Remembering Good Times

Parked on an ideal overlook, nothing but the best company to indulge. Shot on the Olympus E-P3 paired with the M. Zuiko 12mm f/2.0, f/3.5 at 60" and ISO 200. Simpler times, simpler tools, easier focus.

Spent last night talking with a very close, very dear, friend who I haven't seen much of in the past couple years on account of his relocation to majestic (compared to the East Coast) Colorado. Ted. It's always a pleasure to engage him in conversation again, even though I wind up being a verbally befuddled mess with him over text messages. My mental agency inevitably regresses to my impressionable and scatterbrained early 20's whenever I engage with him, like a time capsule of developmental personality traits opened whenever we talk.

Hunting for things to write about today, I dove into the storied annals of my Flickr camera roll to get an idea of just what I'd been up to in past Octobers. Cruising the time wave back to 2012, I was pleasantly reminded of a damn fantastic trip he and I took down to Shenandoah National Park. Seems like I return there with some regularity anymore, deep down knowing that it's essentially a desperate reach to re-live the emotional bonds and states of mind discovered in those early, formative trips into the mountains with Ted.

I can't help but feeling, looking over those old photos, that I had a better sense of direction in those days. Suppose that's colored by the cognitive rose colored glasses of memory and nostalgia, but speaking strictly from the soberingly quantifiable analysis of my photos at the time, I was doing something different and can't for the life of me figure out how I ever had things so "figured out".

Rocks overlooking Shenandoah Valley proper. Shot on the Olympus E-P3 paired with the M. Zuiko 12mm f/2.0, f/4.0 at 60" and ISO 200. I am unyieldingly reminded of my oft overlooked passion for the square.

Frequently in our conversations, Ted remarks that he's never known someone so unyieldingly hard working as myself. I'm sure he means that statement with only the best intentions and encouragement, but particularly after hearing (reading) it last night, I couldn't help but incorporate the statement as a strong criticism of my unrelenting "battle rhythm" (damn corporate culture for coining this business lingo). He's certainly not the first person to indicate bewilderment that I manage to find time to breathe, but it's also not as poignant coming from anyone else. Ted happily confesses his experiences since moving out West have fostered a more hedonist (his words!) lifestyle. Meanwhile, I've doubled down on photography as my sole conduit of impact, sole hobby, the only thing from which to extract pleasure (and even then, the well is dry at times). Today, photography is integral, and I am incapable of imagining a version of myself not wholly driven by the pursuit of the image. It makes me wonder who I was, from Ted's perspective, before slowly narrowing my war path. I can't even turn my head enough to see where I came from anymore.

Sometimes the mountains feel alone, no matter who or what your company. Shot on the Olympus E-P3 paired with the M. Zuiko 12mm f/2.0, shot at f/2.0 and 1.3", ISO 200.

I'm working on plans to fly out and visit Ted next month. Of course there's lots of crap to deal with at the onset of the new month, but it's a trip that needs to happen. Basic needs for a vacation of some sort aside, time with him helps me refocus, remember who I am (which sounds stupidly cliche, but applies quite literally). It is entirely possible I would distill into a logical automaton if not for such critical influences snapping my attention back to the disorganized, frantic beauty of human impulse, intuition, and glorious, unbridled passion.

Getting Back to Normal

Possibly my favorite self-portrait. Olympus OMD E-M1 paired with the M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8.

With the gallery finally closed and the remaining pieces either being sold off quietly in individual sales or donated to a variety of repeat clients as pleasant "thank yous", photo-life is slowly resuming the familiar cadence I'm accustomed to. For its part, and despite being a considerable failure from the standpoint of quantifiable metrics, the gallery left an impression of success in terms of what I aimed to accomplish. From a direct cost perspective, I broke even, but more importantly I engaged face-to-face with a wide variety of people both in and out of the Baltimore Art Scene, ideally to the effect of lifting me from the shadows of The Unknown and constructing an identifiable namesake.

