Reflecting

March 5th, 2010 · thoughts 1 · 36 views

Ah. So. Last August my dSLR bit the dust, and I did not replace it. I’ve talked about it before a few times, and I am happy with my decision. I was never really -happy- with my dSLR in the first place. It was not the brand, type, style, or anything of dSLR that I had, it just simply the dSLR itself that I was not happy with.

I started out with a rangefinder, and I long for a rangefinder again. So, when mine died a sad slow (quality level of death I should state it -still- works, just not up to my level of standards) death, I felt it was fate. And walked screaming quietly from it. It now sits on the other desk, and collects mass amounts of dust, yes, I know. Sad. But true. Though lately I hear it beckoning me and though I know I will curse it extensively if I do pick it up, because like I said, quality issues. I won’t go there again, it is not right for me.

I have another now, non-dSLR camera, it’s a (please don’t scream) point and shoot. It’s not brilliant quite yet, but it will be, it has the potential, hence the choice. My last point and shoot (pre-dSLR) was. But my heart is crying a little, because it’s not the rangefinder my heart really wants. But hey, I’m a patient woman. I waited 4 years, yes, I did say four years, for the dSLR, and look where that ended up. We had some great times, and some great photos together, but it just wasn’t a match made in heaven. I want to go back to my roots. But I know it will be another long awaited journey, as things go with me. And I will wait patiently, for I know it will come, I just don’t know when. For in the meantime, I have this brilliant little point and shoot to learn to shoot the daylights out of, and I will. Just watch for it. But anyways.

This post has come about because I hopped back into my archives to last August, and found one of the last photographs I took with my dSLR before I made the plunge and said enough I can’t take it anymore, and decided to share it.

Enjoy.

Profundity

March 3rd, 2010 · thoughts 2 · 29 views

I like, no, I love profound things. Things that move me, that shake the foundations of my very being and rock my little world. I seek them out purposefully and never know where I will find them. I do this all. the. time. in my day to day life. Sometimes I find them in art. In photography. In words. Sometimes in a film, in a drawing, in another’s suffering, joy, bliss. I find it in small simple things, or in grand large things. In things I want to reach out and participate in, but can not. In things that I want to run far away from and never hear of again.

Yes, I know, complex isn’t it?

I joke often that it’s no wonder I suffer chronic migraines. And I do this to myself on purpose, on a daily basis.

I enjoy this immense, indescribable joy when I stumble upon these without seeking them out. I wanted to write by accident but I don’t believe they come by accident. I believe that I am led to them because there is something within them that I need to know, hear, feel, see, experience (even if from a distance), there is something within them that I need.

Yea, complex. It’s my world. Perhaps my blog should be the blissful complex, not chaotic.

So, back to what started this, though I’m not sure at this point that it’s related anymore but I picked up The Time Traveler’s Wife from the library, on the simple premise that I had heard so much about the movie I wanted to know if it was really that good. Because I come from the school if the book is that good, then the movie will be okay-ish, maybe great, but I was stopped dead in my tracks for approximately 6 hours while I devoured it and good thing my children are all in school I had a free day to soak it it. I am trying to decide now if I even want to bother with the movie, because there is just no possible way it can be done good enough to suit me. Because I am a film snob. I want  grace, and talent, a good script, oh and actors who can act, and I want the movie to follow the book when it matters, and I don’t want to be disappointed. This is 2 hours of my time I am giving the creators. So, yea, like I said, I’m a film snob, I’m incredibly picky but will give almost anything a chance, but when I can pick up a book, and have it affect me like that one did, I want the movie to do so on an equal level.

The Lovely Bones, which I briefly scribbled out one small disappointing paragraph about earlier (which you can ignore) did effect me, because I read the book before the film as well. I was curious how it would be done. I don’t like my films spoiled either, but curiousity got the best of me and I watched an HBO special, and spoiled it just a little, but intrigued me enough that I knew they would do the book justice, in visual regards. The story however, well, they did, but they didn’t, in a big way.

So I’m torn. I want to talk to someone who has read The Time Traveler’s Wife, and has also seen the film, and ask them, will it ruin it. But then, it’s all subjective. They may have hated the book. It in all likelihood did not reach them like it did me, and I really can’t say why it did. It’s too much for here. But I want to know. It’s profound. On many a level. I hear the film is good, great, excellent. But then, they said Twilight was too, and it was wretched.

