Walden Pond
Walden Pond – just as peaceful and great as you think it’s going to be.
photography
Grand Canyon Vistas
After a day of hiking and tromping through the woods, there’s no reward quite like these Grand Canyon vistas.
On Style
When I look at someone’s body of work and it tens to be too cluttered and not consistent in terms of subject matter (sunsets, photos of cats, shoes, street photos, etc) I find it quite frustrating as a viewer.
That’s Eric Kim, renowned street photographer, in his “On Consistency In Street Photography” post.
He finishes with this: “I would say embrace depth over breadth. Meaning, focus on getting really good at one thing– than being so-so in many different things.”
As a liberal arts student, being decent at a bunch of things is my bread and butter. It’s how I live my life. I like to do lots of things.
Often, though, I feel that “depth” pull. Why not just pick one thing and do that well?
The trouble is, at least in creative pursuits, it takes time to develop that style and consistency Kim calls for. More often than not, I feel like I’m still developing “my style.”
I’ve thought about the photos I made when I first got into photography, and how uninformed and uninspired they were. I just shot stuff. I went outside and around town and fired away (see the shots in this post – all from earlier work).
It all fit perfectly with that “your first 10,000 photos are crap” mentality, and it’s something that’s true. If you’re not a bit embarrassed by your earlier work, you’re probably not growing.
I see this in other photographers I follow.
Take Arthur Chang, I photographer I recently found on Flickr. His early stuff is interesting and fun. But look at how dramatically it changes when you look at his recent photos. I mean, wow. There’s a perfect example of developing style and consistency.
I notice the same thing in my own work. Used to be, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Now I know more, and so my work changes.
And you know what? I’m fine with that. I’m also fine with that lasting forever. I’m fine with messing around, trying on different styles. Maybe I’ll find one that’s truly “me” and stick with it. Or maybe I’ll keep searching.
Thing is, I like shooting a variety of things. Portraits, still life, abandoned buildings, cars, interesting design, etc. And I love using different styles, depending on my mood. Maybe that’s what makes me a hobbyist.
Kim says, in his blog post, that life’s too short. Find a style and stick with it.
Find a style you like? Great. Want to stick with it? Awesome. Maybe someday you’ll become one of the greats.
I say, don’t let a time limit stop you from trying out everything and anything. Depending on your creative goals, you’ll be fine trying on lots of creative hats.
Follow the Thomas Hawk philosophy and shoot the dickens out of everything, everywhere, using every style, and do lots of it.
Bubble Pond
Bubble Pond at Acadia National Park in Maine.
Just for fun, I’ve taken a bunch of my landscape photos from cross-country trips (this one on a swing through New England in 2008. Here’s the original.) and re-edited them with VSCO FIlm 03.
The trouble is that these were all taken with a Canon SD750 – a point and shoot with limited capabilities. It took great photos, but the files aren’t all that flexible. Or big.
Anyway, enjoy the full series, or buy a print
Trying Out Film
The fun part about a hobby is that you can take risks and trying things out with little to no consequence (if you don’t count time or effort).
And so, while I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, this year I’m going to try to do a bit more 35mm film photography.
I just posted my first batch of photos developed from a roll of Fuji Superia film. My local photo shop actually developed them for me last year, but it’s taken me this long to get them scanned and uploaded. I’m also working on a roll of Ilford black and white film that I’m excited about.
All of this film stuff has me thinking about experimenting with film more. Specifically, I want to play with my Tomyko LT002 plastic toy camera. I just loaded it with some Lomography 400 speed color film (if you’re going to go toy/plastic, go all the way, right?). While poking around, doing some research on the camera, I came across some sample images – the type of dreamy photos I’ve wanted to make, just for fun.
(An aside: it’s super hard to find info on these Tomyko – or Lavec – cameras. But you can grab your own for $15 on eBay, or for $5 at a local thrift store.)
Also, I have collected rolls of Kodak Portra and Ektar to try out with my Pentax K1000.
