Pardon the Ego

An unexpected side effect of any milestone leap in marketing success is a not-necessarily-justified inflation of the head.

A majority of last week was spent furthering my experiment in establishing Kneejerk as a recognizable brand. Given the awful state of the weather and relative sense of lethargy, it made sense to pursue the business side of things a bit if I wasn't able to pursue the art. If my last post 7 days back didn't allude to it enough already, coming up with a logo to represent Kneejerk infused me with giddy excitement, enough to grant me the balls to take larger and larger steps into the realms of advertising lesser known to me. As a result, Kneejerk Imagery is now running as an RSS feed thanks to Feedburner, listed on a couple blog listings and, the grand mother of all marketing ventures, being advertised heavily on Facebook.

I've had a running page on Facebook since the beginning of the year to cross post blog updates to and point out little snippits of information or opinion that don't necessarily have a place on a blog (because who writes 3 word blog posts, really). The only audience it ever really managed to reach were direct relatives and friends, not a particularly difficult crowd to cater to. However, some time last month, Facebook's advertising staff was kind enough to send me a redeemable coupon with which to run a trial campaign of their advertising features. Originally this didn't strike any real interest, but in my marketing high of last week I couldn't understand why I hadn't utilized it before. Armed with a wealth of images to serve as the visuals for my advertisements, I assembled an add, set the parameters by which Facebook would target my desired audience and of course set the frequency my ad would appear based on cost-per-click and then it was bombs away. Although excited, rationally I didn't expect much. Holy hell, was I wrong. Thus far the ad has managed to resulted in a couple of "Likes", people posting about Kneejerk in their own feeds, oh, and leading to a 40,000+ strong influx of traffic I had no idea would ever wander my way.

It's flattering. It's exciting. It's a bit more than I was ready to deal with.

When your audience is small (or even reasonably sized) there are no real expectations, no deadlines or demand for content. But with 40,000+ people serving as an audience, a SILENT audience, the next course of action is terrifying vague. The initial reaction is to cater to the crowd, to ask "What can I do to hold this audience's attention". And a classic blunder is to let the vocalized demands of that audience to direct one's actions. But thus far, this crowd has been completely silent. I'm not sure if it's here to stay or if they poked in, looked around, then left. That initial impulse to play the crowd is still present, however, and has subtly influenced my shooting. Namely, because this influx of traffic has arrived after the first impression made by stylized self-portraits in questionable locales, I've been shooting more self-portraits in... questionable... locales.

I'm pretty sensitive to accusations of vanity, especially when they come from the self. Though I have a decent opinion of my appearance, my lifestyle and (of course) my work, the fear of overplaying it is ever present, and awareness of having over-hyped myself is borderline unbearable. And with that context of thought in mind, I'm wobbling wildly trying to balance the act of marketing my work without tipping over into the region of self-loathing whereby I start marketing myself. The campaign I started with last week's advertising spree has proven immensely successful but it is largely the result of randomly swinging in the dark. Which actions triggered the enormous positive response are still a mystery to me, and now that the quixotic high has run its course I'm reluctant to run the risk of taking another step in the dark.

Business is complicated.

Inundated by the stress of the monster I accidentally brewed up in my brain, this past weekend became one of relaxation by necessity. Saturday I visited my local Renaissance Faire and photographed some of the fun goings on, and Sunday... well, Sunday deserves its own post, really. Suffice to say it was an incredible day. Originally I intended to write on it today, but business stresses got the better of me.

Creating art is more way fun.

Tooling with Design

You know, I think I've been neglecting something these past few years that used to be kind of a big deal to me.

