"The Gap"

This is actually a few years old, but it's been making the rounds amongst the photography blogs I follow. And I love it. I transcribed it and tucked the words away, and whenever I would pull it back up and read it, it's inspired me to keep on, particularly as it relates to how I think of doing photography:

"You gotta know it's totally normal. 

The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, every month, you know that you're going to finish one story. 

It's only by actually going through a volume of work that you're actually going to catch up and close that gap, and the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while. It's going to take you a while, it's normal to take a while, and you just have to fight your way through that."

And yeah, I know that this is basically Gladwell minus the pop science. But I do believe that practice is the best way to improvement and "success" (in quotations, because it depends on how you define it). It's about practice. (No really, practice, Allen Iverson!)

Sharon says I'm too hard on myself. In many ways she's right, because I am, about many aspects of my life. But she also says that about the way I judge my photography output. Perhaps I'm harsh; but I know what I like, and I know when I've reviewed photos that I took and realized that none of them are quite to my liking or have fallen short, as Ira says in the video.

But this is a reminder not to defeat myself just because I haven't reached a point where I'm "satisfied" or certain that my work matches my ambitions (and it hasn't; not by a long shot). I really appreciate when people tell me they think a photo I took is great. But I also know I'm working towards something. I don't have so many hours a day to devote to this, but it's something I've identified to myself as a passion, and it's something for which I have ambitions for myself. I'm just working my way through The Gap, as Ira calls it.

Come join me in The Gap?

2013 Project 52 Review

[In which I talk a ton about myself. You've been warned.]

I completed my 2013 Project 52 on December 30, when I snapped the last photo entitled, "Man on Steel." Or maybe I completed it when I posted the photo to the blog on January 1. Either way, by that date I had taken and shared my 52nd photo and 45th accompanying blog post describing the photo and thought process. Doing this project has resulted in something of a personal time capsule for 2013, which is both unique and memorable for me. I'm truly surprised and also quite proud to have completed the Project, as it had bested me when I attempted it a few years ago.

I've now had a month since the last selected photo and blog post for reflection on the Project as a whole and the photos as individual images, which has produced a number of observations (self evaluations) and a few ideas for what to pursue going forward.

==

The Helsinki Bus Station Theory

I feel like I have heard the story linked here floating around the Internet for the past few years, but this is the earliest mention I can find on The Goog. It offers an interesting explanation for people's guiding philosophy on personal development.

The short version: if you keep taking a bus out from the station only to return to the station, no matter how many different directions you go, you'll still wind up back at the bus station. If you take the bus out only a few stops each time, you'll be going on routes shared by other buses, too. If you want to get where you're going, or if you want to get somewhere interesting, eventually you'll need to hop on a bus and STAY on the bus til it breaks from the pack and takes you far from the station to more interesting locales.

I've seen photography blogs pick this up as an analogy for finding your own style and determining what kind of photography you do, a decision with far reaching effects on gear, travel and activities, and how you spend your time, to name a few big things. And eventually I plan to apply this and pick the right niche for myself, be it landscape or sports or something else. Right now, I think it's still too early while I'm still learning basics, or something.

Another broader application of this idea has parallels into my life in other ways, I'll have to admit. My personality (Sharon can readily attest) and philosophy (stated or unconscious) is to think long and hard and consider every possible outcome and contingency before making a decision; this may be useful for certain life decisions (and even then it has its limitations and shortcomings), but when universally applied and reaches something like, "Where do we go to dinner?" it becomes a handicap (an extreme and somewhat silly example, but... well, it happens).

But it also mirrors some of my personal development that I attribute to being an offshoot of my upbringing as a "well-rounded" high school, the ideal college-bait, wherein the participation in a large range of activities cultivated in me the ability to become the classic jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none; I'm skirting the larger college admissions issues of the day here, to say this: wouldn't it make you a more interesting person to have left the station and have experienced the outer reaches? If all you know is the area around the station, then what of the city have you really experienced? What can you then relate to others about your experience of the city that isn't overrun by or entirely common to others? Or "touristy-but-not-necessarily-authentic"?

These are thoughts I wish I'd had earlier in my life. Today I feel like I'm either riding back to the station or staring up at the route map in the station, plotting my next moves.

Talking [Photos] Shop

Forgive me while I indulge further in thinking aloud about photography techno babble. (If this ain't your thing, won't you skip all the techno babble and have a look at my vacation photos? Barcelona here and everywhere else here. "Keepers" on Flickr.)

Last year we were fortunate enough also to take a long vacation; I brought my camera along and took photos enthusiastically only to be sorely disappointed by the output upon returning home (I had left an incorrect setting on the camera for the whole trip that ruined nearly all of the photos). A year later, we return from a similarly long vacation with much happier result, photographically.

We rode camels, you guys. Somehow this photo hadn't made it into any of the previous posts?

