Remote No More

Last August, I wrote a blog about how you can get out into Southwestern Virginia and be by yourself. Usually, when I ride the backroads and hike the trails in Grayson and Carroll Counties, I rarely see anyone. I can go for hours without seeing another person. I’m used to the solitude and I spend that time with nature and creating art.

Because of recent events, however, I don’t have the wilderness to myself. It was jarring the past weekend to arrive at one of my fortresses of solitude and see that it had been taken over. These people were reacting to the pandemic by getting back to the country. I don’t know if it was because they had cabin fever, no money to spend on their usual pursuits, or both. Whatever the reason, there were dozens of people where I would usually see none.

I’m not complaining! I think it’s great that people are rediscovering the outdoors. Maybe it will incline them to take better care of our planet.

Making the Visible Visible

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes it visible.” ~ Norman Jean Harris

We drive along the roads blinded to the beauty that surrounds us. Whether we live in the mountains or the flatlands, there are innumerable scenes of beauty right before us, but we fail to see them. My job as an artist is to expose that beauty. I make the visible visible to you.

In July 2018, I wrote a blog post called “Look Again!” I started it with a quote from photographer Diane Arbus, “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” I concluded the post with, “My work exposes a view not otherwise seen.” Two years later, I embrace that thought even more than ever.

The Power of Art

When you’re a little kid and you love drawing and you spend time at it and it’s like play… But another little kid sees your drawing and says that’s terrible... And you look at your work and look at other little kids’ work and you say My God he’s right... And your parents don’t want you to spend time with art and they discourage you from doing it... And you sing a song and someone laughs at you because you didn’t come from a musical family and your singing isn’t quite on pitch... And your parents push you to study and to spend time only with “serious” subjects... And you turn 17 and take up photography and your parents are ok with it because they don’t think of it as art... So you start producing art with your camera... But you get a safe degree and a safe job... And you turn 28 and realize you have music inside you and you learn to play an instrument... And you move into your 50s and 60s and remember how much fun drawing and painting were when you were a kid and so you draw and paint again even though you don’t have the dexterity you once did... And you spend as much with your art - photography, music, drawing, and painting - as you do with your day job... That’s the power of art.

Quote

“Art doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t even need to be good.” ~ Jerry Saltz

I’ll just leave that right there…

#Every84

168 hours in a week (24 hours in a day x 7 days in a week). Twice a week is every 84. #Every84

My newest photo project is #Every84 - I will upload a photo every 84 hours (give or take). Many of these will be experimental photos. They will be slices of life. They will be random. Many may be mundane.

It’s a way of me expanding my photographic reach and vision. I hope by requiring myself to create on a regular schedule, it will inspire my creativity.

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working” - Pablo Picasso

My First Attempts at Video

How does a photographer become a videographer? From my experience it’s in fits and starts.

I’ve enjoyed being a photographer for over 40 years. I still find it rewarding and challenging. I have had ideas about videos I would like to produce, however, and I have done a few of those over the last few years. A couple of years ago, I decided to try to learn Adobe’s Premier Pro video production software. Let me tell you, it is very hard to learn. This summer, I decided to really push to learn it, and I have made a few videos.

My most recent one is a video slideshow of my photography set to the soundtrack of music by a friend - Jeff Whittington. It looks fairly polished, but like many things that seem to have taken little effort, it required a lot of effort.

Here are issues I ran into in the production:
1. What should be the theme of the video? My photography ranges from portraiture to abstract, from landscape to macro. I knew that I wanted to feature my hometown of Fries, VA in the video. I came to the conclusion that a slideshow of the four seasons through a year would help me narrow down the project.

2. How long do you allow the video to run, and what should be the duration of the individual stills? Those two questions are linked to each other. The video should not run too long or people will not finish watching it. Too short, and you have lost the opportunity to share your work. Also, the length of the stills shouldn’t be too long, or the audience will quickly lose interest. Too short, and they may not have enough time to process the images.

I had to decide whether to show the photos static or to have constant movement during the video. That is, would I have an image come up and then introduce movement such as panning or zooming once the image was up? I chose to keep the images still, believing that movement would make the video too busy.

2. What music should accompany the video? First of all, if you are going to share the video with the public, you have to use material that is not protected by copyright, or you would have to get permission to use it. There are sites where you can get open-source music, but you have to dig through and find music that is appropriate for the video. It’s difficult and time-consuming to find appropriate music on these sites.

I approached Jeff Whittington about using his music for the video. Jeff is a North Carolina musician, but he spends much time in Fries. He loves the area and believes that art projects like these generate interest in the area. He gave me digital copies of a number of his tunes. They choice was hard, but I determined that “Greensleeves” would be the perfect song for the video.

So Many Dam Pictures!

If you take a picture of a scene, you have taken the picture. Right? Is there a need to take another pic of the scene or object? The answer to the question is, it is surprising how many different photographs there are of a scene or other subject when taken at different times or by different photographers. There are an infinite number of photographs available.

Look at the photographs of the Fries dam in the gallery below. All of these pictures were made at roughly the same spot over a number of months. They were all made by me and with the same equipment. My point is to illustrate how different seasons and different times of day result in very different photographs.

It is a common misconception that a photograph is a photograph. Many factors go into the production of the photograph: The vision of the artist (the photographer), the focal length of the lens, the lighting conditions present when the photo is made, the vision of the artist, the aperture of the lens, the atmospheric conditions present, the vision of the artist, the camera position, the shutter speed used, the type of medium used to record the photo (different types of electronic sensors, varying films), the vision of the artist, post-production decisions. I could go on and on, but please note that I emphasized the vision of the artist. The artist is the one who puts all of these factors together and produces the photograph.

This album is on my Facebook page and I plan to update it frequently with pictures of the Fries dam so that you can see how wildly different photos of one dam subject can be.

Remote

In a recent photography podcast I listened to, a landscape photographer said she charges $4,000 per person to take people out into the wilderness where they go for days without seeing another photographer.

Folks, I can tell you that you don’t have to spend that kind of money to be isolated. Get out onto the backroads of Southwestern Virginia. When I go on my photo journeys on the weekend, I go for hours without seeing anyone, much less a photographer. It amazes me how little traveled are the backroads of Virginia. The hiking trails are even less used.

Yes, there are spots that are fairly heavily used - I’m thinking Grayson Highlands Park and the Virginia Creeper Trail. You can find very remote spots with hardly any traffic without having to go to those areas, though.