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Tatania Hassy 1Tatania with my 500 c/m

In a world where folks take more photographs than ever before the craft in taking those photographs is dying. Photographs are endlessly generated but no one seems to take the time to consider the craft involved in creating a true photograph. Millions and millions of random snapshots appear on Facebook, twitter and the rest of social media outlets.\

An argument can be made to blame the smart phone directly. It is extremely convenient. It is always accessible. We never leave home without it. At least with the point and shoot pocket cameras, of the last couple of decades, the process in your mind was entirely about taking a photograph. You had to reach for what you knew was a camera then raise it to your eye, frame a photograph and then click the shutter. Somehow, the smart phone breaks that mental process. The device is almost always in your hand and opening an app or swiping the screen it doesn't seem to simulate the process of thinking about taking a photograph. The smart phone experience seems closer to the same mental process that we use when answering a text message or checking email or Facebook. I don't believe this stimulates the same creative juices that are required to really manage the craft involved in creating a photograph.

There are proponents of what is referred to as “ iPhonography “. I applaud their efforts. They use the little cameras built-in to smartphones to create some really beautiful photography. They blog, tweet and produce inspirational training videos on the skills involved in creating a photograph with smart phone. However, I’m not really convinced there is a tremendous amount of skill using a smart phone to make a photograph. Certainly there is a set of basic instructions on how to use the app. There is a list of different apps you can choose from. There is an even longer list of apps you can use to edit your photographs. Almost all of these applications allow you to add filters's to your photographs. These filters range from mild tint to bizarre colorations and distortions. They also allow you to upload your amazing creations in aninstant your favorite social media  destination. This allows up to millions of people to view you're your masterpiece all across the globe. The total viewing time, about one second. Your photograph probably won't end up in a museum either. A life time for a photograph online is rarely beyond a few minutes. The likes, views, hearts and emoticons fade quickly and are remembered by no one.Photographs that last are those that do hang in museums. Work by world renowned photographers such as Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Cappa, Ansell Adams and a litany of others. Finding a list of these folks is as simple as Google. Appreciating the craft requires an outing to see a show in real life.

So what's the difference? Why are they in museums while your photographs don't even get there 15 minutes of fame. The best answer I have is the craft put into those photographs. The discussion at this point, requires the definition of the word craft. Our boy, Merriam Webster, informs us of the following:

Bicycles Stairways - Henri Cartier-Bresson​

-1019436 The discussion at this point, requires the definition of the word craft. Our boy, Merriam Webster, informs us of the following:

Full Definition of craft  

1:  skill in planning, making, or executing :  dexterity

 2:  an occupation or trade requiring manual dexterity or artistic skill <the                 carpenter's craft> <the craft of writing plays> <crafts such as pottery, carpentry,             and sewing>
        b plural :  articles made by craftspeople <a store selling crafts> <a crafts fair>
        a :  a boat especially of small size

This sounds a bit broad. Let me refine that a little bit. Zoom in, so to speak. Craft is the skill in planning / seeing, making and understanding of the tools required for photography. The next step along the path is becoming an Artisan.Wherever these terms are used in other disciplines there is always an object of some type that results from the effort. Think of the carpenter, the stone mason or, closer in spirit, the painter.

Let us also cool our jets for a minute. I am not saying this cannot be accomplished with a smart phone camera but it is rarely done and for our purposes offers to many distractions. I think a return to craft would result in those tools being put to generally better use. Allow me to propose a plan to help you start building your craft.

Step one - Get a camera. I don’t care what kind. Just a dedicated camera. I favor my 500 c/m Hasselblad when the juices are really flowing. My digital Nikons come out for work and family snap time. You might pick up a really cute digital point and shoot. Fine, my only specification is that it be capable of working in a manual mode or at least a dedicated aperture priority mode.

Step two -  RTFM. ( read the fine manual ) This is part of the discipline training as a growing crafts person.

