Late Winter Meadow and Trees

"Late Winter Meadow and Trees" 2012

So I updated my Lightroom to Lr4 this past week, which was a fairly traumatic and trying experience because I always tend to over think things when it comes to file management, because I've lost files before and it's ooooh sooo painful- especially when it was something important like a half an hour of my mother painting a beautiful watercolor in her garden of a Japanese iris (I'll never forgive myself for losing that!) anyways, it wasn't until after I updated my catalogs of images of the last 12 years into the new version of Lightroom that I took some time to go back over last years and the years before's's images. And I found that they were really a lot worse than I remember them! What's up with that!

Homer Simpson great disappointment

Now don't get me wrong- I still like my keepers, but the less than 100 images represented here are the best work that I could cull from about 20,000 or more that aren't here. And a lot of those other images are snapshots of family and street shots and summer fairs and friends destroying their trailers and pictures of my dogs etc etc, which are important in their own way, but the point I want to make is that I feel from looking back that I have come a long way since even last year. 

My image laboratory and my many assistants ... (actually the LHC) ((Large Hadron Collider))

But how could that be? A year ago I was going out and shooting landscapes at twilight and dawn mostly, (the so called golden hours) and carefully following weather forecasts and planning with maps, and feeling pretty good about the results. I thought that my post processing -I don't like that phrase, -I prefer: developing skills, were adequate if not good in order to develop images the way I wanted. And I was making images like this:

"Katahdin Winter and Ice" April 16, 2011

and this:

"Bass Harbor Moonlight" April 17 2011

So these last two I wanted to pick to show ya what I was doing at this time exactly a year ago. I have some wicked keepers around these times last year but not this particular week. The mountain and ice crack shot above I think I might be able to breathe some life into with the development skills that I've evolved or maybe it's just the vision that has changed in me. And then again, I'm guessing that if I reworked the Katahdin Mt. shot above, a year from now I may want to change it again. So for you new timers out there who might be reading this, that's why you shoot RAW and keep an unaltered copy of that for prosperity! And the Bass Harbor Moonlight shot above I can see has some banding problems that I think I remember being aware of at the time, and that's probably why I didn't post it to any of my photo sharing places or place it into my keepers bin, although I do kind of like the mood of the image so that my be worth a revisit.?

I don't intend to drag this diatribe out forever, so I'll start to wrap it up. 

I still always feel the need to be better, and to make better images, and I still try to learn new development skills using Lightroom as a RAW developer and Photoshop CS5 as a fine tuning tool. And I do keep considering new approaches to photography and different aspects of photographic creativity to keep the feeling fresh. And so then I've been loving going crazy lately making shaky camera exposure abstracts of the landscapes that I've shot so many times before. So my pursuit continues, like my chase for the perfect picture continues, and with that I'd hope to say that even if I were to get the ultimate-perfect-picture-ever-of-all-times!!! then I would still be out there about a week later starting all over again. Starting like from scratch hopefully, with all the zeal and what-so-for of a first time newbie finding the awesomeness of the whole thing all over again! So keep on keeping on all you do'ers of great and or about to be great things! Just don't let the looking back on how you used to suck so bad bother you too much, that's a good sign! Have a good one- Nate.

Homer Simpson Great Success!

One more:

Rift

"Rift" April 16 2012

"Impasse" Acadia National Park 2012, Nate Parker

I accidentally murdered a red squirrel yesterday driving home from a failed attempt at making pictures. And the way I feel about that pretty much sums up the way I feel about my "this week in photography". I haven't taken my kit out of the bag since last Friday when I tried to get my jammed filter adapter off one of my lenses that I screwed on in chilly temps and obviously cross threaded enough to lock it into place in a way that even Sasquatch man couldn't budge, and I really didn't want to take a picture of the maimed red squirrel, so I'll write about it instead.

