I toyed around with DALL-E today and asked for a random but specific depiction of “a dark background oil painting of an intelligent looking fox smoking his tobacco pipe while working on his MacBook”
And here are the results. I think this is a brilliant use of modern technology.
But is it art?
My current creative workflow is simple, on purpose. I’d rather be out there shooting than processing or organizing.
I don’t have the time or desire to go out for that one shot that will make me famous. I want to create a body of work. I’m not interested in social media “likes” or new followers scrolling through their feeds quickly and not caring.
Innovate your new workflow by keeping it simple, self-host your own website, create digital, or e-zines in .pdf. Offer prints and downloads of your work instead. This will generate a more positive, direct response from potential followers.
Over 260 images cataloged on a map with GPS coordinates and waypoints. According to my Lightroom software, I only have a little more than 200 to add.
Then I’ll start a new map for geocaches I’ve logged followed by another map highlighting all of the street art I’ve documented. Whew.
“Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.”
Pablo Picasso
Picasso, when asked what his paintings meant.
Sometimes we create for the sake of creating and seeing what happens. There are times where I go out to shoot & don’t develop the film for months or post-process the digital photos in Lightroom for awhile. I do it just for the experience of creating and exploring.
One of my favorite tools on the iPad is importing my images to the Photos app. The simple act of sorting, organizing these photos like I used to do on a contact sheet of film negatives. Find the keepers and then develop them in the lab afterward.
Due to a variety of interests, there has been less writing here in favor of being outdoors with a camera. I’ve been out and about capturing a variety of topics including urban art, neon signs and more. I’m thinking of capturing a few new things as well.
My philosophy when shooting urban art: If I see something that is .001% interesting to me, I’ll shoot it and figure out what to do with it afterwards.
This is a huge benefit to digital photography in that there is no downside to capturing extra images. Film photography has its own creative, artistic skill but leaves little room for error.
Errors are costly and time-consuming. If I am in a photo flow, I don’t want to think about it. I can shoot 10,000 shots of the same topic without repercussions when using digital.
So that’s where I’m at. Come along with me if you’d like at my photography website: Photo Denbow
If you loosely apply Lomography’s ten golden rules, you’ll do just fine.
Number 10 may be the most important. Don’t listen to others, stay true to yourself and your artistic endeavor. There are plenty of rules that can and should be broken.
To those 10, I’ll remind you of another 10.
Urban, or street photography, combines what I love best. Walking, working with people, courage, risk-worthy opportunities and timing. Now grab your camera and start shooting!
“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.”
– Lawrence Kasdan
This quote could also be used for any hobby endeavor we choose such as photography, crochet, micro electronics, Ham radio, etc.
A hobbyist is constantly researching techniques, going over best practices and learning how to apply them. You don’t just sit down at your keyboard and start cranking out paragraphs without research on the topic. You learn to see the world through the lens of your hobby and wonder how your craft fits into it, or what you can glean from the world to use it. A hobbyist is always shooting, writing, sewing, tinkering and noticing. A photographer is constantly tilting their head looking for angles and composition or color coordinating. Then act on it. A writer is frequently attaching verbal descriptions to a situation and then document it.
“To write, I first must world”
– Laurel Schwulst
Any experience that can be seen as possibly mundane suddenly has meaning, such as grocery shopping, sitting in traffic or walking through the streets. This means they are alert, focused, awakened and deliberately taking their findings to be applied later as homework. Though this homework is not graded, it does help advance our self-induced education, and we are all the better for it.
“We learn by doing.”
This is the way you master your hobby, by getting on and doing it. Learn, practice, re-learn and practice some more. This goes for writing, sketching, photography, painting, or everything else. You don’t get good without practice, keep your head down and move onward.
There are no shortcuts to becoming a good photographer. Just go out and take photos. You don’t need a specific lens or a new camera because you cannot buy skill. It does not matter whether you share images to your website or Instagram because all the “likes” will not help you improve. If you want to take good photos, you have to take numerous photos first. The majority will be crap, and that’s okay. I’ve come back home with maybe 5 usable images and been happy.
With your writing, it does not matter what software application you use, what blogging platform or newsletter publisher or what type of personal computing device you do it on. If the goal is to become a better writer, then just write. A lot of it will be crap, and that’s okay too. I’ve cranked out possibly 5 good articles a month and been happy.
Consistency and constantly. If it isn’t worth the time and effort to put into it, then perhaps it isn’t relevant for you.
You cannot buy in and expect dramatic results with your new gear. The gear doesn’t make you better. Only you can make yourself look good by trusting the process. It’s time to go out there and get it.
