Manipulating light in pixels

I have had this digital camera for almost two years now, and I only just fell in love with pixels. These days, if you work in large format negatives as I have, all negatives are scanned, because the scanner sees way more than the enlarger, so much so that it even sees the substrate that [...]

Wide angle lenses versus Telephoto lenses

I am a wide angle person. I put that wide angle lens to my eye and my eye and my brain swoon. And, I find a place that intrigues me and work the place until it bores me and the images go stale. Such is the case with the Peabody River King State Fish and [...]

Make Great Photographs: Do Your Research

In August I head north up Route 66 in Illinois to Moraine View State Park and found a wind farm outside the park. It was one of those fist-pumping YES! moments when I realized that no matter how we extract energy from the landscape we are going to alter it, for good or for ill. [...]

Flash or No Flash in Watery Landscape Photographs

Last Friday I hiked Hickory Canyon in Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri. It is a beautiful place, a box canyon of LaMotte sandstone, the first layer of sedimentary rocks in Missouri. These rocks eroded from the igneous base rocks that form places like Taum Sauk Mountain, the highest point in Missouri, and the Silver Mines Shut-in, [...]

Many ways to look at the Confluence

Many years ago, when I was starting out,  a curriculum development company hired me to make photographs of every aspect of the Bus Station for a Teacher’s Art project, to prove that beauty could be found in a conventionally grubby place. I explored every part of the station, the seating, the food, the gift shop, [...]

Turning My Through-the-lens digital into a View Camera

Well, that didn’t work. Whatever made me think that the fancy computer with a lens attached could be made to function like a view camera. First, there is a mirror between me and the readout. Second, I haven’t a clue what else is between me and the readout, which flashes on only after the shutter [...]

View Camera v. Through the Lens

For years I have worked with a view camera for landscape photographs. I saved my work with through the lens cameras for weddings and parties. In the last year, however, I have worked almost exclusively with the through the lens digital camera for the landscape work. Last Saturday I photographed friends’ 50th Anniversary Party with [...]

Thinking about Photographs as Fine Art

When is a photograph fine art and when is it reportage? Last winter, when I first started blogging at quintascott.wordpress.com, I did several postings on political art. Then I decided to devote the blog to the Mississippi River and other landscapes. One posting included images made at the Iraq Section at Arlington National Cemetery. These [...]