As part of my 2010 goals, I’m committing myself to posting a minimum of one picture a week. I’m not going to throw up a picture just to ensure I have a post up but rather display what I think are my better images in order to garner feedback. I look at too many of my images of 2009 and go “what was I thinking?”
I took this in August of 2008 while on a family vacation in Colorado at Seven Falls. Ironically, the actual pictures I took of the falls are pretty unremarkable so you get rocks and sky instead. I boosted the saturation of the sky with LR2.
Exposure: 1/250 sec, Aperture: f/10.0, Focal Length: 30 mm, ISO 200
I haven’t been much a of a goal-setter up to this point but was challenged by a good friend this summer to start thinking about what I wanted to do in life (better late then never, I guess ). With photography being my main hobby (plus bringing in some revenue in 2009) it was important to set some goals for 2010. So here goes…
Shooting five days/week. More would be good but at a minimum, I’ll be shooting five days/week. To many days, my camera just sat there. No more.
Blogging more frequently. Starting January 4th, I’m starting a weekly project where every Monday, I’ll be posting an image. Not just some “let me throw something up get a post” but putting up what I would consider my better images. I’ll probably start posting to Flickr a bit more to get more feedback as well.
Education. Between books and various blogs I frequent, I have a unlimited amount of information and pictures to look at to gain knowledge and inspiration. I’m spending a minimum of 30 minutes/day (five days/week) on this.
Putting together a portfolio by July 1st. I have some connections to get in some model homes to potentially shoot this spring so I need to take advantage and put together a portfolio of my work.
That’s it for me. So what are you photography goals for 2010?
I’ve been shooting a bit more lately as part of plan/vision/practice and was able to get my trusty sidekick, Isaac to sit there and look cute while I rattled off a few shots using my flash from different angles and different power (while I can before he starts crawling). This ended up being one of my favorite.
Flash: On camera, aimed left with bounce card up, 1/2 power.
Exposure: 1/200 sec, Aperture: f/5.0, Focal Length: 70 mm, ISO 200
Yes, the blog has been silent for way too long and no new images on top of that. I have images ready to go and will get those up.
As for the lack of anything on the blog, perhaps the easiest way to describe it is a change in workflow. Or more importantly, a change in life’s workflow. I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about vision and realized that I had none. Okay, not quite none but not a lot. If you asked me “What do you want to do when you grow up” or “Where do you see yourself in five years” I couldn’t give you a decent answer and that includes my photography. I’m in the process of jettisoning the things that aren’t important or are time-wasters and focusing on the things that are.
So what changed? This post by David duChemin was pretty much the catalyst to make some moves in my photography. What that led to was a change in everything, work, family, etc. Everyone has the same amount of time in one’s day to get stuff done. We complain we never have enough time yet there are many people who use their time effectively and enjoy life rather than bumbling along in the rat-race.
As it pertains to photography, I’m setting aside time everyday to practice. Practice taking pictures, practice in editing, spending time looking at other people’s pictures for inspiration and to gain knowledge, and following blogs and using Twitter to find articles that will help me get better as a photographer. As for the blog, I’ll be posting more, not daily but several times/week with articles, links and images as I feel the blog allows (and sometimes forces) me to focus on what’s important with my photography.
Happy Veterans Day to all who have served our country. Thank you for your service and sacrifice. Special thanks go out to my dad who served in the USAF.
Also, thank you to the combat photographers who risk their lives in order to document war through their pictures. You can read more about them here, here, and here.
Just a warning in advance that this post is somewhat random. You could even say it is rambling. If you have better things to do, by all means stop now and go ahead and take care of your business. If not, read on (you’ve been warned)…
Bringing my camera on a business trip is usually a no-brainer as I drive just about everywhere and it’s no big deal to toss my camera bag and tripod in the car. Occasionally though, I have to fly and that’s where I start to weigh the advantages vs. disadvantages to bringing it along. I’ve brought it with me before on trips and never used it although that is pretty rare. In the past, I’ve almost felt I had to use it since I took the time and “effort” to drag it with me.
