If you could keep me floating, just for a while, 'til I get to the end of this tunnel

I was thinking about the spectrum of photography that was exhibited there, and I have a few thoughts.

If your work looks like it just slinked from under the plexiglas of a framed motivational print, or snuck off the pages of some glossy inflight magazine, please do not try to pass it off as "art."

It's not art; it's commercial. Your work is highly saleable, be proud of yourself and go sell something, but don't hang it in a show next to high-concept stuff.

I've been around photographers and the craft of photography my whole life. Believe me when I say I'm not knocking the commercial stuff; it takes a lot of skill and a lot of equipment to make a shot that looks like it could have been swiped from Corbis.

Nor am I praising "art." Art photography has a nasty habit of taking itself way too seriously. I suppose what I favor is when a person with a camera goes out and sees like a painter: the the vision is the important thing, much more so than the medium. Edward Weston was a master at that, so was Ansel Adams. I don't think anybody would call their work pretentious or high handed, and yet it certainly is art.

What makes "Moon Over New Mexico" art and Random Pretty Nature Photograph not? Honestly, it's timing as much as anything else. Adams had the great advantage of working when his craft was newer, when he could be a visionary in terms of technique.

I guess the way you tell if you're an artist is by asking yourself one question: Did I need balls--or with apologies to Malice to co-opt her usage, eggs--to make this piece, or did I make it because I thought it would be pretty and somebody might want to hang it in his office?

After you've answered that question honestly (no, you don't have to share your answer with the class; and yes, it's OK to answer "both") then you choose the what you're going to hang.

Art is about taking risks. The artist may be the only one who's fully aware of the risk, but that's OK. Maybe the point is to make the risk so seamless that the viewer can't see it.

I think that's what they call "making it look easy," which is what they always say about the best of the best in any field.

before - after