Listening to the small voice.
I guess that I’m a creature of habit, or perhaps lazy. I find that I don’t like, all that much, to go to so many different places and get many different photographs. All it does is confuse me. That is to say, I don’t know what it is that I’m trying to say when I go to a new place. Sure, it’s easy to get caught up in the grandeur of the mountains, the vast open spaces of the beach, or the mystery of a swamp, but those are the shouts. The big “Look at me voices”. Below that, there is something quiet. That’s what I seek.
It’s kind of odd. Sometimes I don’t hear that voice, even though I know that ultimately, it’s the voice that soothes. It’s the voice that makes me smile when I place my CF card into the reader and see what I got. To see if I heard. When I listen to the shouts, I usually end up with pictures that are simply ‘nice’ and have little meaning to me. The easy shots. The ones that are easy to delete.
I’ve been trying to stay away from the field across the street, but it continues to call, so I continue to go. I know that I cannot exhaust all that it has to offer to me. All I have to do is to be quiet and listen. Its gifts are endless.
Today, I discovered this little cluster of flowers. I was just out for a casual stroll through the field, 50mm lens mounted, to see what I could see. This is what I saw. These flowers were growing in an area that had been intended for a small flower bed, but has obviously not been tended to. It was overgrown with weeds and dead or dying vegetation, but these guys didn’t seem to mind.
It’s amazing how many cars go by this field, how many people walk by, or through, and how much of it gets ignored. They continue to cut the grass, yet the clover keeps right on flowering as if nothing happened. It seems as if it is hanging around waiting for me to start my book on Monday. Perhaps it is waiting. What a nice thought.
So? What will it be?
For all of my planning, I find myself somewhat in the same position at the beginning of SoFoBoMo last year … undecided on which way to go with my project. 
The huge difference between then and now is that ‘then’, I was sweating it, a bit anxious, worried that I wouldn’t be able to produce anything that I liked, etc. This year, none of those feelings are present. It’s more of a feeling of: “I’ll end up where I’m supposed to end up and everything will go exactly like it is supposed to go.”. Talk about relaxed!
I’m excited about starting. The only thing that I’m fairly sure of is that all of the photos will come from South Carolina. That’s about it. I’m still on the fence between 2 projects and a third one has bubbled up in my brain this morning having to do with the Ashely River, which could easily be incorporated into one of the other two. Who knows? I don’t. As a matter of fact, the projects have so much similarity that should I decide in a change in direction midstream, depending on which direction, it would be pretty easy. If I decided to go with “The field across the street” (working title), but then decided that I’d prefer to do the “Visual Haiku” project, it would be a simple matter to place incorporate shots of TFATS into the Visual Haiku project. Going the other way would not be so easy, to be sure. I’d have to ditch a lot of photos that didn’t have anything to do with that field.
This year will be focused a little more on placement and sequencing of the photos to tell an overall story. Scribus, my desktop publishing/bookmaker is sitting quietly on the desktop idling, waiting for the word “Go!”.
BTW: How does the image at the top appear on your monitor? On my Mac, which I have calibrated, it appears to have a nice range of tones; however, on my work monitor, it looks kind of muddy and bit too dark.
Settling in
At peace
So, here I am near the end of month 9 in Charleston, SC. I’ve gotten quite used to it, actually. The trips home are not a problem and I’m thankful that I can visit home each and every weekend. I’ve not missed a lot of basketball games because quite a few were on the weekend. I’ve hired someone to cut the grass at home because I don’t want to have to come in and do that on the weekend.
I feel that new pathways are being etched into my brain. Pathways of acceptance. Let us say that for the first trimester of this journey, there was the ache to return home. The next trimester, there was the dawning realization that perhaps it would be a little longer. At that point, I signed a 6 month lease. A little more acceptance. Now, here in the deep end of the 3rd trimester, I’m considering buying some small amounts of furniture so that I can save money on renting it. I’ve accepted a position as a full time employee, complete with benefits. I’ve finally accepted that I’m going to be here a while, perhaps, it may come to pass that my family will join me in South Carolina in a couple of years. Who knows how it will play out.
