Here's a thought…

HT2214 - Every Work of Art Has a Title

I mean that. Every sculpture, every painting, every poem, every novel, every song — they all have titles. So why do we photographers think "Untitled" is a reasonable title? Is our imagination that limited, or are we just lazy?

HT2215 - No One Cares About Our Plans

It's a fairly common thing in photography to hear a photographer talk about what they are going to do. They haven't done it yet, but they announce to the world they are about to do it — as though we are supposed to care about their plans. Don't tell people what you are planning to do; tell them what you've actually done, accomplished, finished. That's the only thing that counts in the art world.

HT2216 - Amazing IBIS Results

Handheld photography is a new thing in my 50 years with a camera. The advent of image stabilization has entirely changed my approach to photography. In combination with burst mode, simply amazing results are possible. Here is my empirical rule of thumb. One over the focal length + 5.

HT2217 - Paper Has Personality

Photography is — still — a paper-based medium. Paper is a huge part of our lives. Different photographic papers might have different characteristics, sometimes dramatic difference. Other times, these differences are subtle. I learned the importance of this when I was working with Huntington Witherill on publishing his book Botanical Dances. It's crucial to explore a papers personality before committing to it for a big project.

HT2218 - A Convenience Camera

There was a time when I searched for the one camera that would meet all my needs. How innocent I was back then. That camera was likely to be large, full-featured far beyond my needs, render the highest quality images I could ever imagine, and cost and weigh a lot. But sometimes, that camera is just too much camera. I've recently added a new camera I think of as my "convenience camera" for time where portability and light weight take precedence over the ideal. Of course, excellent image quality counts, too, and after searching for a bit, I have found the porridge camera that is just right.

HT2219 - Ego Pixels

Here is an interesting story about gear from a friend of mine who photographed portraits and weddings.

HT2222 - Explore More Deeply

Starting in 2009, I produced a series of annual projects under the title, Winter Trees. Each year for seven years, I produced a new five-image project for the series which was produced as a folio and as a PDF. To date, this remains one of the most difficult projects I've ever done for the simple reason that each year it became progressively more difficult to see the same subject in a new and different way

HT2223 - The Annual Best Of Series

Because I love reading short stories so much, over the years I've collected a number of anthology books that are "the best short stories of the year." This could be a pretty good idea for our photographs too, don't you think? What were your best images from, say, last year? What makes those images qualify as The Best?

HT2224 - Printing Monochrome with a CMYK Press

Most commercial printing presses that you might employ to print your book will use the four-ink process that is the standard in the industry. Simply said, these presses use a combination of cyan ink, magenta ink, yellow ink, and black ink to achieve a sufficient simulation of human color vision. That's where the trouble begins.

HT2225 - A Selective Literacy

There are so many photographers, so many books, so many exhibitions, that it's virtually impossible to achieve anything even close to visual literacy in photography. Instead, we each have our own understanding of photography based on a fractional appreciation of what's being and been produced. We all love photography, but what we mean by that is entirely dependent on our own selective literacy.

HT2229 - Software Updates, Image Updates

Here's a question that's both philosophical and practical. When there is a software update that could dramatically improve an image you've already finished, do you go back and update the image because the software allows you to improve it in ways that were previously impossible? Or, do you leave it as is because you are busy doing new work rather than living in the past?

HT2230 - PPI Required for Printing

How many pixels per inch are required for printing? Be careful; this is a trick question. In fact, as I've asked the question it is unanswerable without additional information or blind assumptions. What's the missing/assumed data? What is the viewing distance likely to be?

HT2231 - Choose Your Challenge

I've often found it useful to divide photography into a set of competing challenges. How do you want to play with photography? Do you want to challenge yourself with the technical complications of making giant prints? That's valid. Or do you want to challenge yourself with the expressive complications of making more meaningful artwork? That's valid, too. And then of course, there are all the variations that combine both of these challenges.

HT2232 - Fifty Pounds of Gear

In my first photographic trip to Japan, rather than take suitcases, I packed everything I needed into my backpack for maximum mobility and foot travel. In those days my comfort limit for my backpack weight was about 70 pounds. With this in mind I packed a maximum of 20-pounds of clothing plus the pack itself, leaving me 50-pounds for gear and film. In my upcoming trip to the West Coast, I'll have a much more capable gear kit that weigh less than three pounds.

HT2236 - Beyond Human Sensitivity

We are told that hawks have keener eyesight than we humans, so maybe they could see the ink dots in our digital prints. We can't because the technology has exceeded human visual sensitivity. Perception boundaries, once crossed shift advancement to other concerns. In the future, we can expect more intuitive and ergonomically advanced equipment.

HT2237 - Art-sized Prints

How large does a print need to be in order to be considered artwork? Snapshots are usually pretty small, 4x6" or so. If we make a 5x7" is that big enough to be considered artwork? 8x10"? Why do photographers so readily consider size of function of the seriousness of artwork?