Back in Middle School, those wonderful, impressionable years we spend first figuring ourselves out, I made my first website. It was a shoddy thing, sloppily assembled with obnoxiously tiled pictures for backgrounds and awful midi music playing at all times and a color scheme that could induce spontaneous eye bleeding. Much as I knew the thing looked horrible I was all too excited to make my first embarrassing foray into the World Wide Web. But like a good little participant in the virgin world of a youth-enabled internet, I didn't just leave the site alone like a school thesis paper. No, I kept it organic, modifying it constantly, adjusting content, introducing new material, modifying colors and layout... it was like an experiment in the mass appeal of specific aesthetics. The layout would be published one day, and over that week the community of inquisitive young minds with which I associated (okay, so it turned out they were in their late teens and early twenties, thus making me the miserably nagging whelp) would comment on what worked, what didn't work, suggested changes, anything to make the site less a trigger for migraines. Over the 6 or 7 years that I kept the site running, what began as a subdued seizure of a website became something respectably designed, assembled and executed.

In the process of building that website I acquired most of my knowledge of image editing and effective layout. Some nights I would tool about in the software with no real aim in mind, simply the ultimate objective to make something new, visually stimulating, and potentially cool. I would raster type and use it to create images, or distort it to create what would look nearly like lines of The Matrix, only blue, scrolling horizontally and much more full of glow. And whenever I would come up with an image or some content that struck the right nerve, I would incorporate it in the website somehow, be it in the background, menu interfaces or simply an accent to the title banner. Put simply, my interest was in the design itself.

While in High School I had my mind set on pursuing a degree in graphic design despite a course load and structure that very much pointed in the opposite direction of artistic pursuits. Instead of taking art courses every year the pressure was upon me from the school itself to dive deeper into core studies, math, science and English. Senior year I hit a sort of rebellious point wherein I enrolled in a program that allowed me to skip half the school day assuming I attended a college course instead. With the choice once again my own, I enrolled in my first, and unfortunately only, communications and technologies course. It touched on all the essential areas, the business of creative design, its application, basic principles and techniques, the works. With very little direction or aid from the professor of the course, I excelled, enough to the point that he saw fit to pull me aside and discuss my professional entry into the field. He indulged the business aspects further than he ever did before, and unmasked the razor sharp, competitive nature of the industry. As a yet-to-be-truly-motivated-to-jump-into-a-competitive-career young adult not even yet at 18... I fled in terror from the thought of engaging myself in the graphic design industry. And instead of admitting to terror, I convinced everyone (or at least myself) that I was intent on "forging my own path" so that I could "appreciate" it more.

Ever since then I never really managed to coax myself back into design. That's okay, to some degree - the pure act of photography cropped up very quickly and became my primary pursuit. But last night I was bored. Bored and I had no images to catch up on editing save for two. I took a look at my page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kneejerk-Imagery/197795970252330 for those who didn't know) and noticed the only photos on the page itself were a crappy little banner piece and 3 cell phone snaps of the studio that could've been mine. What with Facebook's little 5-image bar at the top, it made the immediate appearance look kind of ugly, so I took it upon myself to very half-assed-ly compose some business card sized images to take the place of the ill match 5 image spread on the top of the page. So I thought briefly on what I was trying to accomplish exactly with that spread and immediately came up with 5 images on Flickr that advertised the point perfectly. But the images themselves weren't enough. No, they needed something else. In fact, the entire Kneejerk Imagery name needed something a bit more than what it had already gotten. Not more photos, it was late and I was tired. Not another blog post, after all I had nothing to write about. And it clicked - a logo!

Those photographers whose work I appreciate most, I see now that it's not just their photographs alone that makes them stand apart for me in the greater mental space. Something they've all managed to do is convert their talents into a brand. They have iconic logos, usually signatures or symbols, assorted shapes and lines that convey without a doubt that the image itself was conjured by their unique eye. And it makes perfect sense, it is a crucial element of the trifecta of marketing (which isn't really much of a trifecta, marketing successfully takes a lot of work from several directions). I have the media, the content I wish to share is available and I've steadily worked to diversify it from the simple image to varied other media. I have a theme, a general tone, mood, an intent, and although it has been recently derailed I am confident that I can get the train back on the tracks. And while I have a name that pairs beautifully with my intended tone and presented media, it has only ever met with a portion of its potential because the name was missing its simplified public face - its brand and its logo.

