The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 24 August 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!I end this project with a quote from that famous Greek mathematician Euclid - Quod Erat Faciendum - "which was to be done." We have arrived at the end this process, this New 100 Prints Project. I gave myself a year to do the hundred prints, assuming I'd need the time. The first image was posted 13 Oct 2008 and now - 315 days later - here is number 100, seven weeks shy of the year I'd anticipated. I hope you'll forgive me if my enthusiasm and momentum propelled the project fast than expected - a rarity in the making of art. What a ride it's been, what a joy to share, what great way to start my day, every third day, over my morning coffee, with you and a little photography. Once again, thanks.Audio Commentary The Year is Done, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 21 August 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Three score and ten, we are told, is our alloted time. But experientially, there is only today, only this hour, only this moment. As artists, we grapple with this as the foundation of our creative life. Each day without engaging the creative process is a day unrecoverably lost. Each moment we are making our art, we touch the future — or at least reach for it.The future. We photographers all strive to make our work archival so it has the chance to survive into the future. What vanity! You would think photographing a wall of rock like this would disabuse us of such absurdity. Should my work survive an amazing 500 years, it would be but a fraction of a blink in time.We can only concluded that between the now of creation and the short, short future of our artifact lies the meaning in art. Which brings us back to me and you. Artwork exists to connect us, to leap from my here-and-now to your here-and-now. To the extent this project has accomplished this, it has been my reward for choosing a creative life. I hope it has been rewarding for you, as well. So nearing the end, let me thank you, dear reader, for walking this path of a hundred steps along side me.Audio Commentary Time, Measured in Eons, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 18 August 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!One of the great challenges of photography — at least for me — is to create an interesting two-dimensional image of the three-dimensional world. Plop me down in front of an wall or other flat surface and I see photographic potential everywhere, and easily. An object with depth and curves like a propeller fills me with artistic doubt. Knowing this about myself helps, because when I photograph in a highly three-dimensional environment, I slow down and work more carefully to compensate for my lack of natural vision.The workmen were installing a new drive shaft and propeller in this tug, and I knew it had photographic potential. But while they were working, I would have needed to compose quickly — which simply does not come naturally to me in these situations. I came back the next day, when they were finished, and after forty minutes or so of looking from all different angles, I found this composition.Audio Commentary Form and Function, The Olympic Tug "Eagle," 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 15 August 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Influences from art throughout history are always present. No doubt it would never have occurred to me to make this image had it not been for all those painters from the Sung Dynasty and their long scrolls of mist in the mountains. Or, think Sesshu and the Zen paintings of the late 1400s. What a gift they've given us across the centuries — to still be able to see the world through their eyes! Audio Commentary The Distant Call of the Hototogisu, 2006

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 12 August 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!I challenge you to look at this image for 3 minutes and tell me what you see - not what it is, but what you see. I do love abstracts. Audio Commentary Rorschach Ring, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 9 August 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!The laws of entropy state that everything is winding down like the last ticks of a unwound watch. The yang and yin of growth and decline dance their way through time, but entropy know that yin is 50.0001% and that yang cannot win. Or so the physicists tell us. Be that as it may, there is beauty and poignancy in the dance, even if the overarching mood is melancholy and the rubble is starting to rise. It is so easy - I think even natural - for the end of a project to include a tinge of sadness that things are coming to a close. With only five more prints in this New 100 Prints Project yet to go, I'm already sensing the faint echoes of loss. I know this feeling; I knew it would come because it eventually has with every photographic project I've ever done. This knowledge helps. Like every other project, I've also found in this one the seeds of the next - another consistency in the art life that seems inviolable if we can be sensitive enough. There is pattern to the creative life and in that pattern we can find comfort in spite of the inevitability of cosmic - and artistic - entropy. Audio Commentary Dancing in the Face of Entropy, 2007

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 6 August 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!This is a wall in the shipyard I've been photographing, near the paint area. Perhaps these are test patches, perhaps where brushes are cleaned off, perhaps just a bunch of guys having fun at the end of their shift. To me it was all Mondrian - and irresistible. I wish I could put my finger on what it is about such compositions that appeals to me, but whenever I try to put it into words, nothing comes to mind. The closest I can get is some sort of "order in the chaos." Inadequate, I know, but the best I can come up with. Audio Commentary Study in Vertical Whites and Grays, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 3 August 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!This may be a euphonium, a baritone, a contrabass bugle - I'm not sure. I am sure that it is now sadly silent. Tools that are no longer used - ncluding musical tools - lways induce in me a melancholy for days long past. The soldering on this instrument speaks of repairs to keep it in service as long as possible. But, nothing lasts forever - truth for euphoniums as well as everything else in life. Audio Commentary Silent Brass, Alkabo School, 2003

