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Father/Son Print

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FatherSonPrint425

Place your order here.
Offer ends Friday 9/20 at 11:59 pm EST.

$495 + $34.95 shipping domestic – FedEx
$495 + $69.95 shipping international – USPS

A unique Father/Son Print featuring two images

John Paul Caponigro – Uyuni, Bolivia, 2013
Paul Caponigro – Frosted Window, Revere, MA, 1957

Paper size – 17”x22”
Image size left – 7.5”x7.5”
Image size right – 9.5”x7.5”

Epson Velvet Fine Art Paper
Epson Ultrachrome K3 with Vivid Magenta
Signed en verso by both artists in pencil.
Numbered and annotated en recto.
Limited to the number of prints sold for one week only.

Find out more here.

Place your order here.
Offer ends Friday 9/20 at 11:59 pm EST.

21 Quotes By Photographer Paul Caponigro

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Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes by photographer Paul Caponigro.
(My father has a lot to say about the creative process!)

“Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature.” – Paul Caponigro

“I often see the materials of photography as being a type of terrain. Emulsions, liquid developers, silver salts, and fixers interact, and I construct a landscape that I need to first explore in my mind’s eye if I am to make it manifest as an artful image in silver.” – Paul Caponigro

“Photography’s potential as a great image-maker and communicator is really no different from the same potential in the best poetry where familiar, everyday words, placed within a special context, can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way.” – Paul Caponigro

“The key is to not let the camera, which depicts nature in so much detail, reveal just what the eye picks up, but what the heart picks up as well.” – Paul Caponigro

“Some of my photographs have always been a mystery to me in terms of how I arrived at them. Even with the technical ability to produce fine prints, I am hard put to know how it happens, yet unless technique and materials are seriously investigated and experienced, I see that moving statements are seldom made. The process of photography ever invites me. I hope never to lose this feeling. At times I make photographs for the sheer magic of its process, and the good feeling about the very stuff needed: light, chemical combinations, some imperceptible forces at work behind the scene. I am part of the drama which takes the guise of photography.” – Paul Caponigro

“The influence of mystery is the greatest influence.” – Paul Caponigro

“Keep alive the fact that a mystery has come into existence and that a physical being serves as a house for this mystery.” – Paul Caponigro

“At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to ‘hear through the eyes.” – Paul Caponigro

“… the effort, diligence, and care required in practicing must be quickly suspended when pressure coming from anxiety or a desire for fast results causes them to degenerate.”  – Paul Caponigro

“Under all of the factors that make up the art world, it’s up to the individual artist to discern which of those influences are present and at what time and what really serves the deeper process that is constantly running like a stream underground. Influence is incessant. Influence is a fact. But, carry a big shovel and dig constantly to clear away all the unessentials so that the origins of mystery and the poetic force of life can get into and inspire the work.” – Paul Caponigro

“Photography attracted me before I ever knew that it was a part of a structured world. I saw a camera which my grandmother wielded. I thought it was fascinating. I didn’t know about famous artists and museums and magazines. I innocently met that process. And I excitedly engaged it to the best of my ability. Later, because my excitement was so strong, I realized that this could be a medium through which I could work. Then I had to meet the whole world of photography; manufacturers, materials, hype, galleries, dealers, critics, etc. Somehow I did not lose sight of that initial innocence. I realized that unless I could stay free, unidentified, unless I could keep my personality from going crazy with the adulation or the lack of it I was not going to maintain that innocence. I realized that the innocence was the important state that called forth the inspiration into the process.” – Paul Caponigro

“The only way a work of art can become great is for one to acknowledge that it doesn’t belong to anybody. The greatness is in constantly giving back, coming to an acknowledgment of the source. Look back to the source of any individual, any process, any set of materials. If the individual personality can relinquish its insistence on concepts like “this is mine”, “I did it”, “this is original”, “nobody else has done it”, it goes straight for greatness or the essential spirit.” – Paul Caponigro