I will be frank, the assortment of 5 "branded" images I crafted are very shallow attempts. But the simple act of working on them reminded me of nights spent working my old website back in the far more naive school days. The knowledge I'd accrued during those years came into good use, especially for my very rusty instinct for optimal aesthetics. And I enjoyed creating them, for all the 3-5 minutes a piece they took. The real thrill was in the design of the logo, the KJ symbol. I've always been fond of the minimalist aesthetic, and took care to ensure this "sketch" kept with it. Satisfied with the logo design, it was then a matter of choosing how it should be incorporated in the images, and a partially transparent overlay of it sang wonderful notes to my appeal. It may undergo a bit of metamorphosis, but the point is I know what I want it to look like. And damn does it look good.

KJ will be my little side project for some time now. Maybe I should actually purchase a domain and try that whole website thing again.

Trouble Moving On

It's been 5 months since my accident. Well, a bit more - 5 months and maybe 4 of 5 days. I don't know, I'm too lazy to count. Anyway, 5 months. For sake of various legal matters and other headache inducing causes, I make it a point to never dive into much detail about the incident itself. Though brought up frequently, its specifics are guarded out of necessity and perhaps a bit of prudence. Despite the relative speed of my recovery, both physically and financially, there is a psychological aspect that I'm still wrestling heavily with. Health and finances are easy, they are quantitative problems with straightforward solutions. Matters of the mind are entirely different. The mind is an abstract thing by nature, and prone to self-sabotage by adjusting the focus of the dilemma when a partial solution is reached in regards to the mental problem. Put simply, I don't know if it's even within reason that I'll ever really get over what happened to my own satisfaction (which I define as living day by day without ever thinking about the incident at all).

Within the first 2, maybe even 3 months of my recovery, the focus of my mind was very different. Still in a state of mental shock, I was occasionally afraid to sleep for fear that I would not wake up the following morning. I couldn't wrap my brain around the reason that I should still be alive, after nearly 2 years of passive self-loathing and longing for an abrupt end. Two years of wishing for an instant and painless dramatic ending, that my shockingly immediate passing would see my art serve as the lasting legacy of the person I'd invented to stand in place of me in the annals of memory. Two years and my wish had been granted. I was aware of nothing, felt nothing, even now I have absolutely no memory of the event. But then I woke up. I felt stiff and tired and sore and not the same. Not the same at all. I died that day, and what was being experienced was something else, some other person, an alien and unfamiliar life wherein there was appreciation for the continued draw of breath.

That sense of duality took a long time to reconcile. Or at least it felt like a long time. And even then, it's still not entirely reconciled. My sense of time has been critically distorted since the event as well. Time only seems to make sense to me when measured from after the point of that accident, as if I was not born or did not start accruing memory and experience until that point. Everything before, the 24 years, a month and couple days before it, that's ancient history. That's Roman days, classic Greece, the days of Babylon. That was some other person who led some other life. I am just an incredibly tall and matured 5 month old. And that really is a problem. Under such a flawed line of thinking I cannot take ownership of anything achieved prior to the accident. Not ownership of accomplishments, of relationships (sparing a very select few that have been so long-term they are thankfully ingrained) or, most frustratingly, of talent.

The person prior to that accident was on the war path of self actualization. He was confident, knew exactly what he wanted and exactly how to do it and the means to acquire that goal were available. He was driven and did not tolerate standing still. He took action. And at that point just before reaching the lofty goal set before him, he achieved the glory of an artist's death - young, talented, handsome and cut down before his prime. Beautiful as any tragic story could ever be.

The person after, the phoenix re-birthed, the story yet to be written... his tragedy is built on fatigue and lost opportunity. His story is my life.

I do not feel like I am that person anymore, the tragic hero artist. I do not feel that I possess his eye, the instinct to produce art. I do not feel driven by the muse that stirred him from bed every weekend morning to venture out and produce art, the desire to share his view of the world. He died a beautifully tragic death 5 months ago and with him died all his potential. What crawled from his ashes was a husk, an all but hollow chitin shell, doomed to understand the potential stolen by circumstance.

