New Work

Kenneth Jarecke / Contact Press Images © 2013

It's always fun to start working on a new body of work. That is, until you actually pick up a camera and start shooting. That's when self-doubt tries to make a special guest appearance. It should have it's own theme music. Like Bob Hope strutting onto the Tonight Show stage to crush the dreams of the young comic who just saw his three minutes evaporate, never to return.

Fair warning, I'm going on about five minutes of sleep here (had to make a 30 second TV appearance early this morning). I'm trying to talk sense about these images, but really there's no telling where this piece will end up.

The idea behind this work was a challenge, but also practical in nature. I'm not known for my vertical work (just ask any photo editor who ever hired me to make a cover for them). I've always figured life was a mostly horizontal event, so my pictures should follow suit. To me, shooting vertical was also another variable, and when you're shooting real-life, which is nothing if not varied, eliminating the variables you have control over seemed like a plan.

At the same time, to avoid becoming stale or predictable, I've always worked to push the envelope (I love pushing envelopes as much as buttons).

Young photographers take note, pushing the envelope is probably not the wisest career move in an industry that considers stale and predictable a good thing.

Kenneth Jarecke / Contact Press Images © 2013

Staying on task...

Shooting vertical, as well as forcing me to see a little differently, also allowed me to do something fun with the printing of these images. The idea was to make big prints on my 17" wide Epson. Putting five separate images in a row allowed me to make a 54" print... roughly the length needed to fill the space over a photography collector's couch.

That'd be my entrepreneur side showing.

A big print, actually five biggish prints, from a smallish sized printer on one sheet of paper... genius. The added bonus is the quality of each image is roughly the resolution needed to turn Ansel Adams green with envy (there's a mathematical formula available to calculate this resolution, but I'm not able to find the link at this time).

There's the practical side.

Kenneth Jarecke / Contact Press Images © 2013

Finally, five images in a row give me the chance to tell a little story. The print equivlent of Vine. Sometimes the story is interesting, at other times the story is quite literally "barbwire art", which is how I refer to much of the artwork available here in Montana.

And that was the creative side.

Nailed it.

This new body of work will debut tonight at the Toucan Gallery in Billings, Montana. I cannot promise you that I'll make anymore sense when you see me in person this evening.

Now, speaking of horizontal life, I need to get in some nappy time.