Blogodocious ramblings of a landscape photographer living in Maine.
Why do you take pictures?
"2-22-12 Shimmer"
Clack-click! You depress the shutter button on your camera, otherwise known as the Go Button, and light is transmitted through photons onto your sensor or into your cell phone or onto your celluloid film and you've captured a moment in time. An irascible instant forever rendered as an image born into this world. It's a crazy awesome thing! So why do you do it? Why do you take pictures?! Some do it to tell the news:
Spencer Platt
Wait a minute this one is better:
Stuart Franklin
Some do it to save the world: 
Some click the shutter because it has become an irresistible urge to produce art: 
HCB
To capture and render our surroundings that we find so overwhelmingly beautiful that perhaps it takes this 2d somewhat scientific medium to make sense of it all:
Ansel
others just to "make money money, make money money" (Snoop Dog):
Some random paparazzi shooting Paris
or to influence elections:
Bush eating a kitty
or this:
chest bump
or this:
Romney
some like to shoot sports (although that kind of falls under the category of news reportage):
American fitness instructor Richard Simmons!
or to influence elections:
American fitness instructor Richard Simmons!
to document fashion:
American fitness instructor Richard Simmons!
Allright enough Richard Simmons the American fitness instructor for now but hopefully we'll get back to him soon!
Almost everybody makes pictures of family. Family photos are an invaluable sentimental currency the value of which is appreciated most long after the image was made or especially poignantly after you realize that you lost the original digital file, or your one copy of the picture went the way of the hard drive that just died- I would venture that the most important pictures of all are family photos, like the image of the girlfriend or wife tacked up into the cockpit of the airman in those old war movies. Look at this crazy classic shot! (photographer unknown):
Or a picture of your favorite dog ever: my dog Grover!
Grover the Dog
or My Ma and Dad!:
Mom and Dad 2011 Acadia National Park, Maine
I started really making pictures back in the year 2000 after it occurred to me how much life was passing me by without any visual verification of the moments ever actually happening, so I went out and bought an 800 dollar 3 megapixel digital point-and shooter which I totally loved and used incessantly up until the point it broke in my fervor. That cheesy paperweight is still around here somewhere.. I loved every moment with that cammy, it was kind of worth every penny as an introduction to making pictures. Now 12 years later I like to make pictures in a way that I've been trying to find for the last 12 years and it's something that I hope and fully expect to love and keep yearning to achieve as much 24 years from now as 12 years ago, a lifetimes pursuit. I like to make pictures to create a work of vision that expresses my sensibilities, to make content that the world can enjoy in some vague way, to make something- instead of just being, to do my part in adding to the images that represent our life. I don't mean that to sound too superfluous or grand, but really it is an important consideration! Allright, enough of me.
Now go make some pictures! And when your wife or girlfriend or husband or boyfriend complains that you are pointing the lens at them, tell them they'll appreciate it later. Tell them to look at how happy Richard Simmons the American fitness instructor is to be photographed! Tell them that this is very important! Tell them you are doing your duty in creating pictures that will save the world! Have a good one fellas and thanks for looking- Nate.
http://www.clker.com/clipart-25219.html
Making a photo
Somes Pond Sunset
As the number one (#1) post to this "blog" (?) -(I think this would be better described as the ramblings of someone who has too much time on his hands, with a camera! Well, too much time is really an exaggeration: just enough time would be a better description perhaps), I'll talk about how I make a picture.
The first thing is something that I learned a bunch of years ago regarding calling it "Making a picture" instead of "taking a picture". The difference is intention and foresight and visualization, not that there isn't a time and a place for "taking a picture" and sure I still love to do that and try to make exercises of taking pictures for fun and off the cuff and at family gatherings, but to split hairs I guess that those intentional moments are making pictures as well- forget that, I gotta stick to the point!
The next first thing in making a picture for me is planning the shot- I want to have a vision in my mind to achieve before getting on site with my tripod. Now there's nothing like cloud chasing or driving down a country road looking for a photogenic barn to shoot, but still there you have an image in mind and you are just looking for all of the elements to line up and then you know it when you see it like Bam There It Is!! But that often burns a lot of gas, so Google Maps and satellite views are awesome for scouting, as well as Flickr and G+ image searching to get an idea of what you'll see when you get there, a satellite can't quite do that. So todays image I'll talk about was a sunset shoot of a local frozen lake about 20 minutes from me. There was a rain front that blew through early in the afternoon and was breaking in time for late afternoon light and I figured the conditions would be ripe for a dynamic sky that would reflect nicely off the standing puddles on the lake ice. So I left with enough time to get to the area about an hour before actual sundown.
The next item, we'll call this item #2 on the list is to arrive at your destination and get with the environment, I mean let the dust settle, look and listen, check for other 'togs so you don't have to have a distracting gear conversation (do that after you've got the shot), and get a feel for the picture you're going to make. Or, slam the door of your car before it even rolls to a stop, leaving the e-brake off forgetfully (it's ok the car will roll to a stop eventually somewhere (this happened to me)), grab your kit and your tripod (we are all using tripods aren't we?) and Haul-A@$ slipping and scampering to the first obvious balanced scene you can find. This is where you take the opportunity to soak your shoes and pants as well, this is called "being immersed in the experience", and rip off a few shots to at least have something before the light changes too much. Then you'll catch your breath and realize what you need to do and where you need to go to get what you came for.
#3. Make the picture. This image is the last image I made of this scene before going to location number two (#2), and as is so often the case, it is my favorite of the shoot. After making a variety of different images I settled on framing this scene to include the character of those old spruce trees and have a balance of the dynamic glowing clouds overhead, and it was at this time that the sky glow changed to a particularly dramatic red purple and orange just before the clouds finished reflecting the underglow and went dark for the night. So waiting it out was necessary to get what I wanted, in the past it would have been tempting to think that I got something good fifteen minutes earlier and try to blast down to another spot around the corner and then probably the moment would have been missed. It's really a debatable bit, move on or stay here to see if it gets better. There are weather apps like Accuweather to check the satellite image and see the moving cloud patterns and then there is the luck app- like: are you feelin lucky?! And probably more often than not I'm relying on that. Lucky socks, lucky coffee cups, lucky rituals all have a place in this equation.
#4 Make the picture yours. There's so many things that go into making an interesting photo, and probably it was a bit ambitious of me to think I could knock this out in a few paragraphs. Things like: Have a camera!, have motivation, have inspiration, have technical education and know how to use your tools, have tasty snacks and a killer web logo? That would be good too. I spend hours and hours looking at images that other people make and find things that I like and don't like about them so that becomes the language as you are what you eat and all, but with that in mind it's important to find your own vision and make images that inspire you. And this is all before the development in post process, that's another story in itself. But the most important step of all is: Go make great pictures, you'll get it if you want it!
Right then, thanks for stopping by- get out of here! -Nate.