Photo Book Now Available: #abandoned

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I made a thing.

Seeing as how my musicians portrait project is on hiatus, I’m releasing my new photobook, #abandoned, a collection of urbex and abandoned photography from the past few years, all taken on my iPhone.

Better to ship something than nothing, right?

#abandoned is a simple 8″ square softcover book that includes 30 images of abandoned houses, factories, and farms – mainly in south central Michigan.

Although I’ve largely retired from urbex photography, I felt like I had a few more projects in me. One of them was to make a photobook of all my urbex adventures, but keep it to mobile photography. I’ve made plenty of photos using my “big” camera, but my iPhone is always with me, even when my DSLR isn’t. The photos are all of high enough quality to make a modest book. On Instagram, I’ve had a few people ask me to make something like #abandoned, so here it is.

I wanted to keep it simple and affordable, so I’ve posted the book on MagCloud for order. It’s $15.

My style, such as it is, comes in large part from my explorations in abandoned properties. There came a point where I was both shooting urbex locations and developing my creative voice. I feel like a lot of these photos come from that combination of recklessness and light chasing, and are a good representation of the kind of work I do now.

Order your copy today, and please let me know what you think.

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Opposite of Failure

Living In My Dream

It’s been a weird summer.

It started with such promise. But as the months passed, more and more projects started to slip. My musicians portrait project fizzled, and I found myself picking up my camera less and less.

Just today, I turned in the keys to my studio. I paid for the whole month of August and only accomplished one portrait shoot. I held on to it a month longer than I should have. Guilt made me keep it – you paid for this great space, don’t give it up! – until I couldn’t logically justify the expense.

After a while, I had to tell myself to stop feeling guilty, and accept this new-found funk for what it is: a down period.

Plenty of creative people go through it, and there’s tons of ways to deal with it. My own method has been to recognize it, accept it (grudgingly), and hope things get better.

The sticky part is thinking back on previous years where I was productive. I look back through my Lightroom catalog and Flickr albums and yearn for those creative periods. I was shooting every season, every day, every situation. I was making documentaries and exploring my community and learning about other artists. From 2012 until this spring, I feel like I was on fire with photography.

At the start of the summer, I tried to power through this down period I felt coming on. I started my musicians project with half a heart, but after a while I couldn’t ignore my creative block. I tried really hard, too.

With this blog, I wanted to make it a daily thing for at least a year, and then try posting a few times a week after that. My strategy worked decently well for a while, but now I feel like I have nothing to say about the larger world of photography. I’ve turned inward, sharing and documenting what’s going on around me, with little thought to best practices or experiments in picture making. These days, it’s mostly just picture sharing.

Could it be that I was so steeped in photography that I got burned out? That doesn’t explain my desire for more productive times.

Several things happened in the spring that I can point to and say, “Maybe that was it.” We moved into a new home, into a new community, had a new baby. I was a year into my new job, hitting my stride. My commute wasn’t what it used to be. All of these were big life-changing circumstances. Did they affect my photographic output? Or was it something else?

Time will tell. I’ll let the autumn come and try to capture the season and its changes, and use the cold months to think about this funk.

My hope is that, on the other end, I’ll come up with a recipe for whatever the opposite of feeling like a failure is.

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Summer Vacation

This was it – the last big adventure of the summer, saved until the end.

The trick was lining up our northern Michigan vacation with the grandparents’ schedules. One pair in Mackinaw City for a few days, and the other in Petoskey for the second half. Help with adventures, babysitting, and overnights. With three kids, taking one to spend time with the grandparents relieves a bit of the strain.

Not that this was stressful. No, northern Michigan moves at a vacation pace. Water, and sky, and enough green and blue to make both of our major state university fans happy.

(It’s Go Blue season, just to be clear.)

This close to Lake Michigan, and this close to all those forests – it’s a proper goodbye to nice weather, and water, and wilderness for a while. We even said goodbye to the trout sunning themselves at an honest-to-goodness fish hatchery, complete with a bald eagle waiting, and watching, in the canopy above.

