Jeff Curto's Camera Position

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton How can we use the art we make with the camera to grow, learn and provide ourselves with a way of saying new things… to, as Merton says, “find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time”? I’m asking listeners to help steer the future direction of Camera Position by letting me know what you’d like to hear. Play Podcast:   Links for this Episode: * Help steer the future direction of Camera Position: * Send me an email * Post a comment on the Camera Position Facebook Page * Leave a comment below * Sign up for the Italy Photography Workshops Mailing List – The 2018 workshops are sold out, but planning is underway for the 2019 Workshops * University of Georgia Studies Abroad in Cortona, Tuscany

When the subject takes precedence – when you point your camera at things that are the most interesting thing to you – you are on your way to developing a personal style – the sense that these subjects are the most important things and can only be pointed out in this way by you. “To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care.” Anne Lamott – Bird by Bird Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * Sign up for the Workshops Mailing List – Planning is underway for the 2018 Italy Photography Workshops * Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott on Amazon  

How do we go beyond a record of a place and begin to make photographs that convey a real sense of place? The objective is not just to show  what your destination looks like, but rather to convey, in photographs, what it felt like to be there. Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * Exhibition: WANDERLUST: Travel as Muse in the 21st Century * Stony Brook Camera Club: Talk on May 11, 2017 * Sign up for the Workshops Mailing List – Planning is underway for the 2018 Italy Photography Workshops

This episode is a little meditation on the importance of aligning ourselves with the messages around us, using Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird as inspiration. “The Gulf Stream will flow through a straw provided the straw is aligned to the Gulf Stream, and not at cross purposes with it.” -Anne Lamott Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * Sign up for the Workshops Mailing List – Planning is underway for the 2018 Italy Photography Workshops * Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott on Amazon

“But the art in an artwork might not be located precisely where you thought it was. Perhaps it was just as much in the damage and decay as it was in the intact original. Perhaps it was in the gaps – in contemplating and rending those insults and injuries – that we find ourselves, by compassion; by bandaging, however imperfectly, those wounds. Art may be a species of faith, the assurance of things hoped for. It contains nothing so much as our wish that we persist.” -Robert Clark Play Podcast: Link for this Episode: * Dark Water: Art, Disaster and Redemption in Florence on Amazon * Vasari’s Last Supper – Restored 50 years after the flood

As photographers, we know that there is a fairly wide range of options available to us that change what was to what we show the world in our images. Every photograph is a composite of the choices we make as the person who eventually presents the image. Every photograph is an interpretation of the way the world really looks. Play Podcast: * Italy Photography Workshops, 2017 – Late Registration May Be Possible: * Sicily: Photographing a Sense of Place – May 26 to June 2, 2017 * Tuscany: Exploring the Eternal Moment – June 17 to June 24, 2017

An early influence on my ways of thinking about photography on a deeper level was the great writer John Berger.  A poet, novelist, artist screenwriter and more, Berger,  born in 1926, and died just a few weeks ago, in January of 2017 at the age of 90. A read of Berger’s work gives great insight into what meaning we derive from looking, seeing and photographing. Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * Books by John Berger: * Ways of Seeing – 1972 * About Looking – 1980 * Understanding A Photograph – 2013 * Ways Of Seeing TV Program: * Episode 1 * Episode 2 * Episode 3 * Episode 4 * Italy Photography Workshops, 2017 – Late Registration May Be Possible: * Sicily: Photographing a Sense of Place – May 26 to June 2, 2017 * Tuscany: Exploring the Eternal Moment – June 17 to June 24, 2017

Walt Whitman’s poems in his opus Leaves of Grass mirror the actions of the photographer by beginning with facts and transforming those facts into ideas. I explore how both photography and Whitman’s poetry use simple language to convey complex ideas, giving any object or experience new importance by recording it on a previously blank page. Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass on Amazon * Edward Weston’s photographs for Leaves of Grass * The Italy Photography Workshops for 2017 * Sicily: Photographing a Sense of Place – May 26 to June 2, 2017 – 1 space left * Tuscany: Exploring the Eternal Moment – June 17 to June 24, 2017 – 2 spaces left

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” – Yogi Berra I like to see photographers out in the world and watch them photograph. Observing how photographers photograph can be a great aid in helping us make better, more informed, more personal photographs. Play Podcast: There are still a few spaces left in 2 of my Italy Photography Workshops for 2017: * Sicily: Photographing A Sense of Place – May 26 to June 2, 2017 * Tuscany: Exploring The Eternal Moment – June 17 to 24, 2017

What drives and motivates photographers to do the work they do? I think that our unifying motivation is curiosity – an unrelenting, never-ending curiosity – an “itch” to know more about something and to learn about that thing through photographing it. I was prompted to think about how we should cultivate the itch – our curiosity – and not the scratch by this quote from photographer Sabastião Salgado: “If you’re young and have the time, go and study. Study anthropology, sociology, economy, geopolitics. Study so that you’re actually able to understand what you’re photographing. What you can photograph and what you should photograph.” Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * The Italy Photography Workshops for 2017 * Sicily: Photographing a Sense of Place – May 26 to June 2, 2017 * Tuscany: Exploring the Eternal Moment – June 17 to June 24, 2017 * Sabãstiao Salgado – View some of his work  

Do you take time to be creative each day? The creative act is worth taking the time for. It’s worth making the time for. It’s what holds us up and keeps us going. Thousands upon thousands of creative people are forced to make the time to create. It’s worth it because of what we give ourselves and what we give back to the world. Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * The Italy Photography Workshops for 2017 * Sicily: Photographing a Sense of Place – May 26 to June 2, 2017 * Tuscany: Exploring the Eternal Moment – June 17 to June 24, 2017 * The Memoirs of Hadrian – by Margurite Yourcenar on Amazon

If you see a picture that you think you may have photographed before, take it. Both the subject and the photographer may have changed since the last time you photographed it. Regardless of the reason, you should always make the photograph. Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * University of Georgia Studies Abroad Program in Cortona, Tuscany – a great program for students who want an excellent study abroad experience. * Lincoln Shatz – Lake Series –  look what happens when a photographer engages the same subject over and over again. * Sign up for the Workshops Mailing List – Planning is underway for the 2017 Italy Photography Workshops I’ve stood in front of this very door many times, and photographed it repeatedly, but never in this light, never at this time of year and never with this degree of success.

Among the many things that make photography such an interesting pursuit are its qualities of objectivity combined with subjectivity. In the end, photography is an objective medium with a subjective soul. Play Podcast: Sign up for the Workshops Mailing List – Planning is underway for the 2017 Italy Photography Workshops.   Each one of these images is ostensibly of the same subject (or is it object?) but each one dramatically different from the other based on my subjective interpretation of the scene. Thinking through the choices we make is what makes photography tick.

In addition to the phrase “Less is More,” the great architect Mies Van der Rohe also had another saying that relates to making creative work, and that is “God Is In The Details,” suggesting that attention to each and every detail of your process, from conception to execution, is integral to making the best work possible. Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * The Mies van der Rohe Society * Gustave Flaubert – Bio info * Le Corbusier – At MOMA * Sign up for the Workshops Mailing List – Planning is underway for the 2017 Italy Photography Workshops

Whether it’s a stack of dishes in the sink, moving forward with your photography or climbing up a steep mountain, looking at the path that you’re traveling is usually the easiest way to the top. Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: * Sign up for the Workshops Mailing List – Planning is underway for the 2017 Italy Photography Workshops