In a recent podcast episode, Brooks Jensen brought up an interesting point about our craft being heavily dependent on tools, technologies and, consequently, those who provide them. I did some of my best writing as a soldier, with just a small notepad and pencil in my pocket. I never worried about paper and writing instruments not being available to me or becoming too expensive or rare, or their manufacturers being difficult to work with. In photography, however, this is a very real issue. We often have to put up with sketchy business practices, lacking customer service, and other maladies of the age of corporations.

We are all too quick to criticize and vent when encountering the ugly side of corporate culture, but I think it’s also important to praise those who do offer good and useful services, who don’t cut corners to save a penny, and who are driven by a love for what they do as well as the bottom line. Every so often, I  want to offer a few good words to those who deserve it. I do so with caution as I do not wish to make commercial content a part of this blog. So, no affiliate links and no marketing hype here. Just paying it forward.

With that out of the way, here are a few good experiences I had recently:

I want to thank Jerry Dodrill and Minsdshift Gear. Admittedly, I pretty much gave up on dedicated camera packs in recent years. Most are designed to maximize camera gear capacity at the expense of space for other essential gear, and are usually not designed to be carried comfortably on long hikes. I normally carry my camera in a padded case inserted into a comfortable backpack designed for long hikes. At the last Moab Photo Symposium I got a chance to see Jerry demonstrate the new MindShift Rotation pack and thought to myself that it was the first real innovation I have seen in this space in a while. Later I got a chance to look at the pack more closely and was impressed to find that it offered plenty of space for general gear, hydration bladder compatibility, ice axe loops, hip belt pockets and many other little features normally found on high-end hiking packs. Jerry was kind enough to offer me one of the early production models to test. I used it on several hikes since and I like it very much. This is clearly a pack designed by and for outdoor photographers who understand the needs of working on the trail.

I also very much enjoyed working with the good folks at BorrowLenses.com. I found myself in need of a specific lens for my trip last week. It is a lens I am not likely to use much on an ongoing basis, but I did want to use it for a specific purpose. It was wonderful to communicate with real and friendly people. Everything worked without a hitch. The lens arrived on time in a padded container with all the paperwork for painless return shipping. It was easy and straightforward and reasonably priced, and I will not hesitate to use their services again in the future.

Lastly, I recommend Rob Sheppard’s new eBook: Reports from the Wild. I worked with Rob before when he was editor of Outdoor Photographer Magazine. I finally had a chance to meet him in person last year in Sedona and I was in for a surprise. Working with people in their professional capacity sometimes makes it difficult to get a true sense of their personality. It was a pleasure to find in Rob a very gentle and sweet person and I very much enjoyed our conversation over dinner. Rob’s love for photography and for the places he describes in the book is palpable. He writes about natural things as though he was talking about his home, family and close friends. As an eBook publisher, it was also interesting to me to see his excellent use of the unique features of the medium. It’s the kind of book that makes me want to go out and commune with my own places and tell their stories as Rob did with his.

Rather than “Photographer,” I often introduce myself as a “Photographic Artist.” The main reason having little to do with either photography or art, but with the fact that most people have no preconceived notion of what a photographic artist is, and I get to explain. Yes, I use photographic tools, and yes, I approach my work with the mindset of an artist. But, a distinction often missed is how such an approach manifests in the end result: the image. In particular, what makes an image expressive of the mind of the photographer, rather than a trophy for their technical skill or the aesthetic qualities of the subject. In my mind, expressive images are distinct in that they are not pictures of things; they are pictures about things.

Expressive images transcend subject, location, light and technique. These are all important, but secondary to the goal of sharing something of the artist’s own unique mind. As Minor White put it: “One should photograph objects, not only for what they are, but for what else they are.” And that else is never inherent in the subject, it has to come from the creative mind and unique sensibilities of the person behind the camera; it’s what gives an image that elusive quality: aboutness.

Aboutness is what I struggle to express when working in places I am not familiar with; when working from the perspective of an outsider; when in a hurry or burdened by distractions. And yet, without it, it is unlikely that I’ll be satisfied with the result, no matter how beautiful, colorful, detailed or well composed.

