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Why I Gravitate Towards Pictorialism

Lately I’ve taken to being a little more creative with my post processing. I’ve done so in the past but now it seems I’m Quite often when I'm taking a picture I see another version of the scene in my mind, a dreamscape if you will. It's not always there; but I look for it nonetheless. It's a better story than what I see with my eyes. With this rowboat I am rowing, somewhere suspended between a still sea and sky. Maybe I am rowing between this world and the next. Maybe.following that inclination a little more frequently. In photography there are perhaps a couple of schools of thought, straight shooters who seek to preserve a moment in as realistic a manner as possible. This is an important part of preserving artifacts of our world and society, which is appreciated by many of us including future generations. And then there is pictorialism, which is concerned with creating images about feelings and uses a wide variety of tools to convey a vision. You can read more about here in this L’Oeil article by Andy Romanoff.

As I see it there is a pattern here that photography has with other endeavors. There are usually two schools of thought in just about everything we do. Classical and Jazz, clinical and holistic, …the list goes on. It’s how we are built.

Death, taxes and afternoon thunderstorms are among the few certainties of life. At least it is here in Florida during the summer. I think I would be more surprised if we didn't get a storm in the afternoon. Like when I lived by the tracks then moved away and couldn't sleep because there were no trains going by. Thunderstorms are a little like that. We ignore them. They make noise but we tune it out. But lucky for me I'm a photographer and I'm always on the lookout. I didn't ignore this one. And now, I'll lay back in bed and wait for the sound of the midnight train. Goodnight all. This speaks to the concept of duality. Simply put, duality is an idea that all things are comprised of two contrasting sides, polar compliments, yin and yang. Together they comprise a whole, greater than the sum of the parts. To be greater than the sum of the parts is like saying one plus one equals three. This is not logical nor reasonable, yet I think there is an intrinsic truth that we all might recognize. Think of a family, together the mother, father, children, aunts and uncles form something greater than the individuals alone. And so this is the case with photography, straight shooters and pictorialist all swimming around in the same ocean, each with an effect on the other. Which side we lean towards is a matter of preference.

Lately I’m leaning towards the pictorialism. I’m also a straight shooter, however more and more I’ll go to lengths when shooting and in post processing to manipulate images to convey a vision in my mind. The result is a combination of what was there when I snapped the shutter button and an idea I have in my head. I am now beginning to synthesize the duality of scene and idea so they become something greater that the sum of the two. I believe this might be more akin to music composition, painting or even sculpting. I take something from my environment and fashion it in an interpretation way. The result is reflective of the world as well as feelings and images I have in my mind.

Seeing with my mind’s eye

As a practicing pictorialist I get to be creative. Emphasis on the words “I get to be”. Believe it or not, I didn’t realize that I was allowed to be creative. No one was standing over me with a gun and I didn’t sign a straight shooters contract when I bought my camera, but for one reason or another I somehow felt bound by the rules of the straight shooters club. Oddly, I never even realized it until now. I’m not denigrating straight shooters, I’m one of them and you may be too. We would never have A section of downtown Vancouver BC with a touch of Florida in the reflection. Must be me day dreaming when I should be at work.photos of sports or wildlife or National Geographic without straight shooters. One is not better than the other.

Lets face it, most of us live in a complicated stressful world and we do our best to get by. Between the demands of paying the bills and figuring out what to have for dinner there may not be a lot of creativity going on. We do what we have to do to get by. However we are dualistic by nature and along with the day to day, we are also creative. Only most of us don’t know it because we are preoccupied with only one side of life. However, if we are fortunate enough to discover our own creativity, if we honor and nourish it, if we encourage it, it will grow. I’m understating this to keep on track, but this is a really important thing.

We need more play-time

Remember recess in grade school? If I think back, I might have done something like run from the monkey bars to the oak tree; only I (and my classmates) pretended to be in the Olympics. We saw the stadium, we could hear the crowd, we felt the excitement and we ran until we crossed the finish line and the stands went CRAZY!!! And then the bell rang and we went back to class. Of course we were talking about it until the teacher scolded us to be quiet. That was fun because it was play and we lost track of time.

I tMy how time flies, I was last here a little over two years ago. I shot from almost the exact same location at around the same time, but the results are quite different. For one, I used a different lens. For another, I used textures on this. My style and inclinations change over time and so I'm finding that if I go back to some of my favorite locations a shoot again, the results are quite different. Here is a link to the old version: https://goo.gl/LGw6tmhink it’s important to have fun, to lose track of time and play again. Lately I’m giving myself a bit of permission to play so that my imagination has a greater role in the outcome of my photography. On the one hand I look for compositions. That can be serious business, fully engaging the disciplines and rules I’ve learned about the craft. On the other hand, I’m allowing myself to imagine the way I wish the scene looked. If I didn’t consciously allow myself that latitude I wouldn’t even consider anything other than the scene in front of me when I take the shot.

