cole thompson photography
newsletter
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Issue 126 - March 4, 2024 |
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I'm always torn between sending out more frequent but shorter newsletters, or less frequent but longer ones.
Sorry, it's another long one.
Cole
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In this issue:
- New "Dunes of Nude" images
- New Images from Death Valley
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Article: What would you be willing to do to be more popular?
- New "Ancient Stones" Images
- The Story Behind the Image: My $10,000 Mistake
- Charitable Donation to Ukraine
- ProTip: How to remove a persistent spot from your images
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"Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of arts."
Claude Debussy
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"There was no one near to confuse me, so I was forced to become original."
Franz Joseph Haydn
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"Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you're doing. If you're not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it."
Aretha Franklin
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“A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same.
It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?”
Dave Grohl
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"Always remember that the reason that you initially started working, was that there was something inside yourself, that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society.
And I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations. I think they generally produce their worst work when they do that."
David Bowie
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"I hate rankings about who is better. I don't deal with technique, I deal with emotions." I'm no longer interested in hyper-technical, funambolic musicians who are not able to convey emotions. Better four notes expressed with soul than a thousand without. Think of Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Chet Baker, and Joao Gilberto.
Charlie Watts was for me the essence of the Stones' sound, without doing spectacular acrobatics. Many will disagree. I've read a lot of publications about lists of musicians but for me, music is not competition, it's sharing."
Jimmy Page
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“The audience comes last. I believe that. I’m not making it for them, I’m making it for me and it turns out that when you're making something truly for yourself, you're doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience.
So much of why you go to the movies, so many big movies, are just not good…it’s because they're not being made by a person who cares about it. They're being made by people who are trying to make something that they think someone else is going to like. And that’s not how art works. That’s something else, it’s not art. That’s commerce.
So if we’re making art, we’re making…it’s almost like a diary entry. So should I be concerned that someone else might not like my diary entry? It doesn’t make sense, it has nothing to do with them. My diary entry has nothing to do with anyone else.
So everything we make as artists are essentially diary entries."
Rick Rubin
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“Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people.”
Prince
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"I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public wants — you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years."
Thelonious Monk
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"I’m not here to belong to a genre or adapt myself to any kind of rules, I just do what I instinctively feel I want to do."
Sting
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New "Dunes of Nude" Images |
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Every January I head to Death Valley...why January you ask? Because the temperatures and the crowds are low. My favorite place to photograph is on the dunes, in the late afternoon, when the sun is low and the shadows are long. |
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It is always a treat to be featured in LensWork. Why? Because it's a publication that I respect; they publish the type of work that I love, they focus on creating images as a form of self-expression, there is no advertising and the quality of the reproductions is as good as any photography book I've ever seen.
I worked for several years purchasing high quality, four-color printing from the likes of Anderson Lithograph, George Rice and Sons, and Gardner-Fulmer. It was at Gardner-Fulmer that I became friends with Orbie Fulmer, who developed the Fulltone printing process with his partner Dave Gardner. They printed a majority of the Ansel Adams books and posters due to the high quality of their printing.
The stochastic process that Hemlock Printers use to print LensWork, is equal to the quality of the Fulltone process. It is special to find this print quality in a book, and it's unheard of to find it in a "magazine." LensWork is the crown-jewell of photography publications.
If you are unfamiliar with LensWork, please check out their offerings and consider subscribing. Not only do they have the print publication, but there is also an enormous media library on photography and the creative life available to subscribers.
Something else you may want to consider, is subscribing to the free daily "Here's a Thought" audio recording. It's a 3-5 minute thought that helps keep me focused on photography and the creative process.
You can find the current day's recording at the top of the LensWork.com page.
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New Images from Death Valley |
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Angry Clouds Over Lake Manly |
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I've been going to Death Valley for over 50 years now, and I've never seen weather like I've seen this January: crazy storms, angry clouds and Lake Manly full of water (normally a dry lake bed).
A once in a lifetime event...or the new normal?
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Lake Manly Reflection No. 1 |
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First Light in Twenty Mule Team Canyon |
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What Would You Be Willing to Do to be More Popular? |
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Self-Shadow, Death Valley Dunes |
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I suspect we would all like our work to be more popular, but what would you be willing to do to achieve that popularity?
- Would you be willing to find images that are popular on social media, and then imitate them?
- Would you be willing to create images using fad techniques, just because they are currently in fashion?
- Would you be willing to create images that you didn't love, because others loved them?
What would you be willing to do? How much do you want to be popular and how popular do you want to be? And if you are able to achieve a large audience, does that mean your work is better than someone with a small audience?
Here's a truth uttered by the great pianist, Artur Rubinstein: "Nothing in art can be the best. It is only different.”
There is no good or bad art, just different art, and if you are creating images from your heart, from your Vision and with Passion, you will find your audience. It may be a small audience, but it will be a sincere one.
By the simple fact that I create with photography, greatly reduces the size of my audience. And by creating in black and white, reduces it further. And then there is my style of black and white, which reduces it even further still. That is the natural consequence of creating work that I love, but may not be widely popular with others.
So, how do I enlarge the size of my audience?
