Thursday, June 28, 2012

First Day of Vacation

It has been two years since my last official vacation. I don't have to be back to work until July 10th and I am going to make the most of every minute of it.


Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Old is new again; old is revitalized

Color Abstraction
I am always amazed where a journey can lead me. Even a painful journey through thorns and thistles can lead to a beautiful meadow of wondrous delight.
 
I have officially left Posterous. And while I won't shut it down for technical reasons, I won't post new content there any longer.

I moved my site to Posterous almost two years ago, for two reasons; as a part of my brand re-imaging and because of the native social media plugins for marketing. It was commonly believed, by me at least, that a professional photographer couldn't market him or herself using a free blogging tool with such limited capacity. So I made the switch to a free blogging tool with more capacity in some aspect and more limited in others.

Well, I am not marketing myself any longer, at least not for the wedding/portrait/product photography business plan I was planning two years ago. In the course of the last two years I learned several profound things, well at least profound to me. First; I am an artist. I am not just a photographer. I am a painter. I am a poet. I am a writer. I am a photographer. I am an artist. Second; I can't market myself to save a fledgling career. There was a lot of self sabotage in the marketing arena, a huge chip on my shoulder that prevented me from excelling and a Titanic quantity of baggage from my past left buried that surfaced. There was some obstacles I was unable to overcome by myself, such as how to get past the local market's desire to get everything they can for free, or next at least next to nothing as well.

Oregon Summer
So after much postulating, I posed myself this question; Why are you staying with Posterous? I didn't have an answer. Rather than beat Posterous about the head and shoulders let me explain my move back to Google's blog engine in a positive manner. I have more creative control over the content, layout and general look and feel of the site using the Google blogging engine. Notice the varying alignment of the images in this posting? I wasn't able to figure out how to do that using Posterous without editing the HTML of each post and wanted to focus more on content than writing HTML code to make it work. Google makes layout so simple. A click here, a click there and boom; done.  

To be honest, I have missed Google since leaving, which is why I never shut this down. I am a control freak when it comes to displaying my work and Google lets my freak fly like no other.

Another change that has happened recently is that my 300mm macro lens bit the dust. I was sad as hell about that. But, never fear. Mike out at Focal Point in Dallas, Oregon hooked a brother up. I got this old, heavy, 100% metal Vivitar lens that is 100% manual (focus and aperture), but I could not be happier with the lens or the service Mike always gives. Thank Mike for being simply the best!

The lens is a 70-200mm macro. And just to prove it's image quality, the three images in this post were made with this lens tonight. Photographed at 6:20 PM in the waning, overcast light of a dreary day (hence the raindrops over everything).

So there you have it; old is new again. My blogging site of choice is Goggle and it is good to be back home. Old is revitalized. My new-to-me 1980s Vivitar lens is finding new life after being stored in a bin for who knows how long.

It is good to be home again, making art like I did in the old days; circa 2010.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Postulating a move away from Posterous

The Photographer Within
I am seriously considering a switch back to blogger as my blog engine of choice. I like the interface better than Posterous and I prefer the layout so much more.

One of the main reason I switched was the sheer fact that Posterous integrated an automatic publishing tool, which oddly enough doesn't do a lot to generate traffic to the blog.

Since starting Posterous I have been auto-publishing here as well, and this site still get more traffic than my Posterous ever does.

So I have to ask, why bother keeping Posterous? I may make the full switch back during my vacation. I will see and keep my readers posted.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

The Father's Day Crash

Today is officially a down day for me. it is a down day not because it is Father's Day, but because the last few weeks have been a constant go leading up to yesterday's climatic cresendo.

Each year, our photography group, SalemPhoto.org, does several big events, Help Portrait in December, our recently added annual swap meet in February, our annual BBQ event in June and the State Fair over Labor Day. Yesterday was the annual BBQ event in which we went bigger than ever this year. We had tons of food, drinks, volleyball, horseshoes, a photo scavenger hunt and a raffle.

None of this would have been possible without the help of everyone involved in planning and executing it; Rick, Shawn, Nathan, Heather, Michael, Hermie, my wife and my kids and the other people it took planning the menu and events, Peggy and Jim. It took a small army of planners and executors to make this happen and I appreciate each and every one of you. 

As a result of being so busy that day, I like several others didn't shoot a single shot that day. As a matter of fact, my camera never left its bag, but I wasn't there for me. I was there to make sure everyone else had a wonderful time and outside of some mosquito bites and an army of dancing blue dirvishes that invaded the park, we were successful.

Here are a shot I captured during a BBQ planning field trip with Rick and Nathan. 

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Sunday, June 3, 2012

The Mobile Photography Controversy - My take on it

There is an ongoing trend in photography in which photographers are resistant to the mobile photography trend. A friend recently made the following bold statement: "Instagram isn't real photography." This struck me as rather narrow minded in some sense. I mean I understand that a huge percentage of photos uploaded from mobile devices are subjects including self-portraits in bathroom mirrors and cats sleeping on laps, but there is a large amount of art being produced from today's mobile devices.

I am an artist first and foremost. Photography happens to be one of the mediums I happen to work in. I have said for years, it's not the camera that makes an image. It is the photographer. The better the photographer knows his or her tools, including the camera and processing software, the better the image can be. I am not saying the better camera, I am saying the better the photographer knows how to use the camera. Now I am not here to say that I would take my phone to photograph a wedding, but I do say that I art can be made via the phone.

