LW1491 - More Thoughts on Project as Wall Art

In the Editors Comments in LensWork #173, I discussed a presentation experiment that allowed me to exhibit a multi-image project on the wall using poster hangers. I just changed the presentation to a different project and that has me thinking about a few things I'm observed since the initial installation. I've been observing people's reaction to this type of presentation and discovered a couple of interesting and unexpected things about how people approach a wall full of art.

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You might also be interested in. . .

Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com.

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"How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

These days, amongst my peers anyway, there's no question that the most frequent topics of discussion have to do with aging. Time, mobility, eyesight issues, dispersal of our life's output, downsizing from a life of acquisition. There's a lot to think about as we creep closer and closer to taking up our permanent residence in the ink maintenance tank — or as Ansel Adams used to put it, "the final wash."

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Here's a creative challenge that can be a lot of fun. Let's assume that every image in your Lightroom catalog was captured because you, at the time, thought it would make great photograph. That implies that you could choose any capture at random from your catalog and make a good image from it. Can you? Pick an image at random and push yourself to turn it into something interesting with aggressive or perhaps unusual processing. The goal is not to create interesting artwork, but to observe what happens within you as you work with the compromise between impulse and possibility.

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What do you do if, after cropping an image, it no longer fits the aspect ratio of all the other images in your presentation? Do you let that image just be different than all the others or do you re-crop it within the aspect ratio to preserve consistency? There is a third option I've never considered, but it's recently come to my attention and I'm not sure how I feel about it. That third technique is to stretch the pixels to fit the frame, also known as non-proportional cropping.

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Here's an idea that's been floating around photographic circles for the last 25 years or so. What if we were to publish our finished digital files in a way that allowed consumers to print our work on their own printers, with or without a purchase agreement to do so? What would we lose by allowing them to do so? What would we gain by allowing them to do so? I find this a scary idea, but I'm not sure why I feel that way other than the habitual assumption about intellectual property and copyrights/commerce.

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My first digital captures were made with an 6 megapixel camera that had a tiny sensor. They were primitive, noisy even at its base ISO, and fell far short of what I could produce with my film camera. Nonetheless, I kept those image files just in case future software improvements might make them useable. I was right to do so.

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The history of photography is filled with people who didn't make the best but who did make it first. Matthew Brady wasn't the best war photographer in history but he was the first. William Henry Jackson is not the best landscape photographer ever, but he was one of the first. Other examples abound. This implies a not so subtle premise that is easy to be seduced by in our creative efforts — be first or be forgotten.

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I don't understand the fuss and value that is place on original prints in photography. In fact, it seems perfectly obvious to me that an early print would be the result of less reliable instant aesthetic decisions. There is not a single example I can recall from my 50 years in photography where a later print wasn't better than an earlier one. I know more about how to print the negative or process the digital file; my artistic sensitivities have matured with age and experience. Of course my later print are better and therefore should be more desired by collectors.

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