To do all this, there’s a little bit of an investment involved. It takes money to develop and scan the film (though not much), but that’s to be expected with any hobby. And lord knows I know how to spend money on a hobby.
Taking photos with film is different almost automatically. You need some patience, and some selectivity, to make film photos.
That’s my goal for 2014: explore this measured pace. Make thoughtful images. And learn a bit about how people used to make photos.
Ice Storm
Before the polar vortex, there was the ice storm.
Some hanging-on oak leaves in my backyard.
Snowed In
We here in Michigan were walloped this weekend – bitter cold, freezing winds, and tons of snowfall.
So what better to do than head out and grab some photos?
Below-zero temperatures and a hazy cloud cover made for some lovely light, especially around sunset. During the day, I had to head out and shovel my driveway, and grabbed some images while knee-deep in snow.
To cool off (ha!), I took a walk down the road to see what the rest of the neighborhood looked like. Luckily most of my neighborhood roads were plowed, but some areas were still untouched.
I didn’t get very far down the road before the conditions turned me back home. But weather like this doesn’t happen like it used to, even here in Michigan.
So why not capture the day?
Sweet Home Chicago
I often tell people that I get to Chicago at least once a year.
This year? It’s more like five or six.
A fun trip. Another fun trip. A business trip. A work trip. A conference. It seems I’m heading to the Windy City, on average, every other month.
And boy, I don’t mind. Every time I head to Chicago, whether for personal trips or business, it feels like a getaway.
I’ve said it before: I feel like I know Chicago better than I do my nearby metro area. That goes mainly for the downtown areas, because once I get out of the main hub of Chicago I’m not so confident – whereas in Detroit, I know the surrounding areas fairly well.
But since taking up photography as a hobby, Chicago has been one of my favorite subjects. The people, the architecture, the city life – it’s a smorgasbord of photo opps.
For a work trip back in October, I hit the streets to specifically grab more street photos than anything else.
(Most photos taken with Canon EOS M and EF-M 22mm f/2, edited in Lightroom with VSCO Film 03)
Work In Progress
Images are never final; they’re always a work in progress, subject to the possibility of a different interpretation. They’re constantly in a state of flux, alive with the potential of change.
How I Use Flickr
I’ve been a proud member of Flickr since 2006.
Back then, it was merely a repository of my photos: goofy self portraits, vacation pics, even stuff with my friends. This was before I got “serious” with photography. It was my digital photo album.
Now, it’s a carefully-crafted showcase for my artsy side. No more mass uploading dozens of photos at once, no more being careless with my tagging system.
I’ve grown and developed (ha!) as Flickr has.
POSTING PHOTOS
Most days I post three or four photos that I’ve worked on, and I carefully cultivate my tags. I tend to upload from Aperture, because I like its uploading interface better (even if it does have an issue with multi-word keywords/tags) than Lightroom’s.
Once in a while I’ll post an entire set all at once, just to get it out of the way. A lot of those photos will never be seen because of Flickr’s you-only-see-five-photos-at-once-on-the-following-page rule. But some of my sets would take forever to upload at five photos a day.
I keep a folder in Aperture of stuff to upload, and every day I grab a random five images and post those to Flickr. When I add new photos to my Aperture library, I’ll grab a few and queue them for uploading, too.
On and on it goes.
ORGANIZING PHOTOS
Tags. Sets. Galleries. Tons of ways to organize images on Flickr. Sometimes it’s overwhelming. I feel like I don’t have my own digital asset management house in order at home, and that often translates into sloppy organization on the Flickr end of things.
But thankfully Flickr makes it easy to correct all that. In the Organize tab, I often grab a batch of images and add more metadata to them.
For Sets, too often I feel like I could have a million variations based on location, color, style, subject, etc. Some photographers do a great job, but I tend to stick to a smaller number of sets until I find an image that doesn’t fit into a category.
Is it a vacation spot? Is it a specific project? Does it fit into a set that already exists? Do I want this group of photos to stand out on their own?