It wasn't but a 13 years ago that the top level professional level DSLR, a Nikon D1, only sported 2.7 megapixels (MP). In 2003 the Nikon D2h DSLR was released in 2003 with a whopping 4.MP censor. Today's smart phones generally come with a minimum of 5MP and up to 8MP. Nokia is releasing at 41MP cell phone camera. 41MP! Now, I am not saying that megapixels makes the camera, because they don't. A  100MP camera in the hands of a bad photographer will just create larger version of bad images. The below photograph was taken with a 5MP point and shoot and I was able to successfully make a 16"x20" print from this 5MP digital image. Megapixels don't matter. So mobile phone photography can't be measured by megapixels.

Sunet_silouhette

Photoshop has been around for years. Photoshop-like processing has been around since the invention of the darkroom. Just like more megapixels in a camera, Photoshop won't make a bad photo better. Photoshop can make a great image special. Photoshop can be used to apply filters, color enhancements, textures and frames using plug-ins and actions. Software available for mobile devices like Instagram,  Pixlr-o-matic and hipstamatic are nothing more that Photoshop-like plug-ins and actions. So disparaging mobile photography for its push button processing when it is no different than Photoshop's push button capabilities is like telling a painter he can paint with a certain brush. They are just tools to be used to the artist's discretion.

It is not the camera, it is photographer.  Another thing I believe is that the best camera you have is the one that is with you. I can't take my DSLR with me everywhere I go. It simply isn't practical. But my phone fits in my shirt or jeans pocket without any inconvenience save a small bulge. If I my DLSR with me I use it, 99% of the time. The 1% of the time that I might not use it is cases like the image below, where it was raining (2.5 inches fell that day) and I was simply wandering around at the coast. I wasn't going to carry my DSLR in that weather and risk the heavy rain destroying a lens or even my DSLR body. I pulled my phone out and captured the shot I wanted and put it away. I was able to capture the image I did because I knew how to use my camera on my phone to get the result I wanted.

20110213-2011-02-12_16-48-07_452

Instagram is a social media application, not a lot different than Twitter for Facebook. It allows people to share their lives through images rather than 140 characters. While many people use Instagram as it was intended, many others, like myself, also use it, or in some cases exclusively use it to promote their work. I use it as a way to share with others what I am doing as well as share and sell my Fine Art photography via instacanvas.

Next, I am going to talk about the mobile camera apps that I use to capture and process my phone images. I use the default camera that comes with the droid. I also use an application called Pro HDR Camera which is available in the Google Play market. These are used to capture the base images I used for the my photography on the mobile platform. The seagulls image above was shot using the default android camera. The below image was shot using the Pro HDR Camera and processed using Pixlr-o-matic.

Hdr_00006_1_-_tonyangrydim
This isn't much different than the HDR image below shot with my DSLR and processed in Photomatix and Lightroom.

20120528-_dsc1300and8more
For my post processing I use two different applications primarily, which is again done on my phone. The first is an application called Pixlr-o-matic from Autodesk. It is a free download from Google Play. Pixlr-o-matic allows for three different post processing tools to be done to an image. The first is a color adjustment layer which provides dozens of options. The second is a texture layer which again provides for dozens of options. The third is a framing layer, which again provides dozens of more options. Altogether on a single post processing pass, there are over two million possible combinations. Pixlr-o-matic can also save full-res images. All of this for free. To add to this, once I have saved the image I can open the saved image and process it again to gain even processing options. Below are samples of Pixlr-o-matic processed images,  all processed in my camera. Pixlr-o-matic is also available for Windows as a download at http://pixlr.com/o-matic/air/.

The above images are no different than an image shot with a DSLR and processed in Photoshop. These are art, not photo journalism.  Below are similar artist examples of images shot in a DSLR and processed in Photoshop.

Again I am not promoting a cell phone camera as a tool for shooting a wedding or sporting event. You can think what you want to about Mobile Photography, but if you honestly believe your phone's camera can't get the job done under normal and even some abnormal conditions,  you might be letting a closed mind prevent you from getting the most from photography experience.

 

You can follow me on Twitter @monkeypaw2u and on Instagram @creativemonkeystudios and my fine art prints can be purchased at http://instacanv.as/creativemonkeystudios or by contacting me via email.

 

Until next time happy clicking.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Memorial Day Photo Adventure

Our friend and fellow photographer, Liz Smith, picked my wife and I up at 2:00 PM Memorial Day afternoon. We didn't stop moving until 8:00 that night. Exhausted, sick (still) and hungry enough to eat and horse and chase the rider, the photos were left unprocessed until now. 

Well, I am still sick, although after going to the doctors yesterday and this morning I am finally on Antibiotics and cough syrup with codiene so I can sleep at night. Today was my first and only down day this week and I plowed through the images both my wife and I captured.

First up is mine from the Iris Farm, which was our first stop.

Next up is a sample of my wife's photos from the Iris Farm.

Now some samples images from me on our stop in at Dayton. 

Here is the images from my wife from our stop in Dayton.

Now, I get really angry with my wife, because she has a natural gift for photography and doesn't do much with it and it frustrates the hell out of me because she has a natural eye for it, but not the passion that I do. But I love her. When she does grab the camera and use it BAM!!!. She can't tell you the difference between an ISO and an F-Stop (she tells everyone that), but she has no problem putting the camera in Aperture priority and finding some of the most beautiful subjects to photograph.

 

Thanks Liz for getting out there. If it wasn't for you, we would have stayed home all day.