On the less glamorous side of that experiential story, my car was broken into the Wednesday preceding closing ceremonies and some lucky fellow made off with my "working bag" chock full of expensive goodies like the M. Zuiko 7-14mm f/2.8 and 40-150mm f/2.8, tripod, 10-stop ND filters, a whole assortment of things. Filed a police report (of course) but don't expect it to go anywhere. Insurance, however, did its job in supporting me financially through a catastrophic value loss, thus making such an unfortunate event less... well, catastrophic. My friends all came through in support as well, Rob going as far as to lend me his own copy of the 7-14mm f/2.8 and tripod for use in working shoots. In a neat sort of side deal, he had me design a tattoo for him, which saved him in the triple-digits on getting inked at the studio, paying me back with his little-used M. Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 macro lens which I can easily identify as being superior to the 40-150mm f/2.8 in photographing food. Somehow along the timeline of the week or two post-gallery, we apparently traded cameras, with Rob now wielding an EP5 (which he very much enjoys) and my own wheelhouse is now populated by twin EM1s. Weird how an otherwise ugly experience played out to the positive with time, patience, and stubborn refusal to panic. Certainly inspires appreciation for the support structure around me I don't always have awareness enough to acknowledge.

Contract shoots are flooding in once again, a trend I should be used to after 5 years of business data indicating Winter is (inexplicably) the busy season for real estate. Restaurant shoots are also crowding the calendar quickly, or at least the ones willing and able to get back to me with scheduling (still a deplorably low response rate, but getting better). But moving away from photography-as-work, I spent this past Saturday photographing in classic knee-jerk fashion out and about for Open Door Baltimore, the event Rob and I first became acquainted 2 years ago. And it was a fun afternoon once again, with some neat guided tours of otherwise inaccessible spaces, and lots of street shooting as we wandered from place to place throughout the day. Personally liberating.

The year is closing quickly, but that is no indication that things will slow down in the span of the next 2 months (quite the opposite). I believe one of my goals for the end of the year was to publish a proper portfolio website, which I am at least on the right track to complete, simply requiring a free afternoon to deal with the more mechanical aspects of web publishing. In general, however, I'd like to spend the next couple months publishing more substantive material on this forum when and where possible. Seems to be another quantified trend, my publishing schedule. Always plenty of time to ruminate when it's cold outside and the sun sets at 4:00PM.

At least lazing about with a laptop on the couch on Winter evenings I have bunny friends to keep me warm.

Figuring Out This Headspace

Olympus OMD E-M1 with M. Zuiko 7-14mm f/2.8, 25" x 9 exposures at f/5.6 and ISO 200, composited.

I haven't been in the best head space for a long time, barring periodic breaks through suffocating mental clouds. Last month may very well have been the head of that storm. It's hard to want to engage anyone, anything. A lucrative month from the business perspective, sure, but weighted heavier toward the end of creative suicide than I've ever permitted before. Frankly, I feel prepared to let this business I've built atrophy, wither, and die. Time always has a knack for wearing down the glossy finish on new and interesting things, and for things as sterile and calculated as business, even a new coat of gloss doesn't hide the marring of the timeworn. Patina is strictly reserved for those things crafted with passion, the artful parts that oft look awkward next to the dispassion of genderless business.

Yesterday's quiet scream of a rant on GAS is indicative of this conflict of methodical logic and abstract inspiration. Of course one's tool don't matter assuming they are equally capable of producing the same outcome. Some tools, however, inspire the user to use them, and that's the point of a finely crafted tool. That is why I am in this ongoing phase, perpetually seeking a new camera. I don't like my tools, and I said as much not even a year ago. No matter how well they work, no matter how intimately familiar I am with their operation and nuances, I do not like my tools, and this will not change.

The business is battle worn, its gloss roughed and hazy as if by sandpaper, because I allowed it to accept other people's definition of what a photography business should be. When this experiment began, it was off a lucky break earned because my passion for interior stills photography was recognized. I've since let my "brand" encompass the greater breadth of the expected, the cliche, realms of weddings and maternity and a number of other categories I would struggle to exhibit less enthusiasm for. Sometimes those clients are fun, engaged, and I genuinely enjoy working with them. But that interpersonal amicability is not sufficient to endure work seemingly engineered to suck the very passion from your bones. Weddings in particular. They pay well, and my business income on "wedding months" is markedly higher, every time. And it is a compromise of my business integrity and respect of self every single time I accept a wedding job not because I'm enthusiastic about the work but because the money is good. It is a garbage way to operate, and it must stop if my brand of photography is to retain any integrity at all.

