs were taken at the time of year when the bones of the world are revealed against the stark white of the snow. They are contemplative, often moody images, that invite the viewer to consider their place in a large and perhaps impersonal world.

Vast acres of harvested corn lie under snow, punctuated by patches of forest, buildings and fences. Carefully maintained orchards roll through the hills. Worn but well cared-for farm buildings contribute their simple, classic forms to this ordered landscape. They reflect the presence and works of men who remain unseen.

The photographs have a strong formal quality created by bold contrasts, simple forms and dramatic perspective. The deep spaces in these photographs are defined by receding rows of crops, orchards and fence lines. The varying atmospheres of fog and snow contribute to the sense of unending space.

Technical Notes Some images are panoramic in format and are constructed of several high-resolution images assembled together to allow large prints to be made with sharp detail. Others are shot with a selective focus lens that blurs portions of the frame while keeping others sharp. The blurring and distortion is a product only of the lens; it is not a Photoshop effect. 

 These photographs are made with high resolution, professional caliber 35 mm format lenses and cameras. They are reproduced on archival quality fiber based papers using pigment based inks. These methods allow these photographs to exceed the life of silver-based prints. Prints are sold in numbered editions signed in ink on the print and in pencil on the mat.

So there you go. It’s straight forward, largely descriptive, but with a hint of the mood I want people to get and just the barest suggestion as to what the viewer might think about. The “technical notes” give gallery owners the information they need in terms of how the images were produced and in what form they will be for sale. I think it strikes the right note for me. Nothing too high-minded but with a little poetry to it.

As always, your comments are welcome!

 

A Very Productive Photo Trip

As I said yesterday, I made a photo trip to Michigan last week. I travelled all over Southern Michigan looking largely for landscape photograph subjects. I traversed the back roads from Howell, my home town, to Grand Rapids and up to New Era, a town with gorgeous cherry orchards on rolling hills.

It was a hard working but very productive trip. I drove anywhere from four or five hours on up to 10 hours a day looking for the elusive subject that gets me excited. It’s a combination of scene and weather that makes it come together. I know it when I see it and I love the process. I become a human eye when I see something exciting. Nothing else is in my mind but the scene in front of me and how to approach it and frame it. Time stops for me. It’s a peak experience. This is what I love about photography. That and the beautiful images that can result.

So let me cut to the chase and show you some pictures from the trip:

Probably my favorite shots from this group on an emotional level, which is the level I want to be working on, is the blurred receding fence shot and the blurry shot with just the telephone pole and a hint of blurred woods in the distance. I just love the suggestiveness of the blur and the mystery and emptiness of these pictures.

You will see that there are just two pure landscape photos here. I have a couple more orchard shots that I like and another landscape shot but what I think I’m seeing is that the shots with more evidence of man’s work are more compelling. The landscape alone feels a bit empty.

But when you print these images out and look at them on paper, the strongest shots are probably the small red corn crib, the corn silos,  and maybe the big gray barn and then the big red barn in the wide shot in roughly that order. The color in the silos and corn crib just makes them jump out from their background. Of course a little very subtle enhancement in Photoshop helps with this.

The close shots of the white barn with black trim and the white clapboard building, which is a town hall building, leave me less sure. The white barn has the blurred effect caused by the selective focus lens and it creates an interesting quality, making the barn look like it’s a miniature and downplaying distracting elements like the silos in the background. The town hall is just a straight shot. I would have liked a little more room around both of these buildings but they’re crowded by other buildings and it was just not possible. Only time will tell if they stay in the portfolio.

The orchard shot is one of several beautiful pictures of a beautiful place. When printed big, the detail in the branches of the myriad trees is pretty nice. But they leave me a little cool at this point. Maybe it’s the lack of any buildings or structures, I don’t know, but I’m a little disappointed with them. Maybe when printed really big they’ll work. It was a beautiful scene. I drove a half hour in the dark to be there before dawn to get these shots. I was there early enough that I couldn’t see well enough to focus and the camera couldn’t see well enough either–so I had to wait a little for the dawn to arrive. The early morning light accounts for the soft quality of the light and the clouds in the distance were hanging over Lake Michigan. It was beautiful. We’ll see if the photographs live up to the scene.

This is the most enjoyable part of this entire process in a way. You go out maybe with a pre-conceived idea of what will work and then you take a lot of pictures, responding to what you see, and only later do you have any idea of whether the pictures really work or whether they say what you want. Sometimes it’s much later. What’s worse is that comments from people, especially gallery owners, can have an impact on how you feel about your work.

It’s been said that photographers are not the best judges of their own work. It’s probably been said by critics and gallery owners and photo editors. I don’t see how this can be. After all, they’re my photographs, I know what I mean for them to say. When they speak to me then they’re saying what I want and that’s all I need to know. Whether someone else thinks one or another image is not a good image then that’s fine. I’ll listen to what they have to say, maybe reconsider my feelings about the image, but if it speaks to me then that’s really all I need to know.

As to whether an image will sell, that’s something I have no idea about. I do suspect that some of the images I love will never sell well. I do have a pretty moody or mysterious view of the world and maybe people won’t want to bring that into their homes. But you never know until you put it in front of the public and see what they buy.

I would welcome your comments on any of these images, in particular any images that you especially like. Negative comments are okay too. I don’t think I’m so fragile that I can’t hear that a certain image does not interest you or turns you off. I’ll take your opinion under advisement.

Until next time…

New Photos Coming Soon!

I’ll be uploading the best of the many nice photographs I got this last week soon. Stay tuned! In the meantime, you can see them at www.chmfineart.com.