rick doble: 40 years of evolving photographic imagery: from film to digital, a personal journey

40 Years of Evolving Photographic Imagery:

From Film to Digital, a Personal Journey by a Photo Artist,

an Illustrated eBookBy Rick Doble

Copyright © 2013 Rick DobleAll rights reserved.

All photographs are by Rick Doble. The PDF document is based on the eBook with

ISBN: 978-1-304-15641-9

Permission is granted to reviewers, students, educators and artiststo quote up to 200 words and/or display one to three photographs from this eBook,

as long as the title of the eBook and the author are credited.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION............................................3

PHOTOGRAPHS

Photographic Portraits..................................4

Candid Photos of Human Figures..........................15

Human Figures in Motion.................................24

The Silhouetted Human Figure............................32

Including Myself in My Photographs......................40

Photographic Series of Pictures.........................44

Natural Designs and Patterns............................53

Landscapes..............................................61

Photographs of Water and Rain...........................69

Abstract Patterns.......................................75

Medium Distance Shots...................................85

BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.....................................95

Early Background........................................96

College & Photography...................................99

Graduate School.........................................102

Computers & the Internet................................104

Digital Photography.....................................108

Today...................................................112

Appendix................................................114

Rick Doble 40 Years of Evolving Photographic Imagery

IntroductionBecause of the interest I have received from my website due to my digital photography, I

put together a sampling of the best of my earlier work followed by selections from my later digital work. I divided this eBook into themes so that interested viewers can follow the development of my imagery over the last forty years.

This eBook goes as far back as 1967 and includes 35mm black and white and color film photos from negatives plus photos from 35mm black and white slides and color slides, SX 70 Polaroid photos, 2 1/4" color photographs taken with a Rollei Twin Lens Reflex - TLR and a Bronica SLR plus early low resolution digital photographs taken with a Casio QV-100 and recent high resolution digital photographs.

Under each picture I have included a caption followed by the date, place and medium that I used to create the image.

If you want to know more about my development as an artistic photographer, you can readmy autobiography at the end of this eBook or my illustrated autobiography on the web which has been very popular (rickdoble.net/lifestory). I have also included a number of other resources about my work in the Appendix.

Famed film director Elia Kazan (East of Eden, On the Waterfront, A Street Car Named Desire) commented that an artist is always creating art that is about him or her. There is no escaping this -- we can never truly get outside of ourselves.

I would add another point about photographers. Artistic photographers photograph what they see -- meaning what gets or holds their attention or what fascinates them. I suspect that each of us has a store of moments stashed in our memories from the time we were children. The imagery developed over a lifetime is based on feelings that a photographer has for different subjects. And these photographic themes probably come from deep rooted scenes glimpsed at a young age.

When I was creating my one man show, A 25 Year Digital Photography Retrospective, I looked back at the evolution of my imagery and was surprised to find a number of themes andthreads that continued from my film work of 40 years ago to my digital work of today.

For example, I might find myself noticing a person standing in a certain light. Often strong lighting and the consequential outline of a person in shadow against the light takes my breath away -- as you will see in the section here on silhouettes.


Photographic Portraits

Fellow graduate student1970, Chapel Hill, NC (UNC); 35mm b&w negative


Family1972, Durham,NC; 35mm b&w negative

Photography student1973, Durham, NC; 35mm b&w negative


Senior1974, Wake County, NC; 35mm b&w negative

Senior1974, Wake County, NC; 35mm b&w negative


Friends1974, Wake County, NC; 2 1/4" color negative


Original lost; this scan is from Latent Image magazine that included it in an issue1975, Wake County, NC; 35mm b&w negative


Figure in water1983, Carteret County, NC; Polaroid SX-70


Portrait in the water1992, Harkers Island, NC; 35mm color negative


Digital Photographs

Self portraits with my wife in front of a neon sign1999, Emerald Isle, NC; early low res digital photography


Self portrait with camera movement1999, Smyrna, NC; early low res digital photograph


Studio self portrait with flashlight and head movement2003, Smyrna, NC; digital photograph

Studio self portrait with flashlight2003, Smyrna, NC; digital photograph


Portrait of my wife driving2003, Smyrna, NC; digital photograph


Candid Photos of Human Figures

Candid figures on a beach1969, Cape Cod, MA; 35mm b&w negative


Candid figures on a beach1969, Cape Cod, MA; 35mm b&w negative


Candid figures at a museum1969, Boston, MA; 35mm b&w negative


Woman walking with scarf, processed from Muybridge study of human locomotion

1988, Computer-Photograph(still photography system created by Rick Doble

with the Radio Shack CoCo computer and a video camera)


Candid figures on a beach1990, Atlantic Beach, NC; 35mm color negative


Digital Photographs

People standing on a porch in the late afternoon2003, Beaufort, NC: slow shutter speed digital photograph


People standing on a porch in the late afternoon2003, Beaufort, NC: slow shutter speed digital photograph


Two people lit by an outdoor fire2003, Beaufort, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Man standing outside building at night2007, Beaufort, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Human Figures in Motion

Poor quality reproduction of original photo; original is lost; this scan is from a reprint in amagazine, Southern Exposure, Winter 1977

1970, Atlanta, GA (Atlanta Pop Music Festival); 35mm b&w negative


Two friends at the beach1982, Atlantic Beach, NC; Polaroid SX-70


Candid action shot at the beach1989, Salter Path, NC; 35mm color negative

Candid action shot at the beach1989, Atlantic Beach, NC; 35mm negative


Action shot - swimming in pool1991, Atlantic Beach, NC; 35mm color negative


Digital Photographs

Guitar player, Beaufort Music Festival2005, Beaufort, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Banjo player, Beaufort Music Festival2006, Beaufort, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph

Two friends playing violins2007, Marshallberg, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph mixed with flash


Violin player2008, Beaufort, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


The Silhouetted Human Figure

Scan from poster for my first photography exhibit (original photo is lost)1970, Chapel Hill, NC (UNC); 35mm b&w negative


Waiting for presidential candidate Jimmy Carter at the Ramada Inn1976, Durham, NC; 35mm b&w negative