If you’re a hardcore straight shooter, you’re probably thinking I’ve left the reservation and perhaps might be one sandwich short of a picnic basket. I’m okay with that. But just to be clear, I can separate the “real world” with my imaginary world very well. I do it everyday and am well practiced because I’ve done it most of my life, …possibly to my own detriment. Well bubba, the fat lady just sung. I’m opting out; I choose to be a pictorialist. But to be perfectly honest, I’m doing it for me. Not because I’m self-absorbed, rather because I believe it makes me a better person all around. More than the sum of my parts.

 

I just got back from the beach where I walked along the water at dusk. At one point I stood there fascinated at the challenge from a sandpiper. Apparently I was on his stretch of beach as he worked the waves. The motion is cause by moving my camera sideways during a long exposure. The piper and couple is a normal exposure. This is a technique that I'm experimenting with, that is taking multiple exposures of the same scene and blending them in different ways. There are all kinds of possibilities and today this is what I ended up with. Hopefully the piper ended up with something too.So there you have it, I have made a conscious decision to follow my creative tendencies because, …well its fun. Nothing wrong with a little fun, eh? And its the kind of fun that naturally integrates some of the dualities in my life. And that, my friends, has subtle yet profound influence on who I am as a person and how I live my life. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

 

 

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Rick’s Story in a Nutshell

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Up until now this website has been a place for me to share my photography. For a few years now I’ve been sharing a daily photo and writing a few thoughts to go along with it. I really enjoy sharing my passion for photography with you so thanks for stopping by. Starting today I’m going to add another dimension to it in the form of a longer posts about photography. It just seems like a fun thing to do and the next step in the evolution of my photography. It’s easy to follow me and my photos daily. Everyday I posts to my portfolio here (and the menu above) as well as a lot of social media sites.

So, without further adieu, here we go.

To start I thought it might be a good idea to share a little about myself, an introduction if you will.

About me

Even though I do photography almost every day I am still learning all the time. Anyone can pick up a camera and take a picture, like making a meal. How it turns out depends on your skills, experience and tastes. Along the way I’m learning a few tricks and techniques that reflect my own tastes and vision. There is always more to know. I relish the journey and the everyday learning and experiences that photography brings me.

Heaven knows there are a lot of folks that write about photography, from the details of the gear, techniques to improve, to inspired writings on photography as art. So why would I write want to add to all that? As I share my experiences I suspect I’ll learn more through the process of writing it down and sometimes you’ll connect with what I have to say, and through that we’ll create a bond and sense of community.

So who am I, this man behind these photos? Well my name is Rick Schwartz. I am married to a lovely lady, I have a grown son who has his own career, and I love animals; I have a cat and a dog who are my two best friends.

I'm posting this to remind myself to get outside after it stops raining. That's when we get great light and as everyone knows, photographers love unusual shades and hues of light. Right after a storm is one of those times. In any case, this was taken in the morning after an evening of rain and with any luck I'll get out again today or tomorrow morning for some similar shots. In the meantime, have a great day everyone.I live in Florida, which becomes obvious when you see some of my photos. However I was born and raised in California. For my formative years I lived in or near the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I was a Boy Scout and as I grew up I camped and backpacked quite a bit. That instilled in me a love for the outdoors that I still have and which helps explain my love of landscape photography.

As a teenager I discovered computer programming and for whatever reason I was good at it. That later turned into a career that continues to this day. When I’m writing software I get to a place in my head where time seems to stand still. Hours can pass before I know it. For me writing software it’s not only about solving a problem, it’s also about aesthetics. I know this is going to sound strange, but I strive to create computer code that is pleasing to look at. You’re probably scratching your head wondering how software can be pleasing to look at. Well, if you think about it, you could apply that same idea to just about anything. An architect can come up with an elegant design, a chef can create a gourmet dish and a computer programmer can write beautiful code.

I write programs my grandmother (rest her soul) could read. I take problems and decompose them and then rearrange the blocks in a simple, logical, step-by-step way that creates an elegant solution to something that started out looking really hard. This is a creative process and it’s the part of my career that I enjoy and get a lot of satisfaction out of. This is a way of thinking, it’s how I’ve trained my mind, and I believe that some of that same creativity and appreciation for aesthetics carries over into my photography.
Regarding my personality I’m a little shy and reserved. I gravitate to things that keep me out of the limelight. I’m not sure where I get that, but I think half of us are outgoing and the other half reserved. But really it’s more varied than that. When teaching programming or working with a client I can seem outgoing and talkative. So we all have different aspects to ourselves, but if I had to boil it all down to a single word I would be shy or reserved, yet occasionally outgoing when the need arises.

Having said that, when I write about something as creative as photography, my thoughts and musings are a little freer to come out. So you’ll pick up things about me along the way, that’s inevitable. Whether it’s a photo, a caption or a longer story about my passion for photography, you won’t have to look too far to pick up on who I am and what I’m thinking.

How did I get into photography?

I was thinking about this the other day and mentioned it to my wife. She said something I didn’t expect, that I always had it in me. Like so many other things, I think she was right. I always had a love of photography but it was forgotten for a long while.