Herein lies my dismotivation (if that's even a word)? Last week I talked about rediscovering the fun inherent in photography where I went out and made a bunch of crazy blurry pictures of landscapes through shaking the camera all around during the exposure, and had a blast doing that that day, and made some work that I really like and intend to do more of, but I'm finding my passion suddenly clouded by the concept of the business of photography. This last winter I finally got around to setting up this website to have my stuff properly represented with a dedicated web address and all where it lives instead of just having a Flickr page or a Facespace place, and started the never ending and arduous task of studying and learning new concepts related to SEO (search engine optimization) etc, to get the website to actually show upin searches. So with that entails work: like mind numbing key wording and filling out the metadata entries and filling out forms to get a Google Place listing, setting up the Google web master stuff and the Google Analytics stuff (which isn't as easy as making a picture lemme tell ya), trying to get back links, reading more articles on SEO strategies, etc, etc, and much like the way I feel about matting a print, this is not my forte! It's work. And, to make matters worse, once all of the above was plugged in and registered and on and on, there is the taunting graph of failure that Google Analytics provides for free! where you can check back to see how little the ripples are that I am making on the inter webs. Sheesh! Don't get me wrong- I know it's just the beginning, gotta make a ripple before it can become a wave, etc. etc.

"not really me" 

This is not inspiring motivation to use to go make new imagery! Google Analytics and creativity do not make good bedfellows. Bedfellows? Anyways,  I can't remember a class like this when I was in music school, but I think this would make good curriculum: "The transition from a passion to a business in your chosen art form". I do want to take this class.

"Antecerulean" 2012, Nate Parker

I went to Jazz school at the Berklee College of Music in Boston Ma from 1992 to 1995. I didn't graduate, but really most people don't graduate from the Berklee school, the awesome folks get hired right on, or they start their own bands, and the rest drop out and move on to photography (not really, just kidding). But I didn't go to that school to get rich and make money, seemingly in contrast to most other colleges, most of the students who go to these kinds of schools go there because of their passion to pursue something that they love and want to learn more of in a structured and serious manner. In hindsight I wish I went to a photography school, and as far as the earning potential they are probably evenly matched, but 20x20 hindsight isn't what I mean to be talking about right now, my point is: how do you reconcile making money off of something that you love doing and have a passion for, especially when you are hardly making any money off of it?!

Not mine

I didn't start making pictures to make money, a painter probably didn't start painting to make money, a musician (a real musician) didn't start playing musics to make money, likewise a ventriloquist, a marine biologist, a restauranter, a balloon animal makerist, etc. (some are more obvious than others). But the big problem always is the 5 letter word. I mean, today I would have much rather driven to a more far away place to photograph but my back-bills, bald tires, and price of gas kept me from going too far to get the pictures, of course there is always macro close-ups or still life or other that I can create in my own backyard but today an overriding sensation of being broke kept just about any inspiration from bubbling to the surface. Now this is nothing new to me, I've always been very modestly apportioned when it comes to money, and I like to think of myself as a realist and don't expect that just because I have a web site that people will be clamoring to get my autograph! It's just that damn Google Analytics graph that's getting to me. This morning I read a blog post from the photographer Guy Tal regarding exploration which touched on Edward Weston (a godfather of photography) and his finances which apparently never amounted to much (he never sold a print for more than 250 dollars and he could hardly afford his rent or medical bills and supposedly died with just a couple hundred dollars in his account), but recently some of his prints have sold for more than a million dollars a piece and a limited edition book of his work is selling for 250 dollars each, which he most likely wouldn't be able to afford-

"Pepper" 1930 Edward Weston

(my favorite Weston pic)

And not a lot of good that is doing him now, his estate maybe, but not him!

So, really money shouldn't have to be a limiting facet of an artists work, but obviously in the world that we live in: that is a fantastical nonreality.

Therefore, with that in mind I need to find a way to divorce myself from the concept of my "photography business" and my love of making pictures, I need to find a way to make the business part of it all be a hobby and enjoy doing it like the hobby part of photography that I love. Not likely! But if the business part of it pays off then the photography part of it will definitely benefit, I'll be able to go farther to make more pictures, and have better and more crisp lenses, and most importantly have more time and theoretically more inspiration to do the work, maybe even get health insurance someday!? But in all reality the world doesn't need me to do the job, there are plenty more and then some to the tenth power who will fill my shoes and do a good job at it. So who's kiddin who here, and what's the point after all>?! Forget about it, click-snap, ahhhh: that's the point! Just make pictures! Forget about "I'm goin Pro!!!" Really, just forget about it! Hang a show, make somebody happy, and hopefully make an unforgettable image, what better objective could an imagineer have. Hopefully I'll find a good picture to make before this time next week rolls around, but to tell you the truth blessed reader, if I have to wait longer, so be it, because I'm in it for the long haul Google! Hear that Google?! I'm not going to let your graph of disgrace dictate anything! Other than maybe that I need to find some more obscure yet appropriate keywords. "Fine art broke", "monochrome penniless", etc. To not belabor this self-pitying whine-fest: I'm not complaining, but I don't have to like it! Time to get to work!