Figure TV abstraction - created by adjusting the controls to produce maximum distortion1979, Eden, NC; 35mm color slide


Walking on the beach in sea mist1989, Atlantic Beach, NC ; 35mm negative


Digital Photographs

Shadow figure from a real shadow, then processed with software (but no graphics added)2000, Atlantic Beach, NC; low res early digital photograph


Self portrait shadow2001, Morehead City, NC; low res early digital photograph


Fisherman2002, Beaufort, NC; digital photograph


Figures back lit2002, Davis, NC; digital photograph

Figure on beach2002, Atlantic Beach, NC; digital photograph


Figure in room2004, Whiteys Motel, Wilmington, NC; digital photograph


Including Myself in My Photographs

Early attempt to include myself in the photograph -- not very successful1980, Smyrna, NC; Polaroid SX-70


Digital Photographs

Steering wheel and shadow of gear shift on my knee1998, Greenville, NC; early low res digital photograph

Framing the TV with my legs at a motel1998, Greenville, NC; early low res digital photograph


My shadow against a RR warning on an road2000, Morehead City, NC; early low res digital photograph


Self portrait lit by TV combined with a slow shutter speed2003, Smyrna, NC; digital photograph


Photographic Series of Pictures

Holly Springs School -- abandoned1972, Holly Springs, NC; 2 1/4" color negative


Holly Springs School -- abandoned1972, Holly Springs, NC; 2 1/4" color negative


Digital Photographs

Ferris Wheel2000, Morehead City; early low res digital photograph


Ferris Wheel with movement added2000, Morehead City; early low res digital photograph




My wife driving2003-2007, Carteret County, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Natural Designs and Patterns

Weeds1972, Wake County, NC; 2 1/4" color negative


Weeds1983, Durham County, NC; Polaroid SX-70


Dead branches and mud1983, Durham County, NC; Polaroid SX-70


Weeds1983, Durham County, NC; Polaroid SX-70


Weeds1989, Cedar Island, NC; 2 1/4" color negative


Sand patterns1992, Cedar Island, NC; 35mm color negative

Fish remains1992, Carteret County, NC; 35mm color negative


Digital Photographs

Light painting abstract2009, Smyrna, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Landscapes

Farm field on the edge of the woods1972, Apex, NC; 35mm b&w negative

Railroad tracks in the fog1973, Apex, NC; 35mm b&w slide


Field in early morning fog1974, Durham County; 2 1/4" color negative

St. Joseph's AME Church seen through a wall about to be demolished1976, Durham, NC; 35mm b&w negative


Downtown Durham with sandpile1976, Durham, NC; 35mm b&w negative

Pond and sandpile1977, Durham, NC; 35mm color negative


Silver-siding building composition1977, Durham, NC; 35mm color negative

Warehouse district composition1977, Durham, NC; 35mm color negative


Boats in a creek at anchor1978, Engelhard, NC; 35mm b&w slide

Snow on pine trees1989, Smyrna, NC; 35mm color negative


Digital Photographs

Horse corral at night2002, Bettie, NC; digital photograph


Rain drops on windshield while driving down the highway2002, Morehead City, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph

Abstract highway landscape shot while driving2003, Carteret County, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Abstract highway landscape shot while driving2006, Carteret County, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Photographs of Water and Rain

Pool of water in the woods1969, Durham County, NC; 35mm b&w negative


Water on screen1971, Boston, MA; 35mm color negative

Water on screen1971, Boston, MA; 35mm color negative


Steam on kitchen window1977, Durham, NC; 35mm color slide


Digital Photographs

Patterns in a motel pool2001, Wilmington, NC (Whiteys Alberta Motel); digital photograph

Rain on my windshield2001, Carteret County, NC; digital photograph


Rain on windshield at night, parked in front of neon signs2002, Morehead City, NC; digital photograph

Rain on my windshield while driving2002, Morehead City, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Rain on my windshield while driving2003, Morehead City, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Abstract Patterns

Painting done in the style of early Jackson Pollock 1967, Durham, NC; enamel paint on paper, approx. 3 ft. X 8 ft.

Drawing, actual size 1968, Durham, NC; pen and ink on paper


Drawing, approx. 8" x 10"; poster for exhibit 1969, Durham, NC; pen and ink on paper


Pattern of whitewash on a glass greenhouse 1980, Durham, NC; 35mm color slide


Very early computer abstract drawing using a state of the art computer and paint software atDuke University

1980, Durham, NC; computer printout


Seashore dried vegetation1989, Bogue Banks, NC; 35mm negative

Sand patterns after a rain1991, Beaufort, NC; 35mm color negative


Colorized snowflake from b&w microscopic images of Wilson Bentley1997, Smyrna, NC; my own computer system of replacing shades of grey with color


Colorized snowflake from b&w microscopic images of Wilson Bentley2000, Smyrna, NC; my own computer system of replacing shades of grey with color


Digital Photographs

Painting-with-light photograph using camera painting techniques2005, Beaufort, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Medium Distance Shots

Snow in my yard1973, Apex, NC; 2 1/4" b&w negative


Marsh grass reflected in water1989, Cedar Island, NC; 2 1/4" color negative


Edge of sandbar1989, Cedar Island, NC; 2 1/4" color negative


Marsh grass and water1992, Cedar Island, NC; 35mm color negative


Snow on sand1992, Radio Island, NC; 35mm color negative


Digital Photographs

Man changing marquee at a movie theater2000, Morehead City, NC; digital photograph


Ornament in a yard decorated for Christmas2002, Morehead City, NC; digital photograph


Abstract composition of car brake lights in traffic2002, Morehead City, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph

Abstract composition: lights through my windshield as I drove down the main street2002, Morehead City, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Abstract composition created by moving my camera across the TV2003, Smyrna, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph

Abstract composition created by walking though my home2003, Smyrna, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Abstract composition of car driving down main street2003, Morehead City, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph

Bowl of tomatoes2003, Smyrna, NC; slow shutter speed digital photograph


Brief AutobiographyAn autobiography I wrote for an interview with Max Eternity of Art Digital Magazine

A Poem to Digital Imagery "I often think the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day."