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 31 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!I remember the first time I pulled into the Wawona Viewpoint and looked back into Yosemite Valley. I said out loud, "Of course," standing where Ansel Adams made his wonderful Clearing Winter Storm image from right there, probably in the parking lot of the roadside turnout. One need not always suffer for art. Sometimes the tourist spots are the perfect place from which to make an image. Be that as it may, it is still up to us to select the light, the composition, the moment. I can only hope that this image captures that feeling of setting sun on a hot day with a fraction of the success Adams' had in capturing the foggy, wet storm in his image. Audio Commentary Viewpoint, Lower Salt River Canyon, Arizona, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 28 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Another image from the shipyard across the street. I can see them building this structure from my kitchen window. Each day, the light would scrape across this huge steel plate and make these wonderful shadows. Each day, I'd miss it due to obligations that prevented me from getting out my camera and making this photograph. For two months I'd look and dread that this might be the day they moved it, painted it, changed it. Finally, this last Friday, I had my opportunity with just the right light, just the right angle of the sun, just the right free moment. Usually, to he who hesitates, all is lost. On rare occasions, the art Muse takes pity and gives us another chance. Carpe luz.Audio Commentary Yo, The 8600 Deck, Dakota Creek Industries, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 25 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Every so often, while listening to some piece of music, I'll hear a chord or a harmony that is simply arresting in its beauty. Independent of the song, such chords are simply a magnificence to our ears. Occasionally, I find a similar thing happens in a photograph. This composition was interesting in itself, but when converted it to monochrome, this unexpected chord of tones took my breath away. As I've stated before, take all the lucky ones we can get.Audio Commentary Painted Hull, Dakota Creek Industries, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 22 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!The places where real work is done are photographically compelling. A workshop, an artist's studio, a country kitchen, a factory, a shipyard - these are the places that people live every day, work every day, where their lives are spent in pursuit of accomplishing something. So often a photograph of a person shows them in their "Sunday best," as they say, smiling for the lens like a toothpaste commercial. But, if you want to really know someone, look for them where they work. You'll find the real person there - the very space itself their portrait.Audio Commentary Tom's Shop, Parker Road Farm, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 16 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!At the time I made this photograph, I remember thinking that these black shadows and the submerged roots of these trees spoke of the deep subconscious mind we fear to acknowledge. I find it spooky, compelling, a bit frightening like an unnamed fear that haunts me for unknown reasons. I've resisted printing this image for over 15 years. It still bugs me, but it's time for it to see the light of day. Maybe, like a ghost, walking towards it will make it disappear.Audio Commentary That Which Cannot Be Denied, 1993

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 13 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun! Near the end of the game, particularly in the ninth inning, when your team is losing and there is little chance for a comeback, the stands start to empty and only a few diehard fans remain until the last pitch is thrown and the last out is made. I can image that from the point of view of the pitcher, the stands must look something like this. (I shall resist the temptation to mention that Spring Training in baseball is referred to as the "Cactus League." Ahem.)br>Audio Commentary Saguaro Hillside, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 10 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Interestingly, I showed this photograph to some guests who were visiting and they all asked me what it was. I pointed out our window across the street at the giant ship that is being built in the shipyard. "Wow, your photograph doesn't look at all like the ship." Upon reflection, I've strategically decided to take this comment as a compliment, but I must admit I'm not certain that's how they intended it. Audio Commentary Hull Construction, The Ross Candies Vessel, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 7 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!After the Independence Day fireworks show ended, this scene of clouds, and perhaps a bit of drifting smoke, appeared over moonlit Fidalgo Bay. As has so often been said as the key to photography, "f/8 and be there." It was and I was.Audio Commentary Moon and Clouds over Fidalgo Bay, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 4 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Pheasant hunters are the main clientele of this bed and breakfast deep in the wheat country of North Dakota. We stayed there for a couple of nights, ate the hearty ranch food, drank the jet-black coffee, and even swore once or twice. We still didn't quite fit in with the rugged folks who call this place home. I liked them. I even admired them. They couldn't figure out why I wanted to photograph there, but they granted me free permission to roam and work where I wanted.Audio Commentary God, My Country, and a Good Night's Sleep, Writing Rock Ranch, North Dakota, 2003