I also want to know, am I the only one who hunts the profound for sport?

I’ve Been Keeping a Secret.

March 3rd, 2010 · thoughts 0 · 16 views

I Have a Heart Tug that began quite sometime ago, but I really wasn’t sure what it was, as I was tangled up in the mess of trying to do what I thought I was supposed to do because I had read some words some professionals in the industry said. So instead of listening to the heart tug, I listened to them. It was a little dumb, I know.

So, after my leave of absence, I am sort of semi back, slowly trying to find a groove, to find a balance that does not ignore the heart tug, except for one thing, this heart tug is impossible. It is one of those things that requires me give me of myself that which I currently and presently can not because I am a mom, a wife, a caretaker of my own. I am, as I said to someone the other day, presently only 100% reliable to family. Part of that is due to circumstance surrounding my current living situation, my current vehicle situation (leaky brake lines on 2nd vehicle have rendered it parked permanently until it is fixed), and honestly, my family just comes first. My youngest is almost 9. For now, I need to be where I’ve been since they’ve been babies. Available at a moment’s notice, for them.

But don’t tell them this, it’s getting uncomfortable, and the heart tug is getting harder to ignore. So I’m trying to sort out a compromise within myself. Can I do this without leaving home?  Now, that link is just someone else’s heart tug advice for someone like me who hasn’t done this before. I think I can. I’m just not sure how yet. Given the circumstances of where I currently reside. If I hadn’t been so rudely yanked away from my home by Hurricane Katrina, it would be so much easier; there is where this started. So I’m thinking on my home turf, for now. We too, have these needs here, that go largely ignored. So. Yup. The cat’s out of the bag. I’m just not sure what to do now, given all the variables against my heart tug, for at least 9 more years. But I’m not sure I can bear 9 years of this.

Getting to Know You (Again)

March 3rd, 2010 · thoughts 0 · 29 views

It’s always amazing to me, how a little change of hair, can change someone.

Even little girls can come to a point where they hate their hair, and for weeks my little girl pestered me, begged me, and pleaded her case. You may think me mean for:

1) making her beg, but I really didn’t make her beg, she just chose too, it’s her personality, this was one such instance, on the floor in my room, going mom please I want it short. I was having a small panic attack. Every mom wants one of her girls to have long beautiful hair. I will never be such a mom. So. Back to my points.

2) We are the kind of family who believes in allowing our children a little room to breathe. They are allowed freedom of expression to be/find themselves. Including hair. Even when they are 8, going on 9. Her older sister, now 17, has black and red hair. Like, a red hat, and black hair, is how it looks. (I don’t want to talk about it.) So. I gave her two weeks or so, to be very sure that she wanted it short.

Hair is a funny thing. It doesn’t seem to be all that long (in this before photo), but when she finally wet it down and we sat her on the stool in the kitchen (Yes, I cut hair too.) it reached well past her shoulders and she described how she wanted it to look and I cried a little as I cut. She laughed a little at me.

She is still as beautiful as ever, and looks older. It made her look older. Which is odd. My youngest is tiny. She’s this little thing who stands a head shorter than every classmate and friend she has and now she looks older. Ok I may be being a little melodramatic here, she more than likely just looks her age. But boo hoo for me, she is my last. A strange thing has happened, she is very happy with her hair, she is as much a dork as ever, but she is also more confident in herself. She is more self assured, she is standing up for herself. She is stronger. There is a part of her that I have never met before that I am enjoying getting to know. Perhaps it is the age, perhaps it is something that happens when a girl who has been unhappy in her hair finds happiness in it.

Here are the after shots. A sneak attack on her. (After I fixed her hair the way I wanted it to be.) Enjoy.

Stop

March 2nd, 2010 · thoughts 1 · 33 views

Today we went to the car wash.

It told us to stop.

So we did. Funny, how easily we listen to simple signs.

And how often we don’t.

So often, I just want to stop all this. The blog, the tweets, all that I am terrible at, and terrible at  following through with. I have some photographs to upload, that I have taken three, four, five days to get off the memory card. I think of a lot of things, and go “Oh I should tweet that” and despite having a twitter app on my fancy schmancy phone, I don’t. Even if I am sitting at my laptop, I don’t.

I should just stop. Like the sign says.

