Photographic Randomness: July 2012

Miranda 35mm camera with three lenses, Canon AE-1, and Polaroid. My three classics

I love my two 35mm cameras, I just LOOOOOVE them. And I like that as many pictures as I take, I tend to wait a while before developing the film, I love rediscovering/remembering and bringing up the memories of the thought process that went into taking a particular frame. It is like Christmas morning when I open that pack of pictures. Full disclosure, I enjoyed this feeling before, but I wasn’t able to put it into words (be it because I wasn’t aware I was doing it, or didn’t have the words for it), but I’ve been reading and watching “People Pictures” by Chris Orwig, and he explains this feeling/phenomena in a more eloquent way that I could ever do.

At the moment, I do not have access to my scanner, but believe me, the new pictures are better than this picture

Anyway, I’ll try to not rant too much today about my (lack of) mental health (that’s an uphill battle that just likes to keep getting interesting), instead I’ll rant about Flickr.

For a while now I’ve been very vocal (in my circles) about my hatred of Flickr (Flickr is dead to me), fuckers took my pictures hostage (I hate you Flickr), and unless I renew my account (Flickr, you’re an asshole), I won’t be able to see them again (I will punch Flickr in the roof of its mouth)… this was, to say the least, a bit annoying for me (“what’s that? I only have a limited upload amount per month? I can live with that… what’s this? I can’t see my old pictures?... I WILL WAIT FOR FLICKR TO TAKE HUMAN FORM AND KILL IT!!!!). That, summed to the number of firings done by Yahoo on their Flickr department (and their shitty UI, I mean, really? It is 2012 Flickr, why do you look like a geocities website? Also, your mobile site SUCKS and your momma is fat), made me very vocal against Flickr (as many of my photographer friends can attest… also, die, Flickr, die) and made me see Flickr as a big dumb dying beast (what I’m trying to say is “Fuck Flickr”), but there seems to be light at the end of the fuckery tunnel (GIVE BACK MY IMAGES, YOU ASSHATS).
As many might already know, Marissa Mayer got wooed and took over Yahoo as the new CEO, and as soon as that happened, thousands of photographers took to the internet to plead for a revamping of Flickr. I was one of them, and I will put my money where my mouth is, I will soon renew my Flickr account (if only to get my pictures back…. Fucking assholes), and I will start posting there again. I am, however, not leaving 500px, as they already rock and I will purchase an account with them too (but, as I’ve been doing now, I will only post a limited number of pictures there).

In other news, Johnny “Jet” D. just bought his first DSLR, so I will be giving him classes on shooting, lighting, and post processing… because I guess I’m the more capable of us two to give him those classes, because by no means is because I’m qualify to be teaching anything (“And here little Johnny, here’s how you fly by the sit of your pants/pull out something out of your ass”). We have a photoshoot this weekend with a model, and I’ve been creating lighting diagrams and coming with ideas for locations… but I’m so very aware that when it comes to lighting, form follows function. I can plan all I want, but chances are that I will have to tweak my plans to adjust for different environmental issues (the pain of not shooting in a controlled setting… AKA studio), but I’m pretty confident that we all be happy with the results.

I know it is a repeat, but this is still one of my favorite images of the year

OK, a lil’ bit of an unrelated rant… My cell phone carrier is charging me more to upgrade my phone (and thus, stay with them for at least another 2 years), than to terminate my contract. So I will pay less money to cancel, switch, and get a new phone, than to stay with the company I’ve been for the past 5 years… how does punishing loyalty makes any sense? I hate Apple, but I will end up with a brand new iPhone 4…. Why? Because as much as I love Android (and I do), it seems like the manufacturers are more concerned with outdoing each other than to go after the iPhone, there’s no standard, so an app that might work on my phone model, might not work on yours (and vice versa) (I’ll give you an example, I have an LG phone, I have Skype installed in it, it took Skype 1 year to release an update where it will recognize the front facing camera on my phone…. then they released a new update, and now the camera works at random intervals), until they get their shit together and standardize a little bit better (or until next time I switch carriers), I will go with Apple’s iPhone, because as much as I hate them (oh boy, do I), if I put an app on their platform, it will work as advertise… also, T-Mobile, I hold you now in the same regard as I used to hold Flickr (and again, is because customer service).

I don’t think I can be honest to myself regarding my work, I’m too close and too attached to it, so I will be sending my portfolio to a photographer I admire for a critique… I think it is time I get a honest, raw, and blunt review of my work, will post more details once I put the portfolio together and send it out for review… and once I stop crying, I will post the review.

Thank you for making it this far, will post more soon

Many things define me artistically, many more inspire me… do they define me as an individual? I do not know, I know that I am a product of many years of trial and error, big mistakes shrouded in good intentions, I’ve won… I most certainly lost… And I’ll win again… It is a cycle. At the end of the day, I just don’t want to be defined by no one else, just me and my camera/laptop/paper and pencil/guitar.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I took a short vacation and stayed on the District side, I needed to decompress and dedicate myself to my photography. The plan was to come up with a whole new portfolio (particularly for my street photography), but I came up short in that. I did however accomplish so much in other areas, it was worth it.

I’ve never really been on Alexandria, and I spent two days taking pictures of Old Town, particularly the water front, and I came up with a lot of pictures of birds… which wasn’t what I intended originally to shoot, but I am happy with the results. I also got to rent and test the 70-200 F/4 from Canon, and I got to say, I freaking love that lens, I wish it had a little more reach, but I love the results even at the far end of the zoom.

Got to reconnect with some old friends…

And made a new friend for life…

but mostly, birds…


Evil Eye FTW

This is how I feel about your "art"

Many, many thanks to Pat (for putting up with me for the better part of a week), BorrowLenses (for making lens rentals so easy and helping me when I had troubles with FedEx), Rob, OJ (for being the best old people, and friends I know).

And retaking the original idea at the beginning of the post… Do not… I repeat, DO NOT, let anybody else vision define you, you (me, we, everybody) are unique, celebrate that.