I am doing a bit of a social media fast of late, which is why you haven't seen much of me around. Part of it is to redirect that time and energy into doing other things with my images rather than prepping them and posting them to FB, Flickr or IG or wherever. I have a couple other projects I would like to get undertaken. Part of it is also the stepping back to gain perspective and to think about how I have been using social media in regards to photography. I find it is dangerously easy to get into routines and as those routines get more effortless so too do they get more thoughtless. But also because I want to see if the more distant perspective grants me any insights into the process that I have not anticipated, or would not anticipate.

But I am breaking that fast just a bit to post this image which I just assembled the other night. I am doing so because I am going to use this as a bit of a rough draft for an essay I intend to write that will head out elsewhere and practice makes perfect.

This Holgarama was a bit of a puzzle for me. I mean, they are all puzzles for me. They are a puzzle to preconceive out in the field and to assemble mentally while I am making the exposures and then they are a puzzle to actually assemble post-scanning. The hierarchy of the layers makes differences. The blending makes differences. On the few occasions I have gone back to rescan previous Holgaramas to create higher resolution versions, the second attempts have varied significantly from their original precursors.

This one involved tinkering, sitting, tinkering, sitting, and more tinkering. I had originally meant the centerpiece to be the bottom, the seed from which the rest of the composite grew out, but in the long run it became the cap stone, pinning it all together. I had not anticipated that but it did solve a problem I was having in the assembly of this one.

There are three ruts these Holgaramas help me escape, three prisons of thinking if you will that still photography so seductively lures us into such that we often don't even notice the prisons we place our minds in.

The first is shape. If you step back and look at photography from a very detached point of view, it is astounding how willingly we agree to compose everything in this world, everything we can possibly think of into squares and rectangles. Most of us even use the same shape of rectangle: the 2:3 aspect ratio. Think about that for a moment. Is there a good reason we do this? Not really. It just happens to be that at some point somebody designed a camera to make a negative with a specific rectangular shape and it stuck. If these same inventors and manufacturers had had a preference for circular or triangular negatives and had designed film in such a way to accommodate this, well we would be exposing our photos in these shapes instead. And yes, I know from an engineering and design point of view rectangles and squares made much more sense in terms of how the negatives fit on a strip of film. But from a photographic point of view, this doesn't really make any sense at all, we have just convinced ourselves that it makes sense. We have created compositional rules to help it make sense. The thing I came to realize with these Holgaramas is that one of their freedoms is that I can build a shape to fit my subject. Yes, I know that shape is still composed of squares, but I can create a wide variety of geometric shapes with any number of sides and it isn't the camera that decides the final shape but a combination of the subject and my imagination. It wasn't until I experienced this freedom of composition that I really realized how confining the standard 2:3 rectangle or the square really are.

The second cage we put upon our creative thinking with still photography is the notion that a still image has to be made from one place, from a single perspective. It seems obvious right? We get only one click of the shutter which doesn't afford us the time to move locations. We cannot expose half the frame in one spot and the other half somewhere else. To be honest though... we could. We could do this in a number of ways. We could cover half the lens and move elsewhere. We could make multiple exposures from different spots. We could make completely separate exposures and combine them later. We could do long exposures and move. But most of us don't. To the general way of thinking still photography happens in one spot. At first this is how I did these Holgaramas too. But then one day it occurred to me that I could string images together from multiple locations. I photographed the base of Falls Creek Falls on one occasion then climbed halfway up it and photographed the top portion and combined those two groups of images into a photograph of Falls Creek Falls that presented in a way that is not geographically possible. Well ok, it is obviously geographically possible because I did it, but it is not possible to see from a single place. This Holgarama was created from three different spots. I started in the center of the wheel and made the middle column of three images, then I walked to my left about 30 feet to be right in front of the left edge and made that column of three images then I walked all the way back to be in front of the right edge of the wheel and made that column. I did this for perspective. I did not want the left or right edges falling away from me like they do when you view them from the center. I wanted to show the wheel as close to dead on as I could by combing those three simultaneous vantage points. If I could levitated I would have hovered up to the top of the wheel to make those images, preserving that perspective as well. But I cannot levitate. Someday, maybe.