I know myself well enough to know that my lazy organization habits will opt for tucking photos into a group that already exists, so I try to make them as broad as ever. Sometimes, I’ll go back through and add photos to new sets I’ve developed, like my new season-based sets.
As far as Galleries, I’ve only made one highlighting the most gorgeous piece of Apple hardware ever.
SHARING PHOTOS
Flickr acts as the hub for all my photo sharing.
Every photo I post here to the blog is actually a link back to the Flickr image. That way I don’t have to worry about uploading images, or people grabbing them willy-nilly. Photos live in one place. Period.
And every Friday I do a #FlickrFriday post on Twitter with a link back to (you guessed it) an image on my Flickr account.
The one exception is Facebook. There, I do upload specific albums of family and friends photos that might not be appropriate for Flickr. But often there’s some cross-posting to both, especially in the case of vacation photos.
Also, Flickr’s Group system is a great way to share like-minded photos. I don’t always remember to do so, but there are a few active groups I dip in and out of, adding my images to the mix.
STORING PHOTOS
To be honest, I still use Flickr as a backup mechanism.
I’m grandfathered in under the old membership rules and am exempt from the terabyte limit (although I only use, according to Flickr, “0.025 TB of unlimited”). It’s nice not to worry about archive space like I am at home – I can upload to my heart’s content.
It’s peace of mind knowing that most of my best photos are archived up there at Yahoo! HQ. I’m not super clear on if Flickr compresses the photos after you upload them (like Facebook shamefully does), but something is better than nothing.
LEARNING FROM OTHERS
You know what’s super helpful? EXIF data.
I’m appreciative of the photographers who include it in their photos, because it’s a great educational tool. Not to copy, but to simply learn.
I’m also a big believer in absorbing good photography so you know what to look for in your own images. “If you can see it, you can do it,” my college professor said. Meaning: if you can see the logic and skill applied in making good art, you can apply similar strategies.
So, like 500px, Flickr is a great learning space – for what’s new, for techniques, for upcoming styles, and sometimes for what not to do. Especially for when you find good photographers to follow on Flickr. With “Following,” you always have a good stream of quality stuff coming through.
Some photographers I follow:
Zachary Snellenberger
Ken Fager
Jorge Quinteros
TGKW (sometimes NSFW)
Ben Minor
Grant Hutchinson
Anastasia Volkova
So I’ll stick with Flickr for the foreseeable future, past the changes and updates and whatnot, until something happens that’s unforgivable. I get a lot of use out of it. I enjoy using it. The $25/year for a Pro membership has always been worth it.
Popular In Chicago
From my October trip to Chicago: “Framed Spire.” This one was good enough to reach the Popular page on 500px, so that’s cool.
Play With Images
To this day I still get excited when I feed a card into the computer and begin to play with the images; it’s like painting or sculpting, getting my hands dirty. It’s a step of the process I thoroughly enjoy, however time consuming it may be.
Film, Kage stuff… It’s Friday. — laROQUE
Indeed. I like playing around with a few images, just to get the look and style down, and then going to town on the rest.
What else I’ve found helpful: not touching the photos for a while – like a month or longer. It makes editing/culling easier, because there’s no longer an emotional attachment.
Each Season
A view back from when life was a little warmer, sunnier, and colorful.
But that’s the thing about living in a place like Michigan: each season has its own beauty, and its own reason for being.
Really Winter Now
It’s really winter now. The high temperatures have been in the 15-20 F range, and the snow and ice are starting to stick around.
Nothing will grow until March. There will be nothing on the trees until April. Any sunny day is the best Michigan will look for a few months now.
Despite the bitter cold, I do enjoy getting out when it’s sunny and taking photos. The slants of light, the position of the sun – everything is different this time of year. It looks like winter.
So it was with these faded milkweed plants. The sun was setting and lighting the cotton in a wonderful way. It was one of those pull-the-car-over moments.