It’s what’s so great about living in our state. A few hours in every direction and you’re next to a giant freshwater lake and enough nature to forget that it’ll all be buried in snow and ice in a few months.

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Jackson Pride

This kind of thing just hasn’t happened in Jackson. Not historically.

This is the (or a) birthplace of the Republican Party, after all. Once fairly progressive, now very conservative. We’re a blue collar town – a small city whose claim to fame is a prison.

So when Jackson’s LGBTQ community scheduled the city’s first pride parade, I had to be there, camera in hand. And I brought my entire family.

The parade turnout was small, but the celebration was big. Flags, costumes, fun t-shirts – it had it all.

The parade had pride.

 

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Strangest Thing

Am I just living in the space between
The beauty and the pain?

Just when I thought there’s no way The War on Drugs could top their last album, along comes this wash of reverb, guitar, and emotion in “Strangest Thing.”

Starting at 2:40, the synths kick in, and the guitar part takes the lead – I got goosebumps. I closed my eyes, and I felt.

Some might think 6:41 is too long for a song. Me? It’s not long enough for this one.

Summer’s End

 

Stand in the Disenchanted Field

August in Michigan means hot days, cooler mornings, and a slow dive into autumn.

For me, it’s always the seasonal transitions that are the most fun to photograph. Summer is nice, sure, but the end of summer always holds something special.

Same for when spring (my favorite) comes, and the fog rolls in as the snow melts. Or when winter starts frosting the yet-to-fall leaves.

This time of year is always hard for me emotionally, for some reason. I don’t know if it’s because Winter Is Coming™, or the days are shortening, or what. But I get to feeling down. The last few years, I’ve tried to work my way out of the funk with a few photo projects and writing more.

For this season, I hope to do the same.

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Lunacy

We all knew, years in advance, that this day was coming. Our attention spans are short, so we only really started preparing – with the glasses and the filters and our lunch plans – earlier this summer.

So we took the kids, the grandparents, our fellow students, our co-workers, and we all went outside for a bit this afternoon. Novelty glasses in hand, we looked up, and we saw our sky change.

We watched young and old, rich and poor, conservative and liberal, natural born and immigrant go out into the fading sunlight and watch and wonder. See how the light changes? See how the shadows shift their shape? See that funny cardboard contraption the astronomy students are wearing on their heads?

See how everyone, regardless of background, came outside and shared an experience?

Astronomers have our solar system down pat. They know where the sun and moon and Earth will be in relation to each other from now until Rapture. Barring an unexpected astroid, the future is predictable, thanks to models and observation.

We Americans think we know better. Sure, we show up at an appointed time expecting a celestial show. But when it does happen, we don’t think that makes the scientific method any more reliable. We question and we “fake news” everything, still, even when the heavens dance around us, as predicted.

It’s lunacy.

We rarely get the larger message – in plain view there in the sky, in front of our own filtered eyes – just as we rarely think about eclipses a decade down the road.

We don’t have to “believe” in the eclipse; it happens with or without us. We don’t get that message, either.

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Honest Intent

World We Used to Know

Great bit from Peter Dareth Evans:

Point being, don’t just leave it to photographers and film-makers – you can find inspiration anywhere. The more you take from that well of inspiration, the more you shoot what pleases and moves you in that odd little way, then the more your work begins to acquire a character and coherency of its own.

Absorb and adapt. Keep reading, keep looking, keep making it your own.

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Sliding Out of Summer

It’s been a perfect summer, weather-wise. We had a week or two where the temperatures reached into the 90s, but mostly it’s been high 70s to mid 80s. Late May, all summer long? I’ll take it.

That means we’ve spent a lot of time outside, playing in our new yard, planting our new garden, walking up and down our new street. We have great neighbors. We love our new neighborhood.

There are parts of me that miss living out in the country. My commute is not nearly as fun, photographically and spiritually, as it used to be. It’s all intersections and highway these days. I miss the quiet, and the trees. But then an airplane flies over our house every few hours, and the kids look up to watch it pass overhead, and it becomes one of those neat little things that make the new home so fun.