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 1 July 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Okay, this is not "The Lost Scrolls," but it looks like it should be. It was this wall — which is about 8-feet wide — that first prompted me to see these paint marks at Fort Worden as calligraphic in form. If someone had walked up to me as I was photographing it and and begun reading some ancient Oriental text outloud from these marks, I would not have been surprised.Audio Commentary The Lost Scrolls, 2005

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 28 June 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Hundreds of giant sheets of steel arrive in the shipyard and then are welded together, piece by piece. After months, it starts to look like a ship. It is truly magic. Asked what the tolerance of matching parts is, one of the guys replied "One thirty-second of an inch."I have no idea if he was kidding, but I'd believe it if he wasn't. Audio Commentary Ship Construction, Dakota Creek Industries, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 25 June 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!The sun is the source of everything we photograph, but is so rarely photographed itself. Its brightness intimidates cameras. But, with the help of a heavy bank of fog, it can be captured. As I've said elsewhere, fog is a photographer's best friend. Audio Commentary Mountain Lake, Fog, 2003

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 22 June 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Fundamentally, we photographers record shapes and patterns. This landscape is interesting to me, but what really caught my eye was the extension of the diagonal lines from lower right (in the rocks) to upper left (in the clouds) and the way those diagonals create a connection between the solid land and the fluid sky — all facing the sun, as though to better absorb its warmth. I do this sometimes — turn and angle my face to the sun, that is, just to bask in the light and feel the warmth. In my family this is known as "kitty in the sun" after our furry family members. Perhaps this is why the earth spins, to angle itself to the warmth of the sun.Audio Commentary Facing the Sun, 2006

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 19 June 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!In spite of inevitable mortality, each of us is driven, to one extent or another, to leave a mark of our existence behind. For some, it is a marker of our remains; for others it is a legacy of artwork in a box of prints, a stack of books, or an amorphous spray of memories in the hearts and minds of our friends and colleagues. "I was here." Yes, you were, and we remember you fondly. Audio Commentary Headstones, Tono City, Tohoku, Japan, 1994

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 16 June 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun! Earth, being our home, doesn't seem as "planet-like" as those images we are now seeing from Mars or Mercury. Yet, planet it is. Just a bunch of rocks. But, what interesting rocks in such ever-changing configurations! I never tire of photographing the land if for no other reason than the fun I have being there. Of course, where else could I be?Audio Commentary Earth, Close-up, at Sunrise, 2006

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 13 June 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun! Life is full of shades of grey; memory is dark and spiked with shiny details.This old car was in storage in a building that used to be the Fortuna Depot, now just an out-building on a farm in North Dakota. Everything in the building was old. I felt as though I'd stepped back in time — back when cars were metal and trim was chrome.Audio Commentary Old Car, Fortuna Depot, 2003

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 4 June 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun! As much as I dislike admitting it, I cannot deny that photography is one of the great tools of propaganda. I've hesitated to use this photograph over the years because I know how easy it would be for some people to use it as a stereotype to ridicule those who live in the country, who own guns, who are "rednecks," those unsophisticated rubes. An image like this is so laced with political implications, with such potential to create a wedge between people — not at all what I hope for my photography. It is photographic quicksand that is almost impossible to avoid. I intend no political statement one way or the other, but I ultimately I know that we artists cannot control how others interpret our work — and sometimes people will see the opposite of what we intend. Audio Commentary White Elephant Ranch, Eastern Oregon, 1994

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 1 June 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun! The names tell a lot about this county in North Dakota — Stromstad, Arness, Bowman, Norby, Danielson, Olson, Heckman, Erickson, Johnson, Iverson, Svendson — a Scandanavian squad if ever there was one. Their youth is long gone, but the official records remain should any historian wish to document the Alkabo Sports Club's Basket Ball (two words). Audio Commentary The 1940 Team, North Dakota, 2004

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 29 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun! I have tried, in this project, to restrain myself from including too many abstracts. From this work at Fort Worden, I now have over 250 finished photographs of the splashed paint and graffiti. Obviously, I love abstracts — but I know that a lot of the world does not share my passion. This is only the second from this series to be included here in the 100 Prints Project. I may do a couple more. I will spare you from the full exhibition of all 250 of them. For now. Audio Commentary Mondrian in Three Dimensions, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 26 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun! Sometimes — even in photography — patience is a virtue. I first saw this image in 1989 when I visited Miami, Arizona on a business trip. Without a camera, I made a mental note only. Just last March, I finally had a chance to return to Miami. The composition was exactly as I remembered it. This rarely happens, but when it does, it's best not to tempt fate twice. I waited for the light and finally made the photograph that was a 20-year-old image in my mind's eye.Audio Commentary Mondrian in Three Dimensions, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 23 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun! Before every baseball game, we Americans join in singing our national anthem. Often, this little ceremony passes by almost unnoticed. But, every once in a while, the words come through with more meaning, more immediacy, and what is often a rite becomes an unexpected moment of deep reflection and welling emotion. On these occasions, the flag of our country, whatever country one calls home, has a power to touch us to our deepest core.This weekend (Monday, specifically) is Memorial Day here in the United States, a time when we remember and honor those who have died in military service on our behalf. In Pace Requiescat.Audio Commentary The Home of the Brave, 2008