I don’t know why I am attempting all this, again. It is, admittedly the fifth, or sixth, or tenth “re-start” for me. Part of my “wandering” as I find my way, and perhaps I have not gone about it the right way. But I never do anything the right way, it’s part of my charm, appeal, or disappeal. (Is that even a word?) Whichever you please, I never do anything the way people think things should be done. My brain just does not function in a normal pattern, and I can’t force it, no matter how many times I’ve tried. Often this works out in my favor, in this particular instance, nothing is working out. Whether I try it the way it should be done, or the way it shouldn’t be done. So I think I want to stop.

I want to, but I don’t.

So I have reached an impassé with myself, and have started to skid.

Finding a Way…

February 23rd, 2010 · thoughts 0 · 58 views

When I first found a camera, a long time ago, I did things one way. Then I read a book, and another, and many more. Then I found out that according to all the professionals and experts I was doing things wrong, and I stopped what I was doing and started trying to do things the way they said I should be doing.

I fumbled, stumbled, tripped and fell, a lot. I also learned a lot.

I found my way around my camera, and then another, and another. I sold my rangefinder film camera,  the. biggest. mistake. I. ever. made. I went digital. I went dSLR. I unwent dSLR. I want to go film again. In the meantime, I am unlearning everything I taught myself in those multitude of books, blogs and other sources I thought I had to read, the information and knowledge I thought I had to know. The stuff of the pros that I had to do if I ever wanted to “make” it. Ah, probably it is good to know what I have learned, but in the process of learning it all, I also forgot what my heart loves. I got lost in the midst of soaking up what I “had” to know, of “how” I had to shoot, of how my photographs “had” to look. I know better now.

It’s a hard battle all artists fight I think. To find the boundaries of skill and profession and still retain the originality of what makes you, you. Of that little niche you hold that makes your work stand apart, the style and artistry that when you are completed with a piece you can stand back and a little bit of you is left behind. If it is not, it is not you. It is how I feel. Perhaps it is not how others feel, but photography is art. All of it. You are capturing souls, whether it’s in nature, or humanity, or news, or sports, there is a soul on both sides of the lens, and it needs to be revealed. In capture and in essence, and in my learning adventure I left mine behind. So, I am finding out how to combine all that I learned and not lose the technical skills, but also to not let the artistic skills overbear them, which I can and often easily do.

I have a heavy background in the arts, not just photography. I also draw, and paint. It is something that I have neglected for too long. Partly due to circumstance, stubbornness, a little defiance too. One day, I might like to find a way to combine them. I know many do this now already. But also, as it is said;

9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

I think there’s a certain bliss in admitting out loud that you don’t do things the same way as everyone else.  It feels good, and I like it. I like that nothing I do looks anything like anyone else’s, no matter how hard I have tried to make it so.

(I do know, that one day soon, I would like to wake up and see a beautiful sunrise as this one was, without all the snow and frost, because after 4 months of it, it’s getting old. It’s almost March, it’s hard to believe there is still 2 feet of snow in my front yard, 6 in my back, and Easter is not so far away.)

Observing Lent

February 17th, 2010 · thoughts 0 · 54 views

I can’t remember when I started observing lent, exactly. I know it was around 5 or 6 years ago. I know the first couple of years were major, major flops. I ran with the school of Lent that pushed give up something sinful right now, right away, immediately or you will go to hell, now. It didn’t work for me, clearly. I don’t personally know anyone who it does, or has worked for. I think that sort of falls into the whole New Years’ Resolution kind of thing too, it is setup for failure. Those too, I do a little differently.

I decided this Lent that I am going to share how I do it, since I have so far for the last three years been very successful with both my resolutions and my Lent observances. Now, watch me flop, k? Because that’s how it always go.

This photo was taken with my new camera. A nice surprise not that long ago. I’m loving it. Some of you may know I was a would be photographer, a portrait photographer. -insert huge cringe with scrunched up face and all that jazz here- Last August my camera bit it. Upon observing myself, my thoughts, blogs, tweets, books, and various other stuff, I have come to realize it’s OK that it bit it. It’s good actually. It’s made me realize I really, really, really didn’t want to do that. It’s also given me all this time to help me see what was true within me when it came to my work, to sort out if it was possible (given that I have this huge family, huger obligations, and mounds of obstacles) and I know that right now it’s not, and it’s okay.