Vincent van Gogh

Note: At dusk the coarse pixels of my early Casio digital camera changed back and forth from color to darker color on the monitor at the camera's back as the sky faded and as I framed the scene for my next shot.

REAL TIMEOn the edge of darkness

I have seen the twilight sky

do it's digital dance

in real time --

pixels pulsing from

cerulean blue to black

on my LCD screen --

van Gogh's deepest colors

outside his cafe in the evening

or his starry starry night

-- Rick Doble 1999 --


Early BackgroundI was born in Sharon, Connecticut at the end of World War II, but soon after my parents

divorced. My mother continued to live in Sharon (just a short hop from New York City) and my Dad lived in Sandwich Massachusetts on Cape Cod, just an hour and a half from Boston. I was with my mother during the school year and my Dad in the summer. Neither my father or mother approved of television so I grew up without a TV.

My family was artistic -- my Dad was a writer and a painter. I grew up with Durer's drawing of a rabbit on the wall of my room. My father had an extensive record collection of classical music that we played every night. Classical music became the first art form I understood in any depth. He also had a library of books on a wide range of subjects: from novels to science to politics to philosophy. In addition my father's father was an inventor who founded a company based on his inventions. This meant that exploring, experimenting, inventing and making a living independently were part of my genes.

My mother's lifelong hobby was photography and she was also involved with people in thetheater in New York and in the summer playhouse in Sharon as well as in film making. So I grew up with actors, producers and directors and saw quite a few Broadway plays and off-Broadway productions in addition to hundreds of movies that included many foreign films. Thepeople she knew were unusual such as Phillip Rose who produced the first play written by a black woman and directed by a black director on Broadway: A Raisin in the Sun, with Sidney Poitier in 1959. An actor, Donald Buka, became a close adult friend to me as a child. He had acted in a number of Film Noir movies such as The Street With No Name. Sometimes he and I walked the New York streets after dark where I learned to see the beauty of the city at night. As a result I have had a lifelong interest in Film Noir.

Yet at the same time, my family was dysfunctional: my much older father suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from being a prisoner of war during WWI, my Australian mother took my Dad to court for thirty years after their eight year marriage -- until I was almost forty -- and my older brother was domineering and abusive. Years later I would realize that he was mentally ill. Having said all of that, I had a number of good relationships: I was close to my father for all of his life and I had a number of good friends as I was growing up and later in adult life.

Yet because of my family's problems I learned to concentrate so that I could avoid their conflicts and tune them out. My ability to concentrate became one of the keys to my approachas an artist.

During my pre-high-school years I had a telescope and a microscope and spent many hours working with both of them. I have always been interested in science and responded to the beauty of scientific images such as microscopic pictures of cells or telescopic photographs of galaxies. What I did not realize until recently was that I was also learning about optics, which served me well years later when I became a photographer.

I always knew that I wanted to do something of an artistic nature from the time I was eight when I wrote my first poem. In addition I became fascinated with ideas and wrote about these


at early age. For example, at the age of thirteen I made a notebook where I wrote down concepts of Einstein. In particular I copied a drawing that illustrated the idea of a four dimensional cube that showed the cube's existence over a period of time. Cosmologist and science author, George Gamow called it a four-dimensional supercube -- the fourth dimensionbeing that of time.

At the age of 13 I was editor of the school magazine and won a prize for that in eighth grade -- so my writing skills were already starting to develop. In addition I loved books and I knew I wanted to write some of my own. I also knew I wanted to do something innovative during my life. So just before I went to high-school I had a general outline of where I wanted to go with my life.

However, I knew my wish list was incomplete. I realized I needed something more than writing as an expressive output -- and that quest took me another decade. My father and others had told me that I did not have visual skills which discouraged me from working visually -- so as a result I went down a number of blind alleys.

At the age of 14 I was sent off to a prep school, Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, that I hated. The school was not creative or receptive to creative thinking or creative people. In particular teachers and others disliked my writing. My Dad had gone there so I felt I had no choice but to stay and after enduring the full four years, I did graduate with average grades. The school did, however, teach me to be self disciplined and independent -- so the time was not a complete waste.

When I was 16, I read Kerouac's On the Road which inspired me to hit the highway. During vacations, starting at the age of 17 to about 22, I hitchhiked across most of the Eastern Seaboard and later Europe as well. During those trips I learned to trust my instincts, evaluate and accept chance happenings, get along with a variety of people, and become absorbed in the sensation of motion.

Then, having finished high-school (and almost by chance), I ended up at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, alma mater of Thomas Wolfe and other famous writers. It turnedout to be the perfect place for me -- as teachers and students praised my creative writing. I


graduated with a B.A. in English with an Honors in Writing. It was quite a switch from Exeter where my work had been shunned. From the moment I arrived in Chapel Hill, it felt more like home than the places I had been brought up in the north. As a result I have lived in North Carolina ever since -- getting a bachelors and then a masters degree, making a living as a freelancer and finding the imagery I needed for my art.


College & PhotographyDuring my undergraduate years at UNC I was involved in the Civil Rights Movement as

the south was still segregated at that time. The Movement had an energy all its own -- and part of that was to learn non-violence in special workshops. Although I was white, I marched every day in the fall of 1963, was arrested for sitting in at a restaurant and then spent several nights in jail. A year later the Congress passed the Civil Rights Act which achieved all we had been fighting for and two years later the US Supreme Court threw out our convictions for trespassing (i.e. sitting in). I was also opposed to the US involvement in Vietnam from the very beginning: in October 1963, long before the US sent troops to Vietnam and while Kennedy was president, I helped picket the visit of Madame Nhu (considered the First Lady ofSouth Vietnam) to Raleigh NC.

