Upper Peninsula On Mobile
(Also testing out a new image gallery plug-in!)
photography
God’s Country
Cross the bridge into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and you come into a different world.
Vast stretches of nothing. Straight, empty highways for as far as you can see. Water and forests and wetlands surrounded by three Great Lakes. Quiet and old and wild.
After our trip to Door County, Wisconsin, last year, we wanted a similar upper Midwest experience. We picked Munising as our home base, with a little cabin out in the middle of the Hiawatha National Forest, and ventured out into God’s Country to see all of that different world stuff.
We started the trip halfway there, in St. Ignace, right across the Mackinac Bridge from Mackinaw City. Like its neighbor across Lake Michigan, St. Ignace is a tourist town, but much quieter, and much less gaudy. After one night, the sun came up over Lake Michigan and we made the long trek through the U.P. to see Whitefish Point, sticking out into Lake Superior, and then on to our cabin in the woods.
Each day was an adventure – and a drive, since nothing was close by up here. That meant a lot of time in the car, and a lot of entertaining little kids, but once we got out and into the fresh air, we did our best to tire them out.
We were all tired. That was the point.
Glass City Sharing
It’s hot here in the Glass City. My pal Neff and I get here right at high noon, when the pavement is radiating late June, and walk around downtown grabbing photos of this very quiet midwestern city.
Quiet, except for the speed boat races out on the Maumee River. That was a new one, and it drew a decent crowd.
By sundown, the heat had subsided enough for us to take in a Mud Hens game – a rare summer treat, with our combined kids and jobs and lives, that we haven’t been able to enjoy since our college days.
Around the Riverbend
Manistique, Michigan
Had a great vacation in the Upper Peninsula last week. More to come.
Flower Girls
Here’s another quick project: Grab the kids, find a trail, and start shooting.
I used to do more of this type of work, coming up with a simple idea and grabbing the family to execute it. Now, with a busy life, it’s harder to think this way.
Thank goodness for my wife, who saw a sunny evening and a trail full of spring flowers and got us out of the house.
Small, lovely steps.
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.
Leaving a ‘Legacy’
It’s true: I take a lot of photos of our kids.
So many pictures that, when it comes round to the end of the year and I work on our annual photo book, I can never fit all the photos I take.
It makes me wonder: what will the kids remember? Which photos will the kids treasure? Will they care at all? Or will they see dad as a fussy ol’ snapshot artist?
Hard to say! But I keep snapping away, regardless.
Here’s what I do know: when my mom passed away, I didn’t care about getting anything else but our photo albums from when we were kids. I poured over those albums growing up, and in a lot of ways those pictures helped anchor my memories. As a kid, the past is fuzzy. But with photos, it can come to life.
Maybe that’s all the legacy we need.
The Next Upswing
Lately, I’ve been pining for the past – those productive photography days when I had a glut of photos to take, process, and share.
These days, photography is harder to do. I don’t have a picturesque commute, or much time to dedicate to making the types of photos I did a few years ago. I look back through my Flickr feed and remember those productive days, and it makes my heart ache a little bit.
A lot has changed. I got married, had kids, switched jobs, moved our household. It wasn’t one thing that made me shoot less, but a combination of things. There’s also a mental component, where I find it hard to feel like making photos.
The tough part is being okay with this new period in my life. Here’s how I’m trying to cope:
- Picking up Instagram has helped a bit – trying to keep to a semi-daily photo sharing practice
- Wrapping up my photo project and staying in touch with my portrait subjects
- Making more family photos of the kids playing around the house, or going on walks
- Revisiting some old photos and processing them in my current style, for a change of pace
- Feeling grateful that I had a period in my life where I was super productive, and made some fun photos
Those are not a cure-all, as a lot of my guilt comes from my life situation changing, and I can’t do anything about where I live or the free time I have. What I can do is build some new routines around my current schedule and lifestyle.
One of my favorite artists, Joan Miró, went through similar ups and downs during his career. Art can be bi-polar, filled with peaks and dips. My hope is that a few little things will be satisfying enough to last me until my next upswing.
Done
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.
Back on Instagram
After getting called out by my photo/tech comrade, Ken Fager, I’m back posting to Instagram for the first time in six months.
We’ll see how long it lasts. I will say it’s nice having a semi-daily posting routine again. The practice is good practice. I also have a treasure trove of photos saved up over those six months.
No, I still don’t like what Instagram’s become, but then again I don’t go after followers or likes or anything like that. I post what I post, and if people enjoy it, great.