At least I recognize my mistake, why this year was marked by a sense of creative death. I knew my solution a year ago, knew what I wanted to do, the creative process that made sense and I was inspired to adopt. Before the PEN-F was even announced, I knew the conceptual handling of the Fuji X100T made the most sense to me, and I was ready to pick up a Dell Venue 8 7000, and mentally the gears were wound and ready to attack photography from a purely minimal, mobile platform. Travel light, focus on the experiential, and photograph candidly, processing and posting in the intermittent downtime that goes hand in hand with relaxed travel (or, hell, even sitting on my couch back home, since I despise sitting at my office computer, and will never not despise sitting at my office computer, ever). I knew exactly where my muse was leading me and I didn't move forward for sake of practicality and focusing on business investment, resulting in making no investments in the business this past year and feeling completely miserable about personal photography work. And it's too late to hop on that ship now, the X100T is nearing replacement with the newest X-Trans sensor (worth waiting for) and the Venue 8 7000 fell out of production earlier this year. At best I can wait and see if succeeding product release coincide next year, at which point I don't even know what my muse will be doing. It's been so long since I've seen inspiration in anything I could be staring my muse in the eyes and be incapable of recognizing it.

My most current new concept of "perfect" system is theoretical and insane. Fujifilm is digging into a place that is pulling my heartstrings taught. The GFX 50S is exactly what I want in a system designed for deliberate and calculated photography work. Paired with the proposed 23mm f/4, it would be the thing to lift my interior work to the next level by facet of reducing perspective distortions while still portraying an extremely wide scene, enabling a "look" you just can't get on smaller formats. And, honestly, that's about it with that system. It could be a fixed lens medium format system in that configuration and I'd be just as thrilled to pick it up (of course that is far too niche a system to ever make sense from a sales standpoint). The counterpoint to that medium format (baby) monster would be the theoretical X100F(?), with the same 23mm focal length lens, but producing a 35mm perspective under the constraints of the smaller format. Toss in a new tripod (my MeFoto Globetrotter is battle worn these days) and I feel remarkably comfortable with this proposed minimalist gear set. At the very least, I've gotten much more comfortable editing images on my phone, negating the perceptual need (want?) last year of the Venue 8 7000 tablet (and, of course, that would really only be for processing X100 shots... medium format photography would warrant desktop processing, and I'd do it gladly). But that's it, that's the sort of minimal disparity I feel compelled by in this moment, in this current market landscape, and I'm confident I could make stellar images with those tools genuinely exhibiting a different structure than what I've produced the last 6 years with Micro Four-Thirds imagers (not that they're bad or subpar, just that I've mastered them and am ready to move on to the next thing). Also important is the limitation of work potential with such a pared down system... I will not engage in weddings-as-work with such a system, thus negating any impulse to say "Yes" to such proposals under such a lack of technical capability. Back to basics. Back to what I know. Back to what I want to shoot, with unwavering focus.

This year hasn't been one of investment, but one of saving, of hoarding. Arguably, I'm in as good a spot as ever to hemorrhage business funds in the acquisition of such a different system. While I want to say I would hang onto the Micro Four-Thirds kit... I'm not sure. A strong part of me wants to see it vanish to allay any temptation to return to it, but another remembers selling off the old Nikon gear set so many years ago and rather regretting the choice. Speaking of the old Nikon gear, I think I'm seeing a pattern in my impulse to transition systems... and every 6 years doesn't seem so bad, really.

Tonight I wrap up the last of this season's wedding photos, forward them off and never speak of them again. Friday night my gallery is closing with a bang, party atmosphere encouraged. My head space is stable for the moment. Remind me to never again give merit to thoughts of practicality... there is no truer counter to progress and personal growth than a practical approach.

GAS is the Stupidest Thing

Walking Baltimore, on the way to some quick pizza before staffing the gallery. Olympus OMD E-M1 with the M. Zuiko 17mm f/1.8, processed (puh) in Instagram for some quick black & white hazing.

I've been experiencing bad GAS today and it's highlighting obvious elements of habit you'd think more of us would've figured out by now.