After many years of practice, I find that I’ve become more and more specialized and less of a generalist. Indeed, I have become a firm believer in the value of self-imposed limitations. The more demanding I am of myself, the less likely I am to make images, and yet the greater is my satisfaction with the images I do make. Aesthetics alone no longer satisfy.

What may not be obvious is that such strict limitations also serve to liberate and enhance my experience as a person. When no meaningful image can be made, I am free to revel in feats of light and natural beauty for sheer joy, unencumbered by the camera. In the last few years I watched countless breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, spectacular vistas and abundant beauty, without photographing any of them. I learned to enjoy things for what they are, separating the rewards of witnessing beautiful things from the joy of creating beautiful things of my own, so I can enjoy both in different ways. When a meaningful image presents itself, I am ready for it. It takes more effort and discipline, it makes me less prolific, but when all the pieces fall into place it is a feeling like no other.

“Creativity… requires limits, for the creative act rises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.” –Rollo May

A few myths need to be dispelled: using the Cloud does not require one to have a live Internet connection to Adobe. The applications are still installed locally, but need to verify a valid license once a month or so to continue working. Also, there is no requirement to store files on the Cloud, so they can remain on a local drive.

Michael Reichmann at the Luminous Landscape posted an excellent summary of the new Creative Cloud, that I don’t need to repeat, however a few points are worth mentioning: once upgrading to the Creative Cloud, there is no going back to standalone (perpetually licensed) versions. This means that, whatever your thoughts are on current licensing and promotional costs, once you make the commitment, Adobe is free to change its costs and terms later, which you will have to pay to continue using the software.

Like Michael Reichmann, I also plan to take a wait-and-see approach. Photoshop CS6 meets my needs for the foreseeable future; all my cameras are supported by the current versions of Camera RAW (and even if not, Lightroom will remain a perpetually-licensable product). I did not see anything in the new Photoshop CC that I consider a “must have”. So, for the time being, I don’t have to make a decision.

A better question is what Adobe will do regarding the many single-application users who are clearly unhappy with the new model. Obviously, going back to perpetual licensing will be nice, though the sense I have is that Adobe has too much invested in the new order and, with no obvious competition, doesn’t have much incentive to go back. Alternatively, I hope that Adobe will offer more reasonable pricing for Photoshop-only users. If the monthly cost was closer to $10-15, and rates could be pre-paid for a couple of years to allay fears of steep price hikes, I think that most of us will have no problem paying it, and Adobe likely will even pick up a significant number of new customers who balked at Photoshop’s licensing price in the past, making up for any potential lost revenue. I hope someone at Adobe is listening.

These past few weeks I spent most of my time in Moab, leading four workshops in succession and presenting at the Moab Photo Symposium. There’s a rhythm to these events – running at full capacity for the duration, followed almost instantly by a sweet, euphoric and overwhelming fatigue when again left to my own devices. This was my second year at this symposium and both times the experience far exceeded what one might expect from a photo-centric event. Without exception, all presenters steered clear of gear and technique and spoke, instead, of applying photography in more noble contexts – from conservation to humanitarian causes; all telling stories rendered in poignant hard-hitting images and stories, as beautiful as they are troubling.

One workshop participant noticed the license plate on my car, surrounded by Henry David Thoreau’s words: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” He misread it as “wilderness,” and I had to correct him. Wilderness is a quality of land; wildness is a quality of people. Wilderness is manufactured definition for places that so far escaped the encroachment of humanity; wildness is what we are each endowed with from birth. Both are ours to lose, by action or inaction.

As the business of catching up after a prolonged leave demands my attention, I thought I’d share part of the narrative used in my Moab presentation that seems especially appropriate today:

There are times and places in this beautiful world that transcend anything we can ever hope to express in our limited capacities as human beings. Not in words, not in art, not in any other way. Nothing we can do or create can substitute for wildness. Those of you who experienced it know what I mean, and those of you who don’t will do well to seek it out. Your life will be forever changed and enriched by it.

