photography

County Fair Famous

County Fair Famous

My family took a trip to the Jackson County Fair a few weeks ago, as we do every year. It’s something we look forward to each year: the food, the animals, the people watching. All the lights and sounds and colors make for great photo opportunities. It’s a lot of fun.

Each year, in the 4H pavilion, the fair hosts contests – everything from antiques to crops to artwork. Last year, I entered some photos for the first time, and did pretty well. This year, I opted not to, just because the deadline passed and I had other things going on.

Looking through all the entries this year, it struck me: There were a ton of great photos, and I hadn’t heard of any of the photographers.

As much as we may follow other photographers that we like, and check out exhibitions of nationally-known artists, there’s a ton of great work being made right in your own community, by people you’ve never met. You may work with one of these folks. Or they may make you coffee. Or they pick up your trash.

They work just as hard as you do, find great scenery like you do, struggle with creativity and energy just like you, and wonder about getting their work seen – as we all do. They’re all out there hustling, trying to find their photographic voice, and entering a little county fair competition to get some confirmation of their vision.

We struggle so much with marketing, and self promotion, and creative struggles. Meanwhile, our neighbors are out there making stuff, and entering it into a competition to earn a few bucks and a ribbon.

Maybe they have something to teach you (or vice versa). Maybe you should look them up and go make something together.

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Printing Family Photo Books

Printing family photo books

For the last few years, every holiday season, I’ve made it a point to create a family photo album. It’s a highlight reel of the most recent year, with our vacations, our birthdays, our seasons and walks and daily routines all documented.

My family photos albums were so important to me growing up. For many years, a lot of my childhood photo albums were somewhere I couldn’t get to them. It was only in the last seven or eight years that I got ownership back, and I made it a point to scan all those childhood pictures for safe-keeping (digital is relatively fire proof, as long as you have a good stable backup).

Going through those old photo albums was satisfying. I feel like I got my childhood back. And today, while we still print individual photo prints of the family, the idea of a photo book—a collective annual history—is a tradition I want to carry on. I look forward to making our photo book each year.

Another tradition: making a photo calendar and giving it away to family members. That’s become an annual tradition too, and it’s fun to see a year full of family photos and memories up on relatives’ walls. It makes for a great Christmas gift.

This year, I want to try something new: give away photo books to family members. With my daughter turning one this week, I think a photo book of her first year might make some family members pretty happy.

These are the types of things that keep memories alive.

This year, with the photo book idea, I can keep our collective family history going – and make sure that if one collection of pictures gets lost, there’s another copy floating around somewhere.

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On Sharing Family Photos

Sharing Family Photos

Lately I’ve thought long and hard about sharing family photos on the various photography outlets.

It’s kind of an automatic thing on Facebook, even though I’m using that site less, because family photos are what friends and family are interested in. How are the kids doing? Where is this year’s vacation spot? How is our nearly-one-year-old daughter growing?

For other outlets—Flickr, Instagram, here on the photo blog—it’s a tougher question for me. First, I’m a pretty private person. And second, who is interested, if anyone?

How much do I share? And where?

I look at other photographers’ family work, and lately it’s some of the best stuff I see. Many of my favorite photographers have no issue sharing photos of their family.

Since my daughter was born last year, and even before that, I’ve taken a ton of family photos – some of which I’m proud of. Should I share those as a larger sample of my photography? How do I read my own slight discomfort at sharing family stuff? Why do I feel that way in the first place? Why is Facebook okay, but my photo blog not okay?

This week is an experiment. With my daughter’s birthday coming up this weekend, I hope to land somewhere by then.

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Until It’s Gone

Until It's Gone

When I scope out an abandoned building, I always run the risk of it being gone by the time I’m ready to photograph it.

It’s happened plenty of times. Luckily, this past winter, I had a chance to document an abandoned building before it was leveled just weeks later. Other times, I have not been so lucky. There are plenty of places that disappeared before I had a chance to photograph them.

So it is with people, too.

If you love someone, or are fond of someone, take the time to get a good photo in before they’re gone. Even if it’s uncomfortable or awkward.

A few recent passings are good reminders that I need to grab portraits of people I care about. You should do the same. You’ll be glad you did.

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40mm and Go

40mm And Go

Everyone talks about 50mm being the focal length for 35mm photography. And I mostly agree.

But lately, my 40mm pancake lens is getting a lot of use – for good reason.

Five millimeters north of a 35mm lens, and just a hair wider than 50mm, 40mm sits in a sweet spot. It’s wide enough to get landscapes and cityscapes, and yet short enough to do people well, and get details.

I took a chance on my own Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens. Not that it’s not a good lens. It’s a great lens. And very affordable – especially when you buy it refurbished, like I did.

No, I took a chance because I thought, “I so love 50mm, why do I bother with 40mm?” It turns out that because of the lens’s size, weight, and utility, it’s now my most-used lens. It’s almost permanently strapped to my 5D. I just pick it up and go.