And lastly, there is time. Generally our stills are fractions of a second. More and more photographers are doing longer exposures using ND filters and getting full seconds or minutes, but almost always these seconds and minutes happen consecutively or chronologically. So the third freedom these Holgaramas grant my thinking is the ability to pick out slices of time that in theory can happen over the course of days. I have done this only once, with an image I made of a cherry tree in downtown Portland where I assembled images of the top half of the tree at twilight one evening then came back later for a sunrise and made images of the bottom half of the tree. This is a freedom of thought I want to explore more in the future but it is new enough to me that I am still brainstorming ways to effectively employ it.

So there you have it, three freedoms of thinking/creativity that these Holgaramas have given me. Or conversely three ruts of thinking that us photographers have just assumed have to be.

Anyway, I wanted to get these ideas down in writing. Take this as a rough draft, not a final exposition. Many of these concepts are still turning round and round in my brain. They will on my walk to work today. Hopefully I get something turning round and round in your head too.

Holga 120FN / LomoChrome Turquoise (rated at ISO 100... more or less)

Tags:   Holgarama Ferris Wheel Portland Oregon PDX Rose Festival Fun Center carnival composite LomoChrome Turquoise motion

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We are more than our cameras.

So, so much more. But it is ok to excuse yourself for thinking otherwise. It is easy to do. We get caught up in the incredible capabilities of our equipment these days. Or we get caught up in the incredible prices we pay for this equipment. Or we trap ourselves through convenience into having to rely on our equipment to prove what we are doing, never having developed sufficient trust or confidence in ourselves as photographers. This is all understandable, but it shouldn't be true.

Our cameras are complex and near-miraculous, but we are more so. Our hearts race when we stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon with sunset pouring color into the sky. Our minds wander sitting at the edge of the ocean listening to the roar of the surf. We sweat and curse and bleed over the course of miles through a thick forest just to see a waterfall. We laugh or cry or shake our heads at the wonder of it all. Cameras don't do any of this. We do.

But wait you say, we need what cameras do to make pictures. And I say, no we don't. It all helps: auto-focus, exposure meters, lens coatings, histograms, aperture/shutter priority, depth of field preview, HDR, vibration reduction. These things do matter, but we are still more than them. I have made images without auto-focus, I have made them without lenses at all. I have made them without meters and histograms and lens coatings. I have made them on expensive cameras and broken cameras. I have used cameras that cost several thousand dollars and I have used cameras that were less than $10 sum of the materials used to build them. I use a wooden box with a hole in one side and nothing else for crying out loud (made this image here). I have cross-hatched my fingers in front of the lens mount of my DSLR to approximate an aperture and made an image that way. I have made images without cameras at all.

The cameras do matter... and they don't. But there is no question that we - the people holding the cameras - matter. We matter a great deal... we are indispensable in fact. A photographer can be a photographer without his or her camera. But a camera without a photographer is a paperweight and not always a very good one at that.

There are a lot of challenges that modern photographers face, but one of the most subversive is that they outsource so much of themselves to their cameras. They let their cameras think for them, act for them, photograph for them. They mistake themselves into thinking that the camera creates the images as opposed to themselves making the images. They look to their cameras to show them proof that they did it all right instead of trusting themselves. We worry about miss-exposure when we should be worrying about mood. We pixel-peep when we should be sitting there soaking in the scene and contemplating how best to condense this wide, complex world into two dimensions.

This is not a rant about modern technology. Modern technology is great when you keep it in its place. But really I don't want to get distracted by talking about modern technology, that is not where I want to draw emphasis.

Forget your camera, it will be there when you need it.

Concentrate on yourself and what you do. Think, feel, express, dream, imagine, empathize, explore, experiment. This is just a start, but these are all things that we do that are so crucial to the images we make. And not one of them can your camera do.

We are more than our cameras.

This image was made by me, with the assistance of my Zero Image pinhole.

Tags:   Zero Image Oregon Coast pinhole lensless film analog 6x9 sunset required reading

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Proxy Falls taken with my Holga last Fall on the same day as this other shot captured with my Pentax 6x7.

Working retail as I do, I deal with a lot of different types of customers, most of those I sell cameras to though are students, relative newcomers when it comes to purchasing cameras. As such, a lot of what I do over the counter involves educating as well as selling. Or put another way, re-educating.

See, many people operate under a fair number of misconceptions when it comes to photography, and I want to take a bit of time tonight to combat one of them in particular; in order to take professional quality photographs you need professional quality cameras.

Frankly, if the person selling you a camera tells you this, it really means they are just trying to sell you something more expensive, that and they are probably paid on commission. And they would probably auction off a family member for the right price.

