Claim OwnershipLensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
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Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 50 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work, and building an audience.
Included in this RSS Feed are the LensWork Podcasts — posted weekly, typically 10-20 minutes exploring a topic a bit more deeply — and our almost daily Here's a thought… audios (extracted from the videos.) Here's a thought… are snippets, fragments, morsels, and tidbits from Brooks' fertile (and sometimes swiss-cheesy) brain. Usually just a minute or two. Always about photography and the art life.
Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. He is the author of 13 books on photography and the creative life -- the latest books are The Best of the LensWork Interviews (2016), Photography, Art, and Media (2016), and the four annual volumes of Seeing in SIXES (2016-2019).
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HT2431 - Mean Stack Noise Reduction Repurposed
Back in 2022, I created a video in our LensWork Creative Labs series in which I discussed something called Mean Stack Noise Reduction. That technique is not obsolete in light of Adobe's AI Noise Reduction, but those images have a new and thoroughly unexpected use.
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All of us involved in photography have a reason we are so passionate about it. Knowing that reason can be helpful in directing our actions and recognizing those parts that will require discipline. What, precisely, captures your eye? When your heart skips a beat and you can't wait to pull out your camera, what is it that causes your enthusiasm? The light? The shadows? The subject? A composition? The picture you strive to make? There is no right answer to this question, but there might be a consistent answer for you. Perhaps reviewing your "best images" might give you a clue. Seems to me that knowing this aspect of your creative response to the world would be useful information.
HT2423 - Roads
Making photographs and sharing photographs are two different things. Many of us make photographs because we can't not make them. Sharing, however, is an optional activity. As an optional aspect of our creative life, it's more likely that we'll think carefully about how much we are willing to spend on sharing.
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HT2429 - Stuff Not Used
When I get back from a big trip, one of the decompression things I like to do is review my gear use. Since I put so much time and thought into the kit I'll take with me, doesn't it make sense that I should review and see if my planning was well thought out?
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HT2428 - Volumes 1, 2, and 3
Large bodies of work are difficult to consume. Think War and Peace versus haiku. Novelists know the advantages of breaking their narrative into smaller parts — chapters, sections, volumes. We can do that, too, as long as we remember that each section is its own entity and doesn't repeat the previous ones.
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HT2427 - Ruthless Editing to the Narrative
I believe we have the opposite problem from the one our photographic forefathers had. Their challenge was to make a great photograph with primitive materials. Today, we can make hundreds or thousands of flawless images with ease. How do we choose which ones to show? We edit to the narrative, but first we need to determine what the narrative is.
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HT2426 - Sensor Clean X2
I cringe every time I see those fuzzy blue circles in the sky that indicate I have dust on the sensor of the camera. I was given a suggestion by a reader about one way to deal with this and used it religiously these last two months as I was out in the dusty West photographing. I'm delighted to report that I had not a single indication of any dust on any shot.
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HT2425 - Not Just the Most Recent
Now that I'm back from two months on the road, it's time to see what I have. For me, that process most often starts with building some collections based on potential projects. I add images from the recent trip into collections and then start scouring my previous images from the last couple of decades and add any of them to the appropriate collections. This forces me to think outside the recent captures and to be sensitive to larger trends I may not be conscious I've been working towards unknowingly.
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HT2424 - Problematic Bokeh
A peculiar property of a long focal length lens is that it can render a semi-distant object ever-so-slightly outside the depth of field. Instead of looking like a nicely out of focus area from a shallow depth of field, it can look like a poor performing lens that simply can't render those objects sharply. The only answer is to stop down to increase the depth of field.
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I've returned from my 2-months on the road and am starting the long process of reviewing the 3500 RAW captures. Almost immediately I divided the images into 43 potential projects, but then realized that all of them were location-based project ideas. There is a weakness in this that is not obvious. I call these types of projects "Portrait of a Place." They are easy to unify into a project, but there are alternatives that are often better.
HT2423 - Roads
Landscape photography is inextricably tied to roads. Even if we are hiking into rough terrain, we get to the trailhead via a road. Photographically, not all roads are equal. I've been tooling down the Interstates to get home and doing no photography along the way. For me, photography is always at its best when I'm traveling down a dirt road. If you are not familiar with them, you need to know about Delorme maps.