And we should not lose sight of the fact that these places and experiences are becoming more scarce, sometimes even destroyed for the sake of short-term profit, sometimes packaged and sold as tourist attractions, tamed and scripted and controlled – a pale shadow of what it means to truly experience wild places; to exist on their terms, and not ours. To be a part of a natural community and not to proclaim ourselves its masters or managers or owners.

We are fortunate to still have true wilderness in this country. If we allow it to disappear, such experiences will never again be possible. It’s not some abstract planet we should be saving. We should be saving the things that make our lives more worthy and our very existence possible.

If we consider ourselves true humanitarians, in the sense of caring about the fates of our fellow human beings, present and future, we must be diligent in assuring that they, too, will have the privilege of experiencing what we have.

To be in the wild, is a feeling like no other. It strikes awe and humility in the most profound and powerful and inspiring way that we are capable of feeling. It overwhelms with a sense of gratitude to be alive and to witness such feats, immense and yet infinitely delicate, powerful yet fragile, filled with stories and lessons and mysteries.

There is a lot we can do in photography and in art, but nothing we do has the power to lift the spirit like wild places. For that we need the real thing.

“A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.” –Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Toward the end of a recent workshop, while hiking through one of the canyons outside of Moab, a participant approached me and commented that he didn’t see me expose a single image during the workshop. Indeed, Michael and I make a point of not using workshop time to pursue our own work. The primary reason is that we never want participants to worry about interrupting us. Also, we only take clients to places we are personally familiar with and have visited and photographed many times before. But, there is another, less obvious, reason: almost all my creative work is done in solitude.

In many senses, working in isolation is an indispensable condition for me. This may seem anathema in this age of social photography, photowalking and photography tours; though in truth it only illustrates the many ways and purposes that can be served by photography. When considered from this perspective, photography becomes of secondary importance. In some situations the primary goal may be social interaction; in others, it may be the learning of skills to be applied to future scenarios; and in some cases it may be communing with meaningful places and things; the sharing of one’s innermost thoughts through creative work, and so on. For each scenario, different contexts yield the most benefit. For some purposes, social synergy, the melding of minds, and being motivated by others may be of great value; while for others, quiescence, reflection, and the ability to avoid distraction, to focus attention on the creative experience, and to comfortably step beyond emotional barriers that may hinder creative work when others are present, may be vital.

Of course, much of it has to do with the temperament of the person behind the camera, too. Being a consummate introvert, I need solitary interludes to simply maintain my sanity. This has little to do with how much I like and appreciate the people I happen to be around, or how much I enjoy their company in any other setting. The difference between extroverts and introverts was summed up perfectly by someone (whose name I can’t recall right now) as having to do with energy: extroverts gain energy from social interactions, while introverts need to invest energy in them. Being the latter means that when my attention is focused on socializing, there is little of it left over for creative pursuits.

“For spiritual companions I have had the many artists who have relied on nature to help shape their imagination. And their most elaborate equipment was a deep reverence for the world through which they passed. Photographers share something with these artists. We seek only to see and to describe with our own voices, and, though we are seldom heard as soloists, we cannot photograph the world in any other way.” –Sam Abell

This secret spoke Life herself unto me: “Behold,” said she, “I am that which must ever surpass itself.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

I write these words on the edge of a storm. To the east, a wall of slate-grey sky is slowly making its way into the canyon country and toward Colorado; to the west the Mummy cliffs, adorned in new snow, glow red below a band of turquoise sky. Birds that seemed absent just moments ago are now chirping and fluttering around. The place morphs with the hours and the days. Another small storm is approaching beyond, and more transformations are in store. The only constant in this existence: change.

An off-hand remark in a recent email exchange had been on my mind this morning. A friend asked simply: “so, are you a B&W photographer now?” Hmm … I have a hard enough time with the confines of “photographer,” let alone narrower labels. It’s true, I had been making more B&W images as of late, but, is there a threshold? Is there a bell that rings after a certain amount of time had elapsed and necessitates re-categorization? Is it time to peel off the old label and slap on a new one or risk the dire consequences of falling victim to a filing error? Will the fabric of the cosmos fall apart if I decide to make another color image tomorrow?

