Blog | LomiMonk Photography

Sep

2010

eBook Review: Journey Through Java by Mitchell Kanashkevich

Craft and Vision, which I am a huge fan of, has released another in their series of Print And Process ebooks today. Written by photographer Mitchell Kanashkevich this series of photographs takes the viewer through Kanashkevich’s journey to the East Java, Indonesia, photographing Mount Bromo, the ljien Crater, and the Island of Madura. The photos are initially presented on their own for them to speak their own story, and then followed by the photographers thoughts on his process of making these stunning images of a beautiful and striking land.

These Print and Process ebooks, while not as initially attractive as some of the instructive books created by the good folks at Craft and Vision, are always a joy and wonder to read. I find myself returning to them time and again as I dig deeper to understand the photographic process these visual artist travel while creating their art. Each time I am inspired.

Special Offer on PDFs For the first four days only, if you use the promotional code JAVA4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of Journey Through Java – The Print & The Process for only $4 OR use the code JAVA20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes start at 1:00am PST, September 30, 2010 and expire at 11:59pm PST October 3, 2010.

Sep

2010

The benefits of pulling back

Boy we live in a world! A world of non-stop availability and consumption. Anything we want to know or see, and a lot don’t, is available right at our fingertips through iPhones, computers, iPads, billboards, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc. Media has made it a wonderful world; it has also made it a terrifying world!

Some time ago I noticed I was getting sad, and grumpy, and irritable. I was just generally pessimistic about the state of the world. My solution? I turned off the news. Not as a whole, I don’t have a magic remote control, but in my life. I stopped watching the nightly news (especially local news) and I stopped reading newspapers. It was all negative news anyway and therefore slanted and biased toward selling newspapers and news shows. So I went on a “no news diet.” You know what, it worked. My mood improved dramatically. I’m still on that diet to this day.

With that in mind I wondered how I could make a similar shift in my photography. I spend a fair bit of time reading blogs and looking at other photographer’s work and while sometimes I get inspired, as my Inspiration Monday blogposts might suggest, I also find myself getting down on myself. You see, I compare myself. Sometimes I compare my skill level to others’ skill levels; I compare the quality of my output to others’; I compare the quality, intensity, depth, creativity of my projects to others’ as well. And that can depress me with regard to photographing.

Hmmmm, where have I seen this pattern before?

So, what about going on a low-photography diet? You know, to stop looking at others’ work and comparing myself against it, even subconsciously? Especially subconsciously! What if I just dream up a project and work toward it, without distractions, in my own little creative bubble, without critique, without comparison. I might just have to pull back a bit to do that, but I’ve survived (thrived) doing something similar before. And heck, I just might have the time to pursue those creative endeavors if I stopped.

Sep

2010

Cafe de la Presse

Yesterday I posted an image taken at Cafe de la Presse, a French cafe in San Francisco that I fell in love with. I thought I might share the other images I took on that trip for your viewing pleasure. I hope you enjoy them.

c) 2008 Brian E. Miller Photography

Sep

2010

Inspiration Monday: Zack Arias

This is the 11th in my series of inspirational people or things that motivate and inspire me to pursue my photographic and artistic endeavors. Today’s post is about Atlanta based commercial photographer Zack Arias.

I first came across Zack Arias in much the same way I come across many photographers: through the blogosphere. In this case it was through his stint as guest blogger on Photoshop Guru Scott Kelby’s blog in February of 2009. Arias, since he was generously given the freedom to choose any platform or subject he liked, simply posted a black and white video.

But what a video. Rendered mostly in black and white and with his wife’s beautifully haunting music as the backdrop, Arias’ video takes the viewer through an intensely personal moving snapshot of one professional photographer’s life. It damn near went viral. It kinda did go viral in the photography world, especially since Arias was reminding people of photography’s proper place in the grand design.

And it is not only pure genius to my way of thinking, it is also pure Arias. He’s a straight shooter, it seems, calling things like he sees them and often bringing photographers back to earth. His blog is as wildly popular as it is full of opinion. Love him or hate him, he’s got something worth saying.