For the first month all year, I'm in a financially superfluous spot and in the position to invest in myself (through gear) and perhaps introduce new capabilities (through gear) to my wheelhouse. Lots of new stuff was announced over Photokina, but what's the point in pre-ordering something now when it's still months out from delivery. I quietly gushed over the Pen-F about a year ago, and the damn thing is on sale right now. At a similar price point, the Fuji X100T has long kept me captive with curiosity, but with the X100F still expected next year, why invest in old tech now with new tech around the corner? Or skip the waiting and just grab an X-PRO2 and Fujinon 23mm f/2.0 WR, get the advantages now and have an upgrade path for later.

All of these ideas are completely goddamn stupid.

Why in the flying f*** am I gushing over things I don't have for no reason other than the fact that I don't have them? Realistically, they provide no augmented capabilities given my standing equipment set with the E-M1, trio of PRO zooms, the f/1.2 Nocticron, and every stellar tiny prime lens Olympus has pumped out over the last 6 years. What is the freaking point?

I know I bitched about this last year. And probably the year before that, too. It's a stupid seasonal impulse to whine about wanting something transformative as an influence, but looking for it in all the wrong places. I know what images I want to be making, and I know I am capable of making them right here, right now. What benefit possibly be gleaned from throwing new variables into the mix? Am I, subconsciously, so afraid to simply go forth and produce art that I am compelled to complicate matters so as to negate the flawlessness of their execution? Choice Paralysis is already crippling enough when one is in the market to invest in a camera from the start, introducing choice paralysis as a facet of one's actual daily workflow is completely idiotic.

Frankly, I screwed up my mental approach to workflows when I picked up the PRO zooms. Those optics are absolutely incredible, but with a mess of tiny primes around, I have difficulty rationalizing a parity of systems. I'm frequently missing the E-P3 days, when my bag was simple and straightforward, the PEN, a 12mm f/2, 17mm f/1.8 and 45mm f/1.8. Minimal and perfect. It's much the same with the zooms, but with the added complication of "I don't want to carry all this bullshit around". But... I'm a fan of the capability those zooms present. Thus I am ultimately being undone by my own laziness in not sucking it up and just carrying the heavy bullshit around.

It's all just stupid. I have these fantasies of being a minimalist photographer (again), of being like the hipster-ish photographers I idolize today, strolling about with Fuji's most current X100 iteration and strictly editing photos on a phone or tablet. That escapist fantasizing is the ultimate expression of creative masochism, because I would never be satisfied with such a workflow. Such a transition of methodology would require another transformative life event, and I'm not particularly confident my body can deal with another roll into a power pole from the passenger seat of a Mini Cooper doing 80 down a back road. I had these options at the onset of my transformation 5 years ago, but I've made my bed with this Pandora's Box workflow so I'd best get sleeping. Knowing what I'm capable of producing, unfettered by technical glass ceilings, I will never not want to exercise each image to that potential, no matter how maddening the post-process may be. That awareness of every ounce of potential is a ruiner to anything less than the absolute best. That is why I don't produce art in the quantities I used to... my standards are higher.

This GAS is desperate wishing to regress to a point in which photography was a happy thing, an idle entertainment requiring little conscious effort because the end results didn't matter. I am past that point now, and my wailing about such bygone days is annoying even to myself. That period of growth that was so enjoyable is not coming back with the purchase of hipster-minimal-camera-X. The only way out of this head space is a stubborn and belligerent march forward, to the point where regularity of the High Standard Art is met with such little effort as the be considered an afterthought.

A new camera doesn't mean a goddamn thing. I'll pick up another one once my brick of an E-M1 breaks or gets stolen. Then I can take advantage of the chance for a little transformation.

Post-Gallery Opening Report

Stillpointe Theatre in its current configuration hosting my humble gallery showing. It is a struggle deciding whether I'm happy with the balance of the empty walls... arguably I want them completely empty, but then I would also need to figure out what to fill them back up with and that is something I do not want to rope myself into...

It's been a very busy several weeks, both in terms of work and ancillary projects commanding a greater dedication of time than originally expected. All great learning experiences, and certainly networking opportunities, however I'd be lying if I said I didn't greatly want some brief period of zero-expectations for some needed reprieve. Suspect such freedom from the shackles of obligation is quite out of the near-term picture, unfortunately, but even then it's a great test of my limits (or an entertaining opportunity to fall apart completely).