“If you are engaging rationality, you are already engaging a place that makes you unavailable. Only when I recognize that inspiration has announced itself to my availability will I then say I need to use my mind to calculate exposure, my emotions to position myself and arrange a configuration of shapes that need to come into being, my body to put it all in place because we have been given a message and it has come through inspiration through being available.’ – Paul Caponigro

“Being available is very important. I’ve spent a lot of time working in the British Isles at so called pre-historic sacred sites. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to go there and force a composition or extract any kind of typicality to make pictures which were expected by the audience within the world of photography. I could have been quite clever and made very pleasing pictures. But I was affected by being available to those sites a few times. When I dropped all those concerns, mentally, emotionally, physically, I was available. I was free in those areas. I didn’t think, “I’ve got to get the ultimate in composition today.” or “I’ve got to get the ultimate in light, I’ll stay here until it appears.” I was not making any demands. I went purely to see what would come, what might be there. I didn’t have to be archaeologist or historian or tourist, I just needed to be available.” – Paul Caponigro

“As far as my experience goes one is automatically in touch with the higher spiritual, it is connected to a certain level that interpenetrates our total physical and psychic existence. We are always in touch with it.” – Paul Caponigro

“Can you keep your balance? Can you see what and where you are at any given moment?” – Paul Caponigro

“I use my music to tune myself.” – Paul Caponigro

“Seek freedom within action.” – Paul Caponigro

“Work incessantly, cultivate discrimination, gather freedom from your own hard-earned results. Disregard successes but go back for help in an immediate problem. The possibility of discovery is everywhere. Freedom from your own work allows for intuition that draws from all your experience and perception but goes beyond it.” – Paul Caponigro

“Recording the light of the outer subject can be linked with gaining access to one’s inner light.” – Paul Caponigro

“All that I have achieved are these dreams locked in silver.” – Paul Caponigro

Read more photographer’s quotes here.
View photographer’s favorite quotes here.
Read our father/son conversation here.

23 Quotes By Photographer Edward Weston

Photographers - Quotes  Comment
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Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes by photographer Edward Weston.
“Photography suits the temper of this age – of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.” – Edward Weston
“I would say to any artist: ‘Don’t be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.” – Edward Weston
“My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea.” – Edward Weston
“The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?” – Edward Weston
“Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.” – Edward Weston
“Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.”  – Edward Weston
“I see no reason for recording the obvious.” – Edward Weston
“I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.” – Edward Weston
“My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.” – Edward Weston
“The camera should be used for a recording of life,for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” – Edward Weston
“This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.” – Edward Weston
“To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.” – Edward Weston
“Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection.” – Edward Weston
“When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.” – Edward Weston
“One does not think during creative work, any more than one thinks when driving a car. But one has a background of years – learning, unlearning, success, failure, dreaming, thinking, experience, all this – then the moment of creation, the focusing of all into the moment. So I can make ‘without thought,’ fifteen carefully considered negatives, one every fifteen minutes, given material with as many possibilities. But there is all the eyes have seen in this life to influence me.” – Edward Weston
“I start with no preconceived idea – discovery excites me to focus – then rediscovery through the lens – final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure – the shutter’s release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation – the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.” – Edward Weston
“I find myself every so often looking at my ground glass as though the unrecorded image might escape me!” – Edward Weston
“Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.” – Edward Weston
“The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don’t know what to do with it.” – Edward Weston
“The photographer’s most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically – that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.” – Edward Weston
“The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer’s understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.” – Edward Weston
“If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.” – Edward Weston
“…through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.” – Edward Weston
Read more photographer’s quotes here.
View photographer’s favorite quotes here.

