projects

Organizing Information

Organizing Information

Writing non-fiction, a writer is basically organizing information (facts, data, analysis, observations) for your audience. It’s creative filtering, using words, sentences, and paragraphs to make sense of the world.

With photography, a photographer does much of the same, but uses portraits, pictures, and projects to organize visual information and tell a story to an audience. 

Words are the basic units of measurement when writing. In photography, it’s the individual photograph. But for both, it takes talent and experience to make those basic units do work in an audience’s mind. What do they say when put together?

Taking photos is fun, but organizing information is where photography’s true power shines through.

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Introducing Musicians In Jackson

Banjo Mike Evans

After two years of work, interviews, and shooting, my newest community portrait project, Musicians In Jackson, is live and available. 

The project, like my previous Artists In Jackson project, is available on the web and in book form. It features local musicians doing interesting things. Each of them represents a unique facet of Jackson’s creative community, from musical theatre to rap to folk, and many styles and media channels in between. 

Together, they help make our small Midwestern city a great place to live, work, and play. They help entertain us, heal us, remind us, and connect us. Our musical scene is small, but tight-knit, and gets a ton of support thanks to local venues that value arts and culture. Jackson musicians are just as talented as anywhere else.

Musicians In Jackson took longer than I expected, and I struggled along the way to get the portraits, interviews, and stories done. Something snapped in me earlier this year, where I said to myself, “Enough is enough.” This summer, I made an arbitrary deadline – autumn 2019 – put it out into the world, and then worked like hell to finish the project. 

And here it is. I’m excited to share these 14 local musicians with you, and I ask for your support: purchase the book, visit the website, and help me spread the word. 

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Apple Picking

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Not that I need another one, but I started a new hobby: cider making.

Luckily, our neighbors and the in-laws have apple trees weighed down with apples this year. That meant plenty of fruit for the juicing and fermenting I had in mind.

I’ve long been a cider fan – an apple fan in general – and consider owning an orchard one of my retirement goals. Somewhere along the line, I got the bug to try my hand and making my own hard cider, taking advantage of all the modern brew making equipment and methods. Right here in town, we have a home brewery store with all the supplies I need. That, with some online advice, and I could easily give a batch a try.

There’s a lot to do: wash the apples, juice the apples, sterilize the equipment, add the yeast, feed the yeast, etc. 

But first, I had to grab six little hands to help me pick and wash apples from the neighborhood. 

Away we go.

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Corners

Projects don’t need to be fancy, or long, or all that involved.

Sometimes, all you need is an idea and a bit of time to see it through. In this case, it was playing in the backyard with the kids and wondering, how many corners can I find?

This has been my way out of a recent photography slump: simply shooting what’s around me, and finding something creative to say with my everyday surroundings.

Spring and summer means more time outside, more birthday parties and events, more walking and ice cream shop visits and hiking. All creative fuel for making photos. All slump busters.

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Done

Jaime

That’s it. After almost two years, I finished my musicians project.

And what a relief. So many ups and downs with this project, from a failed Kickstarter to wondering whether I could complete the project at all, that it feels pretty good to have the thing finished.

There in the last few months, during February and March, I tried to schedule a photo session with a well-known musician here in town. After a few reschedules, I finally gave up trying, and finished up the last week of March with my final musician: my wife.

I saved her for last as a sort of friendly torture. She hinted at me plenty these past two years – “You know, I’m a local musician, too” – but I gave her vague answers, or avoided the question all together. But I knew all along she’d be in there. She’s a performer, a teacher, a music therapist, a multi-instrumentalist. She’s a natural.

Now the second part of the hard work begins: writing up all those interviews, getting the last of the film developed, selecting the final photos, and assembling all of that into a book that makes sense. There’s also keeping all the musicians who participated up to date and informed. The secret to that is, it keeps me honest. I’m now accountable to that audience. They want to see the finished product!

The first part, though? That’s all done.

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Shoot for the Moon

“If you adopt that notion of linear progress, if you expect that your life will just be one straight rocketship to the moon, you will be so disappointed and disoriented when you fall off course, when a tank explodes, when the moon moves and it turns out to not be where you plotted.” – Austin Kleon, in a great Twitter thread.

Amen. I think about how, as we settle into winter, I take fewer photos this time of year. It happens every January, and I know this slow, quiet season is coming.

The thing is: do you accept the season, or try to rebel? Often I’ll pick up a different creative project in the winter – photographer interviews, say – and when spring blooms, I get started on photography projects in earnest. Summer, with it’s light and long days, provides more opportunities to make actual photographs. Toward autumn, I fall in love with the weather and the landscape and the light, and create some of my favorite work.

What am I up to? Depends on the time of year.

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Lost Time

Lost Time

Look there – the whole month of July, gone.

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.

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The Spark You Need

The Spark You Need

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.

All you need is a spark.

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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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Making A List

Brooklyn at Night

If I were to do another podcast, here’s what I’d do:

Focus on my community of Jackson, Michigan. Leaders, makers, progressives, business owners, people doing good stuff in and around town.

Keep it a old school, noir-ish, late night vibe – like Letterman in a smoky tavern, shooting the shit with his guests, cocktail in hand.

But less of the promotional, I’m-here-to-promote-something late night TV stuff (we have a show in town for that). No, I’d want to talk with the person as a person, talk about our city, and talk about what keeps them going.

I’d start small, and tap into my acquaintances – people I’ve covered while doing my portrait projects, and people who are doing creative things in town. Then, build out from there.

And yes, a neon-themed logo.

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