And to anybody who has actually gotten to this point in the read: thanks for stopping by and may you have Great Success in whatever are your endeavors! -Nate. See ya next week.

Arbiter

"Arbiter" 2012, Nate Parker

Overture

"Overture" abstract intentional camera movement

Of course i should speak for myself, but I would offer that all serious photographers forget after a point to occasionally just have fun making pictures. That is to say, we're all guilty of taking ourselves too seriously sometimes. We get into a routine of making imagery that uses an approach that we've learned over time that yields a particular kind of result and that's when the whole thing threatens to become a "job". We look at the maps, consult The Photographers Ephemeris, set alarm clocks, and put on our fancy big-time-photographers hat and kind of do the same thing over and over again. Which is good, it's a matter of refinement, building on what we've learned and all. I heard an expression when I was in music school that a composer writes one long song in their career, one loooong song, just in different verses. Whatever that means, It's your particular voice, your work, you're the one doing the driving.

Now, not to say there isn't a real joy in going out to shoot and being in the right place at the right time and manipulating the camera and just experiencing the whole thing as it is, clicking the shutter, breathing the air, chimping at the review, patting yourself on the back, etc, but the whole point isn't to practice a regiment that will enable an amazing image, it's to "go make pictures", that's why we picked up a camera in the first place. Remember the first time you experienced seeing the beautiful bokeh that a fast lens makes, or remember the first time you stitched a panorama, or shot a good portrait, or the first time you made a good black and white conversion- that's real photography fun! After a while of gaining photography experience all these things can become passe and "old-hat", so then what do you do? You can come up with new projects to explore or just do a "photo-walk", shoot something you wouldn't ordinarily shoot, spend the day with just one lens (the 50), bring your kit to the circus and hang out with the clowns, etc etc. 

So that's what I did this morning. I didn't hang out with clowns but I went to play! There's more to it than that though, part of the inspiration came from watching a "Fro Knows Photography" video yesterday regarding focus or something or other, doesn't matter what it was, that guy is just hilarious! Anyway, while I was watching it, it occurred to me that focus and sharpness is over rated! I mean anybody and their mother can make a sharp image with todays cameras, and all the images I see on all the sharing sites like G+ and Flickr and 500px etc are sharp to the Maxx! So that suddenly became in my minds' eye at the time: sooo boring! Let's pause for another picture:

Interplay

"Interplay" abstract intentional camera movement

I've seen some great examples of this kind of abstract camera movement imagery but it never really was something that I wanted to practice much because I wanted to make technically perfect work, but you arrive at a place through the voyage it takes to get there, and I think a bit proponent of arriving at this place has been my experience using my 24mm f/3.5 Tilt-shift lens where part of the beauty of that lens is the ability to control extreme focus fall off through the tilt function, which I love to do occasionally but am well aware to not over do it. So, long story short my approach today was to use my tilty shifter in conjunction with a neutral density filter to achieve really wide apertures with a sharp plane of blurry focus, while maintaining long shutter speeds, and I was shaking the camera and moving it all over the place like a freaky person! And lemme tell ya, (whether you like these images or not), I had a Wicked blast making them! Every exposure was changing the scene in front of me in dramatic yet mostly controllable ways. Depending on the speed of panning, the blur would be more or less obvious, highlights and shadows became a primary compositional element, and everything was new all over. Every place that I had photographed so many times before had brand new compositional possibilities. Such fun! I had initially planned on perhaps blending a sharp image selectively into the blurred image through layers in Photoshop, which I still may do, but while I had it on my mind I wanted to share with you, faithful reader, my suggestion to go out and shoot just for fun every once in a while. Don't let that awesome wicked expensive black computer with the big eye ball get between you and your vision and your passion for making imagery. Remember to have fun. Right then.

Now get out of here and go make some pictures and have a wicked nice day- Nate.

Distance "Distance"