Liz Kuball Photography | Blog: February 2007

Three, two, one

Added a link to Ben Huff’s photo blog tonight. I happened upon his work by accident, and I’m so glad I did. He’s based in Fairbanks, Alaska, and his photographs are beautiful. Almost makes me wish I lived up there so I could be an Alaskagrapher, too. Almost. Thirty-eight below is crazy-cold. Anyhow, check him out.

Labels: Ben Huff, blogs, photographers

Nap

Be sure to check out Wanderlustagraphy, a collective started today by Amy Elkins. While you’re at it, send Amy a photo or two and get your work out there!

Labels: Amy Elkins, blogs, photographers, Wanderlustagraphy

Evolution (or, I was wrong)

A month or so ago, I wrote a post the gist of which could best be summarized as “concept schmoncept.” The thing is, I was wrong. Much of my argument was based on the premise that writing and photography are similar—and on my own fear that photography would become as paralyzing for me as writing had become. (For many years, I thought I wanted to be a writer. Even went into hock to get a master’s in writing. I make my living as an editor, and what I found was that I couldn’t turn off my internal red pen—it was always at the ready—and writing was no fun at all.)

As I got into photography more seriously (finally getting back to what I wanted to be when I was ten), I started immersing myself in the world of photo blogs and art mags and reviews. And I realized that concept loomed large. Pish posh, I said. Nonsense. The thought that all that analysis could kill the radio star, that I might someday be standing with my camera in hand and be unable to release the shutter because all I’d have running through my mind would be a bunch of isms . . . well, I wasn’t about to let that happen.

I’ve continued reading and thinking, as I’m prone to do, and over the past week or two I’ve seen how misguided I was. Fear is a very strong motivator, but rarely a good one—maybe if it’s what gets you to run from an ax murderer, but not if it keeps you from engaging your mind in your work. And that’s what I was doing. I was going out and taking pictures and refusing to think about what they meant to me, why I was drawn to certain subjects, what I was trying to say, because I was afraid that if I started thinking like that, paralysis couldn’t be far behind.

The final epiphany came this morning as I was reading an old interview with Brian Ulrich on Conscientious. Here’s the bit that got me (I’m taking it out of the context of a discussion on the diCorcia lawsuit, but the meaning is still the same—for the full conversation, click here):

On any visit to a museum one can overhear the comments of “I could do that,” “What makes this so special?”, “Who cares about a urinal on a pedestal?” And that is exactly, in some cases, the point. But some of modern art has created a distrust by the general populace because Duchamp (whom I love) and others showed us that art is in ideas not in objects. This is very liberating, but if art is no longer “special,” if we remove craft from art, then it needs academia to explain it. Without reading some didactic panel, the work is then just a urinal, no magic, easy to dismiss.

This isn’t a new idea, of course—as Ulrich points out, Marcel Duchamp originated the concept of the found object or the readymade, and in so doing put the emphasis squarely on the artist’s declaring of the object art. In many ways, the kind of photography that Ulrich does and the kind of photography I most admire is a photography of found objects. In Ulrich’s photos in shopping malls, big-box stores, and other retail outlets, he’s showing us what we see every day, and he’s saying something about our consumerism and making us examine ourselves in the process. The concept—his message really—matters even more than the technique.

I need to start involving my head a bit more in my photography. As I was telling my boyfriend in an e-mail today:

Yeah, I guess, though, that it would be good to have some kind of idea in mind about why I’m interested in a subject. Why am I interested in that? What does it say to me? If I know the answers to these questions beforehand, it’ll help me in saying yea or nay to a particular image. I guess what I’m saying is that I think I already know the answers to these questions somewhere—I just haven’t articulated them. It’s more instinctual now. Okay, so here’s the deal: You hear about actors talking about training versus instinct. There are some actors who operate solely on instinct. They don’t think, they just act. Then there are other actors who really break down a character, look for motivation, do research, etc. But I think the best actors are able to do all the latter stuff and then, when the time comes to walk out on stage or in front of a camera, they revert to instinct. But all the research and stuff is still there inside of them and informs their performance. They’re not thinking as they’re acting, “I think I’ll draw upon that time when my puppy was drowned by my evil stepfather to evoke the emotion in this scene.” They’re just doing it. I think that’s what I’m saying. That I need to at least do a little thinking about this stuff so that when I go out and take pictures, I’m more informed about why I’m doing it in the first place.

