Alright, this post is inspired by, but not just for, Fred, who asked me to post one of my less-than-successful pinhole images. It did not take me much digging at all to find one.

I really should have done something like this much sooner. Several years ago I attended a conference here in Portland by the Rocky Mountain School of Photography, or RMSP, during which I heard a lecture by Craig Tanner on the Myth of Talent. It was a very good presentation, and an argument that has shaped how I have looked at photography ever since. One of the things I remember best about that lecture though was his slide presentation. Craig has done some amazing landscape work, some of which he showed. At one point in the presentation though he switched from showing his best work, to showing several slides of utter crud that he had taken early in his career. I actually remember more of those images than I do of the good ones, it made that strong of an impression.

Here is a truth about photographers: None of them pick up a camera and start making brilliant images right out of the gate. Check out Ansel Adams' early stuff when he was a teenager hiking Yosemite and shooting with a Brownie camera to see a good example of this.

I would also dare to say that every photographer, regardless of skill level, produces more "failures" than "successes". The best photographers certainly tend to have a better rate of success, but more often than not, they have just gotten much better about the editing out of the weaker images. You only see a professional's best in other words. An amateur tends to show you everything.

But let us talk a bit about failure, because I want to make another long post about this in the near future, and I can help set the stage for that now. Failure is a poor choice of words in my opinion. So is calling a photo "bad". There are no bad photos, just bad uses of them. It does not matter how messed up a picture is, if one thinks hard enough they can find a good use for it. Trust me, I have seen this put into practice, at times amazingly so.

And I do not believe a photo fails, a photographer can fail, he or she is human and perfectly capable of doing so, but a photo is just a photo. What I mean to say is, it is up to the photographer to appropriately use a picture, or the experience of taking that picture. Nothing is a waste of time if you learn and grow from the experience of doing it. This is important. My successes as a photographer are because of my failures. Without those failings, and the experience I gleaned from them, the trial and error, guess and check, I would never have been able to accomplish the images I have. You have to fail to succeed.

I hope this is making some sense, I am having to use a lot of words that I do not care to use, such as: failure, success, bad, good, etc. But that I shall address in my next post.

Ok, so on to this photo. Well it fails in a few ways. First, the composition is crooked, and frankly very uninteresting. It does very little to emphasize the subject matter. In fact I am sure most of you cannot even guess what the subject of this photo is. Go ahead, I shall give you a moment to try.

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The subject of this photo is the expanse of water in the foreground. That's right, that mostly black body of water. While i was standing here the gold light from the far hills was mixing with the deep blue of the water and I wanted to try a long pinhole exposure of how that looked. I was curious to see how the blue and gold blended.

Not very well apparently.

Plus my horizon is crooked. And there is a giant blob of shadow on the right. The supposed subject of the far, sunlit hills is not strong enough to usurp this photo and carry it.

So I am left with this. It is not horrible, but nor is it great. At the risk of confusing you and the hopes of underscoring the argument I have begun to make here and will finish later, I will point out that I have not called this photo a failure. Nor do I consider it one. Certainly not one of my better pieces, but a necessary step along the way. It was practice (isn't everything) and I have gained experience from this, particularly for the next time I am in a similar situation.

The funny thing is, this photo does succeed in a very important way. It reminds me of that sunny afternoon, and how it felt to stand on the edge of this lake and see the hills be set afire with the last afternoon light. The brisk wind blowing across the lake and make the surface of the water choppy so that the blue and gold intermingled in the way that initially caught my attention. This photo takes me back to that moment quite effectively.

Anyway, some food for thought though regarding success and failure I hope. And I also hope that those of you who follow my stream and have an overinflated opinion of just how well I do this whole pinhole thing realize that all of us take "bad" pictures, usually more often than not. ;-)

By the way, a few pinhole images from the same lake that I thought turned out a bit better.

