Light Pollution

Light pollution is my enemy. For the type of night photography that I like, it's critical that the skies are dark.



One photographer has made a project photographing nearly the opposite: the world's brightest cities.
http://gizmodo.com/the-45-brightest-cities-in-the-world-photographed-by-o-1464752320

It is interesting yet depressing. The article states that most people haven't seen the Milky Way in their lifetimes.

I live in Houston, so I know what it's like to have very bad light pollution. You can almost read a book by ambient light at night in my backyard :-(

Organizing

Doing anything efficiently in life requires good organization. In photography you need to organize your images as well as gear.

And, the organization that's put into place must be maintained and revised as changes are made.

So, I've spent the better part of a weekend now putting new shelves and drawers in my closet. Part of that system is for camera gear. And it's damn nice to have easy access to it now. Everything has a home in a drawer or on a shelf.



This has nothing to do with my closet project. It's just a Manhattan lit by a citronella candle as I attempted to relax in the backyard for a little while. We obviously still have tons of mosquitos.

But I highlight this because I often have to force myself to slow down, stop being so busy, and take a break to rest and, of course, think about photography. And it's worth it.

A Week of Photos

Daily Grind

Caught in the day to day monotony. Sleep, eat, work, repeat.



This is exactly the situation to avoid. Before you know it, time has flown by, and you find yourself out of touch with your creativity.

The sunset last night (first pic) and the sunrise this morning (second shot) were two events that pulled me away and made me, at least temporarily, observant of something beautiful.

Storage and Backup

Ever have a hard drive fail? Ever worry about your photo files?I don't think I've ever been comfortable with my storage system. But then what would give me absolute reassurance that a storage system was 100% reliable?

My system has evolved over the years. I've used combinations of hard drives, CDs and DVDs, and archival CDs and DVDs. One thing is certain, for any given system to work in a feasible and friendly way, it has to easily accommodate an exponentially increasing amount of data. And because of this I have long since given up on optical media.

The big thing these days is cloud storage. But I don't trust that any more than I do having a hard drive stored in a remote location.

So for now, I'm content with having my work on multiple hard drives stored in two different locations. It's a good thing that hard drive technology has advanced steadily through the years along with my ever increasing stash of image files :-)

P.s. Yes I've had drives fail. The pic above is one example. It fell victim of my curiosity and tools.

Head Down, Fast Forward

I see that time has, once again, snuck past me. It's been almost a week since I posted here, and that kinda violates my new plan for staying engaged with photography.



As we all say, "I was really busy".

I had jury duty on Monday, got selected, and spent 3 days commuting to downtown Houston for the trial. In the evenings, I had to catch up on work and work emails and such.

There will be times like this. I can accept that. The hard part is resuming the "normal" life after the busy-ness has stopped. Being busy for a while derails me and my routine.

I did manage a few thoughtful photos and put them on my Instagram page. The one above is floor tile from the federal courthouse. Only tile that depressing would be (and should be) found in a government facility :-)

Now, back to being "normal"...

More Practice

Busy weekend. Lots of chores. Too many things to do.

Sound familiar?



I saw an amazing scene in the backyard, and I took a 15 break with my camera today.

That's all I needed. I let my creativity loose and found a satisfying outlet. And I enjoyed it.

I just have to remember to keep doing that. Stop and smell the... photos :-)

Editing Day

Today is editing day. I have some free time, finally, and I'm plowing thru Big Bend photos.



Editing, or "post work", is a chore, but I actually enjoy it. Having your face glued to a computer monitor all day is a requirement. But at least the view is scenic :-)

Look for new photos in the coming weeks!

Mindset

Your state of mind, while photographing (or as I like to describe it: engaging in a serious photographic process), is important. I've talked about this before many times. I've described my process and how I photograph in previous posts here.

This has been in my thoughts lately as I often think back about my recent trip to Big Bend. In the few weeks prior to leaving Houston, I was engergized and excited. I had ideas flowing through my head. I felt inspired.

But I feel that it all ended on my first day out there. One major component of that was getting sick. I remember driving south on Hwy 118 to Study Butte/Terlingua and feeling a horrible amount of sinus drainage turn on in the back of my throat.

I've always had bad sinus and allergy issues. When I get sinus drainage, it's usually the first sign that bad times are coming. Congestion, headaches, fever, and fatigue all show up and make my life just miserable enough to keep functioning but operating on a minimal basis. And it always lasts for a couple of weeks.

So I had that going on in Big Bend. When it came time to shoot, my head was filled with thoughts of whether or not to break it off and go see a doctor, what meds could I take to help the situation, and wanting more sleep. Being creative and letting the inspiration come through and engaging in a serious photographic process just seemed to not happen.

The other issue, as I mentioned in the last post, was that I was detached from my usual photographic mindset due to lack of practice. I stayed terribly busy through most of this year on various projects (non-photographic) and had my head in other places for so long that picking up a camera seemed almost foreign.

Then there were the mishaps. Two flat tires, lost camera batteries, and a very close rattlesnake encounter that put a huge dent in my ability to walk about the desert while feeling somewhat safe.

I have a hard time dealing with stress-inducing events. It's difficult for me to engage in an activity with total focus if other parts of my life are out of sort. To use a phrase by Robert Jackson , if my mind is full of barking dogs, I have a very tough time getting them to quiet down or at least tuning them out for a short period of time.