I know, many you already realize this is bogus thinking, nonetheless many of us succumb to it. There is something reassuring in knowing your camera has a price tag to rival your social security number. I mean, come on, if you have to skip two mortgage payments how can that camera NOT be good right? Well chances are it is a good camera. Doesn't mean it is the right camera for you though.

And I guess it all depends on how we define good. Oh boy, that is a topic that requires about three hours and four beers...

I always stress that it is how you USE the camera, not the camera itself that makes the most difference and I stand by that. If I sound like a broken record at times, it is merely because it is true and a very valuable lesson to learn. It is one of the things I try to demonstrate with my stream. I shoot five main cameras, though I cycle in others here and there. My main 35mm is my Nikon FM2n. In the store I work at, this camera costs $200 in perfect working order with a warranty. That $200 buys me a camera that will last for decades, will cost about $120 to refurbish when it wears out every 10-15 years or so and will stay in the family my entire life unless I drop it in the ocean as I seem to be more than capable of doing. Plus it takes images that are incredibly sharp and can be printed as large as 24x36 with a fairly high degree of quality. Sure I could have bought an F3 ($300-400), an F4 ($400), an F5 ($500) or an F6 ($1000 or more). Heck the F6 is the latest and greatest film camera out there. It does everything except sweep the kitchen floor. I have shot it, everytime you press the shutter it sounds like the camera is silkily whispering "damn fine shot". Then again, with the same lenses it will take the exact same quality image as my FM2. And sure, it is whiz-bang, but then again pretty much every automatic feature on cameras these days can be duplicated manually. These cameras don't allow you to do things less expensive and sophisticated cameras won't, they generally just tend to make those things quicker and easier. That is what all that extra money tends to buy you, speed and convenience, not necessarily better quality. More on that possibly in a bit.

My second camera, also my main landscape camera these days, is my Pentax 67. This was once a top of the line medium format camera. It produces large 6x7cm negatives with detail and resolution that still blow my mind. I would even go so far as to say it produces a higher resolution, sharper image than all but the most expensive of digital cameras can compete with. It also cost me $200. I am on my third one due to two unfortunate accidents. I have spent less than $700 combined on all three.

My third is my pinhole, brand new for $250. For those who are familiar with my pinhole images, not much more needs to be said. For those who are not, it is an incredibly interesting camera that captures a perspective unlike most other photography. All without the benefit of a lens, auto-focus, a meter of any kind, not a single gear, wire or circuit. It scoffs if you mention LCD in fact.

My fourth, which this image was taken with, is my Holga. $25. No, I am not missing a zero. It is a plastic toy camera that retails for about $25. Certainly not a perfect camera, but then again is there such a thing? No, there isn't. And if the person behind the counter tells you there is, well see the fourth paragraph above. I was down in Yosemite last year browsing the Ansel Adams gallery in the park, and there is a piece by a photographer named Ted Orland. It is an amazing work and though I do not remember the price on it, it was a lot and well worth it. It was taken with a holga.

My fifth is my Leica M3, which is a contradiction to the point I am trying to make, that camera sold for about $700. Though these days, that is about average for most DSLRs. Though honestly it is more of a specialty camera for me and of all the cameras listed above, is one of the ones that gets used the least.

I am not trying to trumpet my nifty frugalness or impress upon you my ability to not irrationally and impulsively spend my camera budget. The point I am trying to make is that it has always been, and always will be good photographers behind cameras that make good images. Note I have not attached any adjective to cameras, because none needs to be. To be blunt, a photographer is either skilled at what they do, or they are not, or they are somewhere in between hopefully moving towards the former and not the latter. A camera will not change this, though it may seem like it does. And true, cameras can help us see differently, they can help us take different pictures, but that is all they do at the most. Help. We take the pictures, good or bad, and it can be done on all cameras, expensive or not.

Buying the best camera is very very very rarely buying the more expensive camera. Rather it is a moderately tricky process of figuring out what you want to do as a photographer and buying the camera that is the best fit. Want to take odd, alternative artsy photos? Buy a holga, a lomo or a fish eye. Photojournalism? Then you probably want a rugged DSLR. Landscape with the intent to make murals? Medium or large format. Do you want something lightweight? You will want to buy a plastic camera (which will also break on you in a matter of a few years). Do you prefer a heavy and rugged camera for backpacking? Go with one of the SLRs of the 60s or 70s like a Minolta SRT or Pentax K1000. Want to try out medium format on a budget? Get a twin lens. A top notch Yashica Mat 124G can be found for $250 or less.