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 20 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Shall we assume this saddle is being hung from the ceiling to keep the mice from chewing on it? Or, perhaps it's hung above the floor to keep the moisture off of it? It seems too cruel to assume saddlecide has been committed. Perhaps it is being punished for bad behavior, over here in the corner, left to think about its misdeeds and correct its ways. Bad saddle, bad saddle.Audio Commentary Saddle, Crosby, North Dakota, 2003

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 17 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!Long after she'd died, I visited my Grandmother's abandoned log cabin home. The cabin was barely standing, forsaken to the elements, leaning precipitously leeward. All the moveable contents were long gone. Searching for some evidence of her presence, I discovered objects I knew she had touched — repeatedly — the temperature dial on the gas stove, the handle of the wood burning heater, the doorknob to her bedroom. Perhaps only a few molecules are left that were once her, but they are there, they are there.Audio Commentary Doorknob, 2003

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 14 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!As a photographer, I'm nosy enough to take a peek in places I would normally not enter. I'm not above looking inside a cupboard, for example, and am occasionally rewarded with a beautiful composition like this. As I mentioned in the audio comments for the last image, I love storytelling and these two objects so quietly and powerfully offer a springboard to a story I'd love to know — but not knowing, I can have fun imagining. Audio Commentary Cupboard, Sateren Homestead, 2008

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 11 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!F. E. "Mix" Stefonowicz began publishing the North Dakota weekly newspaper The Wildrose Mixer in 1910. He handset the type and ran the press himself. At its close in 1970, it had a circulation of 600.I suppose it goes without saying that such a subject particularly appeals to me, a fellow publisher. I wish I could have met Mix. I would love to know more of his story. These are wooden headline cuts, left just as were the day he closed the shop. It's now preserved as a museum in Crosby, North Dakota.Audio Commentary Webster's Nightmare, 2008

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 8 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. I love fog — so much so that it was the subject of one of my LensWork Podcasts.Audio Commentary from my LensWork Podcast Fog and Tree, 2004

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 5 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Old buildings. They always seem filled with echoes and memories. Someone saw the need for this structure, this shelter, this haven. They built it, furnished it, used it — perhaps for decades. And then it all they all drifted away. Only the shell is left, like a headstone to the memories it contains, day after day facing the desert sun. If these walls could talk, indeed.Audio Commentary YMCA, Miami, Arizona, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 2 May 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Fatigue had set in. We'd been up since before dawn, photographing and wandering around this strange place. I sat down in the dirt for a short rest and a snack. As I sat there, the arc of the sun brought light onto this single mound of bentonite, right before my eyes. Five minutes after I finished this picture, the light was gone and all was in shadow again. Audio Commentary Hell's Half Acre, #190, Wyoming, 2006

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 29 Apr 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Here is another of the images from Japan that was not included in the Tangerine Gifts folio but that I love; it simply did not fit the context of the other images in the folio. Orphan though it is, I enjoy the combination of the ethereal and the practical — the monuments to the gods and the field that provides the daily meal.Audio Commentary Two Torii and Field, Mangoku Ura, Japan, 1990

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 20 Apr 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Accidental compositions are a direct gift we must not ignore. I was photographing this temple (hence the formal composition) when this woman cut through the temple grounds taking a shortcut. Fortunate timing.Audio Commentary Woman and Temple, Tohoku, Japan, 1990

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 17 Apr 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Another of the images from this barren patch of bentonite in central Wyoming. Funny, but in our age it's easy to think of this as an image beamed back from the roving Martian robot explorers. For the previous 500 generations of humans, no such thought would occur. We live in interesting times, indeed.Audio Commentary Long Shadows, Hell's Half Acre, 2006

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 14 Apr 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Both Kenny and Palma are no longer with us. Palma went first, Kenny followed just a few months later. They were both 93. They lived their whole lives on the farm, hard working folks. I never did beat Kenny at cribbage. I always looked forward to Palma's suppers and homemade apple pie. They were married for 65 years. Good folks who are missed by many.Audio Commentary Kenny and Palma's Shoes, Heckman Farm, Alkabo, North Dakota, 2004