Although it is not my ideal climate, hot and humid, I’m starting to explore the area more. Yesterday evening I went to the Ashley River to look for alligators. I didn’t see any, but I did see a vulture, lots of crabs (it was low tide), and a number of small fish. I donated a bit of blood to all of the insects who decided that I was a nice buffet, and just enjoyed the evening. As I arrived, I saw the gentleman pictured above, sitting at a picnic table engrossed in some type of writing. I was going to go over and ask to take his picture, but he seemed to be very much at peace and into what he was doing, so I just found a place between the trees and plants and took a few pictures. This was my favorite. He seemed so at peace. It was my favorite picture of the evening.
I must say that I feel a lot better now that I have totally accepted my situation. I feel at ease. That tension to find a way home is no longer there. It will happen when it happens and that will be the right time. I’ve grown a lot since being here and, if I were to say that I had a bag full of insecurities, I could say that now the bag is half-full, or would that be half-empty? Anyway, I’ve done lots of work and am happy that this opportunity came my way. Life has a grand way of providing us with the things that we need for growth if we are willing to see it that way and accept the lessons.
I’m still learning …
Destination Africa
What can you say about person who encourages you to chase your dreams? Who says: What are you afraid of? Go for it! We’ll make it work! We’ll find a way! Well, I call that person, my wife. Over the many years that we’ve been together I’ve talked about traveling to Africa, ‘one day’. The other day I sent her a link to this post from David DuChemin’s web site. The post was called, Come to Africa with me. My first thought was, that’s the trip that I’ve been waiting for. What a hoot that would be! Then, the old voice kicked in: Well, it costs too much, you can do it later, blah, blah, blah.
I sent a link to my wife, she read it and said, so, how much of a deposit do you need? What’s the total cost? I told her that the price was in Canadian Dollars, $4650, and I wasn’t sure how much it was in USD. It turns out to be $3829 USD. Now, this is a great price because it includes everything except airfare. I mean, hotel, transportation, fees, food, safari outings, guides, etc. All told, the trip is from January 9 – 20, but things really start on the 11th, as the first 2 days are set aside from travel. It’s about 26 hours to get from Charlotte.
I’d have to go Charlotte, NC -> Atlanta, GA -> Amsterdam, Netherlands -> Nairobi, Kenya, total flight time, 22 hours, 30 minutes. By far my longest flight EVER, by about 12 hours. As it is going to be a long way, for just a week, I was wondering what other trouble I could get into, perhaps staying over a few extra days, at the end, in Amsterdam? Do any of you live there? Want me to drop by? Sorry, I don’t know my European geography at all!
If it hasn’t sold out already, I’ll be there. I have no idea about traveling such distances with my gear and keeping it safe. I guess that I’ll have to depend on David to answer those questions. I’m quite excited about this trip of a lifetime.
Vision-driven photography.
The starting line for SoFoBoMo is nearly upon us. When it was announced with a May 1 start date, some months ago, I thought that that was a long way off. Now, it seems very near. 8 days. I find myself making more frequent trips to David DuChemin’s website, Pixelated Image, reading the articles that he has written, and thinking about my own photographic vision.
I can say, with a great deal of honesty, that I’ve never been taken with any particular photographer. That is, I’ve admired the works of others such as Alain Briot, Moose Peterson, Joe McNally, Freeman Patterson and, of course, Ansel Adams; however, I don’t own a single print from any of these artists. David’s work is different, or perhaps it is his writing. I feel that he is writing from the soul and it resonates with me, seriously.
He talks almost exclusively about vision. Vision driven photography; Vision-driven workflow, etc. It’s an idea that I’d never really considered before, but it makes a great deal of sense to me. His vision driven photography works a bit like this:
- Decide what it is that you want to say. Perhaps you’ve received it as an assignment from a client, or made it up yourself.
