After many years of writing in this space I face a crossroad. Do I turn left, right or continue through the intersection? Let's see, if I turn right, by political convention, I would assume more traditional forms of photography were primary. While not freezing the discipline in an earlier time I would urge consistency of vision and a steady hand, usually rejecting "new" and "different" as apt to be false prophets of the one chosen way. I would not support increased federal and state granting and fellowships. I might perhaps push for more film-based photography, and would love traditional black and white, be a proponent of reportage and documentary work and care deeply about the state of our planet but would be a skeptic about mankind being responsible for climate change.

If I chose left I would advocate for new and less conservative methods of presentation  and origination. I would accept newer technologies, hell, I might even invest in them if I was able. Pictures of all kinds could be viable and new methods of seeing them, making them and disseminating them would float to the surface. I would advocate for more screen-based presentations, be big on video, love drone usage, could even be dismissive of tradition, history and a deep education. Traditional gallery and museum structures would be deemed questionable. The market itself would drive what is seen and not seen. And lastly, I would wish for increased federal and state support for all the arts. And oh yes, my feet would be firmly planted in the belief that we were  responsible for climate  change and that we needed to do something about it right now.

Finally, if I chose to stay on course, to cross the road but stay straight, continue to write this blog as I have for now going on three years I would presumably write about my own work, others' works I find worthy of bringing to attention and review an exhibition or book from time to time. The blog has been moderately successful, not a block buster like some others but serving well as a vehicle for writing on my own  work and to publicize my concerns within my chosen medium. This would continue, this centrist perspective. Seeing no need to revolutionize, I wouldn't. 

By looking both to the left and to the right (in political terms) I could presumably embrace some of each to refine what I write and to have a more clearly defined mission, rather than just what occurred to me on any given day. Taking stock, so to speak, would be a good idea at any rate.

The answer? Unknown right now. But I would be foolish not to reflect at some point, to look back at accomplishments and failures, things tried without success and things tried that moved me and even us forward. 

Keeping my eye fixed on photography and my role within it, asking hard questions of myself and, therefore, of all of us invested in photography will, of course, continue. My passion for the medium is as high as ever, my exploration and experimentation (for example, Monsters coming up at 555 Gallery in September) within its confines as deep as at any other time in my career. 

But photography has changed far more than just moving from analog capture to digital. It's place on the global stage is universal and incredibly powerful. A beheaded lion named Cecil shot by a US dentist posted on Facebook? Dash cams tracking police behavior? That's photography. Within my own field, it used to be that the study and practice of making photography as art was small time, a fringe element out their on the edge vying for attention in a big and cold world. Not any more. This is an expansion on a major scale, this making pictures as art, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails. No longer can we practice ostrich-like with our heads in a hole in the sand. 

What a fascinating thing to be doing, going out into the world to make pictures as an artist. Capturing something, bringing it back into a darkroom or into a computer to work with, to "own" it by playing with tonalities and contrast, color saturation and sharpness, size and paper surfaces to make it ours, to frame it and share it with others of like minds but also people of disparate educations and cultures. 

But key, and this is paramount as my own career winds down, is to have something you are trying to do, to let instinct and intuition guide you towards what is right for you to work with. For many, having nothing to say ends up in photographs without distinction, without the guts to put themselves on the line for a maker's conviction, for photography made without passion results in flaccid and uninteresting work.There is way too much of that. How does someone like me, as a landscape photographer, end up making pictures in a Halloween costume store of latex masks, mannequins and and plastic heads with wigs on them? Through not being risk averse, through having some self confidence, through following my instincts and through having a strong conviction.Wrong? Maybe. But going for it. After all there are way too many pretty, boring, mundane, ambivalent, apathetic photographs out there. This is called taking a risk. We all need to do it. I have written about it before here.

Stay tuned.

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I am writing this in the early morning of August 1, 2015. I am struck by many things as we change from midsummer to the beginning of late summer, a month that always forecasted the end of most things fun to me. Spending my whole career in academia had me each spring looking forward to the freedom and creative possibilities inherent in three months off from work. I also dreaded going back in September. I know many of you share the same feelings. Don't get me wrong. I liked my job, but wearing shorts and a T shirt, waking up with no schedule and deciding on a whim to go kayaking if the weather looked good trumped teaching, attending and chairing endless meetings every time.

At any rate, as I ramble on here, I just now am finishing a relentless printing and framing schedule, getting ready for my work called "Monsters" to be shown in September at 555 Gallery. We are not finished yet but I can see the end ahead, as work is printed, mounted and the frames ordered and are in. We will have a marathon framing day this week and see how many we can get done. What can I share? First off, on a technical note, the quality of the files from the Nikon D800e that I used to make these photographs is astounding. I feel so fortunate to have made these photographs when the technology has reached this level. I can remember in the  early days of shooting the Cabelas work (late 2007) wishing for better quality. What was the problem? You couldn't print large due to the file sizes being small. In the eight years since then digital photography has become mature and exceptional. All this is at the service, of course, of allowing larger prints of higher quality. Come to the show that opens September 12 and see if you agree.

Mona © 2014 Neal Rantoul

Knowing where my bread is buttered has me, at times, having difficulty holding back from opinions and thoughts on issues outside of my main area of expertise.  People come to read this blog not for my insights or thoughts on current issues outside of photography. But my cup is very full right now, because issues like police treatment of blacks and hispanics as evidenced by dash cams and smart phone videos is just too much. Because issues like politicians' denial of climate change due to their pockets being filled with oil industry lobbyist funds has me feeling sick. Argh! Don't get me started. 