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HT2422 - They All Come from Projects
What most of us tend to show matted, framed, and hanging in a place of importance in our home are the very best images we've created. But where do these come from? My observation is that most of those super winners rise from the midst of a project and become super winners due to actions beyond our control. For example, Dorothea Lange made lots of pictures for the FSA, but Migrant Mother rose from the crowd to become iconic.
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HT2421 - The Difficulty with Gray
I've started to work on some of the images from my trip and in particular those from the Badlands of South Dakota. These are tricky images to process just right because of an unexpected issue. Light gray can look either alive or depressed depending on the surrounding mat board or digital background.
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HT2420 - Things or Moments
Ask a photographer what it is they make pictures of and the chances are they will answer THINGS or perhaps PEOPLE. Perhaps, but more likely than not what they capture a moment, at least in their better photographs. I always try my best to remember this when I'm out photographing, like when I was at Shiprock last week.
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HT2419 - Bad Light
Yesterday I was photographing in the South Dakota badlands and had a moment when I thought, "This is really bad light." It took me a minute to remember my own advice that there is no such thing as good light or bad light. There is, however, light that doesn't serve our preconceived ideas. "Bad light" really means that we are imposing our will on what the landscape is giving us. In other words, there is no bad light, there are only bad expectations.
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HT2418 - Returning with a Zoom Lens
In the 1980s, I made a photograph of the hills near my grandmother's home in Tensleep, Wyoming. I was never thrilled with that image and finally had the opportunity to revisit the area last week. I found the hill I had photographed and realized instantly why I was not happy with the previous effort.
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HT2417 - Gathering Strategies
I've talked on numerous occasions about my strategy of gathering assets while I'm in the field rather than pre-visualizing finished images. I've never mentioned, however, what I actually do while I'm gathering assets. Here's a quick overview of how I work in the field. Some may see this as indecision; I see it as providing options for when I'm back home making art.
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Minor White (one of my all-time favorite photographers) advised us not to photography only what it is, but to photograph what else it is. A catchy quote, but what does this actually mean? One answer is to think of photography as a medium to express metaphors and symbols. This prompts three levels of thinking: photography of something, photography about something, and photography that points to something.
HT2416 - The Most Important Thing We Need
We photographers are always on the hunt for a subject, a new technique, better equipment, and more time. I've come to realize, however, that the most important thing we need is access. How many times have you driven past a gorgeous scene with beautiful light but there's no place to pull off the road to make a picture? Or there's a fence, or gate, or barrier, or a regulation that blocks us from the position we need to make the picture.
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HT2415 - Thinking in Groups
Yesterday in my Here's a Thought about Going Back, I inadvertently dropped a pretty big hint about thinking in groups. Where do we find the seeds for our projects? It all starts by thinking in groups. The most common group consists of a selection of images from a given location. Next are projects about a common subject. That's not the only way to group images into a project.
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Brooks Jensen has a great way of making the creative side of photography feel approachable. I’ve found a lot of the “Here’s a thought…” snippets surprisingly thought-provoking for how short they are—nice quick hits of inspiration https://karlaannephoto.com/.
Their team of professional editors is highly trained to match your style, ensuring your creative vision is always preserved. Every project, whether big or small, is handled with meticulous care, attention to detail, and a strong focus on customer satisfaction. https://cerafphotoediting.com/service
great podcasts by the way all your wanted camera updates I fully agree with, I did contact Panasonic a long time ago about implementing on screen picture review and determining focus. I suggest to them maybe they could highlight the in focus areas of the screen about like the manual focus highlighting. I thought this would save a lot of time zooming in and out.
So glad I happened across this podcast - two episodes in, I'm hooked! Thanks for the production.
I find this to be the most continually inspiring and insightful podcast on the creative process of photography and of creativity in general. Brooks has the perfect vocal style and pace for podcasting, which I think adds a good deal to it's overall success. I've heard all of them and have started over recently.
Lenswork Magazine is the finest photography magazine, bar none. It has superb photographs and thoughtful essays about photography. These podcasts are in the same tradition, thought provoking and inspiring short essays on why we photograph. I would not miss a single one. Start from the beginning if you can, they are worth it.
Brooks Jensen's random thoughts about photography are brilliant and thought provoking observations that every person with an intrest in photography should listen to. Brooks is truely a great word smith in addition to a very skilled photographer and one cannot help but be inspired by his words.