Flickr As the Anti-Instagram
John Carey writes about Flickr nostalgia
I have been thinking lately about how much I have missed the sense of community and open conversation found in the “good old days” of Flickr before modern social media platforms took off and changed everything. Instagram snuck in as more and more cameras attached to mobile phones started to muddy the photography waters and eventually even those shooting on DSLRs and film cameras started to jump ship to “where the audience was”.
Jumping ship to “where the audience is” always comes with a trade-off in our modern social media world. There’s always a “next thing” to jump to, every few years.
Instagram was a lot of fun for a few years. I felt dedicated to it, and the audience there. It was an every-day kind of sharing site, right there with Flickr, but I kept it strictly mobile-photos-only. Flickr was for everything, Instagram just for mobile – but both were a daily habit.
Now? Instagram is Facebook, through and through. As John writes, it’s all about hype and personality. I used it to follow photography that I liked, not to see baby photos and life streaming. That’s what Facebook was for, but more and more it’s what Instagram became.
John mentions using Flickr as the anti-Instagram:
I am, perhaps, also hopeful that as Instagram gets weirder as Facebook continues to subtly manipulate it, those wanting to engage, share, and collaborate with other photographers will give Flickr a try either again or for the fist time.
What’s nice about Flickr is that it’s kind of always been there, chugging along. It had its early growth period, and its Yahoo! period, and now its SmugMug period. But I’ve always felt like I’ve gotten what I’ve paid for: a site for and about photography, by photographers.
Maybe it’s that “paying for” part that makes the difference. Maybe by paying for a yearly subscription, us Flickr users keep the site free of ads, posers, and junk. Free is open to everyone, but paid keeps the user base dedicated and smaller.
Flickr not changing all that much is probably the best part about it.
Bio Dome II
The light can fool you in winter. Sure, it looks sunny and bright, but step outside this artificial atmosphere and you’ll pay the price.
The midwest, in all its January glory.
We’ll watch from inside the terrariums, taking our time in both the arid and humid man-made climates.
Bio Dome
How better to beat the mid winter blues in Michigan than to travel to a jungle and a desert?
That’s what we did when the big snow storm came: a day for sledding in the driveway, and a day for heading out to Hidden Lake Gardens and enjoying the bio domes.
Hidden Lake is truly a hidden gem – out in the middle of nowhere, winding paths and lake trails, plants and trees of all kinds. The bio domes offer a desert environment, a lush tropical environment, and a simple greenhouse. Walk inside, and you’re somewhere else.
It didn’t feel like January in here.
‘The Light Is the Story’
“Bad light can rob even the most incredible scenes of their visual interest, while good light can transform the most mundane subjects into a thing of beauty.” – Cameron Whitman (via Twitter)
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.
In Case of Fire
I heard a story on NPR about the victims of the Camp Fire out in California returning to their unburned homes, finding everything they own still in its place – just as it was they day they left in early November.
That story made me think of what I would do in case our home ever caught fire. There’s the old trope about grabbing the photo albums. Photo albums, the thinking goes, are the only irreplaceable items.
For me, I’d grab the kids, my diabetes kit, and my backup hard drive. That’s where all my photos live.
Yes, I still have photo albums. I cherish them. But a few years ago I scanned all my old childhood photos and backed them up in several locations: Aperture, a backup drive, and Flickr. I would only the grab the backup hard drive by my desk to grab the few photos I don’t have backed up somewhere else.
This may be a good time for an annual reminder: back up your photos, keep them in a safe spot, and keep multiple copies.
I set a reminder to backup my iPhone photos, too, at least once a month. Just in case.
In case of a fire, I’d still be worried about all my photographs – but maybe not as worried as I used to be.
Autumn Out Back
My co-workers thought I was crazy.
“I’m heading to the woods,” I said after lunch. “If I’m not back in a while, it’s been nice working with you all.”
The woods, they asked? Why?
Because. It’s right out back. At work, our headquarters sits in the middle of a beautiful, hilly forest, with little ponds and lakes all around us. I’ve been dying to get into those woods and explore – dying to get out and shoot, period.
No, the weather wasn’t nice, and no, the light wasn’t perfect. But if felt good to get out and tromp through the fallen leaves on a cool autumn day.
Then my Canon battery died, so I had to rely on my iPhone. Not that that matters.
I made it back by lunch hour’s end, a little wet and a lot refreshed.