From an outside perspective, it may well appear that I’m not making new images. Truth be told, I haven’t printed anything new recently nor do I have a scanner with which to scan negatives. Output-wise, there isn’t a whole lot happening right now. However, I feel that I am making progress in the images I am making. I am creating new photographs almost daily, and I am finding more direction in my vision again. What’s more, I am finding more energy in focusing on creating specific bodies of work.
There is something to be said for keeping to oneself and working quietly on what one finds important. In fact, this may be my favorite way to work. It is difficult to do nowadays, however, when the instant-feed culture of Facebook, Twitter, flickr, etc dictates that if you’re not constantly posting new proof that you’re up to something, then you’re doing nothing at all. This is unfortunate, as the perceived pressure to produce may lead one to release work that is not up to his satisfaction.
If one can stomach getting out of the pressure stream, even if just for a short break, the change in pace and perspective is quite rewarding. While I wish I had more to show right now for the work that I am doing, in the long run this seemingly dry period will in fact turn out to be a very fertile one.
I don’t understand why so many people try to stop me from photographing completely ordinary things as if I’m making trouble for them. Today I walked past a construction site and took a couple shots of some scaffolding against a sky with some interesting clouds because I liked the way it looked. A construction worker came out and shooed me away and was quite emphatic that what I was doing was wrong and absolutely not allowed. I’m curious as to how I constituted such a threat by casually walking by on a sidewalk and taking two frames of something I thought was cool. I simply do not understand the general paranoia surrounding photography. Of course, I don’t run into it nearly as much here in Korea as I did back in the US, but it still happens more often than it should. It’s as if people think they have something to hide, even if they have no idea what it is that they need to hide. Do I really represent some kind of threatening presence?
Perhaps it’s just ignorance at work, as is the case in so many of life’s bits of bullshit. I suspect it’s difficult for a lot of normal people to understand why a photographer would want to photograph most of the things photographers end up making photos of. Not understanding the process, it may end up appearing suspect. It seems to me that if everyone could immediately understand what I see and why I make the photographs I do, I would run into a hell of a lot less resistance while out shooting. I suspect that I would basically only get crap from people who actually had something to hide or who at least thought they did.
I just picked up a California Sunbounce 2×3′ reflector panel. I am reminded that, in my opinion, Sunbounce panels simply beat all others on the market. Not that there aren’t other good options, of course. Scrim Jims are great, for example. This panel is precisely what I wanted, though. Everything about it is superb. What’s more, the collapsible nature of the frame means that the whole thing easily fits in my tripod bag (which is small) along with the tripod. Excellent.
I have once again been absent from my blog for too long. No surprise, right? No surprise indeed. I will no longer make claims about intending to post more because of course I intend to post more, but that doesn’t actually mean anything unless I find the time to do so. So no more claims, only proof or lack of it.
Part of the problem with blogging is that when you feel you have a lot of things to say, it’s easy to keep up your posts and put up new content consistently. However, when you don’t feel like you have a whole lot to say, or at least that you feel is worth typing up for other people to read, keeping new content coming is more difficult.
Sometimes one feels that one simply doesn’t have anything to say that day. Other times, what one has to say isn’t something all that interesting to the public at large. Other times still, one has something to say, but one cannot find a way of expressing it that is satisfactory.
Mostly, though, I’m just easily preoccupied enough with other things that I don’t exactly notice when it’s been weeks or months since my last post. While bad for the blog, it’s not a bad thing for one’s life necessarily. Hell, it can be a great thing for one’s life to have things to preoccupy oneself with. So long as the preoccupation is with good things, that is.
Tonight is an odd time because I’m posting, despite having nothing to say. I guess you can take that as me saying I’m saying what I’m saying because I have nothing to say.
I have realized how horribly out of date this version of my site has become. It wasn’t built very well in the first place (web publishing isn’t exactly my greatest strength) and that was long enough ago that just about everything about it fails to sit well with me now. It doesn’t need an overhaul, it needs a good, thorough reinvention. I am making sketches of design, flowcharts of navigation models, and the like. Before too terribly long, I hope to have a new version of this site implemented that will resolve the many problems that now plague it, such as lack of new content, CSS problems, and subpar graphic design.
It seems silly to have let it get this far out of date. I’ve been preoccupied with other parts of my life for long enough that the web site (and this blog, clearly) basically fell off the radar.
It has been placed back at the top of my list of priorities.
A couple nights ago I churned out a big stack of proof sheets. It was tedious, boring, and not something I especially enjoyed. However, since then I have enjoyed going through them with a 4x loupe and a paint marker (because I can’t find a grease pencil/china marker in Korea that will get along with RC paper) and making picks. I’ve really come to like the workflow with Lightroom, but still value having a physical proof print I can write on, etc. It’s a different working method, but certainly one with its share of advantages.
When you dump new images on your computer, get rid of all the bad frames immediately. Don’t put it off. If you do, you may find yourself wading through 10,000 frames deleting files that shouldn’t have stuck around past the first hour in the first place.
As I continue to do more and more with cycling photography, I also find myself wondering what else I can expand my photography into simply by following other interests. I began doing cycling photography because I loved cycling and photography and eventually the overlap between the two naturally arose. It made sense.
It’s been very rewarding. So much so that it seems a bit surprising that I haven’t begun to test the waters of combining photography with other things I’m especially interested in/involved with. There are a lot of possibilities here:
Fly fishing
Woodworking
Gardening/horticulture in general
Natural and environmental science
Backpacking, camping, etc
Five bullet points, but even just in those is an immense amount of potential for creative exploration and new work.
Basically, as long as you find at least a handful of things in life interesting, there’s no reason to ever find your creative work going in a boring direction. Where your interest in photography (or whatever medium you choose) intersects with an interest in something else, there is potential.
It’s out. Go to www.diagnl.jp for more information. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m very pleased with how this all turned out. If you’ve found your way here looking for more information on the strap that you can’t find on the above site, please send me an email at diagnlequipment@gmail.com and I will do my best to answer your questions ASAP.
I want to know who’s out there. Who’s actually reading this? I know it’s not as many people as there used to be, but I know you’re there.
Things are brewing here. Product releases, photo documentary projects, two book projects, and so on. I’ve also finally started on proper medication for my ADD and having the ability to focus has already yielded a quantum leap in my productivity. Expect to see that reflected on this blog more and more often.