Tags:   pinhole pinscape Vermont New England success failure Fall Autumn Lake Willoughby Zero69 Zero Image landscape film color lake water travel Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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Found in the middle of a field in Vermont. Unfortunately I did not have any change on me, so I was left to stare thirstily at what was undoubtedly an oasis of thirst-quenching refreshment.

Tags:   soft drink Coca-Cola Coke Why isn't it spelled 'Coka-Cola'? Vermont New England Pentax 6x7 Fuji Pro 160C film Passing by I never knew they grew these things in Vermont vending machine drink it up Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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I am still working through images from my trip to Vermont. I think I mentioned earlier being impressed by the number and age of the cemeteries in Vermont. If I didn't, I was. Anyway, so this was taken at a small cemetery we found while driving some back roads on the way to Lake Willoughby one afternoon.

I shot this on my Holga with Ilford SFX and a B+W red 29 filter.

Tags:   Holga square Mother tombstone grave cemetery Vermont New England b&w Black and white IR infrared plastic camera Ilford SFX Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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Traveling and photography do not necessarily go as well together as most think. I mean, when I first started getting excited and serious about photography, being a globe-trotting photographer was my dream. It many ways it still is. But the reality is a lot more complex. What I mean, and this strikes me pretty much every time I go somewhere farther than a day's drive, is that photographing new places is really difficult. Mainly just because you do not know the area. It is sort of like meeting someone for the very first time, not knowing anything about them, then being stuck next to them during dinner, the two of you awkwardly stumbling across topics trying to find some common ground. Sometimes you hit it right off and the evening is a breeze. Sometimes you find a mutual interest half way through the night, and sometimes you spend the whole evening hoping the babysitter will call and deliver you from your social nightmare. Travel photography is not nearly as dramatic as that. Or rather, it can be, just in entirely different ways.

The comparison I am trying to make is that it can be daunting and awkward being introduced to an entirely new place and trying to get to know it intimately enough to photograph it well enough, all within what is usually about a week's time.

This strikes me when I come home and spend the following evening under a certain bridge, or traveling out to the Gorge; to the places I know like the back of my hand. It is weird, because there are aspects I so like and dislike about traveling abroad. I love the energy of learning a new area and experiencing new sights. I really dislike the feeling of flitting in, snap snap snapping over a few days and flitting out. I don't want to just hit the high points, because while I may get some beautiful photos, I don't ever really feel like I got more than an introduction to a place. And then I think about the St Johns Bridge and how well I have gotten to know it, and how much more meaningful the photography becomes for me. Yet at the same time, that familiarity itself is a bit vexing as the explorer in me wants to do more than discover new perspectives of familiar locales.

I know, it is a bit of a circular argument. But one that strikes me every time I spend a week or so in another part of the world. If only I were rich enough to just move to a new place every year or two and just live there. Seeing it day in and day out. Enjoying the rainy days as well as the sunny ones. Being able to experience a place not only at its most beautiful, but those times that it is not as well. Finding all the nooks and crannies and less explored corners of that part of the world. Learning its secrets, and so on.

But that is another dream, for another day.

Tags:   Lake Willoughby Vermont Fall Autumn pinhole pinscape Zero69 Zero Image landscape lake water New England film Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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Control, apparently, is not the answer. People who need certainty in their lives are less likely to make art that is risky, subversive, complicated, iffy, suggestive or spontaneous. What's really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way. Simply put, making art is chancy - it doesn't mix well with predictability. Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-prevasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.

Another excerpt from Art & Fear. I found it meaningful, hopefully some others out here shall too.

This was an image I made in Vermont, near a small church we had stopped to photographed. The ground was layered in fallen leaves and I was laying in them staring straight up, admiring the blue sky and yellow leaves, the warmth of the sun, and the lazily drifting clouds. This was how it all felt to me.

Tags:   out of focus oof Vermont blue yellow leaves sky skyscape Fall Autumn New England branches trees Nikon FM2 Fuji Velvia 50 slide blurry impression Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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