LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process Brooks Jensen

I try to think about what I am doing photographically, but sometimes my (bad) habits simply overpower my better intentions. For example, I know my habit is to think of a wide angle lens as one that shows more to the left and the right of a normal lens. I have to consciously fight that habit to use that lens as a near-far lens.

Pushing tones around might make an image have better light, but that doesn't guarantee it will be a better photograph. Images might be enhanced by tonal adjustments, but it's content, meaning, and metaphor that make a photograph better artwork.

We live in the age of software. Even if you are producing analog prints from the wet darkroom, you still use digital means to share your work on the Internet, produce you work as a book, or email your images to, say, LensWork. Learning software is a part of our creative life. Here's a thought about the two strategies for embracing software.

In a generic sense, a piece of artwork has the purpose of shifting our emotional state of mind. In most cases, that means a shift from everyday awareness to an elevated sensitivity. How do we break through everyday awareness so people will experience a shift of mood, feeling, or emotion? Doesn't this seem like a question for either biologists or psychologists? Do those disciplines offer any clues?

Of all the artistic and non-artistic media, photography is considered the most objective, factual, documentarian. I think this idea about photography is so widespread that it complicates things for those of us who see photography as visual poetry.

I've been seriously (note the word) involved in photography for 50 years. I've learned to value of letting go of the seriousness. From time to time, maybe it's worth a little experimenting to design a photographic project that would be a lot more fun and a lot less work.