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Self-Shadow, I'm on the left |
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Well as I see it, I have two options: create what the audience loves...or don't.
And I've chosen "don't."
It's a part of my philosophy of "creating honest work." You do what you do, and you love what you create, and you're happy with the audience you find...even if it's tiny!
Why? Because popularity is overrated. What does it get me? Will I live longer if I'm popular? Will it get me into the best restaurants? Do I get to associate with a "higher class" of people?
No.
And even if it did get me all of those things, I would not trade popularity for the personal satisfaction that I receive when I create an image that I love.
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It seems that so many of the questions that I find myself asking these days, leads me back to this basic one:
Why do I create?
For too many years I created for the accolades, and I was dissatisfied with my photography. I wasn't creating what I loved, but rather what I thought the audience would love.
I have found that true satisfaction comes from within. It also has the extra benefit of giving you confidence and the ability to withstand criticism, and praise. I love how Georgia O'Keeffe said it:
"I decided to accept as true my own thinking. I had already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain, and I am quite free."
That's how I feel when I follow my Vision and create what I love: free.
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New "Ancient Stones" Images |
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Ancient Stones is a project that I've been working off-and-on for about 15 years. It started in Joshua Tree, but I have found equally good subjects in the Alabama Hills, at the base of Mount Whitney.
And my recent trip there, yielded several new images.
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Self-Shadow - Alabama Hills No. 2 |
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The Story Behind the Image:
My $10,000 Mistake
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Can you believe this image is part of a $10,000 mistake? It is, and it taught me a valuable lesson that made it worth the price.
After I had created "The Ghosts of Auschwitz-Birkenau" series, it was published, exhibited and "liked." That reception was gratifying because it was work that came about through Vision and Passion, and it was a series that I loved. That's my definition of a successful series, and so to then receive accolades, was like adding a cherry to the top of your favorite desert.
But then something interesting happened: friends and advisors started encouraging me to create another similar series, such as "The Ghosts of the Twin Towers" or "The Ghosts of Little Big Horn" to take advantage of spotlight I found myself in. "Strike while the iron is hot!" was a common refrain, and "you've got momentum, keep the ball rolling!" was another.
But I resisted.
I did not feel inspired to do another ghost series, and one of my personal mantras was: don't copy others, not even yourself. And so I declined and held fast to my values...for a while.
Then, for some unexplained reason, I caved in. I started believing the chorus of refrains and decided that I was going to create another "Ghosts" series to ride the wave of success from "The Ghosts of Auschwitz-Birkenau." It was sound marketing advice, and it made good sense from a business standpoint.
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At this same time, my wife and I had been watching the TV mini-series "The Tudors" and I was fascinated by the castles featured in the program. And so I decided that my next ghost series would be "The Ghosts of Great Britain" and it would set in and around those castles. |
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And so off I went to Merrie Olde England, with my daughter and a white bedsheet in tow. For this series I decided to control the ghosts, instead of relying on unknowing tourists to cooperate in an enterprise they had no knowledge of. My daughter would don her bedsheet and then spin or walk a predetermined path as I photographed her in long exposure.
After a couple of weeks of shooting we had visited lots of castles, created lots of images and had gotten lots of funny looks!
But when I came home and processed the images, I hated them.
- They were not inspired.
- I was not passionate about the project.
- They were contrived.
- They were designed to meet a marketing objective.
And I scrapped the images, except for the one above, which I did love.
My wife pointed out that while I didn't love the project, others might like it and it could still turn out to be a "successful project."
But how can anything that you despise, and that was not created honestly, ever be successful? It cannot.
So what lessons did I "re-learn" from this project? A successful project must have certain key ingredients: It must come from my Vision. I must be passionate about the project. The work must be created honestly. And it must be work that I love.
It was an expensive trip, and to come home with just one image, made it a very expensive image. However the lesson was worth the price...but I do hope that I don't need to "re-re-learn" this lesson again.
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Charitable Donation to Ukraine |
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At my invitation, a number of you signed up for Angel McNall's Landscape Summit last year. I committed to use the money I received from that event, to help with the Ukrainian cause.
I chose to donate the money to Natasha. She lives in Beryslav, Kherson Oblast, Ukraine. Her town is situated on the banks of the Dnipro River, near the dam that the Russians destroyed last year. She survives on the front lines of the war with her animals, without running water or electricity, and with Russian shelling.
Natasha was one of my subjects from the "Ukrainians, with Eyes Shut" project. And your participation in Angel's Landscape Summit, has helped Natasha, and those whom she assists, to survive.
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ProTip: How to Remove a Persistent Spot from your Images |
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Sensors get dirty, no matter how vigilant you are about changing lenses. And if you find a spot that follows you around from image to image, and you've tried the Spot Healing Brush, the Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp Tool without success...here's a "ProTip" that doesn't involve AI or sensor mapping:
Use a slightly damp, lint free rag, and clean your screen.
It works for me.
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For this month's print drawing, I'll be giving away "Two Kimonos" (above).
Thanks for entering!
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The winner of my last print drawing is Jo Bolton (hi Jo!) who will be receiving a print of "Harbinger No. 36."
Congratulations Jo, please contact me and arrange for your print to be delivered!
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