My last post here I mentioned an inaugural gallery showing of my work. The event has received some mixed reception. Opening night was dense with people coming to view each piece, varying from patrons of the hosting theatre Stillpointe to family and friends, co-workers, co-workers of friends and family, and even among friends the variety spanned social circles from high school pals to current photography partners. It was actually quite the struggle to navigate from the social perspective, so many different spheres not really co-mingling so much as existing beside one another, thus it was difficult as the only common thread in the room to engage each different group in turn. Can't help but feel I may have left some parties feeling abandoned or ostracized, but for the life of me I tried to give everyone the face time they were due for showing up to support me.

While I absolutely appreciated the turnout and was flabbergasted by some of the distances traveled, the comfort zones stretched, to come in at the gallery opening, it was not the kind of turnout I was entirely expecting. Perhaps my vision of how things would go were too lofty - My interest was in the arrival of complete strangers, engagement, interest, and sales made to people who otherwise did not know me and did not know my work. But the space was ultimately rife with people I knew, people who knew me, had seen my work and heard my stories before. There was nobody to whom I really had to play salesman to (which wasn't necessarily a bad thing), and everyone there who bought a piece I suspect knew they intended to do so already as a show of support. It was a hug box of sorts, a space entirely entirely safe and seemingly insulated against open criticism, and I was rather excited to engage with people who didn't like the work I chose for the walls.

This expectation was contrasted by the worst-possible-case scenario the following week - Open Thursday through Saturday from 6:00PM to 10:00PM, I was lucky to have seen maybe 4 or 5 people come in, grand total. Thursday night one of the local homeless "regulars" spent 2 hours conversing with me in the gallery lobby, and I bought him a pack of cigarettes for his time. Friday wasn't too dissimilar, perhaps 2 strangers wandering in, and Saturday some friends stopped by and a couple more strangers but certainly not the random reception I had envisioned and hoped for. My conclusion based on this post-opening experience is absolutely in line with my thoughts on gallery showing of work up until this point of weakness when I thought photography-as-art could ever be relevant and sell... Nobody cares. Outside of the hug box opening night, people really just don't care. And they shouldn't, because I don't care either. Call it bias for staring at the same pieces on the walls for so many nights in a row, but none of it compels me, it doesn't call out to me, it's not engaging. My first mistake was picking pieces that would look good on walls. They may as well be on the interior decor shelves at Target or Walmart.

The other trick I thought might pull people into the space involved co-opting with other businesses, specifically wine distributors and breweries. Baltimore is host to plenty of both such companies I would have loved hosting wine or beer tasting in the space, but legalities got in the way. Baltimore City liquor licensing specifically limits distribution of alcohol to the business' home address, and without the ability to sell along with the tasting no company realistically saw a benefit, which is just good business sense and the way the cards fell on that idea. This week I'm employing the desperation play of offering headshots to purchasers or those who donate to the theatre hosting the gallery. That will likely appeal to the actual theatre crowd in the area, but even so I don't expect to see pieces flying off the walls. At this point I suppose I feel sort of stuck with work I cared about before being forced to stare at it for 16 hours over 4 days.

Things did sell well opening night, though, but I'm still plenty shy of any sort of "profit threshold". This gallery is not a thing I went into with any expectations beyond hopefully breaking even (of which I am also still tremendously short of accomplishing). The financial burdens of gallery showing are very much a behind the scenes thing, and while art buyers may stare at a piece and be appalled at the pricing of what seems so simple and cheap to make (value of the artwork displayed altogether abolished from the equation), what they completely miss are the costs of the gallery space (typically a 50% commission on the sale price of the artwork), the sales and use taxes for every piece purchased (often burdened at the seller's expense to make for easier pricing and transactions in a gallery format), and of course the time spent manning the gallery itself lest nobody ever have the opportunity to come in and see/buy the art (or scoff at the pricing because they "could get the same thing cheaper at Walmart"). At the very least, a gallery shower must earn 60% on top of the cost of production to break even on materials/commission/taxes, leaving extremely little wiggle room for a New Name artist showing work to pad at all for profit. It's a bit of math I suspect not all artists take into account in their gallery showing aspirations, but it is absolutely a bit of knowledge I will pass on to every aspiring artist henceforth. Without a name of pre-developed base of demand, a gallery is a mechanism of debt with the expectation of being a networking opportunity. A way to make new business with new people. If one wishes to sell artwork for profit... Try Etsy.

