I decided to be a little bit different this morning and brought a digital camera with me to a photo session. I’m really not sure why. I think I just wanted to mix up my life a little bit and do something different. It felt a little odd to photograph a scene with a digital camera and it feels even more odd to be posting an image I exposed less than two hours ago onto this blog. What a crazy modern age we are living in! Well ok, everyone else has been living in this modern age for quite some time.
Read MoreThe Oregon Garden
Late last week I took a trip down to Silverton Oregon with a friend to visit The Oregon Garden. I didn’t expect to take many photographs as we really just wanted to check out the beautiful gardens and landscaped pathways before it got too hot but I decided to take my Hasselblad along with me anyway and a few rolls of film. I’ve done a lot of photographs with this particular friend in the past and I knew she would be happy to pose for some images if we came across anything particular cool.
It’s a little tough to see on a computer monitor or a phone screen, but the flower plant that is at the center of this image is covered in caterpillars! There are probably at least twenty of them crawling along the stems and flower tops of the plant. We thought it was such a cool sight that we just had to take a picture. I love the way the image turned out and I plan on making an extra large print in the near future so one can see the details of all the little hairy caterpillars walking up and down the plant stock.
Read MoreCross Processed Slide Film
I noticed the other day that this blog was in some very desperate need of some color film. Unfortunately I just haven’t been working with color film all that much lately. In fact, I meant to buy some at the local camera store this past week but when I walked in I pulled a handful of black and white film off the shelf by pure instinct and walked out the door without buying any. Yikes! Talk about walking around on pure autopilot.
So in order to add a little flair to this blog I’m just pulling an image out of the archives. There was a short time a number of years ago when I was doing a lot of experimenting with cross processing slide film. This was mostly because everywhere you looked it seemed someone was practically giving away their old expired slide film in favor of transitioning their entire work flow over to digital. Now that film has gained back some popularity you don’t see this quite so often. I found myself cross processing this stuff mostly because I learned very quickly that processing slide film that has been expired by ten or so years just ends up looking muddy and bad. With cross processing you at least have a chance of getting something interesting from the results.
Read MoreSocial Media Choices and Nudes
NOTE: If you like this image I did just make it available on my ETSY store!
I have to admit, I’ve been struggling with the internet as a whole lately. Yes folks, I need to vent! Life is pretty rough for anyone out there like myself who enjoys photographing and sees the artistic value in working with the human body. Every single time I turn around it seems I am getting backed further and further away into a corner.
Just this week, I have been put on notice by Instagram for posting an image that they felt violates their policies. Even though I begrudgingly censor everything I put on Instagram but it still feels like I’m fighting against a tide that just doesn’t want me there. This week I was also put on a 30 day ban from posting anything new in my Print Store for offering something up for sale that the internet game wardens did not deem artistic enough to be in the “Artistic Nude” category and should have instead been in the “Adults Only” category. Facebook is off limits all together for me and as much as I love Flickr it doesn’t seem to have an audience beyond people who are photographers themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Flickr following, but sometimes the joy of sharing photography is doing so with people who don’t necessarily practice photography.
So with my frustrations mounting I’m left wondering where it is I want to spend my time sharing, and quite frankly getting compensation for work on-line. I’ve always enjoyed selling prints but that is becoming increasingly difficult as every sight I know keeps getting more and more conservative with what they deem “artistic”. For a short while I had a Patreon account and I’ve considered building one again. The trouble there is I’m not sure what sort of paid content I can offer there that I don’t already have right here for free on my main website. Should I start making more video content? Tutorials, behind the scenes of a photoshoot, etc. etc. Would anyone actually want to see that?
Decisions decisions…
Anyway, just some general thoughts going through my mind as I clean up the house this afternoon in preparation for a house guest the rest of the week. Sweeping my floor and washing towels tends to make me think about the business side of being an artist, something most of us are pretty bad at doing. I’ve been saying for years, I wish there was an industry of social media experts who worked as agents in much the same way that Hollywood movie stars have agents. I focus on the art while someone else puts my work out there and just takes a percentage off the top.
Wouldn’t that be cool?
Two Exposures, One Photograph
So here is a comparison that I imagine most photographers can relate to. After developing this roll of film I probably flipped back and forth between these two photographs for the better part of an hour trying to decide which one I liked better. These two frames were exposed one after the other. More or less the same pose. The exact same exposure and lighting conditions on each.
The only difference between the two images really is that one I pulled back the camera in the scene just a little bit to add a bit more of the environment into the image. One little change and I create an hour of anxiety for myself. The life of an artist folks. It’s a constant thrill ride let me tell you.
Ultimately I feel like I decided on the top image as my favorite. I think the added negative space in the overall composition has a better emotional effect in this particular case. Still, both images are nothing to sneeze at. I love the soft lighting and the harsh straight lines of the staircase cutting directly through the frame.