Hello Everyone!
I hope you are doing as well as you can be regarding these circumstances. I for one have not been having the best time like many of you! It has been incredibly difficult for me to motivate myself as an artist in any sort of way these days because I haven't been able to sleep, like at at all! But besides that, one of my family members has been very sick, and was receiving at home hospice care before covid made it more dangerous to do so. I was feeling very down, but then my mother unknowingly sparked my creativity again by sending me photographs of my grandmother (my sick family member) feeding geese outside her house. The sun illuminates her, and unknowingly to my mother who sent me the photos, they were in a perfect sequence. It honestly made me cry.
It was after these photos that I was able to drive up to Cleveland to see her and talk to her through a screen door. It was beautiful. After I talked with her in person for what might be the last time, I drove back to BG. The sun started to set, and I was taken aback by how beautiful it was. After the beginnings of an emotional drive, I began making photographs, and I think I made one of my best photographs ever (carry out store w light on in sunset).
I feel that this moment helped me understand something about my photography that I hadn't for the longest time. Photography for me must be somewhat immediate, quick and fast. I'm talking specifically about making the initial negative, not the printing or editing process. I have noticed that when I feel something emotionally, I can make photographs that represent those emotions through my lens.
This is why I often find myself running after the sun, chasing after shadow patterns and evenly lit sunsets. The light changes me, and forces me to think about my life while I make photographs that basically represent another day, moment, closed door.
I hope you can feel something like this in my photographs. For color photography, my approach was different than my approach for large format black and white photography. I mean, obviously it would make sense, but I am noting this because I think the way that I shoot color is what is meant for me. With color I am thinking more about emotive light, where as in black and white I was looking for dynamic landscapes that tell a story. I don't feel I am meant to tell stories like I was trying to with large format. I feel that I share moments and memories with my color photography because when chasing light, you cannot expect to find the same shadow painted with the same color of sunlight. I do feel that I could make photographs using my other process with interacting with a landscape, but right now I feel that this is the most applicable process for me.
It is really interesting to me though, because my background in film is the opposite of this process. I have to be extremely detailed and specific with lighting for film because of the drama, the movement, and the action. I spend way more time thinking about the lighting theory of a shot for cinema, but to be honest, sometimes it doesn't turn out to be interesting because there is no "in the moment" aspect of capturing something that will never be there again.
I do not feel that photography is magical because you can capture a moment that will never be recreated. I feel it is magical because the photographer gets to choose which moments are even worth freezing in time. Intimate documentation of immediate subjectivity. Does this matter, is this light trash or beautiful?
I hope that you can see both the immediacy and the hesitation in these photographs. I want them to feel like someone sprinted after the light, gathered their breath, and then carefully composed a photograph that represents a little bit of themselves.
My photography process really hasn't changed since the stay at home order was enacted. I shoot the same stuff, but right now I am just so emotionally drained that I cannot shoot new stuff as much as I want. I don't think my anxiety has been this bad in my life, so I have not really been able to make the photos I want. Sometimes I get something I really like. Here's to hopefully recovering from all this.
I hope you are doing as well as you can be regarding these circumstances. I for one have not been having the best time like many of you! It has been incredibly difficult for me to motivate myself as an artist in any sort of way these days because I haven't been able to sleep, like at at all! But besides that, one of my family members has been very sick, and was receiving at home hospice care before covid made it more dangerous to do so. I was feeling very down, but then my mother unknowingly sparked my creativity again by sending me photographs of my grandmother (my sick family member) feeding geese outside her house. The sun illuminates her, and unknowingly to my mother who sent me the photos, they were in a perfect sequence. It honestly made me cry.
It was after these photos that I was able to drive up to Cleveland to see her and talk to her through a screen door. It was beautiful. After I talked with her in person for what might be the last time, I drove back to BG. The sun started to set, and I was taken aback by how beautiful it was. After the beginnings of an emotional drive, I began making photographs, and I think I made one of my best photographs ever (carry out store w light on in sunset).
I feel that this moment helped me understand something about my photography that I hadn't for the longest time. Photography for me must be somewhat immediate, quick and fast. I'm talking specifically about making the initial negative, not the printing or editing process. I have noticed that when I feel something emotionally, I can make photographs that represent those emotions through my lens.
This is why I often find myself running after the sun, chasing after shadow patterns and evenly lit sunsets. The light changes me, and forces me to think about my life while I make photographs that basically represent another day, moment, closed door.
I hope you can feel something like this in my photographs. For color photography, my approach was different than my approach for large format black and white photography. I mean, obviously it would make sense, but I am noting this because I think the way that I shoot color is what is meant for me. With color I am thinking more about emotive light, where as in black and white I was looking for dynamic landscapes that tell a story. I don't feel I am meant to tell stories like I was trying to with large format. I feel that I share moments and memories with my color photography because when chasing light, you cannot expect to find the same shadow painted with the same color of sunlight. I do feel that I could make photographs using my other process with interacting with a landscape, but right now I feel that this is the most applicable process for me.
It is really interesting to me though, because my background in film is the opposite of this process. I have to be extremely detailed and specific with lighting for film because of the drama, the movement, and the action. I spend way more time thinking about the lighting theory of a shot for cinema, but to be honest, sometimes it doesn't turn out to be interesting because there is no "in the moment" aspect of capturing something that will never be there again.
I do not feel that photography is magical because you can capture a moment that will never be recreated. I feel it is magical because the photographer gets to choose which moments are even worth freezing in time. Intimate documentation of immediate subjectivity. Does this matter, is this light trash or beautiful?
I hope that you can see both the immediacy and the hesitation in these photographs. I want them to feel like someone sprinted after the light, gathered their breath, and then carefully composed a photograph that represents a little bit of themselves.
My photography process really hasn't changed since the stay at home order was enacted. I shoot the same stuff, but right now I am just so emotionally drained that I cannot shoot new stuff as much as I want. I don't think my anxiety has been this bad in my life, so I have not really been able to make the photos I want. Sometimes I get something I really like. Here's to hopefully recovering from all this.
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