The Lardner Report: Make great art — Give yourself a gig!

(Pic #1) Weathered wall “grab shot.” Santa Barbara, California. Photo by Josh Kaplan.

Guest post by Josh Kaplan

Last weekend I went to Santa Barbara to have breakfast with my closest friend. Naturally I took my photo gear along, because I love to shoot in SB — it never fails to inspire the muse. Well, almost never. After breakfast, I wandered around the streets looking for colors or shapes or anything that might grab my attention.

Nothing. I just wasn’t feeling it. I took a little drive over to Samy’s camera (or as photographers call it, the holy land). Surely all the gadgets, and glass, and lights and filters would get the juices going. Nada. I was just in a total creative funk.

(Pic #2) Samy’s Camera loading dock.

(Pic #3) Delightful decay.

(Pic #4) Perfect imperfection.

Readers of this blog may remember a post Lonnie did about the wonderful country/singer songwriter Deana Carter, and her sure fire fix for writers’ block. If she’s writing with someone, and it’s going nowhere, she will say “Have some whiskey, go for a walk…whatever you need to do to clear your head for a minute. When you come back, we’re gonna write a song in 15 minutes. Good, bad or indifferent, 15 minutes from now we’re gonna have a tune.”

So I decided to adapt that to my situation. I gave myself 10 minutes to shoot, and I had to come up with at least 5 images…. AND… it all had to all happen in the area bordered by the Samy’s camera parking lot.

None of the images I captured are award-winning, but forcing myself to just start shooting got me through the doldrums. Whether it was that beautiful blue doorway, or the bright red of Samy’s loading dock door, or the funky oxidized trash can cover, suddenly it was all interesting to me again, and I’ve been shooting with joy ever since.

(Pic #5) Pure trash. Sweet art.

(Pic #6) Yes, those are cow skulls on Lonnie’s butt.