The strange thing is that I did not, at any point, feel that I was doing anything different from what I had been doing for many years now: charting the waters of life; seeking experiences; being the author, narrator and protagonist of my journey; telling stories, evolving my skills of articulating them in words and images, color and B&W, whichever works best for a given situation.

There are, indeed, realms of art where consistency and tradition are valued. Still, there is a difference between sticking to a tradition and being stuck in it. Tradition should not be synonymous with stagnation. Tradition is, and always had been, building upon the accomplishments of the past, recognizing its less-glamorous aspects and moving beyond them. Progress toward greater knowledge, skill and enlightenment is the greatest tradition of all.

So, no, I’m not a B&W photographer now. I’m a human being, an artist, a teller of stories, who, sometimes, makes B&W images, and, sometimes, not.

~~~

Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps the most prolific of Western philosophers on the topic of art. In his mind, art is a means of coping with the chaos, tragedy and imperfection that are the true nature of reality and, as such, makes life itself not only tolerable, but also meaningful and noble. Beyond random observations on art and its role, Nietzsche also sought to understand the minds of artists. Among his many profound and pithy observations, he offered that “The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”

Gratitude is what allows us to venture beyond the mechanical act of creating images, making the very experience of engaging in the creative process rewarding in its own right, and independent of any outcome. It is a distinction often lost on those yet to have their first taste of it.

When we are thankful for simply being, experiencing, appreciating and enjoying what we do, something magical happens. Not only do we value the experience more, but our images also carry some of it in them. If all photographs have the power to capture the appearance of a moment in time, photographs created from gratitude can venture beyond mere appearances and encapsulate in them the essence of the photographer’s thoughts and feelings.

It takes little more than time and money to produce images of spectacular beauty and technical perfection. Yet, after nearly two decades of creating and viewing landscape photography on a daily basis, I find that I am no longer impressed or moved by yet more takes on the same subjects, not even ones adorned in perfect golden light or sprinkled with rainbows, star trails or the Milky Way, yet lacking in any personal narrative. All too often such images strike me as showcasing skill, technique and tools, rather than relating to the personal experience of a fellow human with an expressive mind and a sensitive heart. These days, I seek the quiet, soulful, intimate imagery that speaks to the mindset and sensibilities of an artist in love and in harmony with their subjects, rather than their tools.

It starts in the simple admission that, on the whole, none of us matters to any great degree; that our work merely serves to elevate our own life, and the lives of those we are able to touch; and will some day be forgotten. Rather than the preoccupation with the greatness of our skills, our technology, and our ability to control our environment; it is worth sometimes to remember that we are but tiny blips in the astoundingly complex and beautiful tapestry of nature, and that the greatest goal we can set for ourselves is to use our painfully short lives in the best possible way.

In our desire to comply, to fit in, to follow fashions, and to keep up with our peers, it is important not to lose the most important things of all: to live meaningfully, to find joy and contentment not just in what we have, but in who we are; to create not for our own glory but so we can grow and learn, and help others do the same.

Humility is the fertile soil for a grateful mind; and a grateful mind, beyond any tool or technique you may own or master, is the engine of creativity and emotion that manifest in meaningful art.

As my interest grew, I also became an obsessive reader and collector of photography books, the coffee-table variety, as well as the stories and biographies of notable photographers; and, to a lesser extent, technical references, as long as they were accompanied by noteworthy images. There always seemed to me to be an interesting schism in the way that photographers described their images in these books. Some opted for the dry technical data – camera, lens, exposure. Others described something of the location and technique used. But those that fascinated me most were the ones describing moving and emotional experiences associated with the work, a love for a subject or place, a reverence for natural beauty, the awe in the face of serendipitous circumstances, the merging of a passion for the wild and rare revelations with the expressive abilities of the photographic medium.

“I seek out places where it can happen more readily, such as deserts or mountains or solitary areas, or by myself with a seashell, and while I’m there get into states of mind where I’m more open than usual. I’m waiting, I’m listening. I go to those places and get myself ready through meditation. Through being quiet and willing to wait, I can begin to see the inner man and the essence of the subject in front of me… Watching the way the current moves a blade of grass – sometimes I’ve seen that happen and it has just turned me inside out.” –Minor White

