As you long-time readers of LensWork are fully aware, we tend to concentrate on the artmaking side of photography and the creative process rather than on technology, cameras, or equipment. But, truth be known, as photographers our productive life is very involved with technology. Without cameras, lenses, equipment of all sorts — and now computers, software, email, websites, etc. — our life as creative photographers would be pretty difficult.
Well, after 17 years of publishing LensWork and LensWork Extended without technology discussions, we're comfortable adding such to our repertoire with this blog.
But with a twist.
It seems self-evident that here in the new millennium "technology" for photographers is much broader thing than merely cameras or other photographic equipment. We've specifically titled this The LensWork Technology Blog for a reason — so we are free to discuss software, computers, PDF publishing, print and book publishing, ebooks, digital printing, folios, website design and marketing, special edition prints and folios, and even blogging itself — that encompass such a variety of skills and tools so important to photography and the creative process to modern fine art photographers. To limit the discussion to just cameras and lenses seems more an anachronism than a useful strategy.
So, in this blog I'll share with you my random collection of thoughts, discoveries, explorations, hard-won experience, and — I fully anticipate — some technological failures and struggles as I wade through this world of technology and its use to create photographic artwork.
I'm particularly excited about the technology of blogging because it offers, almost for the first time in my publishing history, a fully integrated platform that allows an exchange of ideas with LensWork readers and between our readers. Since 2004, we published one of the most popular podcasts about photography on the Internet. To date, there are about 600 podcast episodes available on our LensWork website in which I discuss various aspects of photography and creative process. (Consider yourself invited.) I love doing these podcasts and will continue them in addition to these new blogs. Podcasts however, by their nature, are a one-way street and blogging offers a different opportunity that allows not just a two-way street but also cross-traffic that opens all kinds of lines of communication that further the notion of a community of photographers who share a passion for photographs, the creative process, and the technology required to produce them. I tend to think of LensWork readers as a community and I love the idea that the community, from around the globe, can find each other through these new LensWork blogs.
By the way, I use the term "blogs" (plural) because we're launching three blogs simultaneously, each with a specific focus and purpose —
- this blog on technology,
- another we're titling Ask Brooks in which I'll do my best to respond to questions from our readers (or help them search for answers to their questions within the community of other photographers who follow the blog),
- and finally a sort of relaunch of LensWork Vision of the Heart. Version 1.0 of Vision of the Heart was a podcast-format production that offered commentary on photographs we'd published in LensWork or LensWork Extended. As such, it was intended to be a discussion of images (rather than either creativity or equipment) and was one of my favorite projects for the last few years on our LensWork website. Unfortunately, as a podcast it was simply too cumbersome to produce and bogged down in its own logistics. The blog format, however, is ideally suited for this project so we are relaunching it using blogging rather than audio as the platform. This also will allow you, the LensWork community again, to add your comments and join the conversation.
So, here we go! Welcome aboard.