Labels: artists, Brian Ulrich, Jörg Colberg, Marcel Duchamp, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, photographers, S.

Laundry

Patience

Not enough

Today I started my project on the border of Los Angeles County, photographing between the ocean and the 101. I’ve spent a lot of time poring over the Thomas Guide the past couple of weeks, looking at roads, planning routes. (I did the same thing before I moved to L.A. in 2001, but then I was practically trying to memorize all the roads between the LAX office of Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Studio City, where I had an appointment to look at an apartment on Laurel Canyon just off Ventura.)

A few days ago, the map in my lap, I was naïvely thinking that I could finish this project in five or six months. Ha! Yeah, sure, I covered a decent span in a few hours, but I’m already thinking about things that I missed in that relatively small stretch, places I need to return to, things I need to improve on. I’m happy with one or two of my photographs, but that’s it. Now that I’ve gone out there and seen a bit of it, I have a slightly better sense of what I want to find.

I’ve read Alec Soth in interviews (like this one) talking about the imaginary museum in his basement, how he tells his students to think of what they’d want on the walls of their own imaginary museums, and that they need to go out and make those photographs. I don’t think I fully understood what he meant until I got home today, downloaded my photos, and said, “Oh, but what about that one—I don’t see one of that.” I’ve quickly realized that this is not about traveling the perimeter of the county once, and calling it a project. It’s about returning again and again, getting a better sense each time of what’s there and what I’m looking for, finding those things I want to see on my imaginary museum wall. And going back until I’m satisfied that I have enough.

Labels: Alec Soth, photographers

Pay phone

Milpas Street

Blue

Cat

Scandal

Desk

Ah-choo!

I am buried in Kleenex and loaded up on Emergen-C, and it does not appear to be letting up. The photo today is the view from where I’ve been spending far too much time these past few days, trying to get better.

Also, a quick note: I added a link to Armando Bellmas’s photo blog. I happened upon it recently, and now I’m a regular reader. I love the way Bellmas uses light and color, and how psyched he is about photography. Check out his Web site, too. Good stuff.

Labels: Armando Bellmas, blogs, photographers

Window

Flowers

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Librarian off duty

Gate

Venice Beach

I heart L.A.

Superbrief comments for the evening: Went to the first afternoon of a two-day course at The Julia Dean Photo Workshops, and, man, is she good. I learned so much in just four hours. Back there again Sunday afternoon, and then Monday for the first of six monthly meetings for another workshop.

Bottom line: If you’re in Southern California and you’re into photography, get yourself over to the boardwalk in Venice and take a workshop at Julia Dean’s. It’s money (and time) well spent.

Labels: education, Julia Dean, teachers, workshops

Dresser

Mystery II

Today the mystery wasn’t lens reflection—it was the mystery that is Blogger. If you’re a subscriber to this blog, you probably noticed lots of weird postings and repostings, ending in a renaming of my Wednesday blog entry. I have no clue what’s up with Blogger, but at least I finally got the Wednesday post up and it seems to be sticking. (Fingers crossed!)

The other mystery was why—or maybe more appropriately, how—somebody would throw the cab of a truck into a Dumpster.

Mystery

So Monday night I was taking pictures outside the post office, and while I was there, I took a few shots of the liquor store across the street, realized I didn’t particularly like them, and moved on. When I got home and downloaded, I saw this strange reflection in the image, and I couldn’t figure out where the hell it was coming from.

I e-mailed Say Dempsay, an awesome photography teacher, to ask her what she thought it was. If anybody could figure it out, it would be Say. She had some ideas, for sure, but she said she’d never seen anything like it before and she wasn’t certain of the explanation.

The mystery was deepening.