Step three -  Get off your duff and spend some dedicated time looking for photographs to make. ( no selfies, not yet )

Step four. -  Read a book, a book about photography.  Yup, a book. No video substitution. This can be technical or inspirational. Even Dr. Suess can be inspirational. Though, you might have a little trouble finding a talking cat. Practice something you found in the book. Imitation is a very practical form of flattery.

Step five -  Make some prints. You can get them at some WAL place or online. Again I don’t care. Once you get them, hang them up where you see them often. Look at them and think about how they affect you. Are they warm and really fuzzy or are they dark and dangerous? 

Step six -  Think about why any one or group of photos makes you feel that way. Now go out again and try to duplicate that feeling with new photographs.

Step seven -  Go to a museum, a gallery or an art show and pay attention.

Step eight -  You’ve been waiting for this one. Rinse and repeat. ( after three rounds you can take selfies but I bet they’re much different. ) 

In going over these exercises for about forty years, I have learned a great deal about the craft of the photograph. I can guarantee that as you grow as a photographer or if you just do this for a while. Your photographs, even on your phone, will gain new life and you will have a greater appreciation for the craft of photography.

Lisa LuLisa Lu

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“Anatomy Of A Studio” is workshop concept I have been thinking about for a long time. After 20 years working as a corporate media photographer, videographer and producer and another 20 years of photography on top of that, it is finally time to step out and offer the first look into the knowledge I have accumulated.

I have attended lots of workshops over the years. Some with folks no one ever heard of and others with leaders in the photographic community. Joe McNally, Frank Dorhoff, Chris Marquardt, Peter Hurley and Jay Maisel are all names of folks I have studied with in one form or another.

All of these practitioners have had something to offer. Some shared technique. Some gave technical advice. Others shared insight into their creative vision. All of them did one thing consistently, share. They gave openly and honestly. They always did the best they could to offer whatever was available to them to all that came. Some where more effective than others. All of them were, and are, valuable resources.

Building my first workshop has been a challenge. I have sought out folks to offer feedback. Beat this thing side ways and finally worked up to a full dry run in the studio we are actually using to launch.

I still have some concerns. Less about the content than how to convince folks I have something of value to offer. My entire professional Photography career has lived behind the corporate wall. The vast majority of my existing portfolio is owned by my former employer as “ work for hire”. I was certainly published well enough there. If you were an employe or their customer you most certainly saw at least some of my work in internal publications and international materials shown around the world in the industry. This was a big fortune 50 outfit. Yup, I said 50 not 500.

I knew my employer was leaving this coast and I would not be moving. I made a concerted effort over the past year to build a commercially viable body of work. I needed something to show I wasn’t all talk and I think I have succeeded.

What Needs to happen now is to keep showing as much of that work as I can and hope to catch up to folks like Joe McNally who have decades of publicly published work. Well, I probably won’t catch up to Joe. I would like to at least feel like the tide was turning my way. I would like to feel the opportunity to really share my, skills and vision is within my grasp.

I am writing this on my sixtieth birthday. That means I need to get thing rolling sooner rather than later.

Please join me on September 20, 2015 at Frog Hollow Studios for my first workshop. I promise to offer all I can to make you better at what we both love.

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Video Version

So this week SONY is releasing a new member of it’s A7 line. This has been a really popular and well received line of full frame mirrors cameras from the Japanese super corp. I am happy to see camera technology progressing and have even made a small investment in the mirrors world myself with the Panasonic Lumix GH4. That being said the mirrorless fanboy cry of  “The DSLR is DEAD! “ is utter nonsense.

These new cameras have some interesting features. I am liking the “flippy screens” and I am getting used to the Electronic ViewFinders (EVF). The size is definitely smaller as far as the body goes and on my micro four thirds GH4 the lenses are also pretty tiny compared to the Nikon full frame glass I am used to. However the still image quality of the GH4 is not what I get from my D800. Not even by a long shot. That, however is to be expected. I left the crop sensor world for a full frame 36 megapixel sensor for detail and image quality. That is what I got. The stills from the G4 aren’t terrible and if they were only ever to be used online or maybe a small print then they’re fine. They are not pro quality 8x10 or magazine material. IMHO of course.