Those were the experiences I sought and which made photography so fascinating to me. The descriptions were visceral. Since my earliest childhood, I spent much of my time alone in fields  and could easily transport myself into these experiences, adding in my mind all the missing dimensions of being there: what it smelled like, what sounds were in the air, what the temperature was like, the quickening beating of my heart when encountering a rare sight. Still images animated themselves in my imagination and I could feel what it was like being the person behind the camera taking it all in with great gratitude.

I can distinctly set aside a period in my life lasting more than a decade in which my own images failed to live up to such experiences. I was in pursuit of the “keeper” often in a rush, on a short break from a corporate career. My images failed to capture such emotional depth because, I can admit now, I did not actually experience it. I would leave home early, rush to beat the sunrise, spend the remainder of the day rapt in an incessant and at times frustrating pursuit for something – anything – that may yield an appealing photograph before rushing back. In my mind then, the only difference between what I was doing and those wonderful experiences described by other photographers was merely in the time I had to dedicate to it. I went to the same places, used the same equipment, went through the same moves and came back with good images. But it did not feel like the real thing, because it was not.

When I finally decided to leave the urban corporate world to pursue a life of creative writing and photography, I looked forward to finding those deep and moving experiences I remembered from my own childhood and from the accounts of naturalists and adventurers I read in books. For a while, though, I was still unable to accomplish them. There was a period of transition. I still worked in the same rushed mode, favoring images over experiences. But, slowly, things began to change. I found myself daydreaming again, leaning against rocks and tree trunks taking deep breaths and smiling for no apparent reason, savoring smells and warmth and the dance of light on water. Slowly, I began to trust that images will present themselves in time without me seeking them out, and that my being there was more important than anything I may record. Gradually, the barriers came down, the rush gave way to quiet contemplation; the beauty and magic that seemed like manufactured tales in other times became real and visceral again as I remembered them from my youth. Being in these places that inspire me stopped being about sunrises or sunsets or “secret” spots and became about living and feeling and being the protagonist of a story that captivates me as much as any work of fiction.

Where for years I took very seriously the how of making images, with time and peace to savor and interpret and study and be fascinated, the why became a far a more serious and rewarding aspect of what I do. The poetic and emotional descriptions of images that once captured my imagination are no longer flowery platitudes; they are real and every bit as beautiful as I always hoped them to be.

I am currently in the midst of writing a new book, tentatively titled A Life of Quiet Inspiration (a play on Thoreau’s assertion that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”). In it, I have a placeholder for a would-be chapter titled “Should You Quit Your Job?” It is a topic that caused me much hesitation. In the past I answered such questions with a politically correct dismissal, saying that I could not answer it for anyone but myself. Indeed, I still believe I can’t, but in the book I will offer insight into the thoughts and meditations that led me to quit mine, and the rewards that followed.

I was recently invited to showcase my work at a site proclaiming to promote art. The first thing I noticed as I brought up the page is that it was divided into “Artists” and “Photographers.” When I inquired with the site owner about photographers also being artists, his response was that the separation was for ease of navigation. Navigation, it seems, is more important than decades worth of struggle by photographic artists for the legitimacy of their work.

The site was not alone, though. Try looking for books on Amazon.com and you will find a category for “Arts & Photography.” Barnes & Noble goes further by separating “Art, Architecture & Photography.” Even a site entirely dedicated to art, such as Fine Art America makes references to “Artists/Photographers”.

Why single out photographers, as distinct from other artists (or from any artists)? Why such ingrained institutionalized discrimination?

Famed author Philip K. Dick said that “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”

Words matter.

