The 2012 Joshua Tree Fine Art Festival is coming up next weekend.  The dates are Friday, April 6 to Sunday, April 8.  I’m excited to be returning and catching up with old friends.  This is the first art festival I ever did and so returning is like a homecoming.  The festival is at the Oasis Visitor Center in Twentynine Palms, CA.  The hours are 9:00 to 5:00.  Come on out and see some great art.

I’ll be showing some old favorites along with some new photographs I’m very excited about.  As far as the old favorites go I’m planning on showing Virgin River and the Watchman from Zion National Park.

This has proved to be my most popular photograph and has won awards.  It was captured on Thanksgiving day back in 2008.  I was in Zion with my wife and daughter for the Thanksgiving weekend.  I slipped out for this sunset and caught a beauty.  Beginners luck!  I’ve returned many times but never with light this good.  (By the way, to get a better view of the photographs you can enlarge them by clicking on them.)

To go along with the Watchman is another photograph taken that same weekend along the Riverside Walk to the Gateway to the Narrows.  When my family is with me we always do this walk.  It’s our favorite – for obvious reasons.

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In the previous post in this series I presented the idea that calendar art is a worthy first goal for serious photographers.  (Read Taking Your Photography to the Next Level.)  And aside from the fact that the subject matter of calendar art may be fairly run of the mill, the technical and aesthetic qualities are generally excellent.

In that post I ended with this thought:

Calendar art is about the subject of the photograph.  The photographer is transparent.  In fine art photography the influence of the artist becomes more apparent.

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If you sell fine art photography you hear this a lot, “I don’t need to buy your photographs.  I’ll go there myself and take my own pictures.”

Sure, why not?  We all have digital cameras these days that do a great job of producing really fine pictures – some of the time.  I would never argue with a person with this attitude but even if you’re a great photographer there are good reasons for purchasing other photographer’s works.

I don’t think anyone would argue that it would be a wonder to own an Edward Weston original platinum print.  But let’s look at some factors that are more down to earth.

Let’s start with capturing the best light.  A landscape photograph is nothing without great light.  Usually that’s early in the morning or late in the afternoon although good light can occur any time of day.  Is our intrepid photographer going to be on site a half hour or more before sunrise?  I know from lots of personal experience that you pretty much have a location to yourself before sunrise.  It’s funny to see people just starting to show up, cameras and tripods in hand, after we’ve shot through the best light and now that it’s gone we’re ready for breakfast.

How about subject selection and composition?  We all have our own personal ways of seeing and interacting with the world around us.  How we choose to select a subject, isolate it and place it along with other components into a composition is a very individual process.  The end result says as much about the photographer as it does about the subject, maybe more.  So each work is a unique expression of an individual with his or her own very personal viewpoint.  You see this very clearly at workshops when the participants gather around to share their work.  The diversity is enlightening.

Then we come to post processing.  This is where the photographer’s personality comes forth even more strongly and loudly.  There are many decisions that come between uploading the RAW file and producing the final print.  I’m plagued with false starts in which I have to go back to the RAW file and begin again from square one.  There is a large variation in the techniques different photographers will apply in post processing and hence a large variation in the results.

So, why would a photographer want to by other photographers’ works?  Because there is so much to learn from the photographers you admire and one good way to learn it is to have their works around you every day.