How about the SONY. Well I have looked at it. The body is lighter. The features are interesting but there is very little glass. I already own great glass. It has taken me years to scrimp and save for that great glass. SONY would have me go out and sell all my great glass at a loss and then re-buy their glass. The alternative is to buy a rather pricey adapter and just not use all the features of my current great glass. These options are not optimal. Actually they’re terrible. 

So if you are looking to buy your first full frame camera. Consider the SONY as an option. Also consider how many folks you know who own one and can help out if you get stuck. Also consider what SONY gear and accessories you can find on the used market at a discount. Also consider SONY’s track record with proprietary gear.

I think the summary here is stick with what you have for now. The Canon and Nikon boys make really nice cameras that do pro work all over the world every day. They have been doing it for a long time and they are at this time the best. SONY, Panasonic, FUJI and Olympus are definitely nipping at their heels but no matter what the pundits say they are not there yet.

PS. This is all about stills. Video is a very different story. The GH4 OWNS VIDEO. Video cameras have always been “mirrorless” ; )

Tom and FamilyThe front yard is a great place for a family portrait.

Beyond the Wedding we all think of when we think " Photographer ", this could be a Prom, Birthday Party, Marriage proposal, Homecoming, Family Reunion or any of thousands of those moments marking our lives that are worth remembering.

You might think the herd of wild cell phones that surround us are just fine to capture the photos you want to save for the rest of your life. Think about that for a minute. Pick up your cell phone and find a photo from two years ago. I would wager that is a tough task for lots of folks. If you can find a couple, well, congratulations! Now go get Moms photo album out and peruse the pics from 20 years ago. That album is history. It is full of heart and shared memories that pass across generations.

Tom and DonnaMoments between the big photos can be just as special.

If I could guess your next question I would say, “How expensive would that be ?” Pretty reasonable question.  Money is tight right now and hiring a photographer for a Birthday Party seems pretty extravagant, right? So lets talk value. What is it worth to you to provide your children with the experience you had looking at Mom’s photo album? A professional photographer could be found that would shoot your party and provide you with a CD or memory stick with quality digital images for $300 - $400 bucks for a couple of hours at a party. Those digital photos can be turned into prints in an album or photo book at your leisure. Just don’t wait to long.

You no longer have to march the family in their best dress outfits to the studio, kill a couple of hours trying to manage the little ones. Then be subjected to the big hard sell at the end of it all.

The photography business has changed a lot in the past few years. There are business models for photographers where they come to you. You pay them just for the service of taking the photos. Today print costs for regular 4x6 photos are minimal. You can still get the studio Family portrait and these are really nice to have. You can also have that portrait taken in a local park, near a local landmark or right in your back yard. The photographs posted here are from a dear friends birthday. That one event provided Tom with a variety of different family memories he could use many different ways.

  Tom and DaughterThis is an opportunity to take advantage of. Get as many precious moments as you can.

You say “ But I want to hang these on my wall ”. You can always upgrade if you like. The nice wall prints in pretty frames are still out there and make your house look more like a family home. They are still an investment but one you should definitely consider. Remember how much time you spend looking at the photos on the wall at Grandma’s house? There are some really cool products available now that didn’t exist before. You can get prints on aluminum that are simply something you should see. They are awesome. You can get prints on glass, acrylic, canvas or bonded to wood. These offer a ton of decorating flexibility so you home doesn’t have to look like Grandma’s, if you don’t want it to but you can still share the memories in the very best way.

There is one caveat to all of this flexibility. The quality of these products vary wildly. You are just not going to get as good a photographic print from a Walgreens equivalent or local Box store as you will from a lab that specializes in providing prints to photographers for their customers. I have taken some of my photos and had them printed at my local drug store and the had the same photos printed through my professional supplier. Believe me when I tell you there is simply no comparison. Speak to your photographer ahead of time to see what he or she or me provide in the way of printing services. You could very well be surprised at the value.

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Tom's KidsMoments for everyone to remember.

Pin WheelLooking at the things nearby to inspire us.

