picture window # 43 ~ window view

2 chairs and a window ~ Gideon Putnam Hotel - Saratoga Springs, NY • click to embiggenMy ongoing body of work, picture windows, is gaining enough of a critical mass of pictures for me to start showing it, portfolio-style, to galleries with the purpose of having an exhibition. Time to get printing.

picture windows # 41 ~ a Kodak moment

Making a picture ~ St. Peter's RC Church / Au Sale Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

picture windows # 40 / civilized ku # 1032-33 ~ basking in the glow, pt. II

Chair and window ~ Quakenbush Long View Wilderness Lodge / Long Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Porch ~ Quakenbush Long View Wilderness Lodge / Long Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Lawn and lake ~ Quakenbush Long View Wilderness Lodge / Long Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenA week ago last Saturday, there was some warm early evening light bathing the landscape in and around Long Lake.

picture windows # 39 ~ user (viewer) activation required

Gallery window ~ Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts - Blue Mt. Lake, NY • click to embiggenMy NYC trip included a visit to my favorite little art/photo bookstore where I purchased an interesting book titled simply Stephen Shore. It was not until I returned home that I noticed it signed by Shore which makes the $30.00USD price - marked down from the (unsigned) original price of $70.00USD - a veritable bargain.

The interesting thing about the book is the fact it is not a book of just pictures. While there are plenty of pictures, the book is organized around 4 distinctly different sections: 1) an interview (with some of Shore's pictures) with Shore by art historian Michael Fried; 2) an extended 70-page essay (with lots of Shore's pictures) by critic Chrisy Lange which chronicles Shore's artistic development; 3) an in-depth analysis of just one of Shore's pictures - Holden Street, Massachusetts (July 13, 1974), by photographer Joel Sternfeld; and, 4) a section titled Artist's Choice which showcases - all selected by Shore - a few of his pictures, some of his writings and text extracts and pictures by others whom he admires.

There is a particularly interesting bit in the interview section wherein Shore and Fried talk about the idea of activating the space in a photograph. Specifically, how Shore activates the space in his pictures and, consequently, how he gets the viewer to active the space upon the viewing thereof. In response to Fried's comments regarding the visual sensations associated with moving one's attention in a picture from foreground to middle ground, middle-ground to distant-ground, and distant-ground to "infinity" (inasmuch as "infinity" is represented in any given picture), Shore responded:

One of the things I did at the time ... was stand next to the camera on its tripod and simply look. After I had gotten a rough idea of what I was photographing I would look at what was in front of me and literally pay attention to as much as I could as far back into space as I could see ... it was like a check list. Okay, I have done all this, I have got the rough framework of the picture and now I am going to stand here and really look at everything. The metaphor I have in mind is that in a certain way I am clearing the space for the viewer. That by moving my attention through the scene and making the necessary adjustments to the picture, I clear the space for the viewer to move his or her attention through.

In discussing the picture making medium here on The Landscapist, repeated reference has been made to what I label as visual energy - a visual phenomenon I associate with the repeated movement of the eyes around the surface of a picture - not necessarily in any directed order - almost as if you can't stop the movement because the picture does not give any obvious and comfortable place to come to rest. Your eyes, and consequently your intellect and emotions, seem to just keep on dancing.

To my eye and sensibilities, pictures which activate the space thereof in a restive/restless manner rather than a restful one - an activation which ignores the picture making adage of simplify, simplify, simplify - is one of the primary characteristics which distinguish fine art pictures from merely decorative pictures.

To my eye and sensibilities, those restive/restless pictures are by far the most interesting and engaging pictures. They are most often challenging to look at and visually appreciate and very often equally challenging to "understand". They require a great deal of visual, intellectual, and emotional engagement on the part of the viewer but, most often, bestow great reward in return for the effort expended.

In my picture making, I strive to make pictures in which I try to activate the space in a manner similar to (but not exactly the same) that of Stephen Shore. My desire is to make pictures which give the viewer ample opportunity (via the cleared space) to activate the space of those pictures in whatever manner they see fit. Whatever that manner may be, my hope is that the visual energy visible therein will be engaging and, ultimately, intellectually and emotional rewarding for the viewer.

All of that said, in a review of the book in Publishers Weekly - the book was published in 2007 - regarding the Artists Choice section of the book, a reviewer stated the section contains:

.... a paragraph about Chinese poets, who accept the world exactly as they find it in all its terms, and with profound simplicity therein find sufficient solace. It's a shame that Shore's section isn't longer, as that line perhaps explains his exceptional body of work more completely than any of the learned musings that precede it.