Even though the wind chill is about zero, and the snow is starting to blow, there’s still beauty out there.
Breakfast In Boston
It doesn’t take much to be a great breakfast spot. Good service, a constant flow of coffee cup refills, unique and/or tasty meals.
And a jar of homemade marmalade.
Pentax K1000’s Beach Day
Oh, you know. Just a Pentax K1000 hanging out on the beach.
Just about done with this roll of black and white film, finally. It’s getting to the point where I hardly remember what’s on it. But on this day, Labor Day, it was on the beach.
Franck–Hertz Experiment
The now-famous Franck–Hertz experiment elegantly supported Niels Bohr’s model of the atom, with electrons orbiting the nucleus with specific, discrete energies. Franck and Hertz were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925 for this work.
Our college science complex has some amazing stuff, and I always look for esoteric items to photograph.
This was a good one for my 7,777 photo posted to Flickr.
Canon M Usage
Interesting to see the spike in usage, at least on Flickr, of Canon’s EOS M mirrorless camera.
I think this probably correlates with the fire sale over the summer, eh? Quiet, steady growth, then: boom.
Read my review of the EOS M.
(A hint: I like it.)
A Rare Landscape
I don’t take many landscape photographs. Landscapes are lovely to see, when done right (read: not obnoxious HDR), but it’s probably the patience required that turns me off. You have to wait for the right combo of weather and subject.
But toward the end of summer, things line up just right, especially in my daily commute, and especially near where I live. The fall light, the earlier sunrises, the mist covering the fields – it’s all great for photos.
This one is a country block from my house. I caught it on the way home from the Jackson County Fair, in early August, and snapped it with my Canon EOS M (and edited with VSCO Film 04). Not bad for a little mirrorless camera with a pancake lens.
Landscapes still don’t interest me all that much, but I take advantage of the scenery when I see it.
Abandoned Irish Hills
Used to be that the Irish Hills, a section of US-12 between Detroit and Chicago, was quite the tourist attraction.
As a kid, my family often went to Stagecoach Stop and Prehistoric Forest, and played putt-putt and drove go karts at the little amusement parks. Even back then there was a level of hokeyness – but it didn’t matter. Those places were tons of fun.
But now, it’s all shutting down. There are a few attractions that are still humming along. The majority, though, lie in disrepair (or worse).
In high school, my dad and step mom were married at Stagecoach Stop’s little chapel, and their reception was held in the old timey tavern.
Stagecoach was a bustling place back in the day. You could watch a gun fight in the town square, grab some ice cream, pet a goat in the petting zoo, and even stay overnight in the motel. There was a working lumber mill, and horse rides, and a drive-through haunted Halloween tour.
Now those places are overgrown and fading away.
Driving down US-12 now, and passing through the Irish Hills, it feels like a ghost town. It’s almost like a run-down part of town, with all the windows broken out and no one left to protect it. Eventually, I’m sure, these roadside attractions will be mowed down completely.
Maybe the dinosaurs at Prehistoric Forest will survive. But more and more each year that place gets eaten by vegetation.
So last fall I took a drive out there, seemingly back in time, to capture some of those attractions I remembered from childhood. Before they disappeared.
At Stagecoach, I ran into a couple that was hosting a garage sale of sorts on the property. Most of the area was closed off, but I asked if I could walk around to grab some photos, and they said “yes.”
The Irish Hills Fun Center, a general amusement park with putt-putt and go karts, was completely abandoned. The kart track was still in decent shape, but the rest of the property was fading fast.
Prehistoric Forest, the true goal of my trip last fall, has been known as a target for vandalism. With motion sensors and cameras guarding the place, it was risky to try to grab photos of the place. When I drove past, there was a utility truck and a man taking measurements, so I played it safe and drove on.
Word is that the place has been sold. Who knows what will happen to it.
It was weird to see a place that was so bustling turn into such a dead spot. I may take another drive out there this fall to see what’s changed – if anything.
(See the rest of the set on Flickr)