Music and Me

I love music.

I know I’m not unique in this aspect, so why bring it up? Why devote a post on my photography blog about my love of music?

There was a recent period in my life when I wasn’t the voracious music listener I was before and after. The only time I listened to music in any degree was while I was driving. But last year I gradually paying more attention to my iTunes library, and one of my resolutions for 2019 is to really get back into music.

I’m going to make perhaps a long-winded correlation, but hear me out: In the past 12 to maybe 18 months I’ve felt a resurgence in my confidence as a photographer (this whole topic of confidence deserves its own blog post, which I may or may not write), and I feel like my return to searching for new music and listening more often has been a big contributor to that change I’ve seen in my creatively, especially over the last month and a half. It was in early- to mid-2014 that I stopped searching out new music and listening so much, and it was around that same time that I felt a decline in my confidence level.

Music has always been one of my favorite things. I love the memories that certain songs can bring to the surface; I love the excitement of hearing an old favorite I may have neglected or ignored for a long time; I love the thrill of hearing a brand new song that stirs up emotion in whatever way, be it happiness, or sadness, or rowdy, or hopeful.

And while I’m on this topic of music, and its impact on my creativity, music has been a part of my photography. I’ve often thought of what a soundtrack for projects or individual photographs would sound like: what style of music would it be? would it be a score? who would compose it? what artists and songs would be on it? During the years of 2015-2017 and part of 2018, whenever I went out photographing I played music in the car that had an impact on me when I was in college or during my time in grad school. Artists like Interpol, Death Cab for Cutie, Wilco, The New Pornographers, and Elliott Smith. My thinking was that that music inspired me and helped channel my creativity back then, so it should inspire me now. I felt my work was strong then, so listening to that same music should help me make strong work now. Right? I even made a playlist with all of those old favorite songs and albums.

Looking back on that period, I feel like I was making work that was trying to by like the work I was making during college. I feel like I was trying to make that old music inform my present-day creativity. In mid-2018 I realized this, and thought “it’s 2018. I’m not in my early or late twenties. I need to be making work that is more authentic to my 2018 self. Why not update my music?” And once I did that, once I started playing the music that was inspiring me currently, today, I think that was when my confidence began to really return. I had, without stating specifically, decided to live in the present and look to the future as an artist, and turn to those things that are currently inspiring, informing, and influencing me. I’m not trying to make the music I listen to be responsible for my success or failures, or ups or downs as an artist. I just mention all this to illustrate the music’s power to influence me.

The lesson I’ve learned (and maybe it’s still sinking in) is that I’m not the same person I was when I was in college. I’m not the same artist I was then, or in 2008. I’m not the same artist I was a month ago, nor am I, I think it would be safe to say, even the same artist I was yesterday. We’re all progressing—or, god forbid, digressing—and we need to embrace that progression, grow with it, and learn from it. It might do us good to take a minute periodically and identify (if it’s not obvious) what is causing that growth.

Bon Iver—Holocene

David Shannon-Lier Interview

Last weekend I posted some photographs by David Shannon-Lier. I emailed him and asked some questions about the body of work, and he was kind enough to answer.

Andy Duncan: How long have you been working on this project, and do you think there will ever be an "end" to it, or point at which it will be considered finished?

David Shannon-Lier: I have been working on this project for a little over 5 years now, though the first year and a half to two years of that was spent figuring out how to make the pictures and refining my methodology. I hope to put a book of this work together and I am actually working on including long exposures of the movement of the sun. This is a little trickier as days tend to be a bit windier than nights. I am now building a folding wind break to bring with me on my trips after this last outing.

 AD: What was your inspiration for this work?

DS-L: The inspiration for the work came when I was driving from Massachusetts to Arizona for graduate school. I began to think about our old home and how as we drove west it was slowly setting below the horizon. It occurred to me that I rarely thing about the larger world in three dimensions. I wanted to make work that would point to that gap in our thinking. Now I see that gap as a metaphor for the gap in our conception of our own lives: we know we are small, ephemeral beings, but we can't shake the notion that the things we do every day carry some sort of weight.

 AD: How did it begin, and how has it evolved?

