It’s been a busy month. We had our family vacation (more on that soon), and I did some traveling for work. Along the way, I had big plans for my musicians project, even paying for studio space for the month.
Last night, I had my first subject join me in the space for a portrait session. It took the whole month of July for me to get one musician in the studio. That left 29 other unproductive days.
Finally, after things settled down, I hit a day last week when I got fed up with my lack of progress and jumped back into the project. I sent some emails, confirmed some dates, and boom – photo making.
It’s easy to feel guilty over all that lost time. I’ve beaten myself up all month long, but enough is enough. All it takes is pushing one pebble down the hill, and pretty soon you have an avalanche. For me, the pebble was sending an email invitation to a stranger.
Few things have been constants in my photography hobby. Not cameras, not lenses, not subjects, not styles.
The thing that has remained constant: the On Taking Pictures podcast by Bill Wadman and Jeffery Saddoris.
The duo just wrapped up their last episode, number 325, after putting out six years worth of weekly, hour-plus shows. We, as listeners, tuned in as they discussed the art and craft of photography, the creative method, art culture, and personal struggles. Bill and Jeffery built an audience and a community, and as they did so, On Taking Pictures become a can’t-miss podcast for me each week.
In fact, as I think about my photography practice, I can’t think of a time when I wasn’t listening and learning at the same time. OTP was responsible for one of my first photography projects, and Bill and Jeffery helped me think of projects as larger bodies of work – something that has helped me create my portrait projects, and much more.
Even as my photography practiced has waxed and waned, especially lately, Bill and Jeffery helped me stay in touch with my passion. They reminded me that photography was a worthy hobby, and that some issues – what we view as “good” work, how others see our work, how much of a difference photography can make – may never be resolved. Their point? That lack of resolution was okay. It was normal.
Gear was sometimes a topic, but rarely a subject of their show. Instead, what they focused on was the art stuff: exhibitions, project goals, their Photographers of the Week. Cameras were important, but never as important as the subject.
OTP was a great show – a perfect photography podcast, when so many others have come and gone, or lost my interest. I’ll miss it. The good news is, the shows are archived at 5by5 for future listeners.
“Turns out the stuff that makes you happy is mostly everyday and boring.” – Hugh MacLeod
My bio says that I use photography as an excuse for adventure. But lately, being boring is far more attractive to me.
It could be getting older, becoming a parent, priorities shifting, all that. Anymore, I feel like simply photographing what I see, around the house, or on a walk, is plenty satisfying.
I look back at my early landscape photography, and all the abandoned work I did, and I recognize the “adventure” involved in making those pictures. Part of me misses that phase of my photography – the hunger to wake up early on a foggy morning and watch the sunrise, making lovely images all the while.
When I get the chance, I still do that kind of stuff. But I don’t actively seek it out anymore. I’m becoming boring.
I still have my portrait projects, and the kids are always great photo subjects. I work on the occasional family portrait session. It’s just that the adventure stuff has taken a backseat.
That’s the great part about photography as a hobby: I don’t have to feel guilt about settling into a groove.
One year ago today, I purchased a Nintendo Switch, and made The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild the first game in our library. That first Friday night I stayed up until the Switch’s battery ran out, playing this wonderful adventure game.
Since that adventure started one year ago, I’ve been a bit of a Zelda collection hound, grabbing books and figures and merchandise where I can find them. The music, though, has been elusive.
I’ve been playing the “Hateno Village theme” nonstop for a year now, but now I own a copy – along with all the other great tracks from the game (some standouts include Tarrey Town, Waterside, Riding at Night, and any of the other village themes) in this beautiful collector’s package. After loading the tracks into iTunes, the set makes a nice edition to my Zelda-theme bookshelf.
The set even comes with a little playbutton: like a mini MP3 player that holds the Hyrule Field theme from each Legend of Zelda title. A nice bonus.
With this soundtrack set, it’ll be another year filled with great Zelda tunes at our house.
This June I’m participating in Essa Art’sPeople, Places & Things exhibition, featuring three local-ish artists presenting those three topics.