Now, clearly, that is incredibly melodramatic and defeatist. And it's not necessarily representative of how I'm feeling at all times. But at one point throughout each and every day that is a perspective outlook I adopt and for at least a brief moment every 24 hours I feel hollow and broken and deserted by time. It is difficult anymore for me to believe I will ever again reach that idealistic and purpose driven state. What I have returned to is the passive approach to life that I spent years fighting against. The divine motivation is gone. On any given Sunday I will sooner vegetate in front of a computer and play games instead of pursuing that which still honestly satisfies me like little else. I will sooner mope and whine about being bored than actually take direct action and squash the ill feeling. I will sooner spend my time admiring and experiencing grand jealousy toward the accomplishments of others than pursue those very realistic accomplishments myself.

What I had, the person I lost, there was something bubbling inside him that reeked of absolute potential. I'm not sure I have the energy to build myself up to that point ever again. After all, it nearly killed me the first time.

Eating Pudding

This past Monday I spent the better part of 4 hours in front of my laptop trying to play a serious game of catch-up on all the photos I'd taken in the week-and-3-days prior. It's always those late night stretches in front of that digital glow that remind me why, as much as I love the process of taking a photo, I absolutely despise the post-process involved. Luckily a majority of the images were simply snaps that just needed to be re-sized, contrast boosted and maybe given the warming touch of an 81A - nothing too complicated. But that swamp of snaps stood in the way of what I really couldn't wait to get to - the crop from a recent explore.

As many times as I've ventured into "The Valley", my coverage of the area always seemed to stop on one side of the dividing river. My portfolio is full of images of the power station on the South side, but not once in a year of wandering have I managed to document the mill on the North side. This past Sunday, with the company of a new friend and photography junkie, the decrepit innards of the mill finally got their 15 minutes in front of my lens (gee, that sounds kind of pompous now that I'm re-reading it).

Needless to say it was an exciting explore. Easily my first foray into an unfamiliar, unknown location since February. Despite being a comparatively low-risk endeavor compared to other "missions", the adrenal rush of excitement I so missed welled up right away. I'm starting to wonder if perhaps the secret ingredient to a heightened state of creativity isn't the adrenaline rush itself, much as it works for athletes who pull out dramatic maneuvers in desperate moments. Much unlike my other shooting as of late, I certainly came away with more than a dozen images I saw as quality enough to merit some time in post. However, it was in post that I hit something of a brick wall of limitation.

I am happy to be shooting in JPG again... most of the time. When candidly photographing people or snap shooting an event or anything that to its core involves a more reactive method of shooting than premeditated, JPG seems to serve me just fine. Photographing what matters to me, however, the decay and peel and dirt and dust of forgotten places, despite having all the time in the world to set up, compose, frame and shoot, the JPG is not enough. Dare I say it, the GF1 spoiled me when it forced me to shoot in RAW.

Compared to the post techniques exercised by some, my own process isn't particularly heavy or involved. Each photo I carry into post sees a pretty uniform list of edits done upon it that typically doesn't run over 6 adjustment layers. The adjustments are simple and straightforward, but where the catch 22 has managed to surprise me is in how hard those adjustments punish the JPG for discarding rather specific image information. Specifically, I'm referring to color channel adjustments, especially the red channel. Given the layout of the bayer matrix generating color on the sensor, the red channel is right next to blue as being the noisiest of the bunch. This is an issue for me, because one of my crucial methods of recovering shadow detail is to tweak that channel. In RAW, there is no issue because, despite being initially concealed by the way the image was exposed, that concealed image detail can be recovered via channel mixer tweak. In JPG, however, the image information hidden in the shadows is discarded during compression to reduce file size. Thus, when attempting to recover that image detail with the channel mixer, all the JPG files give me are blotches of chroma noise. Not attractive, and not what I'm looking for at all.