Recently though my outlook has changed. While I debated again about bringing it, rather than thinking about the reasons not to bring it, I was more focused on what would happen if I didn’t bring it. I certainly have enough to do without taking time out to go shoot (plus the potential for post-production work after that) but the practice of just getting out and shooting was too much to pass up. The potential of the next shot and what I might miss as well as the process of learning something new ended up being something I didn’t want to miss out on. Oh, FWIW, I took a whopping total of five pictures.
Speaking of something I could have taken a picture of last week but didn’t was an honor guard of soldiers that came to the Omaha airport. On my flight was a member of the US Navy and the captain of the plane made a comment about letting him off first plus something else (I didn’t hear the entire message). When I got down to baggage claim, there were several older members of either the American Legion of VFW waiting there as well as an Army honor guard complete in dress uniforms and white gloves. Not sure what the protocol is for taking a picture of this but out of respect for them, I left the camera in the bag.
One of the things I’ve been ignoring is putting together a contract for services. I have several good examples to draw from but to take the time to sit down and hammer it out isn’t overly appealing to me right now although paying a lawyer to do so is less appealing. Safe to say that I never see myself ever having the urge to go to law school.
Right now I’m sizing my pictures 650 pixels wide and what I would like to do is to make them a bit smaller to fit various sized screens and then use a Lightbox to make it bigger. I’ve looked at a couple of Wordpress plugins that I could use but wanted to find out if anyone had suggestions/recommendations prior to trying those out.
This appears to be the popular choice and the basis for most plugins.
This summer I was offered the opportunity to go canoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) for an extended weekend with some friends. Having never done anything remotely like this ever, I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing (let alone how to protect my camera equipment.)
Nonetheless, the trip was amazing and we are already planning for next year. I ended up taking about 300 pictures which in retrospect, doesn’t seem to be that much for four days out in the wilderness. I did some minor editing and as a gift to the rest of the guys, I burned the images to a disc. As I look back at the images now, I wish I had been more selective and only sent out about a dozen or so of the best images rather than sending 100 plus. Something to remember for next year.
This was the view from our landing area next to our campsite. This is probably my favorite image of the entire trip (or at least one of the top three or four). Using LR 2, I changed the Tone Curve to Strong Contrast, moved the White Balance Temp a little more Blue, and sharpened it a bit and that’s about it.
Exposure: 1/1600 sec, Aperture: f/5.6, Focal Length: 28 mm, ISO 200
In what feels like forever since I last posted a image I’ve had some down time to think about what I want to do with this blog. I’ve had a bit of a creative funk as of late and didn’t pick up a camera for the better part of a couple of weeks. During that time, I also didn’t have any work on the real estate side so was a bit bummed out about that as well (which only added to the lack of interest in picking up a camera). No blog updates, little activity with Facebook or Twitter and I basically just sat around.
So what changed? Reading this post by Chase Jarvis. Following his advice, I went and did all the little things I’ve neglected (backups of hard drives, reorganizing camera bag, making a list of equipment I need for the real estate business, and oh yeah, just walking outside with a camera with no plan and shooting.) Not just rattling off frames for no reason and hoping one maybe turned out but actually taking the time to be inspired by what was available and taking the care and time to compose the shot and get it right in the camera rather than hoping that Lightroom can bail me out.
With that, I’m going to run things a bit differently from here on out. I’ll probably post more and link to articles/blogs/cool images I see elsewhere as well as provide some thoughts on photography in general. I will also put up an image but it will be probably no more than one per week. I tried putting up 5/week and looking back through the archives there were a lot of images that were more suited for the Delete button rather than for posting. Instead, the image I’ll be post will be what I would consider from the small pile of images I would consider my best. Only from getting feedback from those images will I get better.
). With photography being my main hobby (plus bringing in some revenue in 2009) it was important to set some goals for 2010. So here goes…