Tuesday night, I happened to be at that same post office again (this time actually picking up some mail), and I thought, “Hey, I’ll try to replicate that effect and see if it was just something freaky in the air last night.” I took a few shots and, sure enough, there it was again. But this time, I noticed that I could actually move the reflection around the sky, depending on where I pointed the lens. I e-mailed Say and, this time, she actually tried to get the same kind of reflection using a candle in a dark bathroom in her house. (This is why she’s such a great teacher—your obsessions become her obsessions.) She couldn’t get it to happen, but she offered me the use of her camera to see if it was something weird in my camera or lens, or whether it was something I could get to happen in hers, too.

I took pictures with my Canon 5D with my 16-35mm lens and then again with my 50mm lens, and in both situations, I could see the reflection. But I noticed I could see it as I was looking through the glass—even before I hit the shutter release. So it had to be some kind of reflection on the internal elements. But just to be sure, I took out Say’s 5D and I was able to get the same result. (To the left is a crop of the part in question.)

I drove back to campus (where she was in the middle of teaching a class) and showed her the results. We know that there’s some reflection going on with the lens elements, but we don’t know why. And we don’t know why we’re not seeing this same effect in other similar situations.

So what do you think? Have you ever noticed anything like this in your own photographs? Do you have an explanation for it (beyond just knowing that it’s some kind of reflection in the camera)? If so, be a pal and e-mail me—this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.

Labels: cameras, Canon 5D, Say Dempsay, teachers

Car, woman, man (and camera)

Post office

Peter Parker

My boyfriend and I spend a lot of time in the car, and with my vow to take and post a new photo every day, he’s gotten used to being in the middle of a conversation with me—one or the other of us talking—and hearing me shout out, “Stop!” I think he’s almost gotten to the point where he starts to hit the brakes before I purse my lips to say the p. Today was one of those days, and the result is the photo you see below. I think all the adults were inside watching the Super Bowl, and there were just a few kids in the yard. I learned from one of them—a boy, maybe six years old?—that it was his birthday and that his cousin’s birthday is in eight days. That’s why they have Spider-Man in their yard.

Next weekend, I’m taking a two-day course at The Julia Dean Photo Workshops in Venice. And that week is also the start of a six-month workshop I’m taking there called “The Long-Term Project”—that’s the one I’m really eager for. I have a couple different project ideas, but the one I think I’ll start with involves the Los Angeles County line. I don’t know that I can articulate my plan just yet—I’m still thinking and researching and figuring out why I’m drawn to this in the first place—but I think it’ll have something to do with following the county line from where it starts just west of Malibu all the way up past Santa Clarita, east through the Antelope Valley near where David Hockney did his Pearblossom Hwy., and then down past Disneyland and toward the beach again.

This will be my first long-term project, so I’m not sure how it’ll play out. I’m assuming (and hoping!) that the project will evolve as I get into it, and that when I start I can’t possibly know what I’ll find. I’ll still post daily photos to my blog, but I’m sure you’ll start seeing some from this project instead of just the one-offs I’ve been posting so far. So stay tuned. It should be fun!

Labels: artists, David Hockney, education, Julia Dean, S., teachers, workshops

Liquor

I couldn’t decide what to post today. I took lots of random pictures but none that I loved or even really liked. Something about the horse and the liquor sign and the light streaming in made this one the pick of the day, with 38 minutes to spare.

E-Mail
First Name
Last Name

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Three, two, one

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Nap

Monday, February 26, 2007

Evolution (or, I was wrong)

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Laundry

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Patience

Friday, February 23, 2007

Not enough

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Pay phone

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Milpas Street

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Blue

Monday, February 19, 2007

Cat

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Scandal

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Desk

Friday, February 16, 2007

Ah-choo!

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Window

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Flowers

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Librarian off duty

Monday, February 12, 2007

Gate

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Venice Beach

Saturday, February 10, 2007

I heart L.A.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Dresser

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Mystery II

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Mystery

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Car, woman, man (and camera)

Monday, February 05, 2007

Post office

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Peter Parker

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Liquor

Friday, February 02, 2007

No meat

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Recommended reading

About

Contact

Web Site

Say That Again?

Get E-Mail Updates

Where to Find My Work

Recent Posts

Archives

Blogs I Read

Subscribe