There are options, sometimes a seemingly overwhelming number of them. Start with yourself. Figure out what you need in a camera (much less than you might think). Plan how and where you will use a camera. Make a list and stick to it. Otherwise you are just going to be paying for a number of features you never actually get around to using. Expensive is not always the answer, but then again neither is cheap. It really revolves around your needs. You are matching a camera to yourself, not the other way around.

Anyway, hope that is somewhat intelligible. And hope you enjoy the photo. I find it interesting to compare the two images, both medium format, but one shot through a high end glass lens, the other a toy plastic camera. I like them both, a lot. And both are very different images taken from almost the exact same spot. That too is the beauty of different cameras, they allow photographers to realize different visions. Just remember, photography begins and ends with living, breathing human beings. Cameras are just means to that end.

Tags:   holga 120 film square waterfalls Oregon Pacific Northwest landscape the $25 camera strikes again Proxy Falls Fuji 400H moss lush green Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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Before I get started on a minor rant, a bit about this photo. This was taken a few years ago near Dayton, Washington. I led a three day workshop in the area introducing other photographers to this amazing landscape. I was fortunate to be able to have worked with a local resident who knew all the right fields to stop along, such as this field of Canola. For those who have been following my stream awhile, this image may look a little familiar. I posted a very similar one a couple of years ago, also from this same trip. The reason this one came back up tonight is simply because this is a scan from a slide, a Fuji Velvia slide to be exact. Which is where my rant begins.

I shall start by saying, if you are reading this, and happened to have said the comment I am responding to, I mean nothing personal. It is not the specific comment that rankles me but rather the general attitude behind it. So nothing personal ok. ;-)

Anyway, I was browsing Flickr tonight and enjoying the photos on one fellow's stream when I came across an image he had posted after going back and scanning some of his old Velvia slides. The comment that went along with the photo was basically, "I sure miss those good old days of Velvia." He had received a couple of other comments agreeing with this and bemoaning this "loss".

Here is the problem I have with this comment, and I admit, it really does ruffle my feathers just a bit, but see, Fuji still actually makes Velvia. In fact you can go down to your local camera store tomorrow (or why wait, go now!) and buy a roll. I shot a roll just this past weekend as a matter of fact. I expect the slides back on Thursday.

Now it is one thing to choose not to shoot it, to choose to shoot digital as opposed to film, and that is just fine. To each their own. But it seems so silly to not only choose to not shoot it but then act like it is not a choice, like you were forced out of it. The icing on the cake then is the lamenting about how good it once was. And it really does seem like slightly odd behavior. If you thought it was that good, why stop using it when it is still available? I really am curious as to what the rationale is to this question.

My suggestion? Go buy a film camera. These days a high end one that will "only" last you 30-40 years will cost you less than many digital lenses. If you are fortunate and savvy enough you may even be able to buy a film body that shares lenses with your digital (Nikon or Pentax). Keep it loaded with Velvia and carry it along with your DSLR. I am actually seeing more and more of this happening. I am encountering a lot of photographers who have been all digital these past few years going back and picking up film bodies to complement their digital ones. It does not have to be one or the other. It can be both, and in that way, the good old days don't have to be over at all.


If you are interested in pricing for my images, or just plain curious, more info can be found at my website: www.zebandrews.com

Tags:   Palouse Canola Pacific Northwest Washington Dayton Nikon FM2n Fuji Velvia Good old days blue skies landscape pretty beautiful film slide chrome 35mm clouds fields agriculture If you really love something, you don't give up on it Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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"Use what talents you possess; The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best." William Blake

I have to admit, this is a bit of a vehicle photo, meaning I am more inclined to post this so as to be able to accompany it with a bit of writing than because I am just in the mood to post a nice photo.

I recently read this article from Newsweek and as such journalism ought to do it got me to thinking. Now it is hard to know for sure the author's intent in writing this article, but regardless of what it was, ultimately I have to disagree with the argument he has presented. Is photography dead? Hardly. Has it lost its soul? Hardly. Is it evolving from what it once was? Of course.

Well he does a decent job of addressing the first question, photography, in terms of photographs taken is at an all time high. More photographs get snapped every single day than at any point in its history. But Mr. Plagens goes on to postulate that this incredible rise in popularity is saturating photography, diluting what photographic art is. And it is not just the rise in popularity but the advancement of technology and the proliferation of digital imaging and image editing software such as Photoshop.