Starting in the mid-1960s and continuing through the 1970s, I studied modern art on my own which included many hours at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC when I was there visiting my mother who lived there at the time. I concentrated on the paintings of Klee, Kandinsky, Seurat, van Gogh and on the Futurist art movement. I studied the photographs of Cartier-Bresson, Weston, Evans, and Arbus plus Steichen's landmark book, The Family of Man, comprised of work from many photographers. I also studied the American abstract expressionists. In 1967 I saw the Jackson Pollock retrospective at MOMA over two weekends -- when I drove from Durham NC to NYC and back two times. I regard Pollock in many ways as my spiritual mentor because he taught me how to 'think outside the box' and to work independently.

In my junior year in 1965 I took the spring off as I had a semester of credits from advance placements at UNC. I stayed by myself in my Dad's house in Cape Cod when he was away, and made a focused effort to find an art form that filled my need for expression -- as writing in itself did not feel complete. I had just seen the Calder retrospective of mobiles in the Guggenheim Museum in NY and that inspired me. I went back to model making, something I loved as a kid, and made a series of mobiles -- out of balsa wood frames and tissue paper stretched and glued onto those frames -- that worked quite well. One mobile always turned nomatter how still the room, for example. But now looking back on it, I was fascinated with movement -- a fascination that is a driving force in my work today, even more so than it was forty years ago.

Mobiles led me to work visually. Over the next four years I drew plans for the mobiles, which morphed into abstract pen and ink drawings, which then morphed into abstract expressionist paintings. Then almost by accident I bought a camera and started taking photographs. Soon I became totally absorbed by photography. The sudden realization that I had found the art form I had been looking for was like a thunder clap. It was as though I had been hoarding memories of scenes all my life. For the next ten years I took photographs non-stop which included setting up several darkrooms, working at the UNC photo lab, and getting a MA in media. Recently I was watching a DVD on graffitti art in which one artist exclaimed, "You don't chose your art, your art chooses you" and that certainly was the case for me.


PoemThe sensation was hard to explain:

lets say it was like memories

that I threw into a closet

until it was stuffed, overflowing

and when I believed what I had been told

-- that I was not visual --

I pushed the door shut,

squeezing scenes I had seen

all my life:

from the car's rear window at age 5

the snow on the mountain

the civil rights marches

the smiles of my friends

the nakedness of girl friends --

I had to push the closet door hard

to get it to close

years later when I picked up a camera

I was only going to take a few abstract photos

just for fun

instead the closet door popped open

and a thousand memories feel at my feet

During the summer of 1965, before I went back to college for my senior year, I took another plunge, got on a boat and went to Europe by myself -- having only one address when I arrived in Paris. And, as chance would have it, at that address was a friend from college whojust happened to be there and who eventually became my best friend for the next 15 years. Later that summer I ended up in the small town, Deia, on the island of Majorca in Spain. This town was the home of the reclusive but famous poet, writer and leading authority on Greek and Roman mythology: Robert Graves. Again by chance I got to meet him and shake his hand -- many years later I would realize that his example of creating art in a remote location was one I would follow.

In my senior year before I became a photographer, I met a woman who I felt was my soul mate. We were both passionately interested in art and she knew of my ambitions to be an artist of some kind, although she also knew that I had not decided exactly what form that would take. After a year and a half we were married and I thought I had finally freed myself from my dysfunctional family and started a new life for myself in another state -- sadly, however, we would not live "happily ever after."


In 1970 my wife and I went to Europe for an extended stay -- living as cheaply as possible,which you could do then. We stayed briefly in England where I saw the prehistoric monument,Stone Henge, which is as old as the pyramids. Back then you could walk around it and touch the stones. Next I spent weeks exploring the innovative and stunning Gaudi architecture in Barcelona, Spain. Later we visited the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain where we walked for four days through the complex of buildings. The Alhambra is the most beautiful building I have ever seen; it is like a sculpture that sculpts space -- a sensation that is hard to describe -- and it has been a major influence on my work.


Graduate SchoolIn the early 1970s I went back to UNC to get a Masters Degree in Media -- I got straight

A's in the department until I took a movie course. Although the teacher approved my script, hehated my final film which followed the script. He even agreed that it was technically well done and that my photography was some of the best. The movie was an experimental film that involved animated cut-out drawings, time lapse photography and electronic music -- much likewhat I saw on MTV fifteen years later when that channel showed cutting edge work. While myteacher grudgingly gave me a passing grade, he let me know that he did not approve of what I had done, although student friends said it was the most innovative work they had seen in that department. And I never worked in film again.

After writing a full length movie script for my thesis, I got my MA and then my first job working with teenagers 'at risk' in an after-school photography workshop in Durham NC -- a workshop that I designed from scratch. After three years, I started a freelance business in Durham and was able to make a living by teaching regular photography classes independently, doing photographic assignments and teaching occasional workshops.

All during the 70s and 80s I continued to write and hone my verbal skills. I wrote photography reviews for a local newspaper for a couple of years and then a regular column ina monthly magazine for about ten years -- I featured one photographer in each issue. During that time I taught photography classes entirely on my own in Durham -- classes that were better attended than those at the arts council or the night classes at the local community college. In those classes I learned to be clear, concise and articulate about photography.

In the 70s I found and became pleased with my photographic style. However, I wanted to work in color, yet color film was not permanent which meant that saleable collectable museumprints were not possible. At the same time I looked for a process that was more spontaneous since I wanted to experiment. I played with a number of alternatives processes such as modifying a large old bellows Zeiss-Ikon camera (6cm X 9cm) so that I could attach a Polaroid film back -- even using a pinhole lens at one point with the Polaroid. I developed black and white slides which meant I could see enlargements of what I had shot in a matter ofhours projected on a screen. And later I spent a number of years working with Polaroid SX-70film -- for the quick feedback it gave me -- yet it was quite expensive, small, and had very odd color -- so I kept looking for a better process.

From 1970 until 1993 I held a one man show of my work about every 2-3 years. In additionI participated in many group shows and was published in a number of magazines. In 1974 I swept a major photography show in the North Carolina winning 3 awards: best in show, first prize in architecture and second prize in portraiture.

