Project 3 Planning: Texture in photographs

Project due: 02/19/07

This project calls for creating an image that reveals texture in the subject, which is basically an extension of portraying form through light and shadow in the last project.

While this is still a pretty broad canvas, I find this project much less intimidating because texture all by itself can create a striking image. Stuff that comes immediately to mind is peeling paint, bark and the dry skin on the back of my hands. (How hard is it to shoot your own hands?)

In an effort to get this rolling (at this rate, my first-grader will graduate from college before I reach project #71), I'm going to set a short deadline and plan to have it done in the next couple of days, so I'll make the deadline Monday, February 19th.

Project 2 Results: Form that gives substance

The goal of this assignment was to portray depth of form through gradations of light and shadow. This is a simple setup, with a small strobe straight left of the egg, about two feet away and shooting through an umbrella for diffusion. I found that controlling the "transfer zone" between the light and shadow more difficult than I expected... even with diffusion and getting fairly close with the umbrella, the transfer zone is narrower than what I was looking for. Some of the problem was getting bounce off the very low ceiling in the room I was shooting in. But I set it up and shot it in about fifteen minutes, and didn't want to mess with setting up makeshift flags to control the light better. But I think the lighting still does a fair job of conveying the shape of the egg.

Project thoughts: Much the same as the first project, I fretted over this one far more than I should have. Obviously, my learned lesson of "get shooting" from Project 1 didn't really hit home... I had the same problem here, worrying too much about creating something "artistic" and not shooting anything because I was waiting for the right inspiration. But I've talked about that in previous journals already.

Of course, the point of the lesson was to learn to see how shadows convey depth and volume, which is something I don't think I really needed much emphasis on. I should have breezed through this one. I'll have to work harder at meeting my deadline for the next.

Journal: The rut of creative inactivity

Wow. This whole workshop project seems to have had the opposite of the intended effect. I haven't even had my camera out of the bag for a couple weeks now, with my deadline cast aside like a half-forgotten dream.

I'm finding that the assignments, at least this first couple, are so vague as to be less than useful... in general, I find that constraints fuel creativity, and these assignments haven't been constraining enough. Combine that with the "need" to be "artistic," and I'm just at a loss. I seem to have missed the point of the whole thing, which was to just start shooting.

Okay, so the sucky weather doesn't help, but that didn't stop me from trying out my new pinhole camera down by the river. Though it did mean we didn't try it out for long... it was darned cold!

It's Polaroid (3.25x4.25 pack film in a 4x5 holder), so the film is annoyingly expensive... about a buck a shot. It was expense that put me off film photography years ago in the first place. But this pinhole camera has me excited about photography in a way that the new digital SLR hasn't. I don't know why. Some of it I think has to do with the fact that it has nothing to do with this workshop assignment!

I'm part of the Wichita Flickr group, and we've started having monthly get-togethers. At this last one, we decided to do monthly assignments to get us motivated, and this one is much more concrete... we picked a particular sculpture in downtown Wichita, and the assignment is to shoot it creatively. This one's much easier, and I figure I should be able to do it this Friday if the weather cooperates.

But the thing I'm thinking about the most is that I'm trying too hard to be creative. I've been listening to all the old podcasts at The Radiant Vista where Craig Tanner talks a lot about creativity and fear. He says a lot of good stuff, but I think the most valuable thing he says to me right now is this... productivity equals creativity. It's hard to be creative if you sit back and try to figure out just how to do something creative, without doing anything because you want "art" to spring forth from every attempt. (That's my restatement of what he's aiming at, not a quote or even a paraphrase.) In short, start shooting, which creates a space for creativity to blossom.

And that's where I'm at. Project 2 asks me to shoot something demonstrating the use of light and shadow to portray form, and I spent too much time thinking about what kind of creative way I could do that... and that led to a rut of inactivity. I'm not shooting anything because this one project has become a roadblock to creativity when it was meant to grease the rails. The point of the early projects isn't even creativity, it's teaching fundamentals, learning about light, shadow, color, motion and so on.

So my plan is to kill two birds with one stone if I can, and shoot the sculpture with an eye toward Project 2 on Friday. And if that doesn't work out, I'm going to get out an egg and a black background and shoot that... it should be challenging to light an egg well and give me a good feel for what the project is trying to teach.