“It often happens that two students can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can. The fellow-pupil can help because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten.”
C.S. Lewis
When I was supervising a team of engineers, I would often train new hires but also bring in a recent “graduate” from a previous training session to sit in with these new hires. The concepts were still fresh in their minds, while I may have taken for granted what should be common knowledge because it was “basic.”
While learning how to sketch and paint here recently, I grabbed a couple of books such as “Beginning Watercoloring” or “Learn to Draw” that was absolutely worthless. I am drawing stick figures but the examples shown in the book were full on portraits in pencil that would take years to master.
If I were to ask an artist right now how do you do this or that, they may not be able to convey properly what I need to learn. No, I need someone who is at the same level to learn with and challenge each other to become better. I am ignorant and sometimes don’t know what to ask, so how can I effectively learn from a “master?”
This is a great time to document what you are doing and learning right now because eventually you can look back on it and see your progress. As opposed to making something crap, then posting for everyone to see and offer fake kudos or “likes.” This doesn’t help. The expert takes for granted all of the fundamental concepts needed because they’ve moved on. They’ve built their knowledge and their foundation and have put their own flair on it.
This applies to utility engineering, to drawing, to photography or everything else. Innate talent will only take you so far. Embrace your beginner status and learn to have fun. Document your progress and appreciate the journey.
What does it mean to be an explorer of art? To reach out and investigate out of curiosity. Right now I am curious about analog art, that which is done by hand and not digitally like I have been doing for the past twenty years.
As a child, I was naturally curious in just about everything. That curiosity has been set aside through education and a career. Always on a back burner simmering until recently it has been boiling over and ready to go.
So why explore now? To inspire myself, to see new things or to see things in a different perspective and to create something different.
Recent examples have included making zines of my photos using Affinity Publisher or Apple Pages. Or by pushing buttons in GarageBand to generate “music” on a loop for a photo collage soundtrack.These are creative ways to explore the art of making photo books or collages. But there is still so much left to be explored and conquered such as sketching, painting, paper collage and somehow creating a hybrid of these with my photos. That reminds me to send some images to a photo lab and make paper prints for use later.
YOU ARE AN EXPLORER.
YOUR MISSION IS TO DOCUMENT AND OBSERVE THE WORLD AROUND YOU AS
IF YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.
TAKE NOTES.
CoLLECT THINGS YoU FIND ON YOUR TRAVELS.
DOCUMENT YoUR FINDINGS. NOTICE PATTERNS.
COPY. TRACE.
FOCUS ON ONE THING AT A TIME.
RECORD WHAT YOU ARE DRAWN To.HOw To BE AN EXPLORER OF THE WORLD
I. ALWAYS BE LOOKING. NOTICE THE GROUND BENEATH YOUR FEET.
2. CONSIDER EVERYTHING ALIVE & ANIMATED
3. EVERY THING•iS INTERESTING. LOOK CLOSER
4. ALTER YOUR COURSE OFTEN.
5. OBSERVE FOR LONG DURATIONS (AND SHORT ONES )
6. NoTICE THE STORIES GOING ON AROUND YOU.
7. NOTICE PATTERNS, MAKE CONNECTIONS.
8. DOCUMENT YOUR FINDINGS (FIELD NOTES) IN A VARIETY OF WAYS.
9. OBSERVE MOVEMENT.
10. CREATE A PERSONAL DIALOGUE WITH YOUR ENVIRONMENT. TALK TO IT.
11. TRACE THINGS BACK TO THEIR ORIGINS
12. USE ALL OF THE SENSES. IN YoUR INVESTIGATIONS.Keri Smith, How To Be An Explorer of the World
Explorers, scientists and artists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways, by observing, collecting, documenting, analyzing, and comparing. I don’t know what will come from all of this new art kick but I will enjoy exploring and discovering the world in ways I haven’t done or even imagined until recently.
Time to log off this laptop and apply pencil to paper.
Just picked up a couple of art supplies to start creating in analog as opposed to digital all the time. I have this need for a tactile experience. I am lousy and impatient but somehow feel the need to experience this. Oh, and the smell of wood and graphite when I open that tin is amazing.
Here are a few masterpieces of art I enjoyed while visiting the Art Institute of Chicago recently. As evidenced in my photo portraiture, I have a love for faces. We find portraits fascinating because we are fascinated by people like ourselves. We’re also fascinated by people unlike ourselves. It is who we are and that is what makes us delightfully human. Similar but different. Fascinating.