So the old proverb "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" has struck again. Despite thinking I could get away with an exclusively JPG process, there are just some things that won't stand up to my abuse without being shot in RAW. For these kinds of images, however... they're worth the time in post, and therefore worth the "RAW treatment". I just need to figure out if E-P3 RAW files are supported in software, yet.

In any case, it was a great day to explore.

Accidental Fame Monster

I've posted this photo to the left before - it is the image that seems to incur the most bizarre and unexpected steady flow of high traffic. Of all my Flickr-hosted images, this one would be the Malaysian Whore. It gets around to people and places and I simply cannot fathom why. Perhaps I've just seen it so much that the original effect it had on me has dissolved? I don't know. But I do know this image has gotten to places without my knowing.

One of Flickr's nifty features is a stats screen to show view traffic of the gallery. Not being much interested in those numbers, I never really dove into it too deep, just noticed it was there. Curiosity got the better of me this weekend and I ventured to that screen to see the view traffic of the day and sure enough this image was again on top of view hits. Something I hadn't noticed before was a panel that shows image referrer's URLs to source the flow of traffic. It only seems to keep a log of traffic over "today" and "yesterday", but that was certainly enough for me to get an idea of why this image seems to engulf the numbers on the traffic counter:

• http://basedigitalphotography.com/low-key-photography-make-a-chiaroscuro-effect/
• http://www.theinspirationblog.net/showcases/dark-mysterious-20-examples-of-low-key-photography/

Unbeknownst to me, some time last year The Inspiration Blog and Base Digital Photography both produced articles on low key photography and utilized my image as a reference piece for their material. At last, the puzzle is solved!

Late as my recognition of their credited use of my image is, I am deeply flattered and thank both sites for finding my work of a high enough caliber to be paired with their writing. I do wish, however, that they'd have let me know of their use of the image, if only to extend a mutually credited thanks. Not that I'm one to complain about any kind of credited use of my images (especially when the images link directly back into my main Flickr gallery), but it would've been nice to have known the cause of this inadvertent fame monster of a piece.

Again, to the writers Lucas Cobb and "Admin", I thank you!

Jealousy is the Ultimate Flattery

A good friend and fellow photog I've followed on Flickr and lives local has just recently managed to not only publish a photo book of his work, Monodrift: Volume One, but achieve the coveted Staffer's Choice recognition for producing a photo book chock full of deliciously wonderful images. His accomplishment is one I've often hoped to achieve myself (the production of a book, anyway, not necessarily the exclusive recognition, although that would certainly be nice). I find myself in a weird place of admiration for his dedication and talent, respect for his drive to push forward with it in face of the costs associated and insane jealousy that he managed to beat me to the chase and produced a book before I could. But as another good friend always told me, jealousy is the ultimate expression of flattery to the successful. And sure enough, Jake deserves it.

Barring the jealousy that he managed to publish his favorite work in this manner first, his achievement has rather inspired me to put forth more effort in publishing my own work. Jake's Volume One is a clean, crisp display of his photographic work over the last year, sans text blurbs and explanation. Rather, he lets the images speak for themselves. It's a gorgeously arranged approach, but mine would certainly be a bit different (different strokes for different folks).

Before my accident, while in the process of acquiring my studio, I had it in mind to produce a photo book of my own, but aside from straightforward display of images I had planned on a strong literary element to pair with them. Other photo books on the topic of abandoned and decaying Western architecture have traditionally concerned themselves with building history, detailing in fine detail the progress of their function's decline into vacancy. Myself, I've never been too overly concerned with the history of the buildings I've photographed. Much like Jake, my interest is heavily geared to the aesthetic of decay. In the greater picture of photography as a hobby overall, however, my focus leans heavily on the experience behind the capture of the image. As such, my original plan back in April was to produce a photo book with short, frankly written yet eccentric and stylistic descriptions of the experience behind each image.