I have always had a variety of interests and while trying to avoid becoming fractured, I would often follow my interests to see where they led. So in addition to photography and writing, I was also on the board of directors and then chairman of the St. Joseph's Historic Foundation (now called The Hayti Heritage Center) in Durham which was an African-American church that I and a number of other people saved from demolition and turned into a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic arts and education center. Later in the 90s I wrote a newsletter


about frugal living. I saw a frugal lifestyle both as a necessity for artists who wanted the freedom of making less money and also important for the environment since a frugal lifestyle left a smaller footprint than a more expensive one.

In addition I have always been interested in history. As a child I read dozens of Landmark books about historic events. In Durham, NC where I lived for a while, I was director of a project that got a grant from the NEA to make an archive of historic Durham photographs which is now housed in the Durham library. I also made a multi-media slide/tape show with funding from NEH, a show that highlighted historic buildings that were threatened with demolition and that needed to be saved. Every building that I focused on in that presentation was saved and is still standing today.

In the mid 1970s my marriage was crumbling. My wife began to resent my work as a photographer, became angry that I was spending time getting a masters degree and hated myambition to make a living as a freelance photographer to the point of mocking my efforts. In short she became a different person from the one I had married. Due to my parents' difficult divorce, I swore I would never go through that myself, yet when my wife suggested we separate, I felt a sense of relief. Fortunately we did not have any children, so we agreed to a trial separation. Later when she decided that she wanted our marriage to continue, I knew it was too late and I divorced her -- relieved and yet troubled that a person I had shared my deepest secrets with was not trustworthy.

But more wrenching things were to happen. At the end of the 70s: my mother died, my father died, and when one weekend my brother hit me repeatedly with no provocation or explanation (and being non-violent I did not hit back), I severed all ties to him.

Yet soon after I would meet Janet, the woman I am now married to. Out of the blue I met her at a party and we have been together now for more than thirty years. She helped me put my life back together after the shock of so many losses.

Nevertheless, during that time and in spite of my problems, my art had provided a sanctuary that allowed me to develop and grow. By 1980 I had put together more pieces of my artistic puzzle: photography and writing would be my two art forms, I would work primarily in color if possible and my visual subject matter would be common things and everyday moments that I transformed into something unusual with an eye to the spiritual. I also knew that I wanted to build on and extend the tradition of Western art. And I knew something else: I sensed that it was going to take me a long time to put all the pieces together.


Computers & the InternetIn the early 80s I taught pinhole photography to children at the Museum of Life and

Science in Durham. On the walls where I taught were huge sharp color blowups of the planet Jupiter that had been taken by the Voyager 1 space probe and then sent back, computer bit by computer bit, to the Earth. At this point I knew enough to realize that this meant electronic photography was going to happen in my lifetime, and that when it did I wanted to work with it -- I just did not know how long it would take to become a reality for the consumer market, howcostly and how available it would be.

In 1983 when inexpensive computers became available, I made another major shift in direction (like the revelation about photography 15 years earlier) and spent the next 15 years mainly with computers although I continued to take photographs all through that period. Like any red-blooded American kid, I had known that computers were on the horizon as they had been an essential part of the NASA space missions since the early 1960s and I had watched all of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space ventures on TV.

The computer I worked with at first in 1983 was a Radio Shack Color Computer (called theCoCo) which had 32k memory and a tape cassette drive for data storage. I bought a used thrift store black and white TV for a monitor. The operating system was a built in BASIC. To get the machine to do anything meant I had to learn the BASIC programming language. So I joined the Raleigh CoCo club. It turned out to be one of the most exciting, creative and non-judgemental groups I have been a part of. At that club I learned to feel comfortable tweaking both the hardware and the software in addition to writing a number of full blown programs for my own use. I even went to several CoCo Fests -- trade shows in New Jersey where about a thousand people swarmed around the latest innovations and discussed new software.

Poemall at once in '83

cheap computers were in the malls

and everywhere I went

some kid had tweaked the thing

so it repeated his name

'Chris Jordan was here Chris Jordan was here Chris Jordan was here...'

graffitti and

the urge to declare existence

now entering the electronic age


and I thought

"Well, if a kid can do that..."

so I set about figuring it out

watching youngsters

punch in text commands in BASIC

as the early computers required

after a couple of weeks I typed in:

10 print "Rick did it "

20 goto 10

run

and like fireworks

'Rick did it Rick did it Rick did it Rick did it '

filled the screen

side to side and top to bottom

scrolling endlessly

until the store pulled the plug

that night I could not sleep

my dream world pixelated

broken into computer bytes --

the digital world was calling

in spite of what my friends said --

that computers were just a passing fad --

I took a sharp right turn

artistically

and went from cameras and f/stops

to RAM and ROM

I cannot tell you

what I understood at the time

but it was something about

a digital common denominator

of the future

about power tools for the mind


Initially I bought a computer for its word processing capabilities. It was at last the tool I needed as an author since I constantly revised my written work -- which was an agonizing process on the typewriter, but almost effortless on a computer.

In 1987 my second wife and I made the move to a remote area of the North Carolina coast, about 100 miles south of the Cape Hatteras Light House. As had happened so many times in my life, it seemed that such a move would make it impossible to build a career. Yet I knew that it would be a place where I could be creative and that was what really mattered.

From 1987-1995 I took the public domain photographs of Muybridge -- those tens of thousands of historic photos of the human figure in motion (there's that motion thing again) -- and selected about a hundred that I photographed as stills with a video camera, which was the only way I could generate an electronic signal that was compatible with the computer. I then fed the video signal into my Color Computer aided by software that I wrote. I shot and processed the originals so that I could break down the image into 16 separate shades of gray.Next I colorized those black and white images by substituting 16 colors, chosen from 256 colors for the various grays, with software that I wrote. Then I printed them in color. These were published in 1994 in an art magazine, Sanskrit, in a two page color spread and in addition I had a one man show in a local gallery; this work also filled a gallery at the Greenville Museum of Art in Greenville NC where East Carolina University is located and two framed prints were part of the Orlando Museum of Art's juried Digital Americana show, in Orlando, Florida in 1998. And an Australian arts publication gave me a prestigious Editor's Choice award for this work and featured it on their web site. Later I used this same method to colorize Bentley's microscopic public-domain photographs of snowflakes in the late 90's.