Years ago in the 1980s I used to shoot and develop film. I had a dark room and all the equipment I needed to process film and produce prints. I use to love to take pictures of people, streets and landscapes. When I lived in California I would go to Yosemite to take photos of the waterfalls. When I lived in Long Island in New York and I remember taking pictures of the sailboats along the shore, villages and occasionally portraits. It was a big effort to maintain the equipment and a darkroom, but I was hooked, it was a passion and I did it as much as I could. As I moved from city to city for my career in software, all of the equipment and artifacts of photography slowly fell away. Life moved in, I moved on. The passion receded as I became involved in life, friends, career and family. When cameras started going digital there was a lot of hype that it would replace film. But like all hype, the reality took longer It's warm and humid here in central Florida and this evening the clouds were heavy and thick. So I headed over to the Skyway Bridge to capture this. As I was here some dolphins swam by, ships passed under the bridge, and pelicans looked for scraps from the fishermen. All in all, just another lazy Sunday evening.to realize. Fast-forward to today and of course it’s a completely different world.

One night a few years ago while sitting up in bed trying to fall asleep I was browsing the Internet on my iPad. I ran across some photos by Trey Ratcliff. Whatever photo I first saw intrigued me because I pressed the next button, then I did it again, and again and again. I became spellbound by what I was seeing in photo after photo. I clicked to his website and came to realize that what I was looking at was digital photography with post processing. Sometime during the last couple of decades it became possible to create beautiful digital photography. Actually, knew it was possible, I have a friend that has shot digital for years, but for whatever reasons it never really registered with me. Perhaps I wasn’t ready. However now it finally hit me that the hype had finally turned to reality. So night after night I would go back at stare at those landscape photos, I thought it was pretty cool. At that time I didn’t realize it but the long forgotten passion inside was beginning to stir once again.

Also, around the same time, I was traveling a lot for my job. At night I’d be back at the hotel, working out in the gym, reading books or walking around for exercise. For a while now I was feeling like something was missing or that I was out of step with something. As I analyze it now, I realize that this feeling had been percolating just under the surface for years. It’s an odd feeling but I think many of us feel it at one time or another. Yet I still couldn’t put my finger on it so I paid it little heed. This is just about the time when it all came together for me, most certainly because I was just about ready for it.

The epiphany

One night I had an epiphany that forced the subject of photography to the forefront. I was reading a book from an author by the name Anita Moorjani entitled Dying to Be Me. In the book she chronicles her personal journey overcoming cancer. It’s a transformative story and I highly recommend it whether or not you’ve struggled with disease. Now I’m paraphrasing, but in the book she said that our true nature is an unstoppable creative energy, and that if we don’t let it flow out of us, it can turn in on itself which can lead to problems, health or otherwise. Her life is a living testament to this and it struck a chord with me and resonated in a powerful way.

Every time I drove between Tampa and Orlando I'd see this under construction. Finally completed I made it a point to stop here to get a closer look. From an architectural perspective there isn't anything in the region that compares, an icon of design and innovation.It’s funny because I can still remember the feeling I had when I read it, it was an “ah ha” moment. Certainly others have said similar things in similar ways, but for me, at that exact moment, it just clicked (no pun intended). My very next thought was that my creativity had been stifled in the process of living my life, that I had a passion for photography and that it was a creative force inside me that most certainly needed to flow again. I didn’t think, “oh that’s nice, I should do photography, wouldn’t it be nice?” No, it was an undeniable statement coming from inside me. I might sound a little strange I’ll admit. But with that affirmation of what I was about to do, creative energy started flowing inside of me once again. It was a quite a rush because it felt final and I was so excited I could not sleep that night.
Seeing Trey’s photos and reading Anita’s words reawakened creative energy that I already had inside. To this day, just like that evening in the hotel, I continue to get charged up about photography. I have to be careful because if I start looking at photos just before I go to bed it’s like drinking a double espresso. My mind starts running a million miles a minute and sleep is impossible. It’s funny and yet it’s just one indication of how photography affects me. There’s a lot more but these are the Cliff notes.

That’s how I got back into photography. I have always loved it, and for me it’s a way to be creative. Fast-forward from that night to now and a lot has happened. Photography is back in my life and it has become a business as well that goes by the name Just Enough Focus. I license images and sell prints, but I have kept the business to a minimum for the time being while I work on some things behind the scenes. I lean more towards the artistic pursuit of the medium and I have a few ideas as to where I’ll take it, or should I say, where it will take me.

Tada!

That’s me in a nutshell, at least as it relates to photography. Photography is an all-consuming passion, and the more I feed the muse the stronger Mountain lakes are peaceful first thing in the morning. On this morning I was lucky enough to get a few colors of the sunrise as well as the calm water. That's Mount Edith Cavell in the distance which has a big glacier that hangs precariously over a small lake. However there are no glaciers around this lake and so the water is clear without the typical aqua blue which is typical of glacier fed lakes.it gets. Is that cool or what?

So this was the first of my expanded posts. Now that we have the how-do-you-do’s out of the way I can get down to the business of writing about what I love to do. I have a few ideas of what I’ll write about next, ideas and thoughts that are just waiting to get out. Rest assured it will be something fun and maybe we will all learn a little something together.

Catch you on the flip side!