A new landscape exhibit at my site

[Steven Barall]

People should take a look at the other photos on the site as well. A wonderful and thoughtful collection of photos. I personally love eclectic behavior and, like the work or not, it's all worth looking at.
I'm not saying that I completely connect with every single thing I've seen on the site but that certainly doesn't give me reason to discount everything else. It's like getting invited into a strangers house to look around, it's surprising and a little spooky but it's compelling and you can really learn a lot about the people who live there. I like it when I can learn about a person by looking at their work.

That said, I can live without some of the text because some of it seems to be about justification and I just don't think it's necessary. Reasons are not the same things as justification. Reasons can be a true part of the art work. Reasons can be insight into the artist just like the work can be. They're part of the biography.

As far as the camera tech stuff goes, it's like deciding that you don't like Van Gogh because he used cheap brushes. You have to deal with what's infront of you and that's it. Looking at photos is a reactive experience, just like making photos is.

[John_4185]

It is an interesting site and fits web publishing very well. Enter with an open mind and meet a new person who is quite different than the usual LF maven and enjoy, or not. Thanks, Darin.

[Darin Boville]

A few quick answers:

No photoshop filters--ugh! I just zapped the color a hair in photoshop, that's all. (btw, My Antietam photos look like they were made with toy cameras? Holga on the battlefield! There’s something very funny about that...)

But maybe the origin of the series is a little more interesting than the tech stuff? It sort of started here on this board, in fact. I had days before bought a digital Nikon and was thinking about what to do with it when there was a post here about 35mm landscape photography:

http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/502308.html

I suggested exploring ways to photograph the landscape using 35mm in ways difficult to explore with the 4x5. So since I had this new camera I thought I’d take my own advice. My thoughts were that mobility, instantaneous feedback, and near zero "variable cost" (to use econ lingo) were (a few) major characteristics that sets digital apart from a creative point of view. The last two together are like free, unlimited Polaroids--I've always loved working with Polaroids for the interactivity it allows with the subject and idea. Mobility sounds like simple convenience (and convenience is invisible in the image) but it also, like in filmmaking, can mean interesting handheld camera movements. An old technique for serious photography, even in the more traditional camp--Harry Callahan made some wonderful shots of reflections on water like that.

Here’s something along similar lines that I did with a 4x5 and Polaroids (the originals were then made on negative film, so I had to practice each “dance” to get it right) a few years back (it’s an exhibit I never linked to from my main page)
http://www.darinboville.com/onlineexhibits/stpete/images/

So, anyway, I was doing this spin thing all summer shooting everything that way--people, landscapes, driving my wife nuts and looking kinda weird to passersby--and got a lot of cool photos. All sort of pointless in the end but very cool looking. Sort of a visual idea free-floating. Then the hurricane hit and it all made sense.

As for the texts on the web page, yes, they can sometimes seem like I’m giving too much away--but I’m not. I used to have no text but that does a disservice to people who don’t have the time to ponder every little detail for clues to what I am doing. On the other hand if you try to put it into words you kill it--the ideas just don’t work as words. My solution was to “open the door” to the work and to at least get them pointed in the right direction. They can do the rest themselves.

Sometimes images or projects have multiple reasons for being--take the still lifes. There’s an original introduction on “beauty in photography’ which seems to serve as the justification for the images, then later I added an alternative introduction that moved it up a level talking about turning back the clock on modern art--all true reasons but not *the* reason for making the image (the real description of the origin of these is unprintable in a family newspaper). So there is plenty (perhaps almost all) left unsaid, as there should be. Think of it as a personal side to the work and a public side. I talk about the public side.

Speaking of saying too much, I’ve said WAY to much here! Thanks for indulging me...

--Darin

www.darinboville.com

[Bobby Sandstrom]

Very Nice Work Darin. You have a good eye.

Bob

[Kerik Kouklis]

Darin,

I've looked at the Cat4 series a few times in the last couple of days now that you've plastered links in every forum I pay attention to :-). Really compelling images, although they make me want to reach for the dramamine after a while. What I like about your work in general (even when the images don't grab me) is that you use your brain a lot more than most photographers seem to...

Congrats my friend.

[Darin Boville]

Hey Kerik,

Plastered links? Ah, you mean in the old forum which is almost dead, the new one that is showing signs of life, and then this one here....maybe I'll post my response on the old one--sort of like watering a withered old stem, hoping that it will grow again...

--Darin