5 Jan
2012

Posted in: General, Inspiration, Landscape Photography, Vermont
By Kurt Budliger    7 Comments

Just Do It!

I don’t have any New Year’s Resolutions or great epiphany to share at the close of 2011 and I’m about to celebrate (if you can call it that) my 42^nd birthday on Monday.  Don’t worry, I’ll include my shipping address below so you can send gifts.  That means I grew up in the ‘80s and am a Gen X’er (whatever the hell that means).  I watched Dukes of Hazard on Friday nights, remember the original Smurfs (a bad idea even then by the way), saw Van Halen when they were still cool and watched the first live broadcast of MTV.  I also grew up watching Michael Jordan reign supreme on the basketball court and was totally inspired by the Nike ad campaign “Just Do It!”

If you think about it, this mantra has tremendous relevance for artists.  In order to grow as photographers and artists we must “DO” photography.  We’ve got to get out as often as possible and stretch those creative muscles, work compositions, and see the light, textures and patterns that are the building blocks of our images.  Without doing or making photographs our creative muscles won’t develop and if you’ve been shooting for a while and possess big creative guns already you need to exercise them so they don’t atrophy.  The truth is that art is hard work (hopefully it’s work you love).  There is no special pill, supplement or surgery that will make you great, something that us generation x’ers are having a tough time coming to terms with.  It’s all too tempting and comfortable to sit in front of the computer admiring the work of others, posting comments and chatting online, but that does little to improve or evolve your own work.  It’s in the doing or making of work that we push beyond and grow as individual artists.

I live about 35 miles from the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont.  Surprisingly, I’ve made very few images of this wonderful resource.  One of my goals for the coming year is to produce a body of work on the lake.  The dirty little secret that I must confess to is that it was also my goal last year, and if we’re really being honest the year before too.  I don’t like rough drafts and I get grumpy when I can’t do something well out of the gate.  But the reality is that you can’t run a marathon without logging those hundreds of miles and building up your endurance.  So it goes with photography.

"Winter's Warmth, Lake Champlain, Vermont

A couple of weeks ago I finally got off my duff and began my Lake Champlain project.  It was cold and I hadn’t been out shooting landscapes in a while so I felt a bit rusty.  I paced up and down this little beach prior to sunset looking for compositions and must admit I wasn’t seeing anything that inspired me.  I even contemplated bagging it for the warmth of my car and a hot cup of coffee.  As the light started to improve my frustration level began to rise.  I remember literally speaking out loud, “Just do it Kurt, shoot something!”  My first two compositions were terrible, so terrible I deleted them right away for fear the photography gods would strike me down instantly.  However the act of setting up, looking through the viewfinder and tripping the shutter was enough to get me moving in the right direction.  I finally settled on this arrangement as the last of the good light was fading away.  Do I love it?  Probably not (although it is growing on me) and it may never make it into the final portfolio of work, but it’s a step in the right direction.  And that’s what being an artist is all about, taking steps along your path, some big and some small with no set destination.  So this year, be like Mike and “Just Do It!”

Technical Details: Canon 5DII, TSE 24mm, ISO 50, f18 @ 25 sec., polarizer, 3 stop grad ND

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About Kurt Budliger  (15 Posts)

Kurt Budliger is a full-time professional photographer specializing in landscape, outdoor lifestyle and fly-fishing photography. He is a frequent contributor to Vermont Life Magazine and works with a variety of other editorial and commercial clients throughout the year. His fine art prints of the Vermont and New England landscape can be found in many private collections around the country. Kurt teaches a variety of photography classes throughout the year, both in formal college settings as well as more informal field based workshops.