Continued from Page 8
Jody Miller
‘Hilltop Farm,’ is a photo taken by Jody Miller in Iowa. The photo will be on display at LightBox Photographic Gallery through Oct. 6.
Carolyn Hoard
The exhibit ‘Serendipitous Eye’ is also on display at LightBox Photographic Gallery. The exhibit is a collection created by juror Melanie
Walker of alternative process photography.
A: It has always been that way my whole
life; I do my best work alone. I think it’s
because my subjects always speak to me and
call out to me in some way. You have to be
listening really closely and wait for those
(callings) to come to you for that to hap-
pen. If other people are around, it distracts
from that experience. Sometimes things will
speak to me very softly like a whisper and so
it really takes concentration to feel that and
zero in on a subject to shoot.
Q: Do you always listen to those intu-
itions calling you to take a photo?
A: Generally, yes. If I’m driving at 80
miles per hour, I need to turn around and take
the photo because the light changes every
second and you will never have that opportu-
nity again. That, I’ve learned the hard way. If
the light is good, I stop and take the picture.
Whatever I’m doing, I have to stop and take
the picture.
Q: Do you find that post-processing is
necessary?
A: There are different ways to grab your
images. Say you’re using an iPhone, which is
a perfectly valid form of photography, it does
a lot of processing within its own sensors and
sometimes can come out absolutely perfect
and you don’t need to do anything. If you’re
shooting with a big DSLR camera that shoots
in the raw format, there’s lots of information
in that, but you have to do post-processing to
get that. It’s required to use Photoshop on a
raw image.
Q: How has the pandemic affected you
and your work?
A: I’ve put no work with galleries at all
during the pandemic until this. I’ve been
shooting, but not as much as I had before the
pandemic hit. I kind of became a shut-in for a
while. Now I’m still shooting every day, but I
certainly haven’t shopped around at galleries
during this pandemic period. This is the first
exposure of my recent work that I’ve had
since the pandemic started. I feel like every-
body in the public and businesses are trying
to be more careful now and use safe proto-
cols so I feel more at ease being in galleries
now. We want everyone (at LightBox) to feel
safe.
Q: What advice can you give an aspiring
photographer?
A: Don’t stop shooting; just go out every
day. My teacher did the best thing for me
by saying you have to shoot a roll of film
every day. I went out and shot a roll of film
every day even if I wasn’t inspired. It’s prac-
tice, practice, practice, practice, practice.
Your eye will soon be trained to see the way
the camera sees as opposed to the way you
think you’re seeing. The camera has a differ-
ent kind of eye. Just practice is the only way
to learn that. Just keep shooting and you will
find your own vision.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2021 // 9