Being a sucker for punishment I am pulling the trigger on a Guggenheim Fellowship application this year. With an application due in late August it is one of the major grants possible, is privately funded, is very competitive, doesn't restrict itself to the arts, is international, pays about $35,000 and is project based. I have applied numerous times. Wish me luck.

Here's the outcome of my 1982 application (for awards given 1983):This is a postcard from Harry Callahan, whom I'd asked to write a recommendation for the fellowship.

Above is the front of the card.

I've written before about accepting defeat in the face of this kind of repetitive failure and I truly believe the only reason I am applying again is I've forgotten how much it hurt to fail the last time. One of the advantages to aging, perhaps, is that I honestly don't remember.

The really difficult part of applying is you must seek out four people to recommend your award. Think about this for a minute: you have to reach out to the most highly placed people in your field that you can think of, ask them to write on your behalf, then, assuming your application fails, which, of course, is the most likely of outcomes, go back to them and ask them to write again! This is humiliating, humbling, and puts you in a position of outright groveling, which I really don't like to do. This is another reason I have let years lapse in between applications.

Who will I choose? Well, I won't put them on the spot by naming them here but suffice it to say that so far I have one east coast museum curator, one western one, am in the process of asking a former winning photographer and am still searching for the fourth.

You can find out more about the Guggenheim Fellowships here.

After many years in this existence of being obsessed with making pictures and being in the world with a camera in hand it would seem time to take a break, to put down my camera and let it go a little, to get off the cart and to pursue other interests or just kick back a little, read a book, take in a show, travel just for the joy of it.

Not bloody likely. 

Although more critical than when younger and less impressionable, I am still as smitten with this most difficult of mediums called photography.

Sipping lemonade the other day with a friend, who's a veteran like me, we agreed that a large part of the challenge is the sheer diffulty of making truly exceptional pictures.

So, am I here going to show some truly exceptional pictures? No,  am I mot going to fall for that trap, me calling pictures of mine "exceptional". Not for me to decide, my friends.

But what I am going to do is show some pictures here that came as surprises to me, taken in the midst of photographing something else. These are offered as being proof that we really don't know what we're doing or, perhaps more specifically, that I don't know what I am doing. After all, when standing in front of something with a camera up to your eye, it doesn't take so much effort to frame something else, to focus it, check on the exposure and click the shutter. This seems to prove the efficacy of "what the  hell?" when taking pictures. I can't tell you the number of times I have stopped to photograph something,  worked at it for a bit, turned around to head back to the car and seen something across the road completely unrelated to why I stopped in the first place, made a picture of that thing, ony to find later that there was the one that really worked. Go figure. Part of what intrigues me about photography is that it is so very hard. So, here we  go, no presumption that these are  superior at all, just that they were found in the process of photographing something else and were made in the chance that something might happen.

Early, near Penland, North Carolina, mid April, 2013.

While flying and shooting the Imprial Sand  Dunes in Southern California, February, 2013.

The site on Plum Island, MA where a house had to be demolished due to erosion, March, 2013.

Martha's Vineyard (Menemsha), MA on a very cold mid-March day. 2013.

Spruce Pine, North Carolina on an early rainy morning, augmented with flash, April, 2013.

New York, about an hour north of Manhattan along the Hudson River, March, 2013.

Salton Sea, CA, February, 2013.

USS Midway, San Diego, CA February, 2013.

In my experience making good photographs entails: some work, some serendipity,  some luck, some persistence, some concentration, some awareness, a good sense of design, some training and, at times, not thinking too much but letting your instinct guide you in reacting intuitively. 

This last one from Italy in September, 2012. This was the final evening we were there before coming bak to the States. We climbed  this hill and, of course, the heavens opened up to show us this:

And finally, being aware that you are not so smart after all. Photography has been very successful over now a very many years in keeping me humble.

