Formal Education

In the fall of 2021, I took my first formal visual art class since high school, in black-and-white photography. 

I decided to do this more or less on a whim. I had met the instructor, Neeley Drown, at my monthly photo group. She made a Facebook post saying she had some spaces in her class, and that, for that term only, she was offering it entirely online. That last bit was critical for me, not only for COVID reasons, but because Cabrillo College is a couple of hours' drive away from me. As much as this scary and lonely COVID-infested world has limited our abilities to travel and see people in person, this miserable situation has also opened up opportunities for participating in faraway events from the comfort of our living rooms. 

I was entirely astonished by the amount that I learned. While I had been using an SLR for 30 years, and taken many workshops during that time, I had never before studied photography formally. The difference it made to my art is indescribable. I thought I had learned something about photography in the last 30 years. The class made me feel as if I had never known anything about photography before.

The topic of black-and-white photography was a particularly foundational one. Removing the color from an image reduces it to its essential elements. Black-and-white demonstrates so much more clearly that, as Neeley says, "light is our medium." When we have no color, we see so plainly the contrast, the lights, the darks, and the midtones. 

The most valuable lessons were the ones on Ansel Adams' Zone system. While Adams' system might seem overly technical, there is a real value in recognizing the gradations of lights and darks in a scene. I had been trying on my own to learn to see the world in black-and-white, but Neeley's lessons made the concepts much more comprehensible. The ability to see the tonal contrasts in a scene improves color photography as well.

The experience was also a lot of fun! It was art class! I had all sorts of fun projects to do, discovering new ways of seeing and developing new skills every week. The class focused my attention on my art and helped me grow as an artist. It was a wonderful opportunity to interact with other growing artists and feel like part of a community. Neeley pushed me in new directions, insisting that I try different things... that I, for instance, photograph myself right-side-up! 

I enjoyed the class so much that I am now taking another class, this time in color theory. I look forward to more fun and fascinating learning!

The Value of Rocks

Mono Lake, January, 2018

Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, “The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks!”

I'd like to say, first of all, humbly, that Cartier-Bresson was underestimating rocks. Rocks are the foundation, literally the bedrock, that determine everything else about a place, what plants can live there, what animals can live there. They underlie every living thing on our planet. And Adams and Weston of course were photographing extraordinary rocks.

But I think Cartier-Bresson was wrong on another level as well. Adams reportedly responded by saying, “the understanding of the inanimate and animate world of nature will aid in holding the world of man [sic] together." Adams' work, along, of course, with that of John Muir and others, was instrumental in raising consciousness about the beauty of our landscapes. In so doing, Adams helped to protect these landscapes from destruction, to preserve them for future humans to enjoy. Yes, the settings were also stolen from the natives, but at least they did not become disasters like Niagara Falls and Key West. By photographing rocks, Adams and Weston were communicating to the world the beauty, and the value, of the scenes they were displaying.

Art is a conversation between the artist and observers. The artist displays something and asks observers to observe it. In choosing the thing to display, the artist is making a value judgment, asserting that the subject is worthy of observation, of time and attention. The subject is worthy of time and attention even though it has no other practical purpose; it is just art. Some rocks are worthy of time and attention, even though they are just rocks.

Because art makes these assertions of value, fortunately or not, intentionally or not, art is inevitably more political than we might like to think. Who could take a picture of Mono Lake, or even Lake Tahoe, today, without making a political statement? In showing photos of such places, the artist inescapably calls for their preservation and protection. Every photo is a statement that the subject was worthy of being photographed. Every photo is a value judgment. 

So let us be conscious, as photographers, of the value judgments we are making, of the messages we are communicating. And let us speak for the value of rocks.