Gallery aside, it's been a nonstop rush of the more common one-off business. Several weddings, which were actually quite fun to shoot for sake of being far less stressful in that they were not beleaguered by traditional format. Running a steady project of maternity photos for an old elementary school friend as well, which typically would be well outside my realm of interest but 2 shoots in I'm having a blast with the happy couple and am looking forward to a third session in a couple more weeks. Extending my restaurant photography services to new clients in new avenues as well, aiming to try and build a more local network in which to provide the service without always relying on contracting agencies for jobs (much how I took real estate work outside of the same sort of format over time, partnering with clients on my own terms). It's been a lot of work, and I'm sitting on a backlog of photos with no time in-between to process them. For obvious reasons that has me remarkably anxious, but folding to the stress would achieve nothing. I predict several weeks upcoming will be spent slaving over Photoshop and Lightroom. I have no time for personal artistic pursuits, save for the 1 or 2 hours spared every week wherein just a hint of that sort of freedom can be gleamed. Winter is coming, and it is my busy season (which still makes no sense to me from a business perspective).

To close on a pedestrian note, Photokina:

• Olympus EM1 Mk. II is doing exactly what it needs to do in confronting the prosumer DSLR's only discernible advantage, continuous autofocus. Not relevant to me, but it will be a happy upgrade to my workhorse EM1.
• M. Zuiko 25mm f/1.2 is the replacement I want and need for the 12-40mm f/2.8 (which is also a great lens but normal zooms have never felt particularly useful to my shooting style).
• M. Zuiko 12-100mm f/4 is kind of tempting as a mid-range walk-about stand-in, but my use cases for it would likely apply to night shooting and I have doubts as to the ability of an f/4 lens to provide ample imaging feedback for decent composition at night (maybe in the city, but is that too limiting a use case for a $1600 lens?).
• FL-900R = YN-560 with TTL metering. Cool, but I'm not convinced of the regularity of its usefulness.
• Fuji GFX is a camera to instill fantasies of medium format real estate photography that looks amazing with the proposed 23mm f/4 and by god do I want it. Realistically, however, I'm not sure I am of the skill level to justify such forward investment, and I sure as shit don't have the computer to deal with processing 50+ megapixel RAW files without significant struggles.

Oh do I have such awesome fantasies about using that Fuji GFX, though...

Back to Time Lapse?

Live Composite on the Olympus OMD E-M1, 7-14mm f/2.8 set at 9mm and f/4, ISO 200, compositing time ~40 minutes.

I've been on a crazy time lapse kick this past week, and it feels good to rush into a process that ultimately forces you to slow the hell down. The photographer's equivalent of meditation.

Business is still kind of slow, but might be picking back up finally. Would be interesting to discover a new market trend wherein all the work inevitably gets mashed into the last 3 or 4 months of the year (such as what happened last year, however weird a rush that was). Meanwhile, with Summer scorchers taming down a bit, it's nice to have the latitude in personal time to just run out and screw around with photography techniques new and old alike. Time lapse stands out as the hallmark experiment of the last week for its part.

Capturing sunset from Terrapin Beach Park.

Rob and I have made it something of a habit to chase sunset scenes (since mornings are still horribly inaccessible to us based on our normal 9-to-5 work lives). We've bounced from Terrapin Beach Park on the east end of the Bay Bridge to a multitude of parking garages in Baltimore City chasing the light. Never with any genuinely preconceived image or goal in mind, literally just picking a vantage that seems cool, setting up and running a sequence (or five). Done some storm chasing, too, and I'm squarely in the camp these days that the best time to be taking photos is when the weather absolutely sucks. Frankly, anything is more interesting (to me) than a clear blue sky. At least cloudy days lend themselves well to black and white shooting. Blue skies are just... generic garbage.

Since my incessant bitching began, oh, 4 years ago, in regards to the loathsome post-process of photography I'd mentally locked myself into, I feel the new methodologies I've employed with the flexibility (and frankly the power) of mobile phone editing paradigms and the multitude of mobile-only sharing networks have really released a pressure valve I'd kept clamped down for far too long. The sense of liberation comes from the freedom of not giving a shit how an image looks on any device other than my cell phone screen, especially if the manner in which that image is shared is nearly exclusive to other cell phone screens. It completely breaks my pixel-peeping impulses, and while it took some time to train away from some haughty sort of "brand control" when it comes to image quality, I'm discovering there is far more appreciation all around for the willingness to embrace scattershot sharing and high turnaround (all things I really should know already considering those were value propositions that got my business off the ground to begin with).