Without my realizing it, working with Muybridge's photos would have a major effect on my experimental work about ten years later. Because of their influence, my photos became more figurative and less abstract. Plus when taking candid picture of people in motion I had learnedhow to anticipate a person's movements, having studied the moving human figure at a varietyof angles due to Muybridge's sequences.

In 1996 I taught myself HTML and took the plunge onto the Internet which was just startingto take shape. The first site was unrelated to my art work. However, the next year, 1997, I launched my art site: RickDoble.net which has now been on the web continuously for over 15 years. This was before I owned a digital camera. So initially I put online: a series of essays, a one act play, poems and my Muybridge computer photographs. I also animated one of Muybridge's sequences -- which many people have done since -- but which taught me how to do animations with still digital picture files.

After I had put up my art site, I realized that for the first time I could blend my written work, my images, my photographs, my experiments, my research, my ideas, and my ability to link these together. These elements that had seemed like separate and disjointed threads before the Internet now they fit effortlessly together.

In the years since, I have put about 2000 images on RickDoble.net -- mostly digital photographs, about 30 essays on digital art and photography, an illustrated life story, about 150 animations, and a number of other experimental exhibits. Once I put an exhibit up, I never took it down. Today a web surfer can browse my site to see both the development of my digital imagery and my ideas over the years plus the evolution of the digital camera itself which came of age during the time my website has been online. Over the last 10 years my


site has consistently been ranked in the top 10 in Google for a variety of searches, both for my digital photography and for my essays.


Digital PhotographyIn 1998 I bought my first digital camera, a Casio QV-100. It listed at around $500, but

being a frugal shopper I got a floor model for much less. And it was another revelation. Although the photos were incredibly small (320 x 240), the memory held only about a hundredshots, transferring them to the computer was a struggle and the camera ate AA batteries, I knew that I finally had the camera I needed in my hands. These Casio models were the first tohave a LCD monitor at the back that showed me exactly what I had just shot. And being a writer, I almost immediately produced an essay, Thoughts About Using A Digital Camera, about the promise of digital photography and what it would mean for the art and the craft. In my 1998 essay I wrote, "Immediate feedback makes the digital camera a different kind of beast."

THOUGHTS ABOUT USING A DIGITAL CAMERA (1998)

A digital camera is more than a portable, glorified scanner. A camera is something quite different. As a photographer for over 30 years, I am very excited by the possibilities of direct digital images and the Casio QV-100 camera that I now own.

Digital technology leaves much to be desired at this point in its development: the tonal range is narrow, the contrast is too high, the colors are not true, the film speed is slow and the resolution is coarse. A traditional silver image (film and paper) produces a much higher quality picture. It may be 20 or 50 years before digital photography can compete with a silver image at a comparable price.

So why am I so excited? The reason is simple. This camera allows me to do things that were impossible before.

But before I go into that, let me explain about the power of the photographic image. Aphotograph is not great because of its technical qualities. While tonal range and good resolution are desirable, many of the finest photographs are grainy and far from perfect. Cartier-Bresson, who many think was the best of all photographers, started using a 35mmcamera (when few others did) not because of its technical qualities but because of its portability and versatility. The 35mm camera allowed him to take spontaneous pictures which captured life in its full-blooded movement. The digital camera allows flexibility, instant images and picture possibilities that did not exist earlier.

Since there is essentially no film cost, the digital camera allows you to shoot whimsically over and over until you get it right. The cost never enters into your thinking.

The real-time visual image which shows you almost exactly what you are getting, is aphotographer's dream. You see the picture in color on an LCD screen before you take it and also immediately after you take it. You can shoot for ten minutes, review what you just shot, then shoot for another ten minutes.

Immediate feedback makes the digital camera a different kind of beast.

Also you can turn the lens around 180 degrees so that you can take self -portraits and see accurately what you will get at the same time. Again this was impossible before.

Want to see quick blow-ups of the pictures? Just plug the camera into a TV or VCR connected to a TV and browse through the images on the TV.

Want to exhibit your work? Just put these pictures directly on the Internet which is the greatest gallery imaginable for a photographer. The gallery is accessible to anyone in the world who has an Internet connection, 24 hours a day at very little cost. For computer literate people, the digital camera is much less expensive, more spontaneous, easier to work with and easier to exhibit.


For those of us who have gotten tired of the road (the rut?) that academic photography has taken, the black and white overworked images of super fine resolution and large format, the digital camera brings photography back to life, back into the streets.

In addition, contemporary photographers have become overly concerned with the price of their photographs not the power of what they have to offer. Digital images do not have the same commercial value which in our materialistic age means they have less value. I welcome an art which takes us away from dollars. But don't worry; if the art is trulygreat, galleries will find a way to attach a price tag to it.

I feel that the deepest promise of still photography is a captured image of pulsing life.Also still photography can and should add to and extend the tradition of fine art. The digital camera and digital photography may bring us back our senses.

Unlike traditional photography, digital photography will not fade. It has, essentially, aninfinite life because information about the image is saved on a computer disk not the image itself.

P.S. A principle concern of contemporary academic photography has been the lengthof time that a photographic image will last. Black and white photos have a much longer life that color images so many schools and museums rejected color photography. However, digital photography has, essentially, an infinite life because information about the image is saved on a computer disk not the image itself. While color monitors may fade, the computer file can always be copied onto a disk or put on a CD-ROM and then displayed on a new color monitor.

As you have read, I had always wanted to experiment -- but film photography was expensive, time consuming and the time lag between taking the picture and seeing the image made it virtually unworkable. Yet digital (even my crude Casio) solved those problems. It also dealt with the archival problem as well since photographic files could last indefinitely and would never fade.

