Posts Tagged ‘Photography’

PotD: Nervous

Posted on:

I’m not sure what this is, but I  believe it’s a brown-​​headed cow­bird.  I had some trou­ble with the bird iden­ti­fi­ca­tion guide online.  Very tiny, eas­ily star­tled bird.  Very hard to get close enough for a shot, usually.

 

Photo: Bison With Calf

Posted on:

All my spare brain power right now is going into work­ing on the out­line for a novel.  I wish I had more to say—I prob­a­bly will in a few days.  To tide you over (and keep you com­ing back for more), here’s a b-​​side photo from my Yellowstone expe­di­tion ear­lier this year.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Compositionally, this photo is okay. What it really lacks is any kind of dynamic light­ing.  There’s a sin­gle light source in this photo—an over­cast sky, which just hits every­thing with an equal light.  No shad­ows any­where, which makes for a pretty flat photo.  I have a ton of pho­tos like these where I’m happy with the com­po­si­tion, but I was just there at the wrong time of day.  Once again—the secret to good pho­tog­ra­phy is tak­ing a lot of pic­tures and throw­ing away the bad ones.

Heartwarming Comics and Photos with Excellent Timing

Posted on:

image I came across two items last week that inspired me.  We’ll start with this excel­lent comic about per­ceived truths vs the real­ity of things, “Monstrous Discrepancies” at Subnormality.

The most pop­u­lar post I’ve writ­ten on this blog was“5 Lies Writers Believe about Editors.” I wrote it while I was work­ing as the edi­tor at Escape Pod, and  in it, I wanted to point out some mis­con­cep­tions and cor­rect them, even it didn’t put us edi­tors or authors in a pos­i­tive light. 

My post worked and attracted read­ers for a sim­i­lar rea­son that I find this comic so com­pelling.  The author/​artist takes an obser­va­tion that we’ve all had in our lives at some point and turns it just so, show­ing it from a unique, but nonethe­less truth­ful way.  Again, we go back to this idea that cre­ative peo­ple need to react uniquely.  Simple human truths can be so pow­er­ful in this kind of for­mat.  We rec­og­nize the uni­ver­sal­ity of the ideas imme­di­ately.  Instead of being trite, for me, they are pro­found.  Your results my differ.

Perfect Timing

imageI don’t have a source or a credit for this pho­to­graph handy, so if you know the author of the image, please share it with me in the com­ments and I will update the post to reflect it. I’ve only clipped a small part of it for the post.  Click on the thumb­nail to be taken to the full image.

There are sev­eral really fan­tas­tic things about this clever pho­to­graph that imme­di­ately grabbed my brain, turned it upside, and shook it until the lunch money fell out of its pockets.

The com­po­si­tion is great.  The rule of thirds says  you don’t want your sub­ject cen­tered, but to pull off every­thing here, it makes sense.  And it doesn’t mat­ter that much, because you have these great guid­ing lines of the shad­ows of the legs lead­ing you into the pho­to­graph from the edges.  Plus, the dog is star­ing at the shadow, another visual indi­ca­tor that leads the eye. 

I’m also in awe of the patience and plan­ning this took.  Yes, the photo was taken with excel­lent tim­ing, but to get that tim­ing, I’m cer­tain the pho­tog­ra­pher must have taken many pho­tos to get the right one. I doubt this photo was an acci­dent, although its gen­e­sis might have been.  The pho­tog­ra­pher planned ahead for this.  Not some­thing I do often enough in my work. His or her per­se­ver­ance paid off.

Once again, we encounter some­one who has a unique way of see­ing things. To have taken this sim­ple street scene and turned into into a story—that takes unique per­spec­tive.  Are these two fated lovers who have sim­ply walked past one another with lit­tle more than a glance?   Are they an ex cou­ple pass­ing with­out acknowl­edg­ing one another, while their shad­ows an echo of the way they felt? What does it mean?  It doesn’t have to mean any­thing, but it makes me won­der and day­dream.  In this day and age, good pho­tog­ra­phy is not hard to find.  I think I take a fair share of good pho­tographs myself.  But work like this, work that demands your atten­tion for more than a second—that is some­thing to which we can aspire.  It rewards you for tak­ing the time to con­sider it.  For that, it really inspires me to do bet­ter with my visual work.

Announcing JT365

Posted on:

Today is my 32nd birthday.

I can’t say that I’m happy about it.  But I’m com­ing to terms with it.

At this point in my life, birth­days for me are a reminder of my mor­tal­ity.  They ceased being about gifts when I was in my teens.  For a while in my col­lege years, I thought my birth­day was bad luck due to a string of nasty events around my birth­day, so I went out of my way to hide it from friends well into my late 20s.  I’m past that non­sense, but I still grow melancholy.

I wanted to do so much more with my life than I have.  It feels as if I have squan­dered the last ten years, even though I know this is not so.  I have some won­der­ful things to show for my time.  Nothing of seri­ous con­se­quence in the greater world, but… I am con­tent with this.

It’s time that instead of doing things to impress other peo­ple and draw atten­tion to myself out of some mis­guided sense that it would be a way of achiev­ing a kind of immor­tal­ity, I have instead deter­mined that I will attempt to ded­i­cate my remain­ing time towards liv­ing a life that I can look back on with­out regret.  As my old boss used to say, each day is a gift, and it is up to us how we use them. I have long squan­dered them on things that I will not remem­ber when my time comes to pass.