This summer I’ve worked steadily on the new portrait project. I photograph the kids as they play around the yard. But there haven’t been any photographic adventures – not like there used to be. There are only so many hours in the day, and photography’s slice of the pie is getting smaller and smaller.

That’s okay. My camera’s always ready when I need it to be. Like these late summer evenings when I can’t resist heading out to the front porch and watching the sun set.

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Jubilee

The Hot Air Jubilee is one of Jackson’s big annual events. Photos of hot air balloons are all over the Chamber of Commerce’s promotional materials, and for good reason: thousands of people head to Ella Sharp Park each July to watch the liftoffs.

For me, it never gets old. There’s magic in these giant sacks of hot air slowly inflating, and then leaving the ground, heading to Oz – or the outskirts of the county. It’s not just the balloons, either. The Hot Air Jubilee is like a small county fair, with junk food and rides and games of chance.

Tons of local photographers fight for the chance to get inside the launch grounds. I’ve been there, but it’s just as fun to sit on the sidelines and watch the show as a spectator.

These Never Never Land moments are rare, indeed.

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Room For Time

Only We Can Rearrange

“What’s clear is that it’s healthiest if we make a daily appointment to disconnect from the world so that we can connect with ourselves.”

Austin Kleon, “The Bliss Station“

For me, a simple daily practice is stepping away from my office computer. Take a walk, step away, eat lunch outside – whatever it takes.

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The Meh of Failure

Toledo Art Museum

My Musicians In Jackson Kickstarter didn’t make it.

It was stuck at 33% for weeks, then it creeped up to a high of 48%, and never got over that half-way hump.

I knew, going into it, that it was a long shot. My first rumblings of failure came when I had to explain to people, again and again, that they weren’t making a donation. No money was being exchanged up front. It was a pledge. People didn’t get Kickstarter.

The second rumbling came when a lot of the people I thought would support the project didn’t. After being stuck at 33% for so long, I knew my chances of reaching a fully-funded Kickstarter campaign were slim.

So it goes. As I mentioned in my last project update, the work will continue, albeit a little slower.

The truth is, my heart wasn’t totally into the idea of the Kickstarter. It was more of an experiment, to see if I could do it; to see if something like this could be possible in my small Midwestern city. Jackson wasn’t ready for Kickstarter. Plus the idea of constantly sending out updates and pleas for pledges is not me – I’m the anti marketing guy. It’s hard enough to get people to support your project, but to ask them to make pledges to support your project? Blah.

But it’s all okay. I’m fine, and I let Sunday’s project deadline go by with a whimper.

A lot of things are slowing down for me. Call it a phase, but I’m barely getting this musicians project started. I’m barely blogging. I’m barely making photos. It’s one of those seasons in life right now.

It’s all okay.

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Art Geeks

Hobbies are the best.

They’re a never-ending source of inspiration and fascination for me. Watching someone who is transfixed by their side gig, and who is good at what they do – it doesn’t matter what the hobby is, it’s fun to watch and listen.

I’ve had my share of hobbies over the years: comic books, old Macintosh computers, photography, travel. You know I’m into something if I start a blog about it.

Sculpture Geek here – he’s making videos about the sculptures he creates, and it’s a joy to behold.

I have a theory that the fan art we see these days is just another version of religious art during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. What do we care about? What are we passionate about, as a culture? What moves us emotionally? That’s what gets made in sculpture, painting, drawing, etc. And a lot of it comes with no expectations of fame, money, or recognition. Most people just want others to share in the joy of creation.

Count me in.

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Musicians In Jackson: An Update

Musicians In Jackson: Jaime

My Kickstarter for Musicians In Jackson has reached the 30% mark, mid-way through the campaign.

I knew it would be an uphill battle, and a constant stream of “make a pledge” messages and outreach. It’s not my style, but it needs to happen for the project to be successful.

Logistically, I have portrait sessions lined up next week that I’m pretty excited about. Things are moving along slowly, but they’re moving along. The studio is getting used. That’s the important part.

Next week I’m on vacation (spending time with my wife, above, and the kiddos during the holiday break), so not much happening around here. But please consider backing the project on Kickstarter and help me get over that 50% goal hump.

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