John Michael Swartz

Everybody's doing it, but I'm doing it late!

I've never photographed in heavy, windy snow. And really, I avoided the worst of it. The biggest challenge was the accumulation of snow and haze on the lens. It was rarely had a good aesthetic effect, and my attempts to clean the lens usually led to even less desirable results.

I would have experimented with the effect more, but I was with a friend. And as always, my process is at its best when I'm alone.

(Speaking of which, has anybody heard from the NYBG about the fellowship? I haven't. I wonder if they tell the recipient before the tell the non-recipients.)

My college professor recently revamped his site and I went through all the extra material from American Prospects that I hadn't ever seen before. I should reach out, but why? How? What should be my excuse? My old cello professor remembered me pretty well, maybe I'll get lucky with Joel, too. Ah, mid-life!

It's nice to be able to look at his photos, to know how they've influenced me, and how I feel perfectly fine where my vision very obviously diverges. In particular, I think my compositions tend to be a bit more enclosed, even claustrophobic in a way. I will try to be more aware of when I might be able to simplify or open up a composition, with more negative space perhaps. But as I mainly shoot in the city or in the woods, it is rare that a huge vistas present themselves as such.

It occurs to me that my compositional proclivities may be influenced by my having shot almost exclusively with normal primes for so many years, and then with a square format at that. Combined with the advent of mobile phone viewing as the primary mover of (my and most people my age's) images, I may have been unconsciously compelled to give a generous amount of the frame to whichever objects I thought should be most legible. As I write this now, I find myself very interested in making pictures with more negative/open space, possibly a cooler sense of distance.