Remembering the Great Things of God

This is the title to an international exhibit put on by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints held every three years. You can only submit one image for acceptance and out of 1100 entries from 40 countries mine was fortunately accepted. Unfortunately I will be in California taking photography students from Utah Valley University on a spring break/photo trip to Carmel, San Francisco, and the redwoods and will miss the opening reception. So if anyone is interested in the opening it will be on Friday, March 20th from 6-9 pm. The exhibit will be in the Grand Atrium Foyer on the Terrace (second level) of the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. (If you do go, let me know what I missed) The exhibit will be up through October 11, 2009 if you would still like to see it but can not make it to the opening reception. This was my image that was accepted.

City Gallery Exhibit

I had a last second show kind of drop in my lap. On about 1 week notice me and Brandon Allen decided to pull together an exhibit. Basically in my house I pulled all the frames off my wall so that I would have enough frames since I would not have time to make new ones. We will have an opening this Friday (February 6th) from 7 to 9 at the City Gallery in Provo (250 North University Avenue) as part of the gallery stroll. If you can't make it on Friday, the show will be up through March so we will also have a reception for the March gallery stroll. The images really don't have a connecting theme other than beautiful black & white. I will have some brand new images that I have never printed before as well as some golden oldies (well, silver actually). Everyone is invited and hope to see you there.

Springville Museum of Art & Why I Disappeared

Thank you to everyone that was able to make it to the Perspectives: Utah Lake exhibit that was held at the Cover Center for the Arts in October. I would like to inform anyone that is interested that I will have two images in the Religious & Spiritual Art Exhibit at the Springville Museum of Art. This exhibit can be viewed through December 28th. If you can make it there is another exhibit that you should definitely see, it is a retrospective of the black & white photography of John Telford (My photography professor) I have always been a great fan of his photography.

Posting has been a little slow as of late, I apologize. I am in the finishing stages of making a commemorative book through Commemorative Publications of the Beijing Olympics for the United States Olympic Committee. My schedule has been hectic to say the least. I was initially given three weeks to complete it but the direction has changed so many times that it has taken longer than that. It will end up being about 376 pages, hardbound, and the bulk of the book will focus on the photographic memories of the games. (With a focus towards Team USA). I was hired as the creative director and photo editor. I hired three design students from BYU (Reeding Roberts, Natalie Davis, & Deven Stephens) who created the design for the book and helped me assemble it. They did a marvelous job. But I'll be honest, I will be very glad for this project to be over and done so I can get back to my own photography.

Here is a quick sneak preview so you will have a sense of how the book will look when it is finished.

Utah Lake Exhibit

I started a project a while ago photographing Utah Lake. I started it with Brandon Allen who was a student of mine at the time. We were intrigued by how many people thought the lake was disgusting, revolting, radioactive, cesspool, etc., etc. Yet we actually found the lake quite beautiful and a fun place to photograph. The dichotomy kind of piqued our interest. We have focused on creating and presenting an image that stands in direct opposition to the typical public perception of the lake. Hopefully by approaching this project with this mindset will force people to at least consider an alternative reality of Utah Lake than what they currently have.

We now have a show of these images that will be in the gallery at the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo, UT for the month of October. The show is entitled Perspectives: Utah Lake. The opening reception will be on Friday October 3rd from 6-9 pm. (light refreshments will be served) It is an open invitation so bring friends. Here are a few images that will be included in the show plus my artist statement at the bottom.




Since this is a photography project let me start with a quick photography lesson: How to control perspective? Perspective is controlled entirely by the relationship of film (or sensor) to the object that is being photographed. To be perspectively “correct” the film has to be perfectly parallel to the object being photographed. For instance, if you want to photograph a building and you have to look up to see the top of the building then you have altered the film plane relative to the building and the building will keystone, or get smaller towards the top. The perspective will not be “correct” in the photograph.

In other words perspective is controlled by how the photographer positions themselves in relationship to their subject. I think this explanation works for the cognitive definition of perspective as well, point of view. When you ask someone for his or her point of view you are basically seeking an opinion that is the sum of their life experiences. Their life has been different than yours so their interpretation will be gleaned from a completely different set of eyes. This person will be in a different position in relationship to the subject or question than you are.

I had many experiences while teaching photography at UVU that led me to start photographing the lake. When a student would produce an image of Utah Lake that was beautiful, all sorts of negative opinions would start to fly from others in the class. I began to wonder how many of the negative opinions were due to the condition of the lake and how many were due to the condition of the viewer.

I decided to begin photographing Utah Lake and see what the camera had to show me about the lake. I was instantly mystified. I found beauty everywhere I looked and whenever I looked. I had a hard time seeing what so many people had told me was ugly about the lake. Whenever I saw things gross or ugly it was not the lake I saw but the people who were responsible for the scar.

I have come to the realization that photography does not have the power to change its subject. Photography’s power lies in its ability to change perceptions about the subject. Once the perception has been changed then real change can occur. Once you see a well-executed and well-thought out photograph it is difficult to ever look at the subject again without seeing it from a new perspective informed by that image.

“Life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be.” I think the same holds true in this instance, Utah Lake is what it is now because of us and will become what we make of it. I encourage you to consider a new perspective of Utah Lake, the place no one wants to know.

