Here's an exercise you might find fun. What happens when you spend time with an image before you begin processing it? Seriously, try this exercise next time you are working on images in Lightroom or Photoshop. Before doing anything to the captured file, spend 20 minutes or so just looking at it. Write down any words that come to mind, any thoughts, any ideas. Challenge yourself to write 10 things before you begin processing the image.

When you decide you want to make a photograph of this particular thing, why is that thing chosen over all others? What is it in that thing that makes it more photogenic than all others? I've thought about this a great deal lately and I'm not sure I have the answer. I do, however, think I have one answer: Idealism. So much of photography as it is practiced is the pursuit of the ideal.

The common perception of a photograph is that it is a fact. Even a fanciful, imagine-based photograph is a statement of how the photographer sees the world. But what doors to creativity are opened if we change that perspective and think of a photograph (or a project) as a proposal to consider? What if your photograph says, "Here's a question" rather than "Here's a truth"?

Here is a slick focusing technique I never thought of, but it works. It replaces the half-press and hold, then compose technique. It's much more intuitive in my brain than back button focusing. It uses "focus tracking" or something I like to call "sticky focus." You really should try this one.

In my youth, I thought the magic was to achieve a maximum black. It took me several years to learn that the magic is not in maximum black but rather in beautiful gray tones and chords of tones that please the eye. Increasing contrast and overprinting the blacks is rarely the answer. My apologies to Bill Brandt.

Once Stieglitz decided that photography was best consumed as art on the wall, like painting, he set in motion the pursuit of large prints. If it weren't for our predisposition to exhibit photographs on the wall, I wonder if there would ever have been a push for larger and larger prints. And if we collectively did not think of photography as something destined for the wall, I wonder what methodology/medium would dominate the sharing of photographs?

All media include an element of narcissism. With every photograph we make, we are essentially competing for attention. Each photograph screams, "Look at me!" This intense competition for eyeballs leads to a secondary phenomenon I think of as "the advertising promise." "Come look at me and you will be rewarded with this goody." The competition for eyeballs is so fierce that we now are overwhelmed with advertising promises way out of proportion to actual content.

I've talked before about the solutions to problems that pop up from seemingly nowhere. I've recently been reading The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. I found there a fascination quote that discusses this process. Glad to know I'm not alone in observing how creative ideas so often appear unexpectedly.

I remember years ago hearing of a photographer who would leave small prints wherever he happened to find himself. He would leave his artwork on a bus bench, a restaurant table, a seat in the library, literally anywhere the spirit so moved him. I was so fascinated with this idea that I followed this plan the last time I was in Japan.

When you want to make a photograph, what do you do? Probably you set out into the world somewhere and start looking for things you might photograph. You are on the hunt for potential. What if you were to point yourself to your Lightroom catalog rather than the world out there? I would propose that searching the world and searching in your exigent collection are pretty much the same thing.

The ideal kit includes everything I might need. The opposite of how much gear can I take is how little gear can I get by with. Perhaps it's a function of my aging knees and back, but I find myself brainstorming about the least amount of gear I can take with me and still be productive. Obviously I need a camera and lens, a battery and a memory card, but what else is absolutely necessary in order for me to be successful with the kind of photography I do?

Yesterday I was talking about feedback and the way the digital workflow makes getting feedback about our work so much easier. Not unexpectedly, there is a downside to such easy feedback; the pressure to conform.

How well do you suppose you would learn tennis if you could never see where the ball went after you hit it? Learning is always a function of action, feedback, assessment. This is equally true for photography and this explains one aspect of the digital revolution that I think is highly overlooked, but has radically changed the nature of photography.

Once again I found myself contemplating the super long 100-400mm Panasonic Leica lens for my m/43 camera. As a part of the research, I decided to investigate a cropped image from the Panasonic Leica 50-200mm I already own. Then the next step was to see what the results would look like if I used either pixel shift technology versus Super Resolution Enhancement in Lightroom. Fascinating results.

The light we use to view a print or book is so critical in determining how that photograph appears. Unfortunately, we have no control over the light people use to view our work. A story from Paul Strand's biographer demonstrates how frustrating this issue can be for us photographers.

I've come to believe that the most fundamental and important decision we make when producing our image-based artwork is whether we want our work seen via reflected or transmitted light. Every subsequent processing decision is based on this first choice.

I love photography books, but I must admit that I struggle with big, thick books. I once wanted to read Tolstoy's War and Peace, but struggled for years to make the necessary commitment to its 1200 pages. I feel the same way about 3-400 page photography books. Like big books, big museums also present a challenge. The only way I know how to negotiate my time in a big museum is to concentrate my attention on a manageable number of pieces of artwork. Similarly, viewer fatigue is a real...

Each of the art media have characteristics that are its greatest strength, that set it apart from other media. A novel gives the writer unlimited control over time; music has the ability to tap directly into our nonverbal emotions; painting provides a medium in which the artist can include or exclude elements based solely on their imagination. What sets photography apart? Seems to me that one of its primary strengths is its ability to show detail even finer than human vision and to carry that...

Gestalt psychology tries to explain why we are drawn to certain themes of attention. For example, movement attracts our eye much more than a static scene. Put in photography, all we have are static scenes, even if they capture blurry movement. This defines one of photography's greatest challenges.

Each morning as I slowly awaken from my night's sleep, I think about the coming day and what I need to do. Every once in a while, I find my calendar is clean, I can spend the whole day doing photography without any guilt about obligations I might be ignoring. What a wonderful day! But then follows the troublesome question: What will I do?

An old maxim tells us the theory of communication broken down into three steps of advice. Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you just told them. That pattern seems to work pretty well in project-oriented photography, too.

There is that old bumper sticker wisdom that advises us to be careful what we wish for: we might just get it! For most of my photographic life I wanted faster, smoother, sharper, better. Now that I have all of that in today's amazing photographic tools, I suppose there are no excuses left for why our artwork fails other than to acknowledge our personal and internal limitations. Damn it was sure handy blaming inadequate tools!

Do you have a photographic fantasy of something you would love to do? I suspect we all have such thoughts. Then reality sets in and we realize that those fondest desires may simply not be practical. Do we give up based on the fact that we can't achieve our fantasies? Or, do we adapt ourselves to what we can do? What other option is there? Don't let "If only..." become an excuse.

The other day, I heard once again, for the billionth time, a photographer say that however a viewer wanted to interpret their work was okay with them. Why are photographers so reluctant to make a declarative statement that is unambiguous? If you leave it up to the viewer to interpret your photograph however they want, why bother to compose or process an image? If you have no intent, why make choices?