Thanks to Jason Landry, who owns the gallery that represents my work (Panopticon Gallery in Boston) I  had an interview with Greg Cook last month, who writes for WBUR.org. If you're not local, you may not know that WBUR is one of two NPR stations we have in Boston and it has a huge following. His piece is here: Neal Rantoul.

An artist's relationship with his/her gallery is a really important part of how all this works. A gallery should be a strong advocate for its artists. Working on the theory that "you never know what will happen" the gallery should be active and inventive in marketing its stable of artists. Jason, for instance, has set up many day trips with me, scheduling interviews with curators, other photographers and the press. He does this with others of his artists as well. Of course, if we sell some of my work for a permanent collection or to an individual, Jason gets his cut, as he should. I wouldn't be meeting with these people if it weren't for him.

There is another side to this that doesn't get enough exposure and that is that the artist needs to be respectful of his/her relationship to the gallery. I mean by this that the artist should work to include the gallery in anything that exists outside of showing on the gallery's walls. Selling ones work behind the back of the gallery that represents him/her isn't good business practice and leads to poor relations with the gallery. It is also a good idea to keep the gallery informed about new work or interest in your work  from other sources.

What I have had in my relationship with Jason for the past several years is something I respect and seek to protect as he has been honest with me and I have worked to keep him informed about all of my activities as an artist. I am thankful for his support and efforts on my behalf.

Different galleries have different practices, of course. Some are more distant and carry many artists. And many artists have many galleries, sometimes covering a region so that they have representation in different parts of the country, or abroad. I have had this in the past but do not now, not because I have decided not to but because I don't have galleries waiting at my door wanting me to sign up. So it goes.

Having just finished a show at Panopticon Gallery there is a let down or a feeling of "Remind me again  why I am doing this?" All shows, in my experience, are anticlimactic. There is a tremendous amount of work to get a show, to make the work for the show, to frame or have framed the work for the show, to package the show for transportation, to make lists of prices and titles, to be present at the opening, to be available to speak to the press, to conduct interviews, to provide the press the necessary jpegs, to give gallery talks or meet with prospective buyers and so on. Add to that list additional things like making a poster, a catalog, a card and then mailing and distributing those materials regionally and nationally and you have a recipe for severe let down, if not "artist depression". What's that? Go here to a previous blog post for a description of what could lead someone into some doubt about why he or she does what they do as an artist.

One of my favorite people while on the residency in Georgia last month was Mathew Rosenblum. Mat is a Guggenheim-winning composer who is close to my age, a New Yorker and a very hard working and straight thinking person whom I admire. After going out for breakfast one day in Georgia the day he was leaving, he said, "What we do is hard". Simple enough, but no less true. I don't want you to think I am brushing against martyrdom here but being an artist, or a composer, for most is a singular endeavor and entails trade offs. Many people just see the results, the end product, of course, but the path to getting there can be difficult, time consuming and lonely. 

Some blogs of mine are philosophical, some blogs of mine are remembrances, some blogs of mine are profound (yeah right, Neal), some blogs of mine are experiential, some of my blogs are educational and some blogs of mine are mechanical.

Mechanical? Well, yes. Like this one. Today I want to talk about working conditions, more specifically, how and where you set yourself up in front of a computer screen to work on your files. Is this important? Yes, very.

Check this out. This was where I worked while in Georgia over the past two weeks while on an artist in residency:

This was my studio. You can see the 27 inch Apple display I am now using while traveling sitting on the desk in front of the window. Why there? So I could look out and see the real world.

This is both good and bad, of course. Good in that it kept me from being bored to death or going insane working on files hours after hour. Bad in that if it was bright outside it made it hard to see the screen well. I finally solved this problem by tacking some translucent plastic up over most of the window, leaving enough at the bottom so I could sill see out.

