LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process

Here's a Thought… #2791 with Brooks Jensen

Prevent a Disaster

Photographers spend a lot of time thinking about how to be successful with their images, their projects, their art life. Might I suggest that another fruitful area of thought is to anticipate how to prevent disasters. For example, my first trip to China I took a second identical camera body with me just in case my main camera failed. I always have a wrist strap attached to my camera in case I lose my grip. Every night I recharge all my batteries so that I start each day with a full load of power. Backup memory cards and hard drives. Rain protection even on the sunny days. Offloading the day's images to another memory device as a backup.

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Here's a Thought… #2790 with Brooks Jensen

Lessons That Last a Lifetime

Years ago I used to subscribe to Popular Photography, Modern Photography, and PC Magazine. I kept them all on my bookshelves as reference material. But equipment changes and gear reviews fall out of date. With the passage of years I realized the information in those magazines were no longer pertinent to my creative life. This is precisely why LensWork, my podcast, the daily Here's a Thought, and all the other content at LensWork Online concentrate on lessons that last a lifetime. Creativity today asks the same questions as 33 years ago when we started LensWork. The challenges of art making are timeless.

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Here's a Thought… #2789 with Brooks Jensen

One Place Well

Travel photography is surely an interesting way to take our camera out into the world. I've done a lot of travel photography and I always enjoy it. But over the years I've learned that there are two distinct approaches to travel photography that are mutually exclusive. The first kind is to constantly be on the move, looking for new locations, traveling miles and miles in a grand search. The other kind, which I've come to favor without a contest, is to establish a base camp somewhere and really work that single location for days or weeks at a time. This latter technique always ends up with better images, more depth. and curiously enough more interesting experiences.

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Here's a Thought… #2788 with Brooks Jensen

Two Kinds of Archives

Here is a self-observation that I'm wondering if others have, too. When I look through my past production and my archives, I find I have two kinds of images. There are those who have worn well over the years about which I'm still excited and proud. And then there are those that have not worn well with the passage of time and find I've become ambivalent about or perhaps even loathe. Isn't it interesting how are opinions change over time?

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Here's a Thought… #2787 with Brooks Jensen

The Plot Twist, the Dissonant Chord

Literature and music share a common technique that involves the unexpected surprise. In literature, it's the plot twist. In music, it's the dissonant chord. Try as I might, I can't think of a single example in photography that employees the same idea. How would we introduce the unexpected in a photo project? One color image in a book of black and white? One soft focus image when the rest are all tack sharp? And how would such a startling surprise in a photography project enhance the project? Maybe there's no answer to this, but sometimes asking these kinds of quirky questions opens up unexpected paths in our creative thinking.

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