Because I'm feeling too lazy to add these to the "365 Day Portraits" gallery, I'm just going to link you to them here. I've been so occupied with doing photo sets lately that I haven't had any time to work on my 365 Day Portraits which is OK with me because I get quite bored with editing myself all the time. One thing however that I do enjoy doing with these photos is experimenting. I have been working for a long time now to get at a specific aesthetic, to find myself per se in the photos. It's really easy these days for anyone to snap a photo (although composition is not always so easily accomplished), and it's becoming easier and easier for people to edit their photos to make them even better than what you would normally get with a fairly decent camera (we own a Nikon D90, so I'm certainly not complaining as far as our equipment goes). But one thing that does frustrate me is attempting to distinguish ourselves from the already oversaturated market. We identify ourselves as "non-traditional," but I observe us still following to some extent the more traditional approaches to photography.
Here or there, I will hear as well various critiques of photography as a form of expression. It is, for example, less creative than other forms of art because you are not putting as much of yourself into the process. It is perhaps easy to just snap a photo and call it good. But it's really not so easy as that. As I was editing Sarah's and Kevin's photos, for example, I developed a new appreciation for photographers who do more event-related photo shoots. You try to develop a mood in the photos, a mood that might otherwise not be present in the environment in which you take the photos. When we took the photos of Sarah and Kevin, Liberty Park was a wonderful setting, but the sun was blazing down in the way it usually does here in Salt Lake, making everything look brown and yellow and thoroughly unromantic. Sarah and Kevin were perfectly romantic for the photos, but the lighting was not. As a result of the lighting, it was a really difficult set to edit. And I debated back and forth with myself whether or not to attempt to make the photos look as natural as possible or whether I should attempt to give them a fairy tale kinda feel. Obviously, I went with the latter but was still left a bit unsatisfied.
My dissatisfaction with the editing process stems from my search for my signature, for our signature. We are not interested in making photos look as natural as possible. And we are also not interested in creating the perfect photo: magic words might include "dynamic," "atmospheric," "well-balanced" and so forth (I made most of that shit up). I took an A.P. Art History class in high school, got a "5" (5 is the best) on the exam. I can bullshit my way through this stuff, but I'm not interested in doing so. And I'm not interested either in creating more conceptual photos which seems to be a growing trend in this business. What I AM interested in is being true to myself, being true to ourselves.
Photography isn't just about snapping a photo for me. It's about creating a work of art. Editing, as a consequence, should be a part of that process, although you must learn how to best edit a particular set of photos. There is, for example, no one preset or action or filter that I use in my photos. Each photo is one-of-a-kind. And I have had to try every trick in the book, many of which I am still trying, to be able to start to (emphasis on "start") get to what I want to express in our photography.
Tonight, I reached a new milestone in the editing process. I see in these photos now which direction I want to go. I see what I want to communicate, and what I want to communicate is this. You cannot eliminate the emotional aspect of art. Art should evoke certain feelings and certain associations that are implicit to your self. For me, the way I view the world is as if looking back in time. Because each and every moment is passing, each and every experience is at the same time nostalgic. As a nostalgic experience, emotion is necessarily involved. I want to FEEL a photo as much as I want to see it. This is what I attempt to accomplish.
Another thing I attempt to accomplish, however, is a kind of introspection (which is funny to me now as I attempt to explain to you what goes through my head as I edit these photos). Perhaps I think too much. Perhaps I feel too much. These are problems, perhaps, that I'll never be able to resolve. But I find much release in this art, much release that is, in fact, directly related to my experience of the world. Photography is not just snapping a photo and uploading it to Flickr. It is not just an indifferent medium that attempts to capture a moment. Because it is not a moment I am attempting to capture but instead a feeling, an expression. And that is more than anything you will see through the lens of a camera.
I didn't intend to write such a long explanation about what photography means to me. I know that, more often than not, I get carried away with various thoughts and then go on some long tangent about this or that. Writing too provides for me a kind of release from my very own self. I could make some snarky remark about it and thus lighten the load, but tonight I don't particularly care too. I can, however, guarantee you that this isn't some artsy bullshit that I'm tossing at you to make you believe that this art of mine has some sort of intrinsic value. I don't need to convince you of their worth in order to be satisfied with what I've accomplished, although I do like to hear whatever thoughts you have about them.
That being said, interspersed throughout this post are my latest experiments. Yet one step closer to what we're attempting to accomplish. Frequent pronoun confusion = attributed to an art which is at all times associated with both myself and with Eric. We are a collaboration at the same time as we are ourselves.
And now that I have finished formatting this post, I find that I have a small block of space at the end that I simply must fill in order for me to be satisfied with the appearance of it. And so, I reveal myself to be a bit of a perfectionist about the appearance of not just my photos but also my blog posts! Ha! Could be worse. I could be plugging The Awen Aggregrate shamelessly on Twitter (as I shamelessly take a stab at my husband!). Nah, I didn't mean it sweetie, and I know you didn't mean it when you just said to me that you figured I was filling this extra space at the end of this post...
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 6:05PM 