So today, in an attempt to live each day more fully, to con­nect more with the pas­sage of time and develop more of a sense of being here in the now, I am launch­ing my 365 day pho­tog­ra­phy project.   I am tak­ing and select­ing one pho­to­graph each day for the next year. There’s noth­ing orig­i­nal about it.  Many peo­ple have done these before, but I have not.   I  At times, I will exper­i­ment with new tech­niques. Sometimes, I will prob­a­bly not be able to get out of bed, and so I will be forced to find some inter­est­ing way of cap­tur­ing the ceil­ing of my bedroom.

If you all, the audi­ence, serves a pur­pose in this project, it is to keep me hon­est.  I find that when you do some­thing like this out in the open, you feel more ded­i­cated to the task.  I let myself down often enough, but it’s a moti­va­tor to avoid let­ting oth­ers down. Ultimately, how­ever,  this is a project I do for myself.  You’re wel­come to take plea­sure from the project, and I hope you do. But I’m doing this for so many more rea­sons than usual.

The 365 project can be found here. You can fol­low it on twit­ter here.

So that’s my pri­mary goal right now, on the road to turn­ing 33.  We’ll see how it goes.

Photo: Shadow and Form

Posted on:

I really needed to go for a walk this morn­ing, so I headed over to a small nature area a mile away from my house for a walk. Everything is dead and stark, and not very pho­to­genic. However, I found these snow-​​covered river rocks and I was cap­ti­vated by their shape and the way the light defined it. Today’s photo, actu­ally taken today. I think I am going to start a 365 project on Wednesday–that’s where you take and post a photo every day. Is there inter­est in that?

Photo: Shadow and Form

Photo: Glowing Exit

Posted on:

My life has turned into one long series of argu­ments with the cat over eat­ing, inter­rupted with occa­sional bouts of work.   Prior to the week before last, any dis­cus­sion with my cat about eat­ing would be about him eat­ing too much.  Now, he’s sick with unspec­i­fied liver prob­lems, prob­lems that would cost a min­i­mum of $500 to diag­nose further,possibly more. With the vet’s agree­ment, we’ve decided to take a more con­ser­v­a­tive route with him and see what we can do with just  get­ting him stuffed with food–part of the prob­lem, he said, was that he wasn’t eating.

Now, he doesn’t throw up any­more, that’s a good sign.  But get­ting him to eat con­stantly is like argu­ing with a tod­dler. You can’t explain to him why he needs to eat.  You can keep try­ing to trick him, but he catches on and I’m run­ning out of meth­ods.  We even have this high calo­rie paste that we’re sup­posed to be able to get him to lick off his paws or what­not, but we put some of that on and he just got pissed and let it stay there until it dried up and flaked off.  Despite this, he seems to be act­ing fairly normal–certainly not act­ing as sick as he did when we took him into the vet first.  I just don’t know what to do with him.  He feels bony.  When the vet calls today, I guess I will make more arrange­ments to have him in and weighed and given fluids.

Anyway, here’s another canyon photo.  Last one, I think, until I go back some time.  Which at the rate this cat is cost­ing me money, will be 2015.

November Summit Sunrise

Posted on:

I took Thanksgiving morn­ing and went up to Vedauwoo, one of my favorite land­scapes in the area to pho­to­graph in the win­ter. I made a few nice pho­tographs, and this is one of them.

November Summit Sunrise

Now Open for Business: Clockpunk Studios

Posted on:

Clockpunk Studios is now open for busi­ness. After sev­eral weeks of fit­ting in among the rest of my projects, I’ve finally got­ten the site to the point where I feel com­fort­able in doing a “soft” launch to my read­ers and friends here at the ol’ per­sonal blog.

I still have some lit­tle things here and there to work out–like most any web­site, it’s a work in progress. If you notice some­thing that looks obvi­ously bro­ken, I hope you will please let me know. If you do, please tell me which plat­form and browser you are using so I can nar­row down the problem.

How are things dif­fer­ent from my nor­mal mode of oper­a­tion? Not that much. I have a rolodex of other free­lancers to pitch in and help out if nec­es­sary, but for the most part, Clockpunk Studios is me. I’m expand­ing my adver­tised ser­vices with this site, and I’ve tried to present it all nicely with a good portfolio.

So if you’re look­ing for a web designer, I’m avail­able at rea­son­able rates. Even if you’re not, you could help me out by blog­ging about this and link­ing to the site itself. And if you used the phrase “web­sites for authors” or “web­sites for writ­ers” as your anchor text to help me build my google juice well, I’ll love you for­ever. If you’re an exist­ing client, I’ll give you a $10 credit to your account for blog­ging about the new site. Just shoot me an email with the link.

This rep­re­sents a whole new level of ded­i­ca­tion on my part towards free­lanc­ing. It’s scary, but thrilling. I can’t wait to see where this leads.

Photo:Gaze Upon The Glory of the Sea

Posted on:

A shot of Sarah enjoy­ing the Denver Aquarium on the long week­end. It was nice to get out and look at wildlife that couldn’t run away from me!

Photo:Gaze Upon The Glory of the Sea