2008 Spring Salon

I entered two images into the Springville Museum of Art Spring Salon. As usual I got one in and one rejected. Every time I have submitted to an exhibit at the Springville Museum I have had the same result. I guess I can be happy with a 50% acceptance rate. This image has already been in a couple of exhibits but I was curious how it would do in Springville so I am glad it got in. The exhibit is open from 27 April - 6 July 2008.

B&W Exhibit

This was a photo I took of the Portland Head Lighthouse in Portland, Maine, last year while I was visiting the school in Rockport to see if I was still interested in attending there. I had a friend call me early on a Saturday morning to say he was driving up to Ogden to enter some images in a black & white imagery competition at the Eccles Community Art Center. He volunteered to take a print up if I wanted, I figured why not. Due to the short time frame, whatever I had already finished was what I could choose from. This is the image I entered, so I decided to post it and share some stories/philosophies about it.

I had a full day to kill, so I decided to drive the coast. Knowing the fame of the Portland Head Lighthouse, I decided to stop by. It was a flat gloomy day, so the light was kind of boring, but I decided to pull out the camera anyway. I wandered around for awhile to find the best angle. When I finally settled on a spot, I set up my camera and began to photograph. I had to straddle the chain link fence to get in the position I wanted. After I took a picture, I looked down and noticed that someone had scribbled "put camera here" with a little arrow on the fence railing. I noticed it because the arrow was pointing at the center post of my tripod.

I was now torn. Obviously, I was not the first to stand at this spot, so do I take the picture? Will it be bad or derivative simply due to the fact that somebody beat me to the punch. I decided to take some pictures anyways. Herein lies my dilemma: (That I leave open and do not provide an answer to.) the age old question about originality and creativity. So often a picture is pronounced good if it is shown in a way not seen before. So often I find people trying to be different for difference's sake because that is what they have heard qualifies as good.

I have never seen harm in taking a picture of something that has already been photographed, even if it is from the same spot. I have seen many photographers who will return to the same spot trying to capture something that they missed previously or to create something dramatically different despite its location being identical. Another variation on rephotographing a subject would be Mark Klett (*one of his images posted below) and his Yosemite in Time book where he went back and attempted to take photographs from the same spot at the same time of year and day of famous images by Ansel Adams, Edward Muybridge, Carlton Watkins, and others. Klett then took these images and created fascinating juxtapositions of then and now.


I find irony that in music if someone 'covers' a song, it is completely acceptable and often considered a tribute, in photography it is redundant and uncreative. (Unless you simply take a picture of someone else's photograph, then it is ok and creative, aka Richard Prince.) In training for music one is encouraged to listen to and then try to emulate people you admire, in photography it has already been done and don't do it again. C.S. Lewis provided an interesting insight that he is surprised that people don't read books over and over again because they have already done it. But people eat the same meals over and over again because they tried it once and discovered that they liked it, so they choose to enjoy it again.

Photography operates on a different standard than the rest of the world. In basketball if someone disregards the rules to 'improve' the game then that person would not be allowed to play. Those who become good are those who understand the rules and improve themselves in relation to them, not the other way around. Certain aspects in academia encourage those in photography to disregard all they know and create something new, or to be original, or show me a new way of seeing, or recommendations along these same lines. Is this a strength of photography or a weakness?

I have often wondered if the masters we admired have not fully exhausted there visions. If they had 20 more creative years, would their work be considered redundant or would they extend their vision to levels that we have yet to deem possible? In other disciplines the practitioners are encouraged to stand on the shoulders of giants and then reach further. As artists we are encouraged to constantly reinvent even ourselves or we are destined to become obsolete. We profess to show people new ways of looking at the world, but when I look at the world and then at photography, I think we are more concerned with reinventing the world than in actually seeing the world. Is that why we are considered creative?

UVU Faculty Exhibit

The Utah Valley University faculty exhibit is here again. It will be up until February 15th at the UVSC Woodbury Gallery in the University Mall. It is a nice opportunity for the students to be able to see what kind of work their faculty is producing and critique us for a change. I will post my images that I included here but don't miss out on seeing the rest of the exhibit before it comes down.

Two images came from my Religious Imagery project and the other was from my Utah Lake project. I would be interested to hear what you think about the images if you would like to comment.

The Garden Tomb

The Garden of Gethsemane

Wide Views

Mike Slade, who has been teaching the still life photography class at BYU, approached me about participating in an exhibit with him. He had a call for entry from anyone that created images in a panoramic format. He told me that the idea for this show was spurred on by his work which was being printed as 7x17 inch images, and a selfish desire to see other photographers images and to see how his work fit into the larger genre of panoramic photography.

It also intrigued me by an additional concept that he had for the show. He wanted the photographers who submitted to also see the collected work so as part of submitting work to the show he asked each photographer to also find a venue to exhibit the show. This enabled the show to be a traveling exhibit that potentially could visit all over the globe. All prints where not to be matted or framed to further aid in the nomadic nature of the show.

Even with the earliest participants submitting he already had images that were out of this world. (No really, one was taken on Mars by the Mars Rover and another was from the Moon taken during the Apollo 17 mission.) The first exhibit is currently up at the Twain Tippets Gallery in Logan, UT and will move to the Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City the first of February. More participants have already submitted and hopefully many more venues will appear as well. You can visit the website hosting the work *here*.

Here is the image that I submitted. It is from my Utah Lake project and can be seen in context with other images on my website and also on a separate post on this blog.