Me? I’m taking on the “places” part. In spite of my avoidance of landscape photography, I have enough in the catalog to be noticeable, especially with my focus on our local Michigan landscapes. I’ll be featuring several landscape images from rural areas from my past commutes to and from work. It’s the kind of scenery I don’t see anymore, but I can look back on them and remember how much fun I had taking them.
The gallery is hosting a reception on Saturday, June 9 with all the participating artists. If you’re in the area, and you’re free, I hope to see you there.
Wrapping up my latest project, I thought about what kickstarted the whole thing.
It was the film. Lomography advertised a new, limited-run film stock that you had to buy in bulk – 10 boxes an order. That got my brain, and my math, going: 10 boxes of 36 exposure film equals about a year’s worth of shots, if you took one shot per day.
Boom. A project.
Sometimes we don’t need grand ideas for personal projects. Sometimes it’s the gear that sparks an idea.
Grab a cheap-o camera and see what kind of project you can make out of it. Take a simple piece of equipment – a vintage lens, or twin-lens reflex camera – and see where it leads you.
So this week, like every month this past year, we’ll set her up in a little photo shoot, and take a bunch of pictures. Every month is labelled with a little sticker we put on her. Doing this, we have 12 portraits of our baby through the year.
At the minimum, 12 good photos of your baby in a year is pretty good. I shoot a bunch more of her, but I know that each month we at at least get one, and we make it a ritual: change her outfit, the backdrop, put props in, that kind of thing.
The fun part? Going through and seeing the photos sequentially, from the start. There’s our Riley, one year ago, with a hint of who she would be 12 months later. There’s the first time she sat up on her own. There’s the one with the drool…
I’d like to say we kept our ritual going with the other two kids after they passed 12 months. But babies really are easier to pose, and goodness knows I take plenty of the other two doing their kid things. It’s fine. At least we have those first 12 months.
“There are too many awards and prizes for any of them to make sense any longer, yet people still have their eyes fixed on them,” says Jörg M. Colberg. So what makes a successful photo?
It’s not where it appears, or how many awards it earns, Colberg argues. Success is derived from intent – in achieving a goal.
I know it’s easy to fall into the awards abyss, especially the seeking. I used to love it when a random Tumblr photo blog would feature my stuff. It felt like worthwhile recognition, when really it meant nothing. Another photo would replace it in the blog stream, and the handful of people who saw it wouldn’t think much of it. Rinse, repeat.
What did matter to me was earning recognition from a body of work. That took effort, doing research, talking to subjects, planning out the project, thinking about my audience, and pounding the pavement to get the word out. The project was more than a group of photos with a goal – it was the whole workload.
We see “award-winning photographer” enough, don’t we? How about “completed successful project that mattered photographer?”
I can only make a list like this by actually trying out these types of photography. That means experimenting, testing, doing something over and over again to see if it catches.
It also means stumbling into something, with no warning or preparation, and loving it by chance. My light and shadow stuff developed slowly, over time, and only by looking back and seeing a theme did I realize the kind of work I wanted to make.
Finding your likes may mean finding your dislikes as well.
I haven’t done this in a while: tromp around outside on a snowy morning (in April!) and take some sunrise photos.
It’s one of the benefits of the new job. I now have some time to stop and make pictures, and this week I realized how much I missed that.
As soon as I saw the sun rising in the backyard, and the light catching the snow crystals, I knew I had to grab the macro lens and get out there.
Maybe it’s a good practice to schedule these types of things. Or maybe it’s good enough to have some time in your schedule to let serendipity happen. Maybe, as Forest Gump says, it’s a bit of both.
It’s a weird time right now. I have two weeks off in between the old job and new one. I’m car shopping, I’m playing stay at home dad. And I’m thinking about the future for the first time in a while.
There’s the portrait project that I need to restart and finish this summer. Should I get into the studio space again? Will my head be ready?
Summer is not far away. What’s our vacation going to look like this year? What will the new job entail? Where’s Madelyn going to go to school in the fall?
It’s probably too much, and I’m probably not ready. So I’m back living day to day, capturing the sunshine as it comes, and getting the house ready for the warmer weather. These two weeks, I’m taking it as it comes.
“It’s good to see you taking photos again,” my wife told me this weekend.
Indeed. Maybe it took a freak March 1 storm that had both soaking wet rain and giant snowflakes. Maybe it took the light coming back in the morning and the evening. Maybe it took some hope on the horizon.
