So what was accomplished, photographically speaking?

I was hanging some of my Really Large Prints the other day in the new home theater I had built – it’s actually a converted garage – which gave me pause to ask “What did you accomplish last year”?

As a matter of course I make it a practice to write down what I did right and wrong in managing money during the year for, while the lawyers keep reminding us that ‘Past performance is no guarantee of future results’ I tend to hew to Churchill’s variant which has it that ‘Those who deny history are doomed to repeat it’. In re-reading these self critical pieces over the years, recurring patterns of erroneous behavior are identified and, hopefully, remedied.

So to take a like approach to photography seems to make better sense as my driving goal is to take better pictures.

But what does ‘better’ mean? Those which get exhibited? Sold? Hung? Probably a mixture of all three. If you don’t show it you will never know how good you are. If you don’t sell it you are a commercial failure which may be good or bad. If you don’t hang it why on earth are you taking pictures in the first place? And while ‘exhibit’ takes increasingly new guises – books, cell phones, computers, the internet, a well framed picture hanging on the wall remains the touchstone of photographic display.

Well, what about the successes? Listing these first makes it easier to enumerate the failures.

I published my book Street Smarts, containing 100 monochrome pictures taken in London and Paris in the seventies. It taught me how hard it is to get all the material together, how difficult it is to get it all submitted and looking just so, and how impossible it is to sell a book of pictures. This is the ultimate vanity project – you may feel good about doing it but don’t expect to make money. Best of all, this allowed me to get all that monochrome content well and truly out of my system and free me up from the legacy overhang of being a ‘street’ photographer. That genre is done, for me at least.

I got rid of a bunch of excess gear that was just collecting dust, and I’m not a gear collector. Now I’m down to one 35mm system (Leica M), two 6×6 systems (Rollei 6003 and Mamiya 6) and one 4×5 system (Crown Graphic). I fancy the clunky Rollei 6003 will hit the block in 2006. Too much gear still!

I learned lots about 4×5 when I picked up my 50 year old Crown Graphic and a couple of extra lenses for a song. What a blast to use and negative quality that remains unsurpassed to this day.

I started this blog which forces me to put down in writing what I am thinking about the world of photography. Write it down, the old rule has it, and it’s serious. Talk or think about it and it’s noise.

I got selected for a one man show – due in 2007 – at a local gallery after showing the director my prints. That felt really good as it confirmed that I have the drudgery of printing/mounting/framing down to where it no longer intrudes in the creative process. It felt even better to know that someone else liked my work. And no, she did not ask me what camera I use. And, best of all, all the pictures were New Work, not recycled old stuff.

I started a Photoblog and came away with mixed feelings. The positive is that there’s lots of great work out there. The negative is that most of what’s out there is sheer, unmitigated garbage. I also learned that my dated use of film as a recording medium is incompatible with the ‘picture a day’ pressure in the Photoblog world, so I stepped back and now post one a month, if that. Feels better until digital matures and all that film equipment can go to a collector at some ridiculous premium to what I paid for it. Thank God for the Japanese – where would the used Leica market be without them?

I built my home theater which comes with one huge photographic advantage. Lots of display space.

I confirmed, if ever confirmation was needed, that the products of the Microsoft Corporation are one of the biggest frauds ever pulled on the consuming public and remain blissfully happy with my iMac three years after making the switch. No downtime, just speed to get the drudgery part of the photographic process done. Bottom feeding tort lawyers continue to sue cigarette and hamburger vendors. Wrong place to fish. When will they realize that Microsoft has killed more people than these twin evils combined? Just think of all those coronaries at the keyboard of a Windows PC….

I learned, as age encroaches, that many tasks are best delegated to those better skilled to do them. Processing, framing and so on. I add no value here.

I re-immersed myself in books about art and photography and tried hard to sharpen my vision.

Hmmm. Not a bad list. Feeling pretty good. OK then, what about the not so good bits?

My vision still lack clarity. Thematic approaches to photography make sense. The ‘always carry a camera’ thing is meaningless. Carry it with a mission and you get somewhere. I tried to apply this last year by focusing on three themes – The Fading Past (old wall signs), The Beach Creatures (driftwood at the beach) and The California Forests (I’m quite useless at these but keep trying).

I would like to become technically better with the 4×5 format for it has so much to offer. Maybe it’s just in the nature of things, I tell myself, that the equipment is clunky and a mess to use.

I would like to delegate all printing of Really Big Prints as it’s simply a waste of time when others can do it better and you are messing about with the yet again clogged ink jet printer at home. And I’ll bet the cost is comparable. Got to find a good printer for 2006.

I cannot consistently take good pictures. Maybe that’s because I do not do it enough or maybe it’s the unexplainable nature of the creative process. Sometimes you can do it, mostly you cannot. I do know that machine gunning for pictures is anathema to me and only results in a drop in quality so some other mechanism is needed. One thing I have found that works is to scout out a location without a camera, pre-visualize it – then come back later with the equipment. That seems consonant with my working style.

And, finally, I am still very keen to go all digital, but have yet to find a camera which does it for me.