Last year, we didn’t get to Gwinn’s until darkness covered the tree lot. We picked a Christmas tree that felt right. And it was so cold.
This year was different. The temperatures were in the 40s, thanks to a very mild autumn, so we let the kids run through the rows of evergreens, tiring themselves in the cool air. We played tag, and chased each other in the trees.
Then we got the tree home – a short-needle variety, very soft – and did the real work: putting up the ornaments and lights. The kids were so tired from running at the tree farm that they were ready for bed early. That was fine with us.
As we plugged in the lights, we felt official. Ready for the holidays. All that’s missing in are the cookies.
Sick day at home with the kids. The boy got pink eye two days ago, and the baby woke up with it this morning.
Lots of hand-washing these past few days.
It’s not all bad. We watched the snow fall – only the second snowy day here in Michigan so far, which is weird this late into the year. The kids are still in pajamas, the Christmas music is going, and we’re all quiet and restful.
Working from home while a baby toddles around the house is a challenge, especially with icky hands. But I wouldn’t trade days at home with the kids for anything.
In the process of my big DAM switchover, I’m going through a ton of photos from past years – locked inside iPhoto, or tucked away inside random Finder folders. There are a lot of memories in these old photos.
Talking with fellow photographers, it’s often memory that comes up the most for “reasons why” people make photos. Photos are the physical or digital means to preserve moments. Often, they’re all the evidence we have of certain times or events taking place.
This is what attracted me to photography, as far back as a teenager. I would take disposable cameras with us on family trips, and I have albums full of photos from high school, college, and beyond.
Looking at those images in iPhoto, some as recent as 2011, was a good reminder of this important purpose. Five years ago doesn’t seem all that long ago, in my brain. But as I look back from the images of when I bought my first house (2011), or remodeled my office (2012), it feels like a lifetime ago. Photos help me remember, and show how much time has passed.
“Look at how skinny I was in 2010,” I tell myself. Or, “Boy, what a great Vegas trip we had in the summer of 2011.”
This is all happening by accident. My digital photo management is making me look through these old images, and as I do it it’s reminding me to remember.
Early color photograph holds a special place in my heart. The pioneers, like William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz, showed that color photography could be used for more than advertising and editorial work, especially when taken out on the street.
But even before those two guys, and their comrades like Stephen Shore and Alex Webb, photographers in the 1950s were blazing a vibrant trail.
Ernst Haas was one of these trailblazers, exploring streets and urban scenes in the ’50s, and making his living as a Magnum photographer. A reissued book of Haas’s photography, Color Correction, is out from Steidl, and it’s a great overview of Haas’s personal work.
Haas sits in the same photography family as early color photographers like Saul Leiter. You get the sense that color, light, and abstraction were all tools Haas (and Leiter) used to express his personal vision.
It’s Haas’s use of light and shadow that really gets me excited. That low-key work, combined with the vibrant colors, is what attracted me to Haas in the first place.
Color Correction is an affordable look into that midcentury color photography that’s timeless and continually satisfying.
This time each year, all the major camera and lens companies put their products on sale, along with the rest of our consumerist-crazy world. You can get some seriously great deals from Thanksgiving to the new year.
Rebates, bundles, sales – if you’ve waited all year, and you’ve been a good boy or girl, now is the time to grab your gear.
Six years ago, it’s exactly what I did. I bought an older-model Canon Rebel T1i with a lens bundle, and it changed my life. Here I am today, a hobbyist photographer, because I jumped on a great deal during the holidays.
Here’s a tip to help you feel better about your purchases: If you shop through Amazon, use their AmazonSmile program to help your shopping dollars give back to a charity or cause you care about (my dollars support our local nature center). Or shop through the affiliate links of an artist you enjoy.
Give back to others, and those in need. And then be good to yourself, if you really mean it.
For many photographers, going into depth on digital asset management (DAM) can be good and bad. Good, because sometimes it’s interesting to know how other photographers manager their photos. Bad, because – well, maybe we should be concentrating on something else.
For me, especially lately, my system has been really crazy. In short, here’s how I do things now:
Load my photos from my card reader into Lightroom as DNG files, organized by date
Go through and mark my favorites, and process them
Export the processed photos as high-quality JPGs into dated folders on an external drive
Load those JPGs into Aperture, tag them, get the metadata right, and organize them by months and days, by year.
From Aperture, I take those photos and send them everywhere else: Flickr, Facebook, photo books, calendars, etc. But before they get to Aperture, my photos are filtered and sorted two different ways.
Why not just keep them in Lightroom? I like Apertures metadata handling, organizational scheme, and export options better (here’s my setup). It works like I like to work.
Why not just start in Aperture? Because I like Lightroom’s post processing setup way better, including using VSCO for editing.
For a long time, this setup has worked surprisingly well. One place to process photos, one place to organize and create print projects with them. Except last week when I went to print a photo book of my daughter:
Bonk! Aperture no longer lets you print photo books or calendars (this after I had done all the hard work already).
So why use Aperture anymore if one of the main benefits has vanished? Good question – one I’m wrestling with. If all that’s left is Aperture’s superior organization methods, then a switch to Lightroom means relearning my tag management and organizational strategy. Plus I have photos in Aperture that do not live in Lightroom, like from my iPhone. All those will have to get moved over and sorted.
When I want to make a photo book, I’ll have to either import photos in Apple’s Photos app on the Mac, or stick with Lightroom and create photo books in there, probably through Blurb. My Flickr setup will have to change. And I’ll have a bunch of tagging and sorting to do.
My plan, so far as I’ve thought about it, is this: continue to use Aperture through the end of the holidays, and use the time in between to slowly migrate my system to a Lightroom-only DAM philosophy.
Aperture was a great program while it lasted. Now that it’s officially on life support, it’s probably time for me to rethink my damn DAM strategy.
I was invited to give a talk at the Jackson Civic Art Association Tuesday night on my still life photography: what was my thinking, what were my techniques, etc. It was also a how-to for other artists to think about making their own still life paintings, drawings, or photos.
It’s a good way to really think about your own projects. If you have to explain the whole thing, from idea to execution, you get really intimate with your process. I feel like the talk was good for me and helpful for them.
And many of the group members did come up and compliment me on my presentation. “I really appreciate the length of your talk,” one lady told me. “Some people are up there for hours going on and on about technique.”
That’s another thing: can you show and tell in an efficient time frame?
In another life, I was probably a teacher. Coworkers at my last job nicknamed me “Professor Dave” because of my presentation style, and my love for getting up on a whiteboard and scribbling out thoughts and ideas. I see talks like the one I gave Tuesday as part lesson, part performance. It’s fun for me.
It was also fun to break down my inspirations, thinking, and planning during the still life project.