Oh, and he’s a pretty skilled photographer. He’s made a niche for himself in editorial music photography as well as teaching photographic techniques and workshops. His “white seamless” tutorials, available for free on his website, is renowned, as are his workshops. He is especially well known for his OneLight Workshops where he debunks the need for a constellation of strobe lights at photoshoots and shows workshop participants how to get stunning images with one light source.

He is honest, open, transparent and of immense benefit to the craft and art of photography and he repeatedly inspires me to create work, push myself, and (hopefully) create my vision.

The above image is a dyptic shot in 2008 at Cafe de la Presse in San Francisco. I used a borrowed Nikon d80 and a Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens. I just loved this cafe, mostly because it reminds me of the cafes in Paris with all the pastries, cafe au lait, and waiters who speak French. I think we went there three times in four days. I love the feeling of Parisian cafes, they seem to embrace and celebrate the simple and important aspects of being alive: good food and drink, community and camaraderie, and quiet time. I never feel more at home than when I am in an authentic French cafe where I can sit as long as I like without worry about taking up a table. This and other images I took while there are some of my favorites because I feel I was successful at portraying my feelings for the environment and my experience. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Sep

2010

On Copping Out: when there is no time to make photographs

I’ve not written much on this blog lately, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. I haven’t burned out though. Quite the opposite. I am smoldering, slowly, waiting, watching.

Life has become hectic and running the edge of unmanageably. There is little extra time for anything, including photography. Most days as I collect my things to leave the house for work I look down at my camera bag sitting there, waiting patiently to be picked up, and I wonder, “can I?”

But, for now, I can’t. There isn’t time; and there isn’t time that can be made either. Life has become like that and I surrender to it. Yes, I could choose to rearrange my priorities. I know that. I could choose to make time. But my priorities are right where they need to be, and that leaves little or no time for making photographs. So I leave my camera bag at home yet another day, on purpose, mindfully. In this case taking it along would pull my attention away from those things that rightfully need to have it.

So, what is left then? Well, I watch. And I wait. And I observe. And I dream. And this makes the desire burn. The hot coals smolder and gain energy and when the time comes there will be a bright bursting forth. How do I know this? Well, it’s happened before. I’ve lived long enough to know that. I’ve seen it happen in others as well and the resulting creativity has been fabulous, amazing, fascinating.

It helps to want to create good photographs and this time of restricted productivity can fuel that “wanting to.” Or it can create frustration and resentment if I let it. The choice really is up to me.

Sep

2010

New David duChemin ebook: Iceland: A Monograph

Best selling author and acclaimed photographer David duChemin released a new ebook on his Craft and Vision website today entitled “Iceland: A Monograph.” With images shot on a recent personal trip to Iceland, duChemin presents the prints and then walks the reader through his process in creating the images. This is the third in a series of monograph ebooks that duChemin has published and they each are enjoyable reads. Being with a professional photographer as they walk you through their creative thought process can be helpful in developing one’s own process and these ebooks do just that.

Filling the book with beautiful and ethereal images of this wondrous land, duChemin also uses the pages to demystify the process of capturing the images and the equipment used to do so. Check out Iceland: A Monograph as well as other photography ebooks available at Craft and Vision for the ridiculously low price of $5 each. Really good stuff.

Special Offer: For the first four days only, if you use the promotional code ICE4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of ICELAND, A Monograph – The Print & The Process for only $4 OR use the code ICE20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST September 12, 2010.

Sep

2010

Inspiration Monday: Chase Jarvis

This is my tenth in my series of posts about people or works that inspire me to continue pursuing my artistic endeavors. Today’s post is about Chase Jarvis, a commercial photographer based both in Seattle and Paris.

Chase is well known in photographic circles. He seems to be everywhere, all the time. And not just photographically. He seems hell bent to show each of us how absolutely creative we can be. He appears to be the creative energizer bunny on speed given how much work he produces and the sheer number of projects he spearheads. Not only does he operate two studios, in highly creative cities, on opposite sides of the Atlantic serving clients such as REI, Toyota, Reebok, Apple, Brooks, Microsoft, Smith Optics, Volvo, Jeep, McDonalds, Columbia Sportswear Company, and Nike to name a few (phew), he also throws himself headlong into supporting creative endeavors made possible by the advent of the internet and web-based technology.