DS-L: The work began as mostly technical problems and solutions. How to plot the motion of heavenly bodies? How to do it accurately enough to where the pictures didn't fall apart? How to nail down the exposure, especially considering small apertures and reciprocity failure? These problems took the better part of a year an a half, most of the experiments taking place in my back yard. As I solved those problems, I began to travel in concentric circles around our home in Arizona, at which point I had to solve other problems to do with travel and how to do this out of a car and away from the support of a home base. Now all that is behind me, which makes the work easier, but in some ways less exciting in the execution. The concepts have developed a bit and I now see the work as about that particularly vexing mix we have as a species of being mortal, conscious and aware that we are both.

 AD: Do you have any thoughts or ideas of what comes next for your photography?

DS-L: I am always taking pictures of things that fascinate me. I am interested in the landscape and the sublime, particularly that aspect of the sublime that is closest to fear or dread. It seems to me in these moments we can begin to get at that human knot I mentioned above.

 AD: Who is a favorite photographer of yours?

DS-L: There are a lot. I find the best persona to embody as a visual artist is a compulsive thief. It does no good to steal from one artist or movement, or even one medium. But if you can constantly be taking in new information, and stealing a bit from here, a bit from there, from other artists as well as science, philosophy, theology, culture the work will end up being rather more interesting. This is all to say that sometimes (as is the case with compulsive thieves) I am unaware that I am borrowing from some area until long after and I could spend entirely too long listing all of them. All that being said I will mention Bill Burke and Mark Klett, who I worked closely with and who have influenced me by osmosis. Also, someone who is working now and really gets at the ideas of the landscape and the sublime is Michael Lundgren.

 AD: Because I'm a bit of a tech junkie, what programs or software do you use to project or predict the positioning of the sun and the moon?

DS-L: The solution to that technical problem was to use very accurate data and a very accurate tool for measuring the data. I started getting my data from the U.S. Naval Observatory, but I now use an app called stellarium. It has the same data, but is a little easier to access on the road. From that I can get the precise location for any heavenly body at present or in the future. I use a surveyor's tool called a transit, or a theodolite to plot the points that I get from the data, and then place my camera in the spot where the transit made its measurements. It's a bit more complicated than that and a lot more tedious, but that's the gist of it.

Man, I loved the part about stealing from everywhere!  I've heard the quote that's often attributed to Pablo Picasso: "good artists borrow, great artists steal." But for all the times I've heard it, I never really thought to apply the stealing to all facets of life, not just to steal from other artists.

Thanks for your time David! I can't wait to see more of your work!

David Shannon-Lier

Clear back in October, Lenscratch had an article in their Art + Science series on the body of work by David Shannon-Lier titled Of Heaven and Earth. The first image in the article, Chalk Moonrise, Muley Point, Utah, pulled me in, since I love long exposures of the moon and sun, but also, there was more to the image than just the long white arc of the moon as it traveled across the sky: on the rocks in the foreground is a light line that matches the radius of the moon's path. 

Chalk Moonrise, Muley Point, Utah

Not only are these absolutely gorgeous photographs, but the concept behind them is so fun and interesting! 

In a LensCulture article, Lier says this about his work:

To produce each photograph, I leave open the shutter for a very long exposure. The result is an image of the moon or sun playing off of an altered landscape. In this way, the heavenly meets with the human, the immense with the intimate and one of the most constant forces in our world—the movement of the solar bodies—interacts with a line of rocks or grass: a mark that is small and completely fleeting in meaning and form.

Badlands Moonset, Badlands National Park, South Dakota

To see more of Lier's work, which I highly recommend, you can visit his website. Also, he's been featured on LensCulture, Fraction Magazine, and Hoctok.

Julie Anand & Damon Sauer

A little while ago LensCulture announced their 2017 Exposure Award winners. Among the superb photographers represented were a pair who, for the last 12 years, have been working collaboratively. Ground Truth: Corona Landmarks by Julie Anand and Damon Sauer immediately resonated deeply in me, and the images and concepts behind this body of work have been bouncing around my mind ever since.

I admit to feeling a small amount of jealousy when I first saw the photographs. It was another of those "I wish I'd thought of that!" moments. But I'm glad  those moments occur, because they are, in the end, motivating. They make me think about my own work in new ways; how to look at the world in new ways.