I have also come to realize, that I have sort of ‘lost it’ a little. Not only have I gone 6 months without using my camera. I went 4 of those months without taking a single picture at all. Not even with my camera phone. Now, I know some of you will say, well, a camera phone doesn’t compare. But folks, I have a -good- camera phone. I didn’t touch it. For two months after I got my upgrade. But then, the bug started pulling, I got over my grief you could say, and started to heal, and started to fuss with it, find it’s limitations, cuss it like we do, and love it like we do.

These are the candles from my son’s 12th birthday at the end of January. I took this with my camera phone, nothing done in Photoshop but a slight tweak to the contrast. Like I said, camera phones have come a long way. But, I got lucky, and I’ll admit it.

So, you’re probably wondering how this ties in to resolutions and Lent and observations and giving up something for 40 days, since I’ve gone without for 6 months. Well, it really doesn’t, but at the same time it does. Because for Lent, I observe, but I don’t give up. I change. I do something different. Every day, for 40 days. I am a person who knows my weaknesses as well as my strengths and for the past 4 years I have been on a long road of change and some of these changes have been physical changes, but many have not been. Many of these ‘resolutions’ I have made at the New Year have been ones that only my spouse and children would notice. Some, everyone around me would. It just depends.

This Lenten Season, I am going to change my photography habits, my writing habits, and my yoga habits. Three big ones. They are ones that I have been mulling over for quite some time now; one I could not change but can now, one I could but didn’t bother with, one I always excused away but ties in with parts of the last 4 years goals. Now, I have very specific things about those that I am going to focus on. Some major, some minor. I do have goals for those three things that I will carry out. When the 40 days of Lent are over, and Easter is upon, they will be habits.

I never usually speak my goals, my resolutions, my Lenten observance. In the past, if I did, for whatever reason, putting it out there seemed to set myself up for failing, and I did. Almost immediately. So 4 years ago I set my goals quietly, with myself, with my God, and set about them not telling a soul what I was doing, and I succeeded. When I decided being overweight was too much, I quietly set about losing it, and I did. When I reached my first weight goal, I quietly rejoiced. When I reached my second, I started speaking about it. This is how I have done all of it. For four years. I have not told my spouse this. I have not told anyone this. It is my system.

I am telling now, because I am on the home stretch with my three goals that I have at present. They are the end of the “big ones”. I’m smart enough to know more will come along. But for now, I’m running a smooth ship, personally, and these things that I want to do, will lead me down the road I want to run along, and will run me alongside my spouse in a pattern that will criss cross and zig zag in a way that will be comfortable for us, for our children, for our family; with glitches and bumps and mountains I am sure, because that is how life is. But I am prepared for those too.

I do this because I feel like Lent has taken on a form it was never meant to. Jesus went into the desert and deprived himself to prepare himself for what was to come, for him personally. His journey was a different one than ours. I don’t know how taking one thing away from ourselves for 40 days only to greedily suck it back up on the 41st day does anyone any good, if you are lucky enough to make it that far. He changed himself in the desert over the course of those grueling 40 days. So I observe lent as I feel he must have. Through a long process of change, that does not really end when the sunrises on 41st day, but in a way that leaves one forever changed, in a better way, in a way more prepared for the final sunrise.

Photography: Art or Industry?

February 6th, 2010 · thoughts 1 · 44 views

I stumbled via twitter across a blog a woman wrote about wedding photographers and their seemingly outrageous price packages, and after reading through (at the time) the 115 comments, I had to comment. I am not someone who typically comments on any blog. Though I read a good number of a wide variety of them, commenting isn’t something I do. While I will keep my opinions to myself here about her opinion on the subject, because it’s not why I am writing this, the comments from my fellow photographers upset me more than her post did.

I am wondering more about when photography became such an equipment driven field. When did it become about who has the best camera, the best lens, the best bag. Who started this trend? Did it start when the megapixel war began? We’ve all come to realize (or at least those of you who cared to begin with are beginning to realize) that megapixels don’t matter as much as you thought. So, to continue on, who started the equipment war. I’m not really asking. I’m just stating.