- Create a possible shot list that will help to realize this vision.
- Choose the tools (camera, lenses, filters, flashes, etc) that will help you to attain this vision.
- Scout the location, if possible, looking at light, angles, etc. Again, with your vision in mind. Do you need to have an overall warm feel, cool, bright, subdued, glowing, etc? What are you trying to say with this body of work?
- After you’ve taken the shots, continue with your vision in Lightroom or Photoshop all the way through post processing.
This certainly has given me lots of thought cycles about what it is that I want to say during my SoFoBoMo project. I think that I need to go sit in my field and ponder it. I have a vague idea, but not a clear vision of it. After reading his articles, I want to get a clear vision of what I want to say before I actually start to say it, which may cause a slight delay in my start date … which is what the fuzzy month allows, anyway. Having this vision ahead of time will make things easier, more cohesive, I think.
Perhaps this sounds like I’m over complicating things and taking this too seriously. I don’t think so. I think that it is just the first brick in a path that I wish to continue to walk upon. Perhaps this is my first step in my journey of 1000 miles.
Adobe PS CS4 cross-platform upgrade
A friend from across the street
I’ve heard negative comments about Adobe’s support before, but on this, I’ll have to give them kudos. I just got the Mac version of Photoshop CS4 yesterday (Monday). Adobe were very responsive. I called on Thursday, asked for the cross platform upgrade, they gave me a link to the Letter of Software Destruction (LOD), told me to sign it, add my case number, and e-mail, fax, or mail it back to them. They went ahead and charged my card but were sure to tell me that they would NOT send the software until they had received my LOD.
As I don’t have a printer or scanner here in South Carolina, I waited until I got home on Saturday to send them the LOD via e-mail. On Monday, when I got back to my house in the evening, there was a UPS box on the front porch. No way could that be my CS4, I thought. I didn’t send them the LOD until Saturday morning. But, lo and behold, it was right there. Inside, the packaging slip said that they had sent it on Friday, the day after I talked to them. It shipped from Georgia, so they must have sent it out right away. They had even asked if I wanted express shipping, for and extra $15. I told them no. I’m glad that I didn’t! It couldn’t have gotten there any faster!
Anyway, now I have CS4.
Are there any tips that you’d like to share with me, as far as new features that I’ve just “got” to learn?
I know that there is some new black & white layer thingamajig, but I’m actually getting quite used to Lightroom’s tools.
What happened to integrity?
I remember standing in Wal-mart one day and hearing some people complain to the person in the photo department about not being able to make a scan and print of a photo that they had. The photo was clearly stamped, on the back, with some photographer’s name or studio. In a way, I can understand this person’s frustration because they might not understand that when they bought this photo that they only bought ‘this’ photo and it is not theirs to do with it whatever they please, as in making copies for friends, family, etc.
However, there are numerous commercials shown on television and before movies about piracy. Yet, when I speak to most people, they see nothing wrong with it or give justification as to why it is OK for them to download music, videos, complete movies, etc. Recently, someone, knowing that I am into photography, offered me a complete software suite worth about $2,500 for FREE. Yes. Free! Well, it was a cracked version of some software that I could find useful, but I turned it down. He couldn’t understand why. I told him because it is stealing just the same as it would be if I walked into a store and picked up something of the shelf and took it. He told me that I was old-fashioned and that ‘everybody does it’. I certainly hope not. After all, if people make it and hackers crack it and give it away for free, it gets pretty difficult to make a living!
I just received my cross-platform upgrade to Photoshop CS4 for Mac. It feels good installing legitimate software! I was offered this, as a cracked version, as well, but chose to decline.
I don’t let Tony use peer-to-peer software on our computers at home. He told that his friends do it. I told him that I’d rather give him a few bucks to buy legit music so that the entertainers can keep making music!
Anyway, not to judge anyone. I just wondered what has happened to integrity and when did it become acceptable to steal whenever you felt like it?