I emailed the artists with several questions about the Ground Truth work, and I was pleased to receive a quick response from Julie. Here is our exchange:

Andy Duncan: Can you explain a little about the origins and inspiration for this project and how it came to be?

Julie Anand: Damon read an article conjecturing about strange marks in the Gobi desert hypothesized to be used for satellites and it linked to a single site in the Arizona desert. We made a field trip and eventually found more and eventually Damon mapped the entire system using Google Earth. Meanwhile we did research and found that in 2004 a pilot had discovered them from above and linked them to the Corona project. So we started exploring them photographically. Eventually we started using a 16ft boom. At first they were pretty straight documents and we went around photographing markers that way. Then we got a grant for a new camera and had to redo all our work, so we rethought it and turned them into vertical landscapes. We did that for a while. Finally, we added the layer of looking at what satellites are present now. It took a couple of years for us to develop this methodology. It wasn’t our first draft by any means.

AD: How long have you been working on the project, and how much longer do you think it'll take before you consider it to be finished?

JA: We’ve been working on it for about three years, and as I mentioned above, we went through several different versions of how to explore these markers. Our website isn’t up to date (we have a fresh batch of images in progress right now), and we’re still negotiating what it will mean to be finished.

AD: How do the paths of the satellites influence the composition of the photograph? And visa versa? Or do they?

JA: The satellite paths are a chance operation with respect to the photographs. We have no idea what they will look like when we make our images.

AD: Do you make the photograph and then look up and superimpose the satellite paths, or look at the paths first in your tracking software and then make a photograph with the satellites' paths in mind for the composition?

JA: The photograph comes first and that gives us the data for plugging into the software to determine the satellite paths.

AD: How many photographs do you make at each marker?

JA: We usually walk around and decide what would make the most interesting vantage and make a couple of different versions. Each final image we make is stitched from about 5 images. It’s a fairly big set up with two tripods, sandbags, 16ft boom, tethered laptop etc…precisely measured…so we’re not very “casual” about moving around, but we know that getting to the sites takes a lot of resources and energy so we try to give ourselves options in the field.

AD: How many markers have you photographed so far? Are they all still extant? Looking at the map on the website, I see some blue marks and some green marks. Can you explain the significance of the two? Am I correct in assuming that the green marks indicate the marker at that location is missing for whatever reason?

JA: We have a fresh batch we’re working on right now. When we are through with those, we should be at around 40 completed images. The map is an important part of the project that represents significant research. We plan to show the map in the exhibitions with our images. The map has several layers of things going on. Green marks are ones in which there is no photographic record of any kind available for the site. Otherwise, light colored crosses reveal our images, or dark blue crosses have embedded color Google Earth historic images or black and white aerial images that Damon researched if it wasn’t on Google Earth at all. But just because we’ve researched a historic aerial or historic Google Earth image doesn’t mean the marker is there today. I created a spreadsheet of all the sites and about 100 markers have been removed.

AD: Are there any markers that you've decided to not photograph because of lack of visual interest? Or has there been an additional purpose of cataloging each marker?

JA: We haven’t edited out sites at this point because we’re never quite sure what they will look like once the satellite map is created. Since that’s a chance operation, sometimes even very plain ground views produce stunning line drawings. We’re still deciding about what we think “complete” should mean for this project. But intuitively we feel we’re not finished, so we keep working. We have other things we want to try as a parallel practice to the photographic typology.

AD: Are these markers still used by the Air Force and CIA? If there are some missing, I can't think that they are still used, otherwise they would be better maintained. Also, if some are missing, and this grid is no longer used for satellite calibration, how are satellites calibrated today? Is there a new grid of markers somewhere to serve this purpose? Or is that information possibly classified?

JA: The project was decommissioned in 1972 and the markers have been decaying in the desert ever since. The Corona project was declassified in the 1990’s. We have an appointment to talk with a satellite scientist to find out more about how these were used, to help us interpret patterns in our sky maps we are creating, and to learn more about contemporary calibration systems.

AD: How did the government acquire the land, with the Corona Project being a secret joint program? Was the land bought from the then owners of that land?

JA: The Army Map Service leased the land in 100 foot parcels from land owners...There is a lot of speculative stuff online and we need an actual historian to do some work on this field. We are looking for a historian collaborator.

