It’s been too long since last I updated….!!…so here is a shotgun blast of news.
One of my 2011 dreams was to help establish a collaborative fine-art photo gallery, here in Silverton. Well, The Bright-Tank Gallery is now almost 1-year old, although the players are different than first-imagined (www.FaceBook.com/BrightTankGallery). My pro-shooter buddy Ted Miller and I finally managed to convince the owners of the local brew-pub-restaurant that devoting some special space to our work would benefit both their business, and our business.
After a couple months of learning the ropes, we decided to share the wealth, and invite “Guest Artists” to hang their work for a month at a time. We’ve had some very memorable shows! It’s really interesting to encounter the separation from the “sheep-and-the-goats” in terms of who really IS interested…and who really CAN present their work professionally. It’s been a steep learning experience, for all of us.
Opportunities continue to evolve, and meeting-sharing with other photog-friends is definitely rewarding. Lots of work, but good fun too! Don’t let anyone fool you: having a formal Gallery is one hellova lot of hard-sweaty work!
Since I last wrote, I’ve managed to schedule and shoot two coastal photo-safaris, each netting over 100-images of saleable quality. Some of these you can see now on the website. Others will be emerging. It’s been a struggle, since I have also experienced some serious health issues, which limited my endurance, and my physical range for hauling 50-pounds of gear up-and-down trails-n-dunes. But I’m keeping at-it! Let me know what you think of the new images.
In our profession lately, there has been lots of band-width devoted to the “back-to-film” movement, and I want to pay some lip-service to it as well. I spent 40+years shooting film before shooting digital, and in my opinion there is no “back-to” in the current movement….there is just “still-is”…if you know what I mean. I’ve compared “digital” to just being like any one of the particular films we shot in earlier permutations of our careers. Of those films (and of digital…) we ask ourselves…..how does it work??….how does it look??……what are its advantages/disadvantages??…etc. It’s just like comparing all the film-types-manufacturers, and making a particular choice. It’s all part of the creative selection-process: we choose what works best for us in specific situations. We try it. We adjust it. We adapt to it.
So as the blog-waves increase in number and intensity…don’t get lost in the debate-babble. Keep your bearings. There is no “better-best” to be argued over…it’s just a personal decision about what works better-best for you in a particular setting, for your particular purposes. And that will keep changing. Guaranteed!
In 2014, I’m hoping to see more improvements in my own evolving style. My work illustrating the DaoDeJing is helping with that. I’m aware that my style, over 50+years of shooting, has had various “appearances”….but the one which has endured, is the “Dao-Look” in my images. Hence, the professional name of my work, “SeeingTao.” (As an editorial note, it doesn’t matter whether you write “Tao” or “Dao”…phonetically they are equivalent, and the “T” fits the logo better than the “D,” so that’s how it happened!) Some of the current images will appear in the book in monochrome, to fit the spare style of the writing. Can you guess which ones? I’m working on selecting images now, so if you have hints or suggestions, let me know!