{"id":85,"date":"2008-02-22T22:12:36","date_gmt":"2008-02-23T06:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/22\/journey-to-a-fine-art-photograph-continued\/"},"modified":"2008-02-22T22:12:36","modified_gmt":"2008-02-23T06:12:36","slug":"journey-to-a-fine-art-photograph-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/22\/journey-to-a-fine-art-photograph-continued\/","title":{"rendered":"Journey to a Fine Art Photograph Continued"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first post (http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/18\/journey-to-a-fine-art-photograph\/<\/a>)\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0talked about the importance of the first step you take with your image, the opening move if you will.\u00a0 I don’t know if this ever happens to you but it happens to me all the time – I work on an image for several evenings only to end up in a box canyon, a dead end.\u00a0 It’s not going anywhere.\u00a0 And so very often I think, “Wow, I started it all wrong.\u00a0 I did X but if I had done Y I would have avoided this problem.”\u00a0 It’s too bad but sometimes the weaker opening move isn’t manifested until you have quite a few hours invested in the image.\u00a0 But the only thing to do, if you still believe in the image, is to start all over again.\u00a0 Maybe you do so right away or maybe you set it aside for some weeks or months and just let it ferment in\u00a0 your mind.<\/p>\n

That leads to another ‘Ah Ha’.\u00a0 Do you ever sit staring at an image and ask yourself, “What do I do next?”\u00a0 Like I said before, I’m of the school that discovers the emotional content of an image as I work with it, not necessarily in the field when I’m shooting it.\u00a0 “Discover” is the key word here.\u00a0 Here’s the way it seems to me –\u00a0it feels like walking across a meadow in a thick fog.\u00a0 Sure, you can see one or two steps ahead but you can’t see the other side of the meadow until you get really close.<\/p>\n

Each step you take is based on the one or two most obvious things you see when you look at the image.\u00a0 Perhaps the first thing you notice is the need to address contrast.\u00a0 You choose a tool to deal with it, say curves.\u00a0 Once that’s corrected you see another thing, say color.\u00a0 Maybe you choose selective color for that.\u00a0 Next you see something else, perhaps a highlight that’s distracting from the overall composition.\u00a0 You choose a tool to correct that, say dodge and burn.\u00a0 And on\u00a0you go, step by step, dealing each time with the most obvious correction that is calling out to you.<\/p>\n

It’s in this process of picking our way across the creative meadow, through the fog, step by step that our personal style emerges.\u00a0 Because, two artists looking at the same image on identical monitors will respond differently.\u00a0 They may very well see different things calling out for attention.\u00a0 And even if they see the same thing, the tools they choose to address them may be different.\u00a0 And even if the tools are the same, the way in which they apply the tools will most surely be different.\u00a0 And that’s just one step in the journey.\u00a0 There are many, many\u00a0more to go.\u00a0 It’s fun listening to people who criticize us when we stand shoulder to shoulder with other photographers, cameras all pointed in the same direction, clicking away like mad.\u00a0 They laugh about the individuality of artistic expression.\u00a0 But of the two dozen or so photographers I shared the bridge with over the Virgin River shooting the Watchman in Zion this past Thanksgiving, I’ll lay odds that not a one of them has a photograph that looks anything like mine.\u00a0 Not a one of them took the same path across the foggy meadow that I did.<\/p>\n

The foggy meadow analogy also works to understand the importance of the first step you take with the image.\u00a0 If it’s\u00a0to the left, the right or straight ahead, you’ll end up in a different place on the other side.\u00a0 You may end up in a place that you find inspiring or you may not.<\/p>\n

The journey across the meadow\u00a0can also be\u00a0a journey of self discovery.\u00a0 As you progress, the image takes on more meaning.\u00a0 And as it does, you perhaps relate to the emerging meaning in ways that are new for you, ways that give you an insight into yourself, a deeper understanding of your inner self.\u00a0 This in turn can lead toward exploring the image in yet different ways which can reveal new layers of meaning.\u00a0 In this way, you and the image leap frog across the foggy meadow in a journey of understanding and self-actualization.<\/p>\n

So, that a marvelous, miraculous and mysterious journey this is, from the field to the digital darkroom to eventually an expressive image hanging on the wall that carries so much of you, just as you carry the image and the journey that led you to it.<\/p>\n

(411)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first post (http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/18\/journey-to-a-fine-art-photograph\/)\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0talked about the importance of the first step you take with your image, the opening move if you will.\u00a0 I don’t know if this ever happens to you but it happens to me all the time – I work on an image for several evenings only to end up in a … Continue reading “Journey to a Fine Art Photograph Continued”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-photographer-as-artist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-1n","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}