keithwms

Keith,
You are the 2nd experimental photographer(for lack of a better description of what I do) besides me,who is also a poet. I picked up the pen many years befor I picked up a camera.
Poetry is much less costly!
Bill

Ah perhaps we should combine the two. Poetry written on home-spun plates...

It is less costly in terms of raw materials, but I find writing to be much more time consuming. I'm never happy with the final written product so I keep at it... for years. Photography, on the other hand, forces you to compose on the spot, a lot more like rapid improvisational writing, right?

Not the way I photograph! I rarely click the shutter. When I do it is after hours of preperation (studio) or obsevation (anywhere but in studio). I am not "satisfied" with any of my pieces. I am always striving for my image to be what I see.
Writing is pritty much the same. Never satisfied. I do believe that writing emplys a "higher" brain function than anything that involves pictures, be it photographing or painting.
I have poems that I have been working on for 45 years. And images I have been working on for 3 years. Digital options ifor my work have made it harder, not easier. With more options without alot of equipment manuvering, such as multiple enlargers. My mind eye demands more of my skills.
But realy, most of my time is spent playing "chemist". My art is totaly dependant on panchromatic emulsions. Since Kodak realy pissed me off by killing Techpan, I have devoted most of my time to developing a Panchro emulsion of fine grain yet fast enough for in-camera color separation work. I go through alot of silver, with little to show in terms of art. But I have been an"inventer" swince pre-school and, for some reason, I see beauty in complexity for the sake of complexity, where most people are the opposite.

True, true, I also have several photos in my head that could take a long while to "find." But the "act" of taking a single photograph ... of composing on the spot... that is quite different from writing. At least for me. With writing there is no shutter released, no time interval of capture, which is what this little ditty was about. With writing I feel completely comfortable with coming back and revising over and over. In photography, once the shutter's released, that's it... for that specific moment at least.