At home I also have my monitor set up in front of a window, admittedly with not as   glorious a view as in northern Georgia which was a river valley in early spring in the mountains with almost every color in the rainbow blooming in front of me, but nevertheless, very nice and fun to watch as it changes through the seasons. Again, to help me feel as though I am in the world somehow rather than locked away in some computer room with nothing to see. This window I can draw the blinds on to control the light or pull down a room darkening  shade to completely cut the outside world off if necessary.

This work area is in what used to be my daughter's bedroom. When she went away to school and then moved to Florida, I took it over. You should have seen her face when I told her. "You did what, Dad?" I used to tell my graduating senior students at Northeastern University, where I taught, "You can't go home again". Of course, some of them did, as they couldn't get jobs right away. Most were miserable, as I'm sure so were their parents.

Anyway, the monitor here at home is a 24 inch Eizo and a really good display. I wish it were a little bigger but besides that it is wonderful. I have a hood over it which is a good thing. The light you see to the left of the screen is by Ott Lite and uses a bright flourescent bulb at 5000 degrees Kelvin, which is daylight. This too is important for viewing prints as they come out of the printer. Both monitors are calibrated once a month or so.  I use a Color Munki.

The laptop and the 27 inch Apple Thunderbolt display are new for me and I really enjoyed having that big screen with me while teaching at Penland and working on files at Hambidge. Because if it, I prepped files while away that I can run right to the printer (I call these "RTP's", Ready to Print files). In the past, working off just a laptop when away I didn't think I could see the images well enough to prep them as RTP's.

What about working on one display and then finalizing files on another? I was concerned about this but, partially due to both being calibrated, I am not having difficulties with this issue. The Apple is brighter than the Eizo but not too much.

A few months ago I wrote about making a commitment to being an artist. (Here comes the "philosophical" part of the blog.) Looking at your digital files only on a small laptop, not making prints of things you've shot or, with no offense intended to my friends in the printing  business, sending off your files for someone else to interpret and print, or not having a dedicated space to make your work, isn't, I believe, a sincere form of "commitment" to being a digital photographic artist. 

Next up in this run of practical, mechanical blogs: printing.

Brian is something else. Working by day as a lawyer, his other world is about making pictures. I've always admired people who could pull this off. I worked in a system, being a photo teacher, that was extremely supportive of my photography. But Brian's vocation as a lawyer never has anything to do with his love of making pictures.

It certainly  doesn't seem to slow him down, though. Here's what he says about himself:

Brian spent three years as an assistant to a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist at The Boston Globe. Now, he uses a 4x5 camera to create images about Cape Cod, American culture, and our relationship with the natural world.

Brian is represented by Panopticon Gallery, Boston, MA. His photographs have also been exhibited at Danforth Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Provincetown Art Museum, the Houston Center for Photography, Stone Crop Gallery, St. Botolph Club, Schoolhouse Gallery, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and in the Magenta Foundation’s “Flashed” Exhibit.

In addition to the Spring 2013 show at Panopticon Gallery, I’m Not On Your Vacation will also be the subject of a solo exhibition at Danforth Art in the Fall of 2013.

His curent work is called "I'm Not on Your Vacation". Here are some pictures from that work:

What do I like about this work? I like that Brian is a real craftsperson in the way he uses the 4 x 5 inch view camera, and the quality of his prints and the way they are framed and presented. I like the frontal, relaxed but powerful character of his pictures. It is though they say that this is the way it is, deal with it. I like the project's definition. It allows him to work on the Cape off season and to fold in anything that is good into the body of work.

I know this Cape Cod, you probably do too. Off season the blush is off the rose, the area doesn't look so good and it appears a little seedy and tawdry. The on season gloss of the Cape in mid summer with its throngs of people and everything open trying to get as many tourist dollars before the season closes is contrasted with a place worn down and showing its essential character.

This work will be at Panopticon gallery in Boston for a few more days, til the 13th. If you miss it, you'll be able to see it at the Danforth Museum in Framingham this coming fall.

It's been an honor to show with Brian at the gallery.

Brian's website and contact info is here.