I bring that up because it also applies to recent time lapse adventures. The OMD E-M1 produces a good enough 720p, 30FPS movie right out of the camera with all the specifically tuned JPG image processing settings applied beforehand. And it's great, gets rid of the post-process middle man, looks clean (if you shoot smart and front load your efforts), and the output files are perfect for web upload. That said, I have been trying to stab at these recent time lapses with LRTimelapse, which I stand by among many others as being the best time lapse rendering software out there, bar none. But holy crap, it requires the sort of time investment one can only reserve for an extraordinarily boring Saturday when all your friends are out of town and the skies are so oppressively clear and blue you hiss like a melting vampire for entertaining the very thought of stepping outside. It presents great possibility, but is such a bear to use and a time sink like none other. Perhaps when my next depressive spell takes hold it will seem like a good use of my time, but damnit, right now, while my mood is manageably good, I just want to be out shooting.

Live Composite on the Olympus OMD E-M1, 7-14mm f/2.8 set at 9mm and f/4, ISO 200, compositing time ~50 minutes.

That does bring up a tangential thought, oddly. And I'm surprised I haven't mentioned it on this blog before, but I'm sure I tried to write something on the matter at some point, found myself frustrated with the insurmountable difficulties of translating a train-of-thought coherently into metered keyboard strokes, and chucked the post into the abyss of Blogger's trashcan (although, really, it's a Google company now, so I'm sure there's a pile of failed writings stacked pretty high somewhere on some Silicon Valley database, indexed under "WTF?").

I have a gallery show coming up. My first gallery show, actually, in that it is MY gallery show. I've shared walls with other artists and photographers before in themed galleries, but never had a showing of work dedicated to me and me alone.

I owe Rob for planting the seed in Ryan's head. Ryan is the owner and artistic director of Stillpointe Theatre in Baltimore, and Rob has been shooting their shows over the past year with great success. A side project of Ryan's, when the show season comes to a close or there's a long break in between productions, is hosting artists in galleries at the theatre space. He's already run a few such galleries, and Rob thought of name dropping me. Sure enough Ryan embraced the idea, with alarmingly little forethought (I'm honestly not entirely sure he's all that familiar with my work). And thus the rush to print began.

As someone who doesn't really buy art (I am doggedly Libertarian in my approach to the art process), I never understand the justification for what I always took to be high prices for gallery wall art. Keep in mind, in my business I sell a service, not images as product. I haven't the first clue how to valuate the abstract of time investment into creation, so I did a lot of research on the subject. Even with that knowledge, it still struck me as insane, so I ignored it and went straight into the print making. Then it all suddenly started making an extreme sort of sense when hours and days poured into curation, selection of print media, mounting options, sample products for test, panic attacks, lost sleep, inability to function at work and taking sick days on account of genuine psycho-billy freakouts, all finally culminating in a 4-digit expense for the final order, anxiety over shipping damages that may or may not happen, whether a product would get forgotten or lost in the midst of such a big order, checking each piece for quality... I'm 3 weeks into the process since hard starting it (once the shock of "Oh crap, I have a gallery show coming up" kicked in), and I'm STILL working out organization, pricing details, marketing of the show, making proof-of-sale cards for each print, calculating realistic discounts for series... and it's probably still not going to be over even once opening night hits. Something will change, something unexpected will be in effect, and it won't end until the show ends.

So, from the perspective of a person who never understood the actual cost and time investment of putting on a gallery, please let me apologize to all artists for never getting it until now. Even from the standpoint of this very minor gallery of mine in a theatre in Baltimore, THIS SHIT IS HARD.



That said... September 9th, 2016, starting at 7:00PM at Stillpointe Theatre's space at 1825 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, I'll be on display in my inaugural "Place and Time" gallery, showcasing a multitude of pieces covering a variety of subjects photographed (for pleasure, not work) in the last year. Stillpointe will be offering food and drink (booze!), and all pieces will be up for sale, including series at a deep discount when purchased together. Everything is mounted and ready to hang on the wall, no frames needed. Some pieces (my industrial abandoned building stuff) is printed on sheets of aluminum for something REALLY unique. Furthermore, the gallery will be open for 4 weeks, so if the opening night isn't doable but you really want to come, there's plenty of leeway in the schedule. So please, swing by, I'll be around to chat and tell stories and teach and learn and generally try not to be brutally awkward as I inevitably seem to be in large social situations with strangers as of late.