This occurred shortly after reading The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist – a brilliant and deeply troubling account of Western history correlated with the evolving dominance of certain brain functions. Beyond the narrative, though, one thing I found immensely fascinating was McGilchrist’s reference to the brain as a generator of attention, and the different parts of it as paying different kinds of attention to the world. Some parts of the brain pay focused attention to things, independent of context, while others seek to understand the whole, and are more tolerant of ambiguity in details. It is the balance between these two types of attention that makes our perception of the world. His assertion is that the growing dominance of focused attention (associated with the left hemisphere of the brain) is responsible for many cultural trends in the last few centuries, and that it is leading us toward a loss of creativity, compassion, spirituality and other things we often associate with what it means to be a human being.

The experience I described above made me think about this separation between focused vs. holistic attention. The photographer was entirely interested in one focused task: to make an image he could bring back to show others – a conduit to future social interaction having little to do with the context out of which the image was taken. In the process, he was completely oblivious to the sensory and emotional aspects of the experience. His physical presence put him in a place of astounding beauty, but in many senses he was never actually there. I wondered if he even knew what was there to experience beyond a subject to photograph.

This led me to another interesting account I read a while ago. In his book Beauty in Photography, photographer Robert Adams writes:

“Our discouragement in the presence of beauty results, surely, from the way we have damaged the country, from what appears to be our inability now to stop, and from the fact that few of us can any longer hope to own a piece of undisturbed land. Which is to say that what bothers us about primordial beauty is that it is no longer characteristic. Unspoiled places sadden us because they are, in an important sense, no longer true.”

These words were written in 1996. They are as untrue today, seventeen years later, as they were then. They do, however, painfully and faithfully represent our collective Stockholm syndrome when it comes to natural beauty (and I use the word in the greatest context possible: the physical, emotional, spiritual, multi-sensory array of experiences that make such places elevate our existence as living beings). It’s not that unspoiled beauty is “no longer true,” rather it’s that we choose to believe so. We bought into the idea that such things are no longer, and are in too big of a hurry to write them off and to plan a future without them. In truth, the United States alone has nearly a million square miles of mostly-undeveloped public lands. Legal designations aside, there is still natural wild beauty to be found in relative abundance on this planet. The problem is that we stopped paying attention to them, shifting our limited resources instead to the manufactured reality of cities, gadgets, mass entertainment, the Internet, etc.

Attention is the currency of the mind. It is the hard cost we pay for having awareness, perhaps even consciousness. What we don’t pay attention to, we are not aware of, and may as well believe to be untrue or non-existent. And though many are quick to suggest that modern society suffers from attention deficit, I think it is actually the opposite that is true. We have the same amount of attention we always had. We are just spreading it too thin, and not always on the right things. We don’t have a deficit in attention, we have an overload of temptations to spend it on, and are lacking the mechanisms to properly prioritize this spending.

From an evolutionary perspective it’s easy to suggest that we are designed to pay attention to distractions: exceptional sounds, colors, shapes and sensations that may suggest social or existential threat or reward. Imagine prehistoric humans roaming their quiet world. A movement in the grass may suggest a predator or enemy, a sharp call may indicate the presence of edible or dangerous wildlife, a burst of color may be fruit or a poisonous snake, regular geometric shapes stand out from the fractal geometry of nature and may be dwellings or other products indicating the presence of unknown people. These were exceptions in an otherwise orderly world. In contrast, today, we are bombarded with unnatural sounds, bright colors, architecture and objects of interesting shapes explicitly designed to command our attention.

Attention is crucial to experience. The less of it we assign to any one activity, the less capable we’ll be of appreciating it, of being aware of all its nuances and lessons and, ultimately, the less satisfying our experience of it will be. A meal eaten in front of the TV will not be as rewarding as a meal experienced as a primary focus of attention, savored slowly and deliberately. The same is true for experiencing the wild; the more distractions we bring into it – sounds and scents and anxieties and social interactions – the less of it we experience and the more prone we are to dismiss it as lacking. This is not attention deficit, it’s attention overload. We invest our awareness in too many things and, not surprisingly, get little return from each of them.

The solution is no secret. We know it from medicine, from financial planning, and from any number of other disciplines dealing with scarce resources: stop the bleeding, close the loopholes, pool your resources, scrape your pennies, eliminate all the little things that drain your attention and squander it on things yielding little return. Use your new found wealth to purchase something important and lasting: deep and meaningful experiences.

Turn off, tune out, drop in.