I'd like to thank Julie here on the blog for taking the time to answer my questions. After reading her answers, I was even more excited about her and Damon's project! I can't wait to see how it progresses! Head on over to their web site at 2cirlcles.org to see the whole collections of photographs. Read their statement. Check out the map, and don't miss the Process video! I love seeing the "behind the scenes" of how artists make their work, and this video really shows how much work goes into making just a single photograph of these landmarks.

I found a Youtube video of a presentation Julie gave in 2015 at WSU. It's worth watching if you've got a little extra time to spare. You can also check out an article about the Julie and Damon's work on Wired Magazine: These Concrete Relics in Arizona Helped Satellites Spy on the Soviets—Wired Magazine

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Calibration Mark X47 with Satellites

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Calibration Mark AC47 with Satellites

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Calibration Mark AE48 with Satellites

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Calibration Mark AC48 with Satellites

Nils Karlson

A couple months ago, the Film Shooters Collective Instagram feed featured Nils Karlson. It was "love at first sight." I tapped through to his feed, and followed him. Ever since, I've loved seeing his images come up while scrolling through my Instagram.

Karlson lives in Germany, and uses a mix of medium format cameras, and pinhole cameras, and shoots on a variety of color films.

I was immediately attracted to Karlson's aesthetic. The high-key tones, the soft color, selective focus in some images and the tell-tale softness and vignetting of a pinhole photograph in others, give his images an airy, dreamy quality. I feel as though I'm dreaming I'm on the beach, feeling the humid, salty air blow across my skin. In others, it's as though I've been shrunk down to the size of an insect.

He was recently featured and interviewed at the Pinholista, and you can find it here, and you can also see more of his work on his flickr page.

Some Thoughts on Projects

A few days ago, I published a post on the work of Krista Wortendyke. In it, I explained I first saw her work in an email newsletter, and that it really "struck a chord." I didn't really elaborate on that in the post, because I wanted to focus on Krista's work. Today I'd like to talk about the way it affected and has already influenced me and my own photography.

I've mentioned in previous blog posts how the creative impulse has really taken hold of me again and I've begun sweeping the cobwebs out of the recesses of my mind that drove my creative thinking. It’s not that I quit exercising my creativity altogether—I just found different outlets, like tying flies and fly fishing, and I didn’t exercise photographically often at all. Or, I at least didn’t engage in it seriously, or with any real direction. It gradually fell pretty low on the list of priorities. It is true that I would occasionally think about a project that would help me get serious, but that’s as much work I put into it. Add to that the fact that after leaving grad school (the reasons for which I still haven’t ever fully addressed here), I haven’t really been part of a community to offer any valuable feedback or critiques beyond a “thumbs-up” or a “like” on Facebook or Instagram of any work I ever did do in the past several years. And that has been the hardest struggle.

So, as I’ve been going out around Cache Valley to photograph, and reading material to help get my brain in gear, I’ve been wondering and pondering on what to do for a project, and several ideas have popped up. I’ve always thought ever since moving here, about doing something with the Bear River. It’s a heavily exploited resource, so there’s lots I could say with it. But then I remember Craig Denton’s book “Bear River: Last Chance to Change Course” and shy away from a project of my own on the Bear River. That happens to me all the time: I think of a project or subject or process, then learn of or remember that someone else has done that exact thing or something very similar and I give up on whatever plans for a project I may have started to formulate. But I recently heard a quote from Mary Virginia Swanson who said (to paraphrase) that you should photograph the ideas or subjects that come from within. To photograph what you’re passionate about. She went on to say that after a while you will come into your own style. And then I later heard another paraphrased quote from Robert Adams: Art can’t awaken us if it merely copies what we already have. So, the first quote gave me some validation and encouragement to carry out a project that someone perhaps has already done. The second quote gave me the warning I need to not just copy. Which I’ve always had in mind when making photographs (though sometimes I’ve made photographs knowing full well it looks exactly like another photograph from someone who came before). In the Adams quote, he said something about taking what someone has already done (and this is where the real challenge lies) and to make it better. And he’s right. Every turn I take, it seems like I’ve seen something like it to varying degrees before. There’s little in the Arts that hasn’t been done before. Which can be debilitating, because I don’t want to copy. I just need to figure out how to improve upon work that has influenced me. That’s when a voice creeps in my head and says “How are you going to improve upon Mark Klett? or James Balog? or Peter Goin? and the list goes on.