Chase also gives. In fact, the first time I heard him speak was a video of a keynote he was giving in which he encouraged the photographers in the audience to give freely of their knowledge rather than attempt to secretively protect their hard-earned talent. His thought was that if you give it away you will have to continue to work to grow your style and will subsequently maintain your creativity, freshness, and vitality as an artist. This view, I imagine, comes from his background in philosophy and appears to guide his professional life. You see, Chase Jarvis hides nothing professionally. He gives of his knowledge freely and appears to seek out opportunities to do so. His blog often has video posts in which he takes the viewer behind the scenes of a photoshoot, walking us through every step of pre-production, production, and post production, showing all the secrets, tips, and tricks to being a successful commercial photographer. He also donates images, his time, and sometimes even his earnings to worthy creative causes.

In addition he has also recently spearheaded a project called CreativeLive.com in which he invites creative teachers (photographers, painters, web designers, app developers) to a film studio in Seattle to teach workshops about their craft. The live feed is broadcast on creativeLive.com and is free to the viewer. These web workshops happen most weekends and are just wonderful! In a recent edition wedding photographer Jasmine Star taught a wedding photography workshop and integrated it with a live wedding shoot. It was the real deal and gave the viewer a deeper understanding of what goes into shooting a wedding. The work that must have gone into making that weekend happen was astounding.

He also has started ChaseJavisLive in which he personally interviews somebody he respects and thinks might be interesting to the viewing public, and posts the interview on his blog and YouTube account. Some of these interviews are close to 2 hours long and all provided free to us.

He’s also created an iPhone app called “Best Camera” and been involved in photographic book projects about aspects of Seattle that he loves.

Like I said, energizer bunny. Generous energizer bunny, but energizer bunny!

But what I love about Chase is his willingness and courage to be open and transparent about the work that he does. He’s received some flack about it and his good intentions have sometimes been cynically questioned, but that has not deterred him; he has developed the endurance necessary to maintain a good heart in the world, and we are the better for it. So take advantage of what this man (and his team) have to offer. His intention is to raise the level of photography across the board and subsequently raise each of us along with it. I don’t know about you, but this inspires me.

Sep

2010

Updates at Flickr.com

I recently noticed some changes over at Flickr that have been in effect for a month or two and I got quite excited. You see, I started this blog in order to control how my photographic images were presented on the web. Although I love Flickr as a place for photographers to share their work and perhaps provide each other feedback, I found the relative busy-ness of the page distracting. I felt I could not view or show images in the manner I wanted. That frustrated me. I was much more impressed with how Picasa formats their viewing page.

Well, I am very happy to discover Flickr was listening to me. Well, OK, they probably weren’t really listening to me but they addressed the issues that had become near and dear to me: page layout, optimal viewing environment, ease of use and movement between images. Now there is the option of viewing individual images without all the distracting sidebar links. By clicking directly on an image (when on the image page) Flickr navigates you to an “on black” viewing area they call “lightbox” thereby providing a pleasing viewing experience. On the page are just a few discreet yet accessible buttons. These buttons allow the viewer to navigate forward or backward through the photographer’s photo stream, to start a slideshow of the photographer’s photo stream, or to view the current image in all its available sizes. An example is shown below.

Other improvements include more streamlined ways to add tags, notes, and people to images as well as ways to share the images through blogs, email and link acquisition. There is even a very easy way to link your Flickr updates to FaceBook making the need for third party apps obsolete. It is seamless and very user friendly. These are all very nice updates and will speed up the way images are viewed on Flickr but for me the improvement in the viewing environment is the biggest thing. Thank you Flickr, you have rescued my enthusiasm for your site.

To view my Flickr stream feel free to click on the photostrip at the bottom of this page or follow the link here.

Aug

2010

Failed Inspiration and the Time For Work

The other day I remarked during one of my posts that I was struggling a bit with inspiration. Family life and work commitments can sometimes (rightly, in my book) interfere with one’s movement toward creativity. They can squash inspiration. These times are difficult for the creative. Given to so much inspiration over the course of our days we can be stymied when inspiration fails to arise. What do we do now? This is strange territory and we can become confused and disoriented.

