photography

Twelve Times

Riley

Our youngest, Riley, turned one this week.

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.

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Fixed On Prizes

Follow You Follow Me

“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?”

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Finding Your Likes

Slowly Giving Way

Photographs I enjoy taking:

  • Portraits of characters in my community
  • Slashes of light in darkness
  • Scenes of small, quiet moments around the house
  • Colorful scenes around the city
  • The change of seasons here in Michigan

Photos I don’t enjoy so much:

  • Lanscapes
  • Birds and wildlife
  • Traditional street photography

Things I’ve tried and am still working out:

  • Still life
  • Abandoned buildings and homes
  • Wedding and event photography

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.

Time for Photos

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.

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Two Weeks Off

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.

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In Like a Lion

In Like a Lion

“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.

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Try Not to Try

Try Not to Try

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.

 

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Make And Take

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.

I hope he took the day to heart.

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Snow Day

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.

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On Habits

On Habits

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.

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Say Cheese

Say Cheese

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.

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Gaze and Shrug

Surrounded By the Whole

“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

Before the Break

Sure, it’s nice – getting a week between Christmas and New Year’s off as a freebie vacation week. That week is one of the many benefits of working in higher ed.

Except when you’re sick.

It hit us the weekend before Christmas: a scratch throat, a groggy unease, and sinus pain that felt like continual just-before-you-sneeze agony. Then, from Christmas day to just this week, a persistent sickness. It didn’t ruin the holidays, but it certainly wasn’t fun.

Maybe it’s a good thing I had that week off. But there are better ways to spend a vacation than homebound misery.

So I took the usual Christmas morning photos of the kids opening presents. Other than that, and despite some big photo plans I had, I just didn’t get much done. Instead, I’ll share some pre-Christmas fun in the playroom with the kids.

Before the snow fell. Before the presents showed up under the tree. Before the misery.

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Year After Year

O Holy Day [Explored]

Every year, I give a simple gift to my side of the family: a calendar of full-page photos from the previous year, showing all the kids in the family doing their thing. Easter, summer, Halloween, birthdays – it’s all in there.

And every year, the calendars are a hit.

I’ve been giving photo calendars since before I had kids of my own – probably five years or longer – and there’s no gift that makes a splash like they do. My family tears them open, thumbs through the photos, and remembers the year that was. You’d think they’d get old (“Another calendar? C’mon, Dave.”), but they don’t.

What keeps them fresh? We keep adding family members. That means new birthdays get added to the calendar portion, and new photos of new people appear up top. I added a kiddo to this year (Riley, in April). Family variety, in photo form.

“Sometimes I’ll take out the photos and frame them,” someone told me this year. What a nice thought: an 11×16″ photo worthy of a hanging on the wall for longer than a month.

I often feel like I’m taking the easy gift route for Christmas, giving away family photos year after year. But you know, they’re never not appreciated. I think it’s the variety thing, but I also think it’s because no one prints photos anymore, so any picture of a grandkid that one can hold is a true gift.

We can share our photo talents so easily starting with the ones we love.

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Home for the Holidays

Everything is different this year: new house, new family dynamic, and heck – even a new place for our Christmas tree.

This time we went to the well-known family name, the one you pass on the highway with the big sign. And wouldn’t you know it, the nice weather met us there and made for a fun family outing (and great photos). It’s one of those holiday traditions we look forward to every year.

Like Christmas Vacation, right? Everyone loves that movie. You can’t help but think of the Griswolds every time you head out to the countryside to grab a Christmas tree.

Plenty of things change, but we try to keep these kinds of things steady.

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The Fear Takes Over

Riding the Party Bus

When my daughter Madelyn was born, everything changed.

And not just for the better. As a parent, you can’t help but worry about your kid. Will they be safe? Will they be healthy? Will they always be around? I noticed my brain going down some very dark alleys after I had kids, often despite my best efforts. “Don’t worry,” I told myself. “Not much you can do about the unknown.”

Except my thoughts went to those dark places anyway. They still do.

Photography is a great way to show your love and appreciation of your family members. But to some, it can be a way to manage the anxiety of raising a child. I feel this often. If I’m photographing my kids, that means I’m with them. If I’m with them, that means I can prevent the bad stuff from happening.

That’s silly, of course. Bad stuff can still happen, even if I’m there. Photography is merely the excuse to keep the dark thoughts away, if only for a little while.

In Caspar Claasan’s project, he mentioned that things got better over time. If that’s true, than the photos I make now will remind me of the fears I had from an earlier period.

That will have to be good enough.

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Through Your Eyes

Coke Red

I used to follow quite a few New York City-based photographers on Instagram.

It’s New York! Look at all the city scenes!

Except then it all started to look like…New York. Same Brooklyn Bridge, same skyline, same ol’ urban scenes.

What’s more fun for me is to follow photographers from somewhere else. There’s a million little towns and cities and hidden gems in this country (and continent, and elsewhere). Show me rural Iowa, or downtown Detroit, or Manitoba, or the people of southeast Michigan. It’s not that New York isn’t cool, or infinitely inspirational, but I’m a road trip guy. I want to feel like I’m seeing all of America, not just the most populous/popular part.

Show me America through your eyes, with your photographic voice, and I’ll be right there with you.

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