"By now, we've witnessed all the magical morphing and seen all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers—formerly bearers of truth—into conjurers of fiction."

I think this is quote represents the meat of my objection to this article, for two main reasons. First, there is honestly very little that can be done in Photoshop that cannot be done without digital "trickery". A clever and resourceful photographer can duplicate pretty much everything that Photoshop can do either in the field, in the camera or in the darkroom. Just look at the work of Jerry Uelsmann or Scott Mutter. Believe it or not, Uelsmann's montages are done in the darkroom, the traditional darkroom, not the digital variety. Color, contrast, density, distortion, correcting distortion, creating a larger dynamic range, blurring, dodging, burning, eliminating elements, adding elements.... these were all terms folks that existed well before any of us knew the word "Photoshop". True, it is easier to do much of this on the computer, and it eliminates the need for certain equipment and in some cases, years of experience, thereby allowing more people to enhance and manipulate their photos, but by no means were these types of manipulations inventions that were made possible only after Photoshop and digital cameras became available.

Which ties into my second argument in opposition of this article, and more importantly, this line of thought. Photographers were never bearers of truth. Ever. A photograph is a creation, it is something new brought into existence by the photographer. Often times they resemble the truth or reality, but to believe them to be is to confuse what they are. This is a sticky wicket of a philosophical debate, but I guess it really boils down to how we define "reality". Because for each of us, our reality is our perception of the world, and we all possess a unique perception. Put two people in one location, allow them to choose when they photograph that location during the span of one day, with which equipment, and to be in control of their own post-processing. You will get two very different photos, is one more real than the other?

It's a trick question. Neither should ever be described as real, or rather both should be. See how this quickly gets sticky? Are Uelsmann's montages not real because they are obviously darkroom manipulations of many different photographs? Well ok then I guess we just need to go even further back, to the "good old days" right? We always romanticize those good old days when photography was photography and a picture was an unmanipulated reproduction of reality. Surely at one time this was true.

No, not really.

See, Arthur Rothstein took a very famous photograph of a steer skull in the badlands during the Great Depression in 1936. He found the skull, picked it up and moved it to a more advantageous location for the photograph he had in mind. Then took several different compositions and chose the print that best represented the vision he wanted to communicate. Is this any more real than the photography done today? Of course not, because that is what photography is about, communicating one's perception of the world, one's reality. Using one's imagination and their photographic skill to create a message, to share a concept. In this way photography is really no different than writing, yet writing has never had to bear the responsibility of communicating reality, nor has sculpture or painting.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

So why photography? It is because film and digital sensor capture light that has actually reflected off of some piece of this world, creating an impression of this world created by light. We point a camera, snap the shutter, and we have captured reality, right? Well not quite, because while photography may come much closer to being a direct reproduction of a moment, a place, or person than any other art, it is still an art, meaning it requires an artist, a creative individual who is in the process of creating. And that is what makes photography great. It is interpretation. It is the fact that two people will get entirely different pictures from the same place, even at the same time. It is that we all carry around our own personal reality through which we filter this world and life, and that is what is reflected in our photography. If you want it more real than that, throw away your camera and haul around a Xerox machine, oh wait that would be a manipulation of reality too....

Photography's soul is only as dead as we believe it to be, because photography's soul is not contained in the billions and billions of images snapped and printed each year. There is no 4x6 rectangle out there that contains even a trace of photography's soul. Photography's soul resides exclusively in photographers. Anyway, I think I have rambled long enough, for those who have made it this far, your ability to concentrate is simultaneously admirable and scary.

I will close with a brief description of this photo though. I took this a few summers ago in Mt. Rainier National Park. Shot on my Pentax 67 (which is now dead and replaced by another 6x7, sigh. That story to follow someday) and Rollei infrared film, at least I think it is Rollei, it might have been the Maco. Either way it is infrared, I know that for sure. I have shot a lot at this lake and in this park. It is one of my favorite places within driving distance along with the Gorge and the coast of course. A pretty straight-forward shot, the infrared really picked up on the floating grass and darkened up the clear and featureless blue sky. It really reflects the majesty of this mountain. Anyway, thanks for reading so much. I will pack up the soapbox until another day now.

Tags:   infrared Washington Pacific Northwest Pentax 67 Rollei IR820 Mt Rainier Reflection Lake national parks b&w lakes water forest alpine mountains film landscapes Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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