Take a deep breath, Neal. Whew! Back on topic. The 555 Gallery show called "Wild Thing" will include painting by a young artist and a video piece as well. My contribution, "Monsters", will be in the main gallery and will include a catalog too. And yes, that is currently in final design stage and will be out soon. 

Last, it may be my age, but in my later years as a teacher I told students that making art was not for the mobility challenged, meaning that it was physical. Being slothful would not work as you needed to engage with the world, you needed to make things that often required exertion and those things needed to be moved around, hung on a wall and shown. And that took a lot of energy and desire to be moving to make happen. I would tell them that too many hours in front of a computer screen was not good. That lesson is still true today and one I need to heed as well. Stay fit, my friends. Do not let a lack of fitness restrict your ability to make work.

Hello all. Just a quick post to say that the New England Portfolio Reviews (NEPR) are this weekend at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA.

Sunday afternoon is reviews and all day Saturday and Sunday morning there is wonderful programming on what are called "legacy issues", meaning what is going to happen to your work after you are gone.

This is simply too important to ignore. Want more info?

Go here.

And I'll see you there on Saturday.

What's up? Well, actually quite a bit. There is a new book in the works and about to become available. Long in the making and passing through several iterations of design, editing and proofing, we are very close to releasing: 

Neal Rantoul: Essays on Photography 

Every book you see in the "BOOKS" heading on this site are monographs of my own work. But this new essay book is very different. We have taken key posts from my blog, reworked them, edited them and put them into a 8.5 x 11 inch book that is really elegant and pertinent.

I asked friend and author Christopher Benfey if he would write the introduction. Chris is the Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and, most recently, the author of Red Brick, Black Mountain,White Clay. Chris writes for the New York Review of Books. He and I taught together last year at Penland in North Carolina.

Blog posts are ephemeral in that their life, for the most part, is short and transitory. But a book lasts, has a physical presence and can be read, pulled down off a shelf, referred to, read again later and used to find a key phrase or a thought that has meaning for you. This new book is just that. 

We worked with what I thought were key posts taken from three years of writing the blog, sent them off to the editor (Debbie Hagan, the editor of Art New England; thank you Debbie!), worked them over again, cut some, added some, sent those off again and so on until we got down to the essential ones that could not be cut. We tried to balance the book with essays on my work that were essential with pieces about photographers that have been important to me over my career, such as Fred Sommer, Harry Callahan and Ezra Stoller. Perhaps it is safe to say that Essays on Photography is one person's creative process, taught by example.

The designer is Andrea Star Greitzer, whom I tend to think of as more a collaborator than simply a designer. Andrea has designed all the on-demand books you see on the "BOOKS" page. Quite simply this new book would not be possible without her considerable skill, foresight, and advice. 

We have worked to make the book accessible, affordable and informative to those of you that aspire to a career in photography as well as those that are already in a career in photography. This book, like most of my others, will be printed on- demand, so you'll need to go to 555 Gallery in Boston or to the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA to purchase it. I will let you know when it is out. It will be soon. 

(Note: this is "from the vault" in that it is a blog I wrote but never published after returning from a road trip to New Orleans in March.) 

In the classic film the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy recites this phrase over and over again while clicking her ruby red slippers:

"There's no place like home, there's no place like home".

Photograph © by Neal Rantoul from the "Monsters" work soon to be shown at 555 Gallery in Boston.

I don't have any red slippers and even if I did they probably wouldn't get me home again but I am just back now from being on the the road the past 23 days and driving 4596 miles. Funny, I couldn't wait to leave in early March, feeling pent up after the brutal winter we've had, but I couldn't wait to be home again the past few days. I left New Orleans on Saturday and arrived home Wednesday. 

With so many road trips made over the years this one felt both familiar and foreign. Some general observations while driving all those miles:

-Route 81 is a major cross country corridor totally dominated by trucks 

-There are very few interesting cars on the highway these days (note: I was driving in mid March. Might be different in nice weather in mid summer.)

-Just about everyone drives about 80 mph most of the time

-It is very difficult to eat well while doing a road trip. I did best when booked into a motel for the night. I would search on Yelp for what was nearby then head out to eat.

-GPS, hotel-finding and food-finding Apps, and a radar detector seem like necessities these days. I don't understand how I ever did anything while driving without them and paper maps seem positively primitive.

-Booking in advance, usually the night before, but sometimes an hour or so before checking in has its advantages. I tend to use Hotwire a lot as I don't mind not knowing the name of the hotel as I book. I try to stick with 3 stars as a minimum.

- My car takes high test. The lowest on this trip? $2.55/gal.

-I stop and take a quick nap when groggy. That feeling of zoning out at 80 mph is really scary.

-Although the quality of the sound sucks, Sirius radio helped me through endless boring hours. I listen to some music, some comedy and a few right wing political  stations (I enjoy hearing how the other half thinks. Man, they do hate Obama!). On regular FM in the South you can't go wrong with a little religion, the calls to support the "ministry" are the best.

-The United States of America is really big.

Did I make some good photographs? I like to think so. I know I grew as an artist on this trip, always a good sign. But photography is a humbling vocation, at least for me. Often I think I've hit gold only to find I didn't.

Stay tuned or you could even subscribe to the blog as I begin to work the files and make prints. I will be sharing these with you as I work over the next month or so to bring to fruition work made on my March 2015 Road Trip to New Orleans and Back.

Addendum: writing this now in June. I did make some good pictures, including a new portfolio called "Kudzu" that are at 555 Gallery right now.