I took some 2,086 photos during our trip. As the kids say, they weren't all winners, naturally. It took me the better part of two weeks to process them all and conduct the tiring process of whittling down and separating the "keepers" from the chaff. Sharon has watched askance at times at my trigger- (or shutter-) happy method, but I prefer to take as many of what I think are my "best efforts" and then weed through them afterward (I am not so fortunate as she and others blessed with true raw talent at recognizing and framing up a good shot); I like to think my practices are at least nominally evolved over the maligned "pray and spray" method, though. Ideally I'll continue to hone my eyes for creativity and composition-recognition so that I won't have to wade through so many pictures. But until then...

A Cappella + Photos

I pretended to be a concert photographer this past weekend at the Harmony Sweepstakes A Cappella Festival New York Regional competition. It was a night of fantastic a cappella and college nostalgia... and a new experience practicing photography in a much different setting than I've ever done.

http://flic.kr/p/bCUGek

http://flic.kr/p/bpZLpC

I used my 50-150mm f/2.8 lens for the whole night, and it was really one of the first things I've done exclusively with this lens. I usually walk around with my 35mm f/1.8 stuck to my camera, so much so that I had really spent almost no time with the telezoom. After shooting this event, it's clear I should use the lens more- I like it a lot and I'm glad I got it.

Here's a link to the Flickr set.

*Edit: Apparently, the festival organizer has sent out my Flickr link to the participants and they to their fans. My Photostream has exploded with views!

That's a lot of pictures

I checked my shutter actuations on my Nikon D40 today. When I got it (used) back in February of last year, there were 12,572 actuations on it. I have since mashed the shutter some 6,200 times (!).

9 February 2011 - Cuteness overload

I've learned a few things since going DSLR, and I keep learning. It comes in waves of mini-epiphanies.

2 April 2011 - One of my favorite shots of the pond in Central Park

I had been reluctant and/or afraid of using manual exposure on the camera, basically hiding behind the Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority modes for an entire year before I had a sudden inspiration into how the light meter on the camera worked; since then, I've gone manual exposure and haven't looked back.

3 March 2012 - Stone crab claws at Chelsea Market

As I've mentioned, I had been loathe to shoot RAW largely due to the lack of proper software. I'm still trying to learn post-processing in Lightroom. I have a kind of workflow going, though it's entirely uninformed and disorganized; I am still on the hunt for information on just how one goes about fixing up their images.

10 March 2012 - Members of the Polish a cappella group Audiofeels - a preview of an upcoming post

A large stone still unturned is the elusive "artistic eye" that I keep hoping to develop. I still feel like I struggle with composition of my photos; to a small degree, the three autofocus points offered by the D40 make for a confusing time trying both to compose and to focus properly. I still don't quite understand how the autofocus really works, I think; all I understand is whether something is in focus or not, but I can't figure out how my camera gets to that point. It is a puzzle that my brain has not yet fully synthesized. Until then I will keep plugging away while expectantly awaiting the next revelational dispatches.

Terminal/Thoroughfares

I recently picked up a copy of Adobe Lightroom 3! I have, til now, been reticent to "shoot RAW", as the kids say, since I didn't have any photo editing software that could handle NEFs/Nikon RAW files, so all this time I've been shooting JPEG (also, a little proselytizing from Ken Rockwell had been swaying me for a while. But no more!). I'm really excited to learn how to use this tool and to see how I can expand my knowledge and abilities with it. There's another post forthcoming about how it (LR3, or the ability to edit RAW) has saved an entire, important shoot - Sharon's med school graduation. But for now, more New York pictures! 

I took my camera with me to work last week and made the short walk over to Grand Central Station. It turns out that it was a bit darker inside the Main Terminal than I'd anticipated, so it made for some slowish shuttered handheld shots; I'll have to remember to bring a tripod next time I go. I have been playing around with settings in Lightroom, and I was happy with how this one turned out. Still learning exactly what all the settings/controls are, but this is a start.

I've started taking shots of the subway stops; I may make a habit or a thing out of this, because I've enjoyed  both the shots of people looking for a train to show up and the strong lines and curves of the tracks. The first photo was from a RAW file edited in Lightroom; the second was from a JPG edited in Lightroom. 

I don't actually know if Sharon or I snapped this shot in the southeast corner of Central Park. It was a cold, windy day, and we had walked all the way from 96th Street on the Upper West Side down to the opposite corner, and I like the way the road opens up. I don't know if I can take credit for the composition, but I like it.

Sports Photography

The Roll Bama Roll blog (also of SB Nation) posted this video ostensibly for the front-and-center placement of my beloved Crimson Tide football team winning the BCS Championship Game. It was produced by the FStoppers blog and featured interviews of the Sports Illustrated staff photographers discussing their craft and the experience of shooting a big game. Highly recommended, not just because it combines two loves of mine, but because it really gives a look into the world of the sports photographer (the sixteen-year-old in me is saying "cooool!"):

Fstoppers Original: How Sports Illustrated Photographers Shoot Football from FStoppers on Vimeo.