This is the relevant part of what I said, and I am fully expecting a backlash for this, but it’s ok. I can back myself up:

One point I want to bring to light that is really, really bothering me in reading over all the comments here from the other photographers who have commented is the many, many remarks about equipment, and I will probably get a lot of off screen backlash for it, but they continually mention a “pro has this much money worth of gear and this expensive brand of camera and a canon MK II this and Nikon d that and blah blah blah” and I’m sorry to all you other photographers out there who think it’s the equipment that make you the photographer you are, and the photoshopping you have to do after that makes your images pop out of the world and stand out but it is not. If your images need that much work out of camera, then you are kidding yourselves. You should NOT be spending hours upon hours in post-processing. And whoever it was that said post-processing was non-existent in darkroom days, go back to photography school and retake the film class. It is not the camera that makes the photographer, it the person that makes the photograph. The camera is just a tool, just as a paintbrush is a tool for the painter, and a pencil is for the person who draws and a voice for the singer. It is no difference. Photographers are artists, regardless of what their chosen field of photography is.

I’ve read many a story about the world’s most top renowned fashion photographer using a point and shoot. He obviously doesn’t care to lug around the most newly released DSLR Canon or Nikon has given him to test for next weeks release with a hefty price tag of $14,000, with the lens that matches the price tag. So why should you wedding photographers, or landscape photographers care, because we all know he’s more famous than you ever will be, and admit it, his shooting matter is way more beautiful too, and he needs the best gear he can get. So why doesn’t he use it if you have to?

Obviously he works in a far more controlled situation than a wedding is, and his needs are very different. But I am not a dumb woman either. I know how to kneel, how to squat, I also know how to run in to get close to my subject, so I don’t really need a huge telephoto lens. I also know how to back far away fast too to get that wide angle, so there goes that lens. Do you really need 5 of them? Do you really NEED everything you insist you do? Have you tried to push yourselves to go without all that you use as a crutch, have you tried to step outside of your gear comfort zones and limit yourselves with? I’m not suggesting shooting a wedding with a point and shoot, but how much of what you use or have is a necessity.

How often do you just go through the motions, switching this with that and just click click click. Slide this here and slide that there. Pop the lens this way or that depending on the light. How much do you actually think when you are doing what you do? Honestly. Be honest with yourselves. I think the comments on the original post here speak more loudly about what this field has become than anything else could ever say about it. It has become less an artform and more of an industry and it shouldn’t be. When the focus becomes about business, and not the art, you have lost your focus, your passion, and your work reflects that, and that is when you end up in someone’s trash bin, and not their binder.

Pass Christian Mississippi

This photograph was taken in August of 2005 in Pass Christian, Mississippi. It was shot with a Canon Powershot 3.2 mp point and shoot, in a moving vehicle doing 50mph. There was very minimal post processing. In other words, I upped the contrast, because that’s the ONLY processing I do on my photographs. I am not the person to argue how equipment matters. I have many, many more photographs taken with what many professional photographers would call “crap gear” that are on par with this photograph and above. I have sold prints, I have been hired. I have made some money doing this. (Never much mind you, but I have never really tried either.) My clients and customers know exactly how big their prints can go. They never need or want bigger than an 11×14, they are happy with that. My last camera could go bigger, but there was never a need for it. But it was still a camera you would have considered crap. It’s not the camera that makes the photographer, it’s the person holding it.

Announcement!

February 5th, 2010 · thoughts 0 · 25 views

So. I’ve wasted ridiculous amounts of time the past few days looking at a lot of stuff, a lot of twitter (which is completely unrelated but still amusing, absurd and entertaining anyways). I’ve also spent a lot of time brainstorming, creating in my mind, doing mundane things that drive me mad (slacking on them too) like laundry and such, and now I am only going to say..

There is NEW STUFF COMING.

Here, and at Chasing Cornfields will both be having new looks. (By they way, I am definitely suffering a moment of “WhatintheworldwasIthinking!”) There will be new stuff to look at here, to read, to bore yourselves to death with. (Uhm not at CC, but here, for the boredom part anyways. -laughing-)

So. My announcement of the day.

Now, off to create, complete; wash, dry and fold.

The Lovely Bones

January 17th, 2010 · thoughts 0 · 29 views

So I saw The Lovely Bones last night and after reading the books months ago I was very excited about this. The book was heart wrenching in unexpecting ways as was the film. Both are highly recommended as there were things in the book that give more character depth to the story that were left out of the movie.

« Older Entries