Ultimately, reading through this book, that is the same conclusion I came to - while the "learned musings" contained in the book are, without a doubt, interesting, what I admire and appreciate most about Shore's pictures is, and always has been, the remarkable solace I experience when viewing Shore's pictures of the world exactly as he finds it.

picture windows # 60 ~ it was sunny day

Spring in South Jersey • click to embiggen

picture windows # 59 ~ on seeing

-20˚F outside ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn addition to the fact that I am always looking for "picture windows" in order to add to my picture windows series (and a host of other factors), I made a picture of this window because my eye was "pricked" by the complimentary colors in the outside view with those on the interior view.

FYI, 3 exposures blended manually.

Update on Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 08:57AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment:
John Linn asked: "I assume you shot on a tripod, brought the images into PS as layers and selectively erased non-ideal exposures?"

my response: Yes, I used a tripod - fyi, I needed a 5 stop difference in exposures in order to cover the brightness range.

I did not bring the entire images into PS layers. Instead, after establishing a base layer (aka - background layer) that was the best exposure of the interior scene, I selected areas of the bracketed exposures that were the best exposures of: 1) the exterior scene, and, 2) parts of the window frame and dragged those selections (holding down the shift key for precise registration) into the interior scene file.

After that, it was a bit of erasing (although layer masking could be used) the exterior / window frame layers in order to create a realistic blend of all the exposures.

picture windows # 58 ~ on seeing

View from window ~ Montreal, CA • click to embiggenPaul Bradforth wrote on civilized ku # 762 : "I don't really feel I need to be advised to shy away from 'pretty pictures' though; I don't see anything wrong with pretty pictures, and I think it rather disingenuous to argue that anyone who likes them needs 'educating'

my response: Paul, I sincerely hope that the "clarification" in civilized ku # 762 helps dissuade you from the belief that, if "pretty pictures" are what you or anyone within the sound of my keyboard clattering aspires to making or appreciating, that I think that what they need 'educated'.

However, there are those who aspire to making pictures which "move beyond the pretty picture". That is to say, pictures that illustrate and illuminate. Pictures that have both the referent and the connoted. Pictures that, in the words of Roland Barthes - in his book, Camera Lucida - contain both the studium and the punctum.

It is for those who are interested in that aspiration that most of my writing(s) about the medium and its possibilities is aimed. It is within that context that I advise again being seduced by the "dark-side" - the slavish desire to take the easy road of making pretty pictures.

And, let me be perfectly clear about pretty pictures - pretty pictures are distinctly different from pictures that depict beauty or pictures that are beautiful (suggested reading: Beauty in Photography by Robert Adams). Pretty pictures are concerned mainly with the surface of things whereas, IMO, pictures that depict beauty engage the thoughtful viewer with what has been called the inner life of things, the 'life' that is beneath the surface of things ....

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock ... The camera should be used for a recording of life,for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh. ~ Edward Weston

FYI, if you are not familiar with Roland's writings, studium is defined by Barthes as the element that creates interest in a photographic image. Punctum is defined by Barthes as the element in a photograph that pricks or "wounds" the viewer - the misbehaving detail that challenges the photograph's dry facility and is something which reaches out and grabs you by the shirt tail.

Now, perhaps those ideas and notions are just too much "education" for the average picture maker. If so, that's fine by me. To each his/her own and all that.

On the other hand, understanding, appreciating, and educating oneself to those ideas and notions is, IMO, paramount to the understanding and making of good / interesting pictures - pictures that move beyond mere visual entertainment and that contain, at the very least, the possibility of connecting the viewer to a more complex, nuanced, and illuminated meaning(s) than is found in the typical pretty picture.

And FYI, in addition to the aforementioned, my issue with pretty pictures is not so much with the pictures themselves - although, I do indeed find most but not all of them to be rather boring and repetitive. My issue is with the near total and somewhat slavish addiction to them that is, more often than not, exhibited by the viewing public and with those who feed them with a constant diet of the same.

civilized ku # 727 ~ Autumn color # 47

Corner windows ~ Wanakena, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenI'm tempted to include this picture in my picture window series but it doesn't really conform to the specific criteria of the formal qualities of that body of work.