LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process

Here's a Thought… #2764 with Brooks Jensen

Archive or Burden

We spend our life amassing a pile of prints that form our archive. It can also be said that our archive is a burden that our heirs will be responsible for whether or not they want it. We can't take it with us, unless the software engineers figure out a solution to this pesky problem of mortality. Maybe we should be buried with all our art like ancient Egyptian kings, taking all our important possessions with us to the next world.

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Here's a Thought… #2763 with Brooks Jensen

Visual Syncopation

Structure in a presentation of images can be both good and bad. Structure can provide form and consistency to a presentation. It can also become predictable, repetitious, and boring. This where visual syncopation can come to the rescue.

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Here's a Thought… #2762 with Brooks Jensen

Understanding Fatigue and Exhaustion

There are times when I try to go photographing in spite of feeling exhausted. It never works. This week is one of those times. I just can't bring myself to get excited about grabbing my camera and getting out there. Worse, I feel guilty about it. As I've thought about this in the torpor of my fatigue, I think I've had a flash of insight about this.

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Here's a Thought… #2761 with Brooks Jensen

The Immersive Challenge

We all have art we love and art that leaves us cold. In thinking about my own responses to artwork, I've come to the conclusion that the artwork I like the most are those pieces that create in me the largest immersive response by pulling me into the world that the artwork makes for us. This is, for example, where the novelist has so much to teach us visual artists. What if I were to propose that Tolkien and Ansel Adams are essentially facing the same creative challenge in different media?

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Here's a Thought… #2760 with Brooks Jensen

The Cynic in Me

This is the best time in the history of photography to be a photographer. That said, the cynic in me can't help but worry about the future of photography as an art medium. Because it has become so easy to make a technical stunning photograph, I wonder if the mystery in the craft has disappeared? If it's easy and everyone can do it well, is it still an admirable medium for making art?

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