Like any literary material, it would take time and good editing before it ever reached a published state, and 4 months ago I was more than ready to invest that time. Lately, however, I've been very lackadaisical in my pursuit of a more polished self image as a photographer. That lethargy that plagues me is the one obstacle I have left to counter. And again, I find myself brought back to the talking points of my post-before-last where I'm finding it incredibly difficult to climb back on the horse from which I was thrown. These days, however, I'm getting much more support from key figures in my daily life which is countering that personal woe with success. At this point there is only the doing left to be done, financial and support concerns are not an issue. So frustrating that the doing has become so difficult, though.

In other news, I ordered that 45mm f/1.8 Olympus recently released. Excited about it showing up at my door and putting it to good use. Right now this whole photo book thing is dominating my thoughts, however.

Anticipation is Mounting

First off, let me apologize for the previous post - among many things it was incredibly cryptic, and especially to those who know me, when cryptic ramblings escape from mind to text it's typically a sign that I am at an emotional low. And certainly I was, but have managed to crawl my way out of the pitfall of my own making. The cause has been brought up on this blog before, I believe - I am perpetually terrified that I have lost all capability to generate momentum anything like that which I carried prior to my accident. Some... okay, let me try that again... ALL of that paranoia has to deal with the dramatic change in my relationship with certain ethanol-infused liquids of which I had the habit of partaking in frequently. For my health and for a much broader, overall well being, I have sworn off various gentlemanly named bottles, a move that has undoubtedly resulted in an overall happier mood and ability to deal with important issues, but only at the sacrifice of a great amount of my creative drive. An odd thing, though functionally stunted by the manner in which I consumed alcohol, creatively I don't think I will ever feel that inspired and driven ever again. For the greater good, however, that is something I will learn to live with, and even if I can't attain that high of creative flow, I have to believe I can work my way close to it. One more issue with the lack of booze in my veins these days is horrible lethargy. Again, something I will learn to deal with, possibly with the aid of several boots to the ass.

That depressing topic aside, I am excited! The Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens is finally starting to ship in small quantities, and finally, after paying a large bulk of bills that have plagued my account for the past 4 months, I am in a position to treat myself to the shiny new piece of glass! I've been looking forward to getting my hands on it ever since 43Rumors leaked it on the Olympus lens roadmap. A medium telephoto prime may very well be the only kind of prime lens I haven't tooled with at all, yet, and judging from the work I've seen done with fast primes in the 75-85mm range I'm certain it won't be disappointing. It would tie in very well with the work I've been doing lately (photographing people), and I sure am tired of shooting people with the wide 14mm f/2.5 I've been using almost exclusively for the last month (sure, I could just pop on a zoom, but eww, zooms). Although the 14mm has been serving me well for portraits lately, it's kind of uncomfortable for people when I get inches from their face to frame the image correctly. Luckily my "models" have all been people I know and with whom personal space is a non-issue.

More importantly, a strong portrait lens (and there should be no question that a 90mm equivalent f/1.8 lens is anything but) will be required for my planned venture into a more professional kind of portraiture. Case in point, a good friend from high school and keeper of the blog Decade Displacement and I are planning to meet up sometime soon, not just to catch up on our lives post-high school but also to brainstorm a collaborative effort in which I could photograph the material for her blog. For those who read this far without clicking the link, she's a fan of vintage style of clothing and often purchases patterns and sews her own iconic 60's fashion or sifts through antique stores, Goodwill and EBay to find shoes and other fashion accessories of the era. The opportunity for some fun creative collaboration is impossibly obvious and far too rich to ignore. Assuming we pair up in the manner I have in mind, the 45mm f/1.8 is only one step - next up I would likely be aiming to purchase a softbox for her smaller items and then the classic background and diffuser screens for clean WYSIWYG lighting. More than anything else, I'm crazy excited about working with someone else in this manner. I did it in 2008 when doing shoddy docu-drama with another good friend covering the Baltimore areas street racing underground, and that still stands as one of my most creative periods. This has the potential to shape up in exactly the same way.

Hopefully we meet up soon and material from our melded minds comes to light quickly. This weekend proves to be busy, but I'm sure we'll find some time to sit down together for a mind blowing creative discussion.