A lot of photographers suffer from something I call “stuckitiss” . It’s a condition where there seems to be nothing worth photographing. You feel like you done it all before or there is simply nothing that would be interesting. I would like to suggest a cure.  Close to the TigerI like Tiger Lillys. They are every where in my yard.

The method is pretty simple. You need to change the order that you do things. Instead of deciding what you are going to shoot and then going to get your gear, do the opposite. Get your gear and just go out to your back yard. Now “back yard” can be different things to different folks. In the burbs a back yard is commonly some patch of grass or garden on the property where you live. In the city it can be out on the stoop or in the neighborhood down as far as the corner store. Out in the country it can be your favorite field, garden or barn.

Step two is even easier. Point your camera at anything and press the shutter. Look at details, hunt for flowers, seek out some cool bugs, find interesting characters or shapes and shadows. Just start clicking. The end of the day will genuinely bring surprises.

This simple exercise could very well leave you with a taste for a new genre or some salable fine art material. The trick is to just start firing away. Play with exposure, depth of field, long shutter times or fast ones. This is your opportunity to do all the silly things you can think of. Take your flash with you. Light stuff from the top, the bottom or from behind. Try some of the gadget features of the expensive flash you bought. Maybe, figure out what that multi thing does.

Day LillyTigers are not the only Lillys in the yard.

I know this sounds over simplified but it isn’t. Sometime the best way to overcome a roadblock is to just walk around it. I think if you give this a try you will be amazed at how it unlocks that creative block and let’s things flow freely once more.

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Tigers at NightYou can try this at any time of day or night.

SkylightArchitecture in Photography as Art. 1826 – First photo ever.

By 1930, about a billion photos were taken a year.

By 1970, about 10 billion photos were taken a year.

By 1990, about 57 billion photos were taken a year.

By 2000, about 86 billion photos were taken a year.

Today, we take more than 380 billion photos a year. *

Flickr holds 8 billion photographs and Facebook says it adds that many every 2 months.Facebook claims uploads of photos in the 200,000 per minute range.*

 Who sees all of these? How many are really worth looking at? I don’t know of any statistics on how much art was created from point to point on a timeline. That means these impressive numbers don’t represent how many “good” photos are in the big picture. One must assume that if there are only one tenth of one percent that might be considered artwork, that there are considerably more photographic artworks being created today than ever before.

So how do we identify the great artists? Who is our future Cartier-Bresson or William Klein? Even more difficult to discover is how an artist dedicated to the medium of the photograph, brings his work to the public eye.

In the past there was the magazine. National Geographic, Vogue, Life and other big names played the role of the artists patron. They would invest and nurture young artists to make their product stand apart. They looked and watched, ever vigilant to discover the next great photographer. The online website experience has all but replaced the magazine as we knew it. I don’t know of any websites that do for artists what the magazine news and fashion cultures did.

We have plenty of places to share our photos but not much in the way of curation or guidance.

This does indeed sound dire. I believe this is just the headlong wave of change. The past had the local royals patronizing the artists of their choice. My more recent scenario holds the paper publishing industry to this task. This responsibility is falling now directly on the artist. He or she must own the process of self promotion. Social media must be leveraged and managed. Web content, email and digital products all fall to the artist. There are options for how this gets done. It can be outsourced to an advocate or paid for as a service. It can no longer be ignored. The patron is dead. Long live the patron.

I have included below a couple of documentaries I discovered on YouTube about two very interesting and well know photographers. Watch them and gain some insight on the artists mindset. Be aware that even if you are a great self promoter, you must still be true to your art.

William Klein

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnN9LMvjM7Y 

Henri Cartier-Bresson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR7JPiLyDGk

Photo count list from:

http://www.kiss1027.fm/2013/03/06/how-many-photos-have-been-taken-ever/

Other photo numbers:

http://www.popphoto.com/news/2013/05/how-many-photos-are-uploaded-to-internet-every-minute

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Joe Mcnally Precon workshop During Atlanta's Photoshop World spring 2014. A Kelbyone event.

Ok Ready. Deep breath.

If you have been doing anything that involves a skill for any amount of time, then you need to find others that do, whatever it is, that you do and do it with them.