March is in like a lion. Me? More in like a lamb for a while. Let’s try that.
Desire, as the Buddha taught, is the source of suffering.
This is true in photography as well. New gear comes out, and photographers start sweating from Gear Acquisition Syndrome. It makes photographers feel like their gear is unworthy, and that photographs would be so much better with that new lens/camera/whatever.
Here’s a trick I learned to get over that feeling: just wait.
Wait a week. Don’t think about it. Maybe wait a bit longer.
Then: assess your feelings. Do you still desire that object?
For me, the waiting works every time. I look back at my week-ago self and wonder, what was all the fuss about? Is my life worse off? Did I suffer for not jumping on a purchase?
This strategy applies whenever I’m thinking about making a major purchase. If I wait, and I still feel strongly, then I know it’s important. If I wait and the feeling passes, I know I can either save up a bit more, wait a little longer for a discount, or just not go through with the purchase.
As Tom Petty sang, sometimes the waiting is the hardest part. Once you’re past that, you’ll make better decisions.
Leave it to me to schedule our Family Art Studio session for the snow storm weekend.
But so it went. We drove to Ann Arbor, braving the highway traffic and slick conditions, to spend the day making art at my work.
This was the boy’s first trip to an art museum, and he had a lot of questions. Were the statues real? Why can’t you touch the art? That bust of George Washington – where’s the rest of his body? Why was that girl so hairy?
We took inspiration from Japanese graphic design and made our own poster out of cut-out shapes of colored paper. It was us and six other families – half of what was scheduled to show up.
“The difference between your art on the fridge and these drawings is that there’s a frame around them, and they’re hanging in a museum,” I said.
There’s nothing like a snow storm to get the family out of the cabin fever funk.
It’s also a great excuse to get the ol’ point and shoot camera out, dust off the lens, and take some photos of the outside activities. Despite the broken battery door, my Canon PowerShot SD750 still works great, and shoots fine.
This thing and me go way back. We’ve been on many adventures, from road trips through New England to hiking in Zion, and all of life before I purchased my first DSLR.
This weekend, when the snow started to accumulate, I broke out the SD750 while me and the boy went sledding, and then to capture all the fun in the yard when we got home. After all, if it gets wet, no big loss.
A side benefit: the photo files loaded lickety split into Lightroom.
This time of year is tough: resolutions, winter time blues, Fat Tuesday.
Apart from resolutions, I think about habits – either starting new ones or trying to get back into old ones I’ve let slip.
Take meditation. I had a decent mindfulness practice for almost 10 years. But with kids and moving and new jobs, I let that habit slip. Or fitness: my workout regiment has come and gone for years. After the glut of the holidays, I always have to kick-start that habit after the new year.
Even my photography habit goes into hibernation this time of year. I always have to give myself a project to wake it back up again.
The trick is to not feel bad about letting habits lapse. They come and go, and that’s natural. I could feel guilty about not working out, or taking more photos – or I could just get moving and start forming those habits again.
Every year this cycle starts again. And every year I have to remind myself: it’s okay.
It’s a hard habit to break, having your kids say “cheese” whenever they see the camera come out.
Our own kids started saying “cheese” almost out of nowhere, and at a very young age.
Meanwhile, I strive for those in-between moments when taking photos of the family. I want their real faces, and real smiles, so I’ve learned to be sneaky and quick. Those in-between photos are the ones I treasure, collect, and share.
Sure, the grandparents want a nice framed photo of the kids looking at the camera and smiling. Family snapshots have looked like that since our parents were kids. Again: a hard habit to break.
Me, I want some real life in my photos.
It’s made me think about making family photos for friends and family. My paid gigs are few and far between these days, but when I do get asked about taking family portraits, I want to make a suggestion: How about we hang out for a morning, and just let me capture what happens in between the Cheeses? There’s some intimacy involved, yes, but like a good photojournalism assignment, the good pictures are made by simply being there and capturing what happens.
“I once needed to shout from the rooftops but have now said my piece. Can we be done at some point? Can we gaze upon this world and shrug, content with the work we’ve done? God I hope not. The mere thought of it depresses me.” – Patrick LaRoque