23 Quotes On Being An Artist

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Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes on artists.
“The artist is the antenna of the race.” – Ezra Pound
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.” – William Faulkner
“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.” – Wassily Kandinsky
“An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.” – George Santayana
“I suppose an artist takes the elements of his life and rearranges them and then has them perceived by others as though they were the elements of their lives.” – Paul Simon
“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” – Andre Gide
“To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist.” – Schumann
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”  Francis Bacon
“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” – James Whistler
“Artists don’t make objects. Artists make mythologies.” – Anish Kapoor
“Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you’re an artist.” – David Hockney
“Even a true artist does not always produce art.” – Carroll O’Connor
“The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.” – Eugene Delacroix
“Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.” – Gustave Flaubert
“An artist has to be a little like Lewis and Clark, always exploring in new, uncharted directions.” – C.W. Mundy
“A great artist is always before his time or behind it.” – George Moore
“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer
“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” – Robert Hughes
“Every work of art has its necessity; find out your very own. Ask yourself if you would do it if nobody would ever see it, if you would never be compensated for it, if nobody ever wanted it. If you come to a clear ‘yes’ in spite of it, then go ahead and don’t doubt it anymore.” – Ernst Haas
“Ask yourself if you would do it if nobody would ever see it, if you would never be compensated for it, if nobody ever wanted it. If you come to a clear ‘yes’ in spite of it, then go ahead and don’t doubt it anymore.” – Ernst Haas
“You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do, and you must.” – Seth Godin
Read more photographer’s quotes here.
View photographer’s favorite quotes here.

Find The Best Time – The Story Behind The Photograph

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ConstellationVIII_425

Constellation VIII, Uyuni, Bolivia, 2013

It had been a very long drive. Looking for other exotic locations along the way, we (I was traveling with colleagues Seth Resnick and Eric Meola) had taken the long way around, traveling for five days at high altitude, up to 5,000 meters, through Bolivia’s Altiplano to Salar de Uyuni the largest salt desert in the world. On arrival we began looking for water, which was seasonal and unpredictable. Unsuccessful at first, at first we found only mud beneath a cracked crust, later we found a few wet stains, still later a larger area slick enough to glisten in the sun, much later a larger slick against a mountain that offered limited reflections, and finally, late on the second day we found a large expanse of water. But there was wind and in many areas the water was too deep to access. We waited at our nearby hotel, made completely of salt; the walls and floors and tables and desks and chairs were all made of salt. Returning for the day’s final light, we found the wind had moved the water and then died down leaving a glassy sheet of perfect reflections as far as the eye could see, ringed by clouds. Walking on/in it was disorienting. You felt like you were walking on/in the sky. And then the color began to change and bloom. It was divine. We spent hours photographing, until the light faded and the winds picked up again. We returned the next day, our final day, to find similar almost ideal conditions and later the new introduction of lightning storms and rainbows behind us. We felt exceptionally fortunate.
If there was no rain, there would be no water to hold reflections; we would have been limited to making photographs of cracked salt patterns, a few piles of salt, and the distant mountains. If there were no clouds, there would be little to reflect. Even though this type of weather was typical at this time of year, and this time of year only, there were no guarantees. We had not only timed it just right and planned for enough time to succeed in, we also got lucky.
Stack the odds in your favor and do your research to know when optimal conditions are most likely to occur. There are situations where you can take actions to increase the probability of ideal conditions occurring and there are situations when you can’t – and knowing which situation you’re in is important. In situations where you can’t be more proactive, it’s wise to plan for a little extra time, in case you have to wait for ideal conditions to arise. It’s never easy to know when it’s best to move on and when it’s best to wait it out. Prior experience helps but it will only get you so far. Keep your eye on the weather and seek out local knowledge whenever possible.
Questions
How can you best prepare to make the most of optimal conditions?
What are optimal conditions for the task at hand?
When are you most likely to experience optimal conditions?
Is there anything you can do to increase the likelihood of optimal conditions occurring?
Is there anything you can do to improve current conditions?
When is it better to move forward rather than wait?
When is it better to take a new approach rather than return?
Find out more about this image here.
View more related images here.
Read more The Stories Behind The Images here. 
Find out about my Atacama Desert Argentina digital photography workshop.