Unfortunately the Casio had a relatively fast shutter speed (minimum 1/8 sec.), so I had to make the most of its capabilities. This led me to take a series of small photos which I then sandwiched into looping repeating animation sequences that I called "States of Being" and added "These are not mini-movies but repeating animations that contain the stuff of life." See these on my wikimedia.org gallery that I list in the Appendix. These became a hit on the Internet and I was a featured artist at the Enculturation (film/image) website and was given a positive review in The Film-Philosophy Journal in England: In 1999 David Martin-Jones wrote,"Doble creates 'photographic animations', a series of photographs, taken at intervals to accommodate the movement within time of the object. These are then placed in a loop, or repeated, but with asynchronous intervals between each shot. The randomness inscribed aims, Doble argues, towards the same goals as those of the futurists, or the cubists: the visualising of the whole of an object in both space and time." So even at this early point, with the limited capability of my Casio, I was thinking about the Futurists and time.

This early positive and international reception to my ideas, led me to feel comfortable about my presence on the Internet and to believe that I could make a place for myself in virtual space that would reach a sophisticated worldwide audience. As a result I put most of my publicity efforts into my website and almost stopped submitting physical framed photographs to exhibitions.

Finally in 2000 I bought a Sony CD1000 camera which was state of the art at the time and which allowed me to shoot at a whopping 8 seconds. Like a kid in a candy shop I spent the


next 10 years exploring what I could do photographically -- not with software, as I see myself primarily as a photographer who works with a computer to only do basic darkroom tweaks. Using mostly very slow shutter speeds that had never been used much in traditional photography, I explored the normal everyday world as I found it and tried to transform those figures and objects using this technique. Just recently I wrote a poem about this:

Poemfor 8 seconds

points of light stretched across time

until the shutter closed --

now strung with bright yellow dashes

from blinking warning lights,

now streaked blood red from top to bottom

with brake and stop lights

as I slowed into stalled traffic

prowling the highways

I cruised the dark back streets and brightly lit bridges

and coasted through the city's main drag,

all the while keeping my eye peeled

for flashing signals

neon and areas of glass

shiny metal that added reflections

I did this

on clear nights or

when a low cloud cover lit the sky

I did this in hard rain, drizzle and mist --

the wetness acting like a mirror and a lens

Virtually all of my work was candid, except for my self portraits. After my highway series I progressed to candid photos of people. I took shots of tourists walking on the waterfront in Morehead City, musicians playing at outdoor concerts in Beaufort, friends standing around at private parties -- and my knowledge of how the human figure moved, from Muybridge's photos, allowed me to understand how to capture continuous motion.

And the more I worked, the more it became obvious that my shots with slow shutter speeds created still images very much like the paintings of the Futurists and the Cubists. I wrote an essay about this and showed my photographs along with Futurist public-domain paintings on an LCD screen presentation at a major group show at the contemporary


Eyedrum Art Gallery in Atlanta GA in 2008. The show was entitled: Re-new, Re-use, Re-view. Then lo and behold, two Italian professors found my work on the Internet and used it in a presentation to the Generative Art Conference in Milan, Italy. I wrote them and said lets do another presentation called: The Future of Futurism and present my photographs next to futurist paintings. So on the 100 anniversary of the Futurist Movement in 2009 I was able to show my work next to these Futurist masterpieces in Milan, Italy where the Futurist movementstarted. Who would have thunk it?

The presentation in Milan was not the end, however; in 2010, my work was part of the SCIENAR show at the National University of Arts in Bucharest Romania and my photo of a violinist in motion was the principle image used on the poster for the show.

During the same time period I was contacted by National Public Radio's (NPR) All Things Considered about my experimental work. My four minute interview aired across the country inJune 2009.

During the period 2006 - 2009, I wrote three books on digital photography. And it turned out that being in a remote place did not present a barrier at all -- at least in the book publishing world, as editors were eager to hire me. The first book was for young adults who were considering going into photography. The second was a practical basic introduction to digital photography for the novice -- a book that emphasised photographic settings not software manipulation.

But these first two books turned out to be warm-ups for the third book, Experimental Digital Photography by Lark Books/Sterling Publishing (New York/London, 2010). By the time I had landed the contract for this, I was up to speed on organizing, researching, writing and editing along with a feeling for layout so that although it was a mammoth project, it did not overwhelm me. I did go through over 50,000 photographs to find the right ones to illustrate myideas and I searched the web for quotes that I thought would add to the artistic point of view in the book. And using my knowledge of history I was able to construct timelines about a number of techniques such as continuous motion imagery, night photos and light painting.

This book turned out to be everything I had dreamed of putting together. My publisher, Lark Books, layed it out almost the way I had envisioned. It was the culmination of my lifelong artistic efforts. It can now be found in over 250 libraries in 40 states and 4 foreign countries, including the libraries of 30 colleges and universities. And the first edition has sold out. Sometimes things do work out.


TodayAbout the time I began to capture my images of time and motion with my digital camera, I

began to experience the beginnings of arthritis in my hips which only got worse during the next ten years and which made movement difficult and painful for me. Fortunately I was able to complete my exploration of movement photographs before I was severely crippled. But it wasn't all bad: in 2009, I did need to work on writing my book so being more or less confined to a chair allowed me to concentrate on the task of writing and not be distracted by going out into the world and taking photographs. The good news is that I have had two hip replacements which went well.

I see myself as both a photographer and a writer. These two are so interconnected it would be hard for me to separate them. I have been writing about photography for as long as I have been taking pictures. Writing has a way of clarifying what I am trying to do with my camera -- while photography has a way of presenting new imagery that I may need to think about to understand.

My camera work is primarily photographically driven and not software driven -- the only manipulations are standard darkroom tweaks. Ideally I like to take a shot that requires no processing at all. A majority of the photos in my book required nothing.

Today I see don't see a distinction between the best painting and the best photography; I see intriguing possibilities where science and art intersect. I see some photography as havingexpressionist elements. I see slow shutter speed photography as creating a new kind of representation yet I feel that it is a continuation of the Western tradition in art. At the same time I want my art to be easily accessible -- yet to reveal more depth as a viewer spends time with a picture. And I believe that art should convey a sense of the beautiful and the spiritual.

I also don't see a conflict between abstract and figurative imagery. Some of my work is abstract, much of it figurative -- some minimal, some very lush -- yet all my photographs start with something real in the real world that I then transform using my slow shutter speed techniques.