Whew.

That is essentially what I am trying to tell you. It’s a mouthful but it is also very true. If you are a beginner or a warn veteran it doesn’t matter. The gathering of folks with the same interests and lots of passion is a motivator, a rejuvenator. It gets you off your butt and moving in the right direction. Listening to the new ideas of younger, fresher participants blows out the cobwebs. Hearing war stories and absorbing the raw experience of more journeyed crafts people is the most valuable lesson you can get. The sharing, asking and answering is a bounty of stimulation for your energy, heart and brain.

Go and seek out a workshop. They are available in a wide variety of disciplines. The dictionary definition is: An educational seminar or series of meetings emphasizing interaction and exchange of information among a usually small number of participants:

I spent a Saturday very recently at a photography workshop. It had an unusual theme. The theme was SNAKES. There were 75 live snakes available to handle and photograph with the MODELS. Yep models. Not hired models but models that were fellow attendees also looking to share with their peers and photographers. The snakes and the models came in various forms, both male and female and all were uniquely beautiful. There was a strong spirit of the theatrical and the creative. I was amazed at the energy I absorbed just being around all that creative juice. It was absolutely amazing.

I have attended workshops in the past and they always brought life back to my work. Nobody seems to talk about how they feel after these things. They just give overviews of the work they did or the lessons they learned. Those descriptions sell this experience very short. 

So pick one that sounds interesting, has a leader you admire or just sounds like a fun experience. Then get off your duff and GO.

A couple of recommendations.

One professional I can recommend for my fellow photographers is Chris Marquardt of "Tips From The Top Floor" podcast fame.

http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com

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I believe in Family.

Family first. I have always believed in Family. I believe the photograph is the most important artifact we have to those we love and those who loved before us. It is our past and our legacy to the future. Photographs are our hieroglyphs, our cave painting. It is how we remember who we are and who we belong to.

They show us Granpa and Mom-Mom, Uncle Joe and Auntie Mary. They share our new births. They shows us those who have passed on.

These photos are not part of my portfolio. They are not commercial work at all. These are snapshots of members of my extended Family at an annual picnic held near us at a local park. Part of that gathering is a tradition I am sure many families share. Everyone brings photographs.

 There are those dumped from boxes, stripped from old albums, new ones, old ones, color, black and white, faded and yellowed.. There are graduations, engagements, parties, vacations, the house we used to live in and new homes we have gone to. There are babies, children, teenagers,old men, old women, old cars, new cars, trucks trailers and motor homes. There are professional portraits and faded snap shots from World War II. There are polaroids, 110mm, 35mm,120mm, 620mm film prints. There are 8 by 10, 4 by 5, 5 by 7 as well as those clipped and trimmed to fit snuggly beside another piece of the past in a treasured album.

The common denominator is they are all prints, tossed, touched, held and caressed as though they hold the very souls of those memories they represent. They are physical, they feel like the varied papers they are printed on. Some have a vague musty smell, others reek of ancient cigarettes.

What jewels these are. How wonderful. They are shown and discussed. Stories from long ago bubble up. Scandals are revealed. Youthful adventures are confessed. Young ones are introduced to Family that have left this world. They are shown versions of parents they would never have known existed.

All of this activity ebbs and flows about the pile of photographs.

The photograph has been with us since 1839. Coming near the 200 year mark. We take more photos now than ever before, yet there are fewer photographs.The digital age that lets us socialize and communicate like never before is destroying our legacy. How will the next generation gather around the table to learn and relive there personal history. Data is fleeting. Digital storage is temporary. Photographs are our personal, national treasure.

I am a photographer. I love the art and the light. I love the memories. My personal passion is to add to your legacy with my work. You also need to make an effort to preserve this resource that is so very important to those who love you. Please please, print your photos. Take them from the digital void and give them life. Let them be held and caressed. Let them into your life in a permanent way. Don't just make images or take a pic for Facebook. Make a photograph.

Here is a link to some more snapshots from the Family picnic.

http://www.williamkearns.com/family

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