So what does all this mean at the end of the day when it comes down to my photography?

After looking through all my photos from my recent trip to Big Bend, I'm not all that impressed or satisfied. Sure, I enjoyed my time out there. I'm happy with some of my work.

But I do not feel that I've progressed in my art nor have I explored or employed my full creative ability. In fact, when I sit down and really think about it, I've let my photography go stale over the last couple of years.

I feel that when I go out and shoot (despite enjoying it) I'm just reacting to scenes somewhat passively and following through old, comfortable territory. I.e. I'm shooting the same type and level of work that I've been doing for the last several years. The scenes may change a bit, but my thoughts and processes of engaging those scenes photographically are pretty much the same.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. You could argue that if I enjoyed it, then mission accomplished.

But I have, or I feel that I have, a creative energy... maybe energy isn't quite the right word... my head sometimes seems full of ideas and inspiration that needs to be properly harnessed. I need an output that channels what's in my head and lets it flow into form by means of visual communication (photos).

I don't feel that I'm being too hard on myself. But I do feel that I'm somewhat cheating myself if I don't allow the creativity to come through.

On a practical note, I have been doing several things in the past month that I think will help.

1. Blog more. That's what you're currently reading :-) I initially envisioned a post-a-day, but I'm actually happy with activity every 2 or 3 days. And I have no goals for the content other than it shall be something related to photography. Photos, ideas, locations, gear, news, etc.

2. Practice. This is a very easy concept. All it takes is time. Just get out and shoot!

3. Slow down and smell the photos. I rarely look at photography (from others) these days. I need to start doing that again. For example, I let my subscription to Lenswork lapse last year. I always enjoyed that magazine. I'm thinking about re-subscribing.

4. Personal changes. I'll not go into that here. But I do know of something that I can change in my lifestyle that will make a huge impact on my mindset and creativity. And I'm working on it. Maybe someday I'll work up the courage to describe the details here.

So if you're asking yourself why am I writing about all this and going to all this trouble, then the answer is that I want to be happy. I want to enjoy my photography and be satisfied with the results. And I want to effectively express my creativity.

Whether or not anyone likes my photos is no longer important to me. Perhaps that's a subject for a whole other post :-)

Practice

The benefit of regular practice is one, huge thing I missed on my recent trip to Big Bend. I just haven't shot enough this year to keep my skills in good shape, and I definitely felt rusty out in the field.

I realized this forthcoming situation in the weeks just prior to my trip, and that's when I made the decision to become more engaged with my blog here.

It's a positive cycle. If I practice more, then I'll have something to blog about. If I blog more, then I'll need something to blog about (e.g. the results of practice.

Of course 2 weeks isn't enough time. But I was hoping to turn it into a habit.



Glenwood Cemetery in Houston is an interesting place. I spent the morning there with my friend, Wes. We both went to practice.

I don't think either of us had high expectations, but there's enough subject matter there that we can find something good to shoot and engage in a meaningful photographic process.

The whole point, again, is to keep the photo skills up and going, I.e. seeing, identifying, shooting, operating the camera, and post work.

Although at this point I don't need anymore images to work on :-) I have a ton from Big Bend waiting on me!

Film Scans

The film that I recently sent to be developed is done and on its way back to me. The place I used (The Darkroom) did a quick scan and put them in an online gallery.



This shot is one of the scans. I did some minor processing in PS Touch on my phone.

The scene is of Closed Canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park from earlier this month. This spot is close to where I lost my camera batteries. This was taken with a Canon EOS 3 film body and shot on Kodak Ektar 100.

Anyway, when I get the negatives back, I'm sure I'll have a few posts on the photos and my method of scanning them.

Mobile Image Editing

Producing images on the go has been made very easy with apps like Facebook, Google+, and Instagram. But putting content online in specialized locations, such as my blog, takes a bit more work using a mobile platform.

The real work is preparing the images.

I was using the Photo Editor app. It's free and has a pretty good set of tools for basic editing. I recently bought the Adobe Photoshop Touch app. It has about the same tool set, but it does layers. This may not be terribly important for most photo editing (considering this is regarding relatively, down and dirty quick edits). But it is essential for what I've just done...

The example below takes you through a simple blend of two exposures. This was made possible by using the layers feature in the Adobe Photoshop Touch app.

Those two photos, one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the foreground, are a classic set up for a simple blend using layers and selections and opacity sliders.The above pic shows you the app in action. It takes some getting used to. Instead of text descriptions, the tool sets are represented by little icons. If you are familiar with Photoshop, then this will make sense... well, some sense at least.

I found myself fumbling around quite a bit. But I'm confident that with some practice, I can efficiently use the app.The final result is above. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for efforts on a mobile platform and will give me the opportunity to post more often, especially when I'm away from my home computer.

The other aspect of all this is learning how to do work like this from an app-based, touchscreen environment. Like it or not, computing technology is all heading that way (just like optical viewfinders disappearing from new camera models, but that's a rant for another day...).

Daily Photos

Just trying to engage in photography on a daily basis.I have a new phone, and I'm getting it set up to post just as before.And I'm still fiddling around with editing pics on a mobile device.