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).
1514 Episodes
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HT2454 - Decisions vs Execution
Art making is the fusion of decisions and execution. It's not at all uncommon for photographers to explain that they became a photographer because they can't draw decent stick figures. That is to say, execution prevents them from being a successful pen-and-ink artist, or painter, or musician. Unlike in photography, with these media, there is a barrier that cannot be crossed with luck. With photography, however, we can both be lucky and master the execution of the craft with relative ease, especially here in the digital age. This seems to imply that the decisions we make in the process are even more weighty than in other media.
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HT2453 - From My Distant Past
Twice now in the last few months, I've received a kind-hearted compliment about one of my pictures — in both cases, however, from images I made more than 25 years ago. I'm always grateful when someone compliments my work, but it does leave me wondering about my more recent efforts. I suppose it makes sense for us to receive compliments about our ancient work with grace and humility. There is a part of me, however, that wants to bring out a few hundred examples recent work and bring them up to date.
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HT2452 - Photographing Is Not the Same Thing As Making Art
I have 200,000 digital captures in my Lightroom catalog. Does that mean I have 200,000 pieces of artwork? Of course not. So I ask you, precisely, at what point in the process does the digital capture transmogrify into artwork? When you finish processing the image? When you make a print? When you use the image in a PDF? When you say, Quod Erat Faciendum (It is finished)?
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I think I'm remembering this correctly that it was Pablo Picasso who said the trick and painting is knowing when to stop. Obviously, the same sentiment applies equally well to photography. The question I'm still trying to answer is not about knowing when to stop with a given image, but knowing when to stop with a given project.
HT2451 - Knowing When to Stop
I think I'm remembering this correctly that it was Pablo Picasso who said the trick and painting is knowing when to stop. Obviously, the same sentiment applies equally well to photography. The question I'm still trying to answer is not about knowing when to stop with a given image, but knowing when to stop with a given project.
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HT2450 - Pepper Number Twenty-Nine
Edward Weston's famous photograph, Pepper #30, has always intrigued me. It's a beautiful image, but to be honest I'm less fascinated with the image itself than I am with the idea that there were 29 antecedents that he, for one reason or another, rejected. And is there a pepper number 31?
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HT2449 - Bonus Images
I'll bet that most of you, from time to time, watch the bonus features after you've finished watching the movie. Or perhaps you watch the director's cut with commentary from behind the scenes. Is there any reason why we still photographers couldn't use this idea with our projects? After the last image in a PDF, for example, why not have bonus images for people who want more?
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HT2448 - Each Project Has Its Own Aesthetic
How many different genres of music are there? Beyond that, each song has its own mood. Beyond that, the same song can be performed in different ways. Aren't we just as creative as the musicians? Why, then, do so many photos look the same, that is have the same aesthetic? Perhaps we need to let go of what an image should look like and think more about what it could look like.
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HT2447 - Zines vs Chapbooks
A couple of days ago, I received three "zines" in the mail that came from a LensWork reader. They were lovely and I enjoyed her photography a great deal. They were very close in physical dimensions to my 6R chapbooks. This got me thinking about what's the difference between commercially printed zine and a handmade chapbook. Is it as simple as one is disposable and the other is collectible? I'm not sure about this.
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HT2446 - Caravaggio Ignored His Eyes
Caravaggio, the Italian painter from the 16th century, is well known for his use of a technique called "foreshortening." Today we would call it " focus stacking." It's curious to me that this view of the world is impossible for the human eye. Essentially, Caravaggio had to ignore his eyes and what he saw in order to paint using this technique that seems so real.
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HT2445 - To Increase Sharpness, Move the Sun
Yes, lens sharpness, stabilization techniques, and resolution all add to build a sharp image. As a pragmatic photographer, however, I can't help but observe and admit that the most important way to increase apparent sharpness is to use the angle of incidence between the light source and the subject that maximizes visible contrast and detail. Light that strikes the subject at an extremely low angle does more to increase detail than buying a sharper lens.
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Art, as an inanimate object, doesn't do anything, Art doesn't do, it tells — it tells us about some thing, some place, some person, some moment, some feeling, some idea. Art can cause something in us to take place by simply looking at the artwork and thinking about what we see. That process of looking and thinking lays bare the fact that every piece of artwork is a launching pad for a story, or perhaps a cluster of stories. There are biographic stories, production stories, materials stories, acquisition stories, relationship stories, provenance stories. This list can be quite lengthy. To me as an artmaker, the ones that are most interesting are always about the content, which so often is tied to metaphor and meaning. This is the realm of the artmaker.
HT2444 - Dark Writing
I've thought for years that photographers often think about tones exactly backwards. There are lots of photographic gurus who preach that we must pay special attention to the light. Early in my dark room days, it seemed obvious to me that we don't create a print by adding light to the paper, that instead we start with white paper and add shadows. Photography is supposedly "light writing" but getting the blacks right is what we actually do.
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HT2443 - Color by the Truckload
If there is a photographic aesthetic that defines the early years of the 20th century it will undoubtedly be the fine art black and white print. We are 100 years removed from that era, and it appears to me that the photographic aesthetic that defines the early years of the 21st century is MORE COLOR. Slap it on with a trowel, and crank it up to 11. Is this trend virtuous because it's a wonderful aesthetic or simply a choice we engage now that we have the capabilities to do so?
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HT2442 - Limitations
Money is limited. Time is limited. Access is limited. Equipment is limited. Techniques are limited. It's a wonder we can get anything done with all these limitations. But that's the thing about the art life, we are surrounded by limitations that conspire to interfere with our productivity. If we let these limitations inhibit our work, it's not the limitations that need to be removed, but rather our willingness to allow those limitations to intimidate us. Artmaking is always about what we can do, not about what we can't.
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HT2441 - No One Will Ever See It
The often insurmountable distance from production to consumption. Rick Beato has a YouTube channel all about contemporary music. It's surprising how many times his topics pertain perfectly to our lives as fine art photographers. Here is an example that is so spot on that I thought he was talking directly to me — art without an audience.
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HT2440 - Bit Rot Might Be Destroying Your Backups
Have you heard of a thing called bit rot? I hadn't either, but it turns out it can be slowly leading your backups to failure. And speaking of backups, it's that time of year again when it's a good idea to back up all your computerized data, images, and those 1s and 0s that are the measure of your creative life.
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HT2439 - The Space That Supports Your Work
Once I had seriously committed myself to photography in the 1970s, I didn't fully realize the implications that would govern my choices of living space over the next five decades. Whenever I found myself needing to move, the first and determining question in any place I considered was where to put the darkroom and the print finishing studio. Over the years, I've slowly come to realize how the space influences what I produce.
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HT2438 - Fall Fog Season
I know so many photographers who get excited about the fall season and all those wonderful colored hillsides of orange and yellow keaves. For me, fall is less about leafy colors than it is about fog. (Isn't it odd that we photographers put so much emphasis on the sharpness of our lenses, but love the photographic effect of fog?) Fog and snow — there is no question about it — are my two most favorite atmospheric forms of weather for photography.
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I've been an admirer of Japanese woodblock prints (known as ukiyo-e) for quite some time now. Everyone is familiar, for example, with Hokusai's image The Great Wave Off Kanagawa from his project 36 Views of Mount Fuji. One of the things that's fascinating about these artists' work is how many times they did numbered series, e.g. 53 Stages of the Tokaido by Hiroshige, or one of my all-time favorites, 100 Aspects of the Moon by Yoshitoshi. There's a great deal to learn that we can adapt to photography about working in series.
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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.