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 11 Apr 2009 New! Thanks to a web visitor, an experimental idea, Custom Folios. You pick the 5, 10, or 15 prints you want from the project and we'll build a custom folio for you and even include your name (or gift recipient's name) on the colophon. Fun!For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Syrupy photographs are off-putting, so I tend to avoid the blatantly obvious symbol in my compositions. I trust that my audience does not need me to whack them on the head with trite metaphors and kindergarten symbolism. So, with this image, I apologize and ask for forgiveness for doing exactly that. I simply could not resist the gorgeous light and shadows — barefaced irony be damned.Audio Commentary The Irony of the Unused, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 8 Apr 2009 For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. At heart, I've always been a minimalist, although I don't believe that photography — with its power to render the subvisible detail — can truly be a minimalist's medium. Be that as it may, I'm habitually attracted to images that simplify our complex world — but not dumb it down. I guess I prefer a certain complexity in my simplicity! I prefer clarity rather than clutter, a distilled essence to an over-indulgent inclusion, quiet photographs as compared to raucous ones. Considering the crack, the smaller crack, the wall plug, the pencil mark, the stain, the wallpaper pattern, the dual plaster tape lines, and the molding, this can't really be called a minimalist photograph. Clearly, it is not a busy one either. Minimalist>/i> will have to do.Audio Commentary 17-5½, Hastings Building, 2007

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 5 Apr 2009 For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. I was tempted to title this Evidence of North Dakota Winters — which it surely is. I've photographed there half a dozen times, but always in the balmy, bug-free comfort of September when the heat of summer is past and the frigid winter has not yet arrived. And then I see something like this and am reminded how tough life is there, out on the farm.Audio Commentary Coats, Heckman Farm, Alkabo, North Dakota, 2004

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 2 Apr 2009 Another of the new images from my recent trip to Arizona. I see now why every photographer who visits Arizona makes a close-up photograph of these ubiquitous plants. The agave are seductive! Fortunately, with this image I can now say that I have it out of my system. Another photographic "compulsory" I can check off my list.Audio Commentary Agave, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 30 Mar 2009 For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Jay Maisel is supposed to have said, "Never trust air you can't see." Funny as this is, there is a measure of truth in it for us photographers. Without visible air, the distances in this image would read entirely differently. It's the layers upon layers of receding mountain ranges that motivated me to compose this image.Audio Commentary The Haze of the Desert, Sierra Ancha Mountains, Arizona, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 27 Mar 2009 For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. This is a very unusual image for me. I wouldn't normally think to shoot this or, for that matter, even take a second look. But, I've become more and more enamored of the work of André Kertész over the years and this is precisely the kind of thing he would see and photograph. I hope he would have like this one.Audio Commentary Roof, Vents, and Shadows, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 24 Mar 2009 For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. A cafe is more than a place to grab some breakfast or a lunch. It is a meeting place, a place of conversation, a place to hang out. Life happens at a cafe. One that has been around a long while has stories to tell — if these walls could talk, as they say. More than a building, it is a lost memory, an echo of countless moments that I am impulsively drawn to hear, only to find a silence that my imagination strains to fill. Audio Commentary Toastmaster Cafe, Just Before Dawn, Globe Arizona, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 21 Mar 2009 For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. Outside our back door, at night. Cold snow and ice coming down steadily. The precipitation just seemed to hang on this tree which was backlit by the street lights. I shivered while I photographed it and I shiver now just looking at the photograph. Damn, Spring seems to be taking its time arriving this year!Audio Commentary Ice Jewels, Winter Tree, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 15 Mar 2009 For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. I've just finished my 2009 Winter Trees folio and, unfortunately, this image was the sixth selection for a folio that has only five images. I always feel badly for these almost-made-it images, but decisiveness is also part of the creative process.Audio Commentary Heart Lake, Winter Tree #6, 2009

The New 100 Prints Project by Brooks Jensen New image added on 12 Mar 2009 For a quick view via RSS, here are the essentials, but the project is best seen at the website. We all carry around in our mind's eye a virtual gallery of images that have impressed and influenced us. Edward Weston's famous image from Zabriskie Point occupies a prominent place in the gallery in my mind. This isn't Zabriskie Point and in most regards looks quite different from Weston's photograph. Nonetheless, in my associative mind, this image of a small runoff wash from Hell's Half Acre is somehow is inspired by his vision.Audio Commentary Not Zabriskie Point, 2006