And if you're genuinely interested, I recommend following the Facebook event page with an RSVP. I'll have my marketing hat on and intend to run some fresh ads and sample collages of coming gallery pieces over the next week. Hopefully all this time investment pays off in the end, but worst case scenario I will at least have lots of new stuff to hang on the walls at home!

Career Musing

What a weird year, and we're only 8 months deep. I say "only" given the propensity for random pivots and uprooting non-starts to derail any hope at predicting and preparing. Seems to be the resounding theme of 2016... unpredictability.

Back in June the photography business was curiously stalled despite picking up a new long-term contract in March, but that stall is looking more like a leveling-out of workload and of what I can reasonably expect of myself. Faced with a relatively new (or at least magnified) struggle with unreliable clients, the formerly stern march with which I approached new photo work devolved into a slovenly plod after a brutal series of long distance no-shows. Under contract, I was compensated partially, but not nearly enough to justify hours of time. No grudge against the contract holder, they do the best they can under the circumstances with no recourse available in holding clients accountable. Subcontract work is sloppy sometimes.

My other big contract holder suffered some monumental churn in its photography division around the same time, and so work from that avenue continues to be slower than normal. But... it is picking back up, at least a little. With new management authorities in play, prioritization of assignments is changing, and unlike last year's job-binge in Washington, DC, I'm getting more oddball locations that come off to me as scouting missions to find new market areas to focus on. Which makes sense when the cities are cornered The market may as well expand.

With so much free time in the void of my calendar, I finally got around to toying with Facebook as a marketing tool. The page has been around for some time, largely used as an echo of blog posts on this forum and rarely anything else (I've voiced my distaste for social media before). I'm still not heavily invested in the platform, but testing the waters with potential for virility in loosely photo-work related posts such as highlights of recently photographed homes. Also tossed a couple albums in there from shows and random outings, so content is sloppy and unordered, but that's okay, beginnings are always awkward stumbling affairs. Of note, I do like posting small sets from restaurants, bars, and breweries recently visited, as sort of guerilla advertising pieces (with the added benefit of supporting venues I'm fond of). At the back of my brain is a scratching sound that eerily forms the verse, "Put together a damn website already".

Playing the Google Contributor game lately, too. That effort is less a thing of free advertising (well, not for me, anyway) and more a pleasantly manufactured point to photography for days I (frequently) struggle to understand why I juggle a camera at all. Not super active on that front, but it's essentially a parallel to playing Pokemon Go on lazy afternoons. Which is rather cool in its own right when it's difficult to deal with the arbitrariness of existing. I am aware that there is no end goal, nor tangible or affectual reward, but it's something to focus on and a nice excuse to be in the presence of fellow existentially challenged human beings.

The real curve ball of Q3 2016 comes from my office life. I keep getting pulled into graphic design tasks, and I enjoy them... to a degree. Graphic design tasking keeps me engaged to the point where I lose sight of the fact that I'm working at all and the time just flies by. The caveat to these design tasks are long hours, frequently extending into weekends, essentially translating to all-stop on my photography business. And I'm still not sure how I feel about that, not entirely. I will never not feel the introspective disappointment of what amounts to "selling out", which I now define as working toward the end goals of anyone other than myself in business. My tiny little DMV photography empire may be small, but I'll never feel cozier behind any other walls. Self-employment is like Pandora's Box, this hint of the true potential for self-actualization doesn't get put away.

Dislodged as my situation sometimes seems, I really am in a great position all around. Photography business growth is slow, but even my concept of a low-income month with that business is pretty damn great. And I have opportunities reaching at me from the corporate world, so if a meteor strikes my car with all my camera equipment inside I have a pretty solid fallback option. It's weird that my multi-faceted career pathing insists on eating its own tail sometimes, but careers are like lizards and those tails grow back.

Speaking of which, it's time for me to leave my one job to go do another job and then come back to a third. I'll let you guess where this shell game starts and ends.