Now let me discuss some thoughts on the project I have swimming around my mind, as well as what is an underlying element to all of my photography. I’ve always been fascinated at the way a photograph can freeze moments of time. Whether the length of that moment of time is only 1/500 of a second, or if three hours passed to make the exposure. My lumens, for example, are exposed anywhere between three hours and a week or more (I’ve done them as long as a month, but I feel like a day-long, or two-day-long exposure is sufficient for what I am trying to achieve). Within that time, the plants I use in the process die, along with any insects or other crawly things that are in the plants’ roots or leaves, and things begin to rot and decay fairly quickly, especially if it’s a hot summer day. The paper really changes from the intense UV light that is exposing it. The viewer may not know just how much time elapsed in the making each print, but the passage of time is a preeminent element in the creation of them. With my “camera photographs” (I use the term here to separate them from the camera-less photographs that lumen prints are), I almost always try to use as slow a shutter speed as possible. Within reason. I’m not usually interested in freezing motion in my photography. I aim to show motion—flowing water, tree branches swaying in the breeze, the streaks of headlights as cars drive by.

Which brings me back around to the photography of Krista Wortendyke, and the chord that was struck. In the blog post I did on her work, I explained (actually, I quoted her artist statement) that her photographs are composed of multi-frame images taken from video games, and photographs found on the internet to make a composite image that blurs the line between what is real, and what is fiction. Upon seeing that photograph in the email newsletter, I knew I had a direction I could take in a project on the Bear River. By making each photograph up of a composite of many photographs, I can show the passage of time in each individual photograph that makes up the whole, as well as the passage of time measured in days, weeks, months or even years, showing the effects of time and changes of seasons of a scene in a single photograph. Any changes in water levels of rivers and streams, the sprouting and death of leaves on trees, and any changes that Man might make on the landscape could all be observed in one image. That email arrived in my inbox at about nine a.m., and I wasn’t able to sit still or concentrate for the rest of the day. My mind was exploding with new ideas and locations to photograph and methods of display. In that post, I explained it wasn’t the first time I’d seen work done the way Krista created her photographs, and that I was familiar with James Balog. Even before I knew of Balog, Tyler Hopkins, a friend from college was doing mosaic-, multi-frame photographs. And since I came across Krista’s work, I’ve discovered a few more photographers working in this similar vein, such as Jake Weigel.

Over the past two or three weeks, I've been out a handful of times to start gathering photographs for finished pieces. I've returned to a few locations on different days, so that the larger photograph has photographs made on two different days.

Here is the first one I started working on, with photos made on two different days, and is by no means finished:

These pieces, as I mentioned above, may not be complete for up to, and maybe even more than, a year, since my goal currently is to include frames from all four seasons, from different times of day, under various weather conditions.

It had been a very long time since a project hit me and got me so excited as this one has made me. Stay tuned for more updates!

Inspiration/Aspiration

Grand vistas, good music, family—these are a few things that inspire me.
When I hear the words inspire, or inspiration, I think of things that uplift. Uplift me mentally, and spiritually. It's always been at the forefront of why I photograph. The Apostle Paul (in Phillipians 4:8) summed up my goals:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

The Thirteenth Article of Faith also expresses my aims of my photography:

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

In an age where there's a lot of junk in the Art world, and not just the Art world, but the world in general, I got criticized a lot for being too traditional, or romanticizing the land too much. Back when I was in college, I let those criticisms get to me, and I felt insecure, and inadequate as a photographer. Since then, I've gotten over those feelings, and I no longer care that my photographs are too "romantic." All around us, we are bombarded with filth that desensitizes us. What was once considered immoral in years past is now celebrated and glorified. That is why I chose to photograph how I photograph.
I don't get out much to photograph any more. In fact, any photographs I do make coincide with my fishing outings, and the subject matter is pretty much all the same: rivers. Despite that I still endeavor to create photographs that inspire, and uplift, and to express my love and gratitude to God for the Earth He has given us.