Making Images

In a couple of months I'm taking a workshop and I need 10 ~ 20 images that are cohesive and tell a story.  Will this image make it?  I don't know.  But in attempting to put this stuff together I'm beginning to see a theme starting to emerge.  Only time will.

This is an image from last weeks trip up to the Bay Area.  It's the one image out of the two rolls I exposed I'm happy with.  I'm down to this one image from the original two I thought I had. 

Terminal A, Gate 9, San Francisco InternationalI think this will be the ongoing story for me over the next several years.  My travel doesn't seem to have an end in the foreseeable future and it's a story I can keep coming back too.  I was told once to do something I could revisit often if I expected to see something build.  This is it for me.  And somewhere down the line I think it will be interesting.

In looking at some of my favorite photographers, I notice that images from a period of time that may, or may not be forgotten, peak my interest more than anything else.  I think it's the passage of time, the changes that are visible and the remembering that get my interest.  They also pose questions and I like that.  Will my images do that?  One can hope and try to provide a body of work that resonates down the line.  But for now, I will keep creating and see where it goes.

In a post a few weeks back I said that I would be posting abject failures.  I don't think this is an abject failure but it's a failure nonetheless.  

As noted before, I travel a lot and it's one of the reasons I got rid of the digital stuff and went to the Leica several years ago.  I take it with me on most trips and I try to see what I can see and make images.  A lot of it is cliche and has been seen many times before.  And in looking at the negatives I've tried to move away from those types of images and onto something else.  I've not clearly defined what that something else is yet but I'm trying.

Good stuff is hard to come by for me.  Time is an issue but I also struggle with what to photograph.  As I was driving home today, listening to some of my favorite musical artists, it dawned on me that some of these guys have been around for a long time.  And producing good work for them comes over a matter of time as well.  For instance, I have about 182 songs by John Prine on my iPod.  He's been around since the early 1970's and is still putting out work.  I don't know how many songs he's written, but out of 182 on my iPod I have about 30 that are 5 stars.  I wonder what he would consider 5 stars?

Terminal A, Gate 1, San Francisco InternationalSo, if I get an image or two I'm happy with a year, something I would consider 5 stars, I might actually have something later on down the line.  But I have to produce something, write something, make an image of something in order to have it.

This is an image from the body of work I'll have some day from my travels.  I produce it for me and try to come up with something.  Out of two rolls exposed on this trip I have maybe two images that work.  I won't know for awhile.  But this one doesn't.

I should have gotten lower to get the heads a little less chopped up by the window panes.  It would have also limited the dark area below that is distracting but not incorrectly exposed.  I wanted the detail of the plane.  Basically this is an attempt that failed in communicating what I wanted.

Shanghai InternationalI'm off to the UK tomorrow on business with the hope that I'll get some time to make some images as well.  This is a particularly hard week for doing that but I'm going to try and bring some images home.  This will be an exercise in pushing through the uncomfortable feelings of pointing a camera at other human beings and  I'm psyching myself up for it now as I write.

I added a new gallery today of images that are graphical in nature.  I tend to see these things everyday and see if I can make a decent image.  More often than not what I get is not what I wanted, but there are those occasions when I think I might actually know what I'm doing.  

I've been looking for themes throughout my work from the last couple of years.  I've been really concentrating on getting out with the camera and have a growing number of images to choose from.  Most of them are B&W, taken with the Leica and from my travels.  But there are some in color and I'll get some of those up once the G5 returns and I get back from the UK.  But what I've found while perusing through the negatives is that all of the stuff I really like has been taken with the Leica.  I'm not sure why that is but it's very obvious as I look at the work.  I've got a feeling this is what will dominate the new galleries as I post them.

The images look a little jpeg challenged to me.  I think I might have been a bit too aggressive in the compression.  Let me know what you think and as always any comments are welcome.