But all is not lost. We are not necessarily doomed to a inspiration-less existence, although it might feel that way. Much as the rhythm of breathing in and out (inspiration and expiration) this flow of creative juices might be going through its regular cycle and the flow of inspiration is sure to return just as each out-breath is followed by another in-breath.

But what to do in the meantime?

Well, this is where those creatives who have met success separate themselves from those that do not. This is the time to work.

I recently read a quote by Shin’ichi Suzuki, founder of the Suzuki Method for learning violin and proponent of humankind’s talent potential in which he said, “I want to make good citizens. If a child hears fine music from the day of his birth and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline and endurance. He gets a beautiful heart.” I agree with this sentiment and would expand it to include all art forms for, after all, art is not just for seeing or hearing; it is for feeling.

So why this quote at this time? Well, if we are artists and photographers and we are moved by something either inside of ourselves or outside of ourselves to create something we consider beautiful, then we have the sensitivity part down. Perhaps what we now need to work on is the discipline and endurance. Discipline is born of doing what we know we must despite not wanting to, and endurance is born of discovering that we can do something much longer than we had previously imagined. Suzuki knew, from personal experience, that learning the violin is difficult and requires the development of the ability to practice more days than not despite not wanting to: discipline. He also knew that learning the violin means hanging in there long enough to learn it, which itself is longer than the student had imagined at the outset, mostly because it is a life-long process: endurance. He also knew that the requirements for learning the violin were also exactly what learning the violin would teach and these are beneficial in life.

I believe Suzuki’s thoughts are directly applicable to photography and these times of decreased inspiration are precisely the times when the development of discipline and endurance are developed. And this looks like work. There is a well known saying that goes something like, “success is a mix of inspiration and perspiration; 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Well, this is perspiration time. Much like a violinist will practice scales, fingering technique, and other rudimentary building blocks of the art form, so too must the photographer return to basics. If you shoot more by natural light, learn the ins and outs of flash photography. If you tend to shoot with wide apertures, begin to explore smaller apertures and deeper depths of field. If you tend to shoot crisp and tightly focused images, try shooting something softer, or with slower shutter speeds, and even intentionally (gasp!) blurry. Sit down and learn a new editing software, backup your images, update your website. Go nuts and bolts on your photography, train your technique; from shooting to post processing to printing, train your technique so it becomes second nature and when inspiration begins to flow from the muse again you are so dialed you don’t have to think about technique anymore. Then, much like Suzuki’s young students, the beauty of the photograph can be communicated through the emotional connection to the image and you can play with feeling again.

Aug

2010

Inspiration Monday: Jerry Ghionis

This is the ninth in my series of posts about people or works of art that inspire and motivate me to pursue my art and I am beginning to notice the difficulty in consistently posting these posts. It is not just because of a full life with family and work commitments which take precedence over sitting and writing this post each week. It is also due to the very nature of inspiration; it waxes and wanes, probably due to the occasionally overwhelming nature to those things which take precedence over creating these posts.

But I digress. This challenge of dealing with the wax and wane is for another post. Today’s post is about Gerry Ghionis. Ghionis is what I might label the Lance Armstrong of wedding photography. He has not only entered and won every major competition related to wedding photography, he has also dominated and changed the industry earning accolade after accolade the world over. His portfolios continue to set new standards in not only wedding photography but also fashion and portrait work.

I recently enjoyed watching a wedding photographer work and was even able to follow her around with my camera to make some of my own photographs. While not the primary photographer at this wedding, I was still able to get a sense of the pressure and stress involved in successfully shooting such a pivotal event in a client’s life. That Ghionis is able to create high art in the process, consistently, over many years, is a testament to his vision and his dedication.

I don’t plan on becoming a wedding photographer any time soon but I like how Ghionis keeps me thinking about new ways in which to do things. Check out his website at www.gerryghionisphotography.com and especially watch the video promo for the live view of how he makes his images. In addition, Ghionis also has an educational website at www.theicesociety.com where he provides online educational workshops and also markets his live workshops.