And I don't see a conflict between digital technology and creative expression. The computer is just a tool, like a painter's brush. It is up to the artist to make that tool do what he or she wants and not the other way around.

One of my current ideas, that I am now exploring, is to see the camera as a microscope -- i.e. it can reveal things the eye cannot perceive -- it is a kind of time-machine recording device. Like a microscopic slide, a photographer can capture a slice of time and then smear or paint that reality so that it is visible. Slow shutter speed photography sees a real world we cannot see -- because our eyes have about a 1/50 of a second shutter speed (to get a bit technical). Yet my blurry photographs are just as real as sharp photographs; it's just that they show, instead, another side of reality.

At the same time, I see slow shutter speed photography as being personal and expressivesince each photographer will chose a different shutter speed, a different angle on a moving


subject -- so that the resulting image will be quite individual. About ten years ago I coined the term, photo-expressionism, to mean that and more.

It's important to understand that a depiction of motion is not a gimmick or merely a technique but rather central to us as humans and therefore to art. We move constantly, to be alive is to move and -- as a doctor once told me -- a lack of movement is a sign of death. So the ability to record and display motion in two dimensional imagery is a major step in the tradition of art.

Another idea, that is related to the concept of the camera as microscope, is that slow shutter speed images are space/time photos just as Einstein said and as I drew in my notebook when I was thirteen. It turns out that the camera is uniquely qualified as an art form to record space/time images since an exposure is a combination of light in space (via the lens) over time (via the shutter), i.e., an image of space/time. While this is not obvious at normal shutter speeds, it is quite clear at slow shutter speeds.

Also as I was doing research for my book, it became obvious that the quest for the depiction of motion in still imagery has been ongoing in Western art for over 300 years. A number of painters and photographers had fervently worked on creating these pictures such as: Rembrandt (his drawings), Degas, Muybridge, Marey, Duchamp, Kirchner and the Futurists. This quest all but ended when movies were perfected about 1915 so that the effort to create such still imagery was essentially abandoned. Yet still images show us a quite different world from motion pictures -- and digital now gives us the ability to record such imagery. Therefore I believe this effort can begin again.

I think that what I have done is just the beginning. Once slow shutter speed images are accepted -- photos that involve subject movement and/or camera movement -- there are an unlimited number of new photographs that are possible (and I can do the math... yes, I believe unlimited). My hope is that other digital photographers will come after me and build onwhat I have done and that this type of imagery will become one of the new forms of digital expression -- but with the emphasis on photography and not on software.

When I look back on my life, it almost seems that I was traveling in a straight line to the creation of these slow shutter speed photographs and the publication of my book: Experimental Digital Photography. Yet as I was living it, it seemed that I was going in different unrelated directions. I went from writing, to making mobiles, to photography, to computers, back to writing, to the Internet, to digital photography. At the time these seemed to fly off in separate directions -- yet now come together and fit nicely on a website.

The lesson, if there is one, is that an artist has to have faith in her/his intuition and that if you get pulled in different directions, there is a reason that you will sort out later -- but only *IF* you have a clear idea of your overall goals and a clear sense of your own artistic compass.


Appendix

For more about Rick Doble's Work:

General Addresses:Rick Doble's work listed on academia.edu

Rick Doble's website: rickdoble.net

eBooks:15 Years of Essay-Blogs About Contemporary Art & Digital Photography: In-Depth Articles

from 1997-2012, by Rick Doble, eBook, Lulu Publishing, 2012. (Author & Photographer.)

Living My Life As an Artist, an Autobiography: True Stories of Art, Love, Family & the Creative Process Told in Poetic Form, by Rick Doble, eBook, Lulu Publishing, 2012.

Deconstructing Time, 2nd Edition: Illustrated Essay-Blogs About the Human Experience ofTime, by Rick Doble, eBook, Lulu Publishing, 2014.

Paper - Hardcopy book:Experimental Digital Photography, by Rick Doble, Lark Books/Sterling Publishing, New

York/London, 2010. (Author & Photographer)

Online Photography:At wikimedia.org:

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rickdoble/My_Gallery_Experimental_Digital_Photography

Thumbnails & Links to Experimental Digital Photographs: For Teachers, Students & Academics, by Rick Doble, photographer.


https://www.academia.edu/8139929/PDF_Version_of_eBook_15_Years_of_Essay-Blogs_About_Contemporary_Art_and_Digital_Photography_In-Depth_Articles_from_1997-2012

https://www.academia.edu/8139929/PDF_Version_of_eBook_15_Years_of_Essay-Blogs_About_Contemporary_Art_and_Digital_Photography_In-Depth_Articles_from_1997-2012

https://www.academia.edu/8469685/Thumbnails_and_Links_to_Experimental_Digital_Photographs_For_Teachers_Students_and_Academics

https://www.academia.edu/8469685/Thumbnails_and_Links_to_Experimental_Digital_Photographs_For_Teachers_Students_and_Academics

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Rickdoble/My_Gallery_Experimental_Digital_Photography

https://independent.academia.edu/RickDoble

http://rickdoble.net/

https://www.academia.edu/8140038/PDF_Version_of_eBook_Deconstructing_Time_2nd_Edition_Illustrated_Essay-Blogs_About_the_Human_Experience_of_Time

https://www.academia.edu/8140038/PDF_Version_of_eBook_Deconstructing_Time_2nd_Edition_Illustrated_Essay-Blogs_About_the_Human_Experience_of_Time

https://www.academia.edu/8140114/PDF_version_of_eBook_Living_My_Life_As_an_Artist_an_Autobiography_True_Stories_of_Art_Love_Family_and_the_Creative_Process_Told_in_Poetic_Form

https://www.academia.edu/8140114/PDF_version_of_eBook_Living_My_Life_As_an_Artist_an_Autobiography_True_Stories_of_Art_Love_Family_and_the_Creative_Process_Told_in_Poetic_Form

rick doble: 40 years of evolving photographic imagery: from film to digital, a personal journey

Documents

color photographs

digital photography

ebook withisbn

color film photos

later digital work

color slides

polaroid photos

illustrated autobiography