The 40mm doesn’t stick out from the camera, making it great for close-up shots of the kids at home, or of people out in the city. It’s a great front-seat lens that goes with me to and from work every day for the random landscape shot. It’s flexible for the kind of shooting I do, and I appreciate it more and more every day.

And now that I’ve had it for about a year, I’m getting to see the world in 40mm – just as I did with 50mm (both are natural, of course, being “normal” lenses). My Canonet probably helped warm me up to 40mm before that, as did my Fuji X-E1 with the 27mm (40mm equivalent) pancake lens.

While the 50mm gets all the creative credit in the photo world, it’s good to know there’s a handy, slightly-wider alternative in the 40mm lens.

 

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Local Film, Local Photography

Support your local film photography vendor

Friday, during my lunchtime walk, I discovered a new camera store here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I walked in, and it had the usual suspects of a camera shop: new tripods, fancy bags and straps, a bunch of new Fuji and Nikon and Canon cameras sitting on shelves. And, a wall full of film.

Joy!

Because there are fewer and fewer places selling honest to goodness film these days, trying to snag a roll was random and difficult. If I didn’t want Kodak instant cameras or Fuji Superia, I was stuck using Amazon or B&H – especially for my favorites, Agfa Vista and Ilford HP5.

But CameraMall had those and more. Medium format film! Kodak Ektar! Weird Ilford film I had never heard of! My beloved Agfa! It was like a candy store. As a bonus, they also develop 35mm film.

It felt really, really good to plunk down the $10 for two rolls of film, knowing that I had a local place to shop from. They benefit (yay, camera stores!), I benefit, and somewhere down the line the photography industry benefits.

And really, the film costs the same in store as it does online, I get to geek out with the guy behind the counter, and it’s an excuse to get out of the office and go for a walk.

Find your local place, if you have one, and shop from their film selection (or memory cards, or tripods, or whatever). Order some prints. Check out their used gear section. I know ordering online is super handy, but the benefits of shopping local are numerous.

I’ll bet that after you do, like me, you’ll feel better about doing it.

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Some Project Ideas

A Few Projects

I’m just going to leave this here, as a kind of in-public to-do list.

  1. Musicians In Jackson: This is my ongoing, maybe-soon next project, featuring musicians in my community. Still stewing on this one, but getting closer to getting started.
  2. Artists In Jackson – part two!
  3. Some smaller, more personal portrait shoots with friends and family. Go somewhere interesting, and just make photographs. I have a few offers out there.
  4. Something here on the University of Michigan campus. I thought about setting up a tripod and asking people on the Diag to stop and get their photo, and see what I can get. There’s so many people here – there has to be something fun I could do.
  5. I’d like to get out and explore more small communities around Michigan. How to pick which ones?
  6. A documentary project highlighting something going on in Jackson. Maybe longer form, maybe one-off, but the idea would be to follow a story from beginning to end.
  7. A zombie/horror movie conceptual photo shoot, with costumes and locations and makeup and all that. I’ve had this one in mind, totally for fun, for a long time. I bet I have some friends who would totally be up for it.

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Missing The Shot

Missing the Shot

Patrick LaRoque, at his usual best:

We can never capture everything. But seeing at all times, under any circumstances, is entirely up to us. And for this we don’t need the best camera money can buy or the most expensive lens on the market…we just need awareness.

My brain is full of missed shots.

I remember driving through the upper peninsula of Michigan and passing by an abandoned train sitting next to a pond. It would have made for a great photograph. I hesitated, because to pull over and grab the shot would’ve been something, but I was traveling at a good pace and didn’t feel like stopping. That shot haunts me.

There’s a collection of these shots in my brain, and I add new ones all the time. Maybe it’s as LaRoque says: it’s mostly in the seeing. I’ll remember these scenes in the camera of my mind. The important skill is to recognize new opportunities when they come up.

Or I’ll head back to the spot, and take the shot I missed.

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The Open Road

The Open Road

Last week I visited the Detroit Institute of Art to check out The Open Road exhibition, a fantastic collection of photography road trips by some of the great photographers. It was right up my alley (so much so that I bought the accompanying book).

It got me thinking: What if I had been into photography, like I am now, back when I took my country-crossing road trips?

Surely I could have made some sort of project or publication out of my Route 66 trip, or my New England trip, or any of the other big road trips I took in my 20s and early 30s. I went on some pretty great adventures, and I took lots of photos, but I wasn’t into photography. I didn’t have the eye I do today.

Now, seeing what other photographers are doing with Route 66, it makes me wish I could go back in time, hand my younger self a camera and a bit of wisdom, and say, “Fire away.” But that’s not possible.

What is possible is to maybe go on another, similar trip, or somewhere totally different, and do what I do now with a camera.

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