What Am I Doing Now?
Here’s a quick update on some of the things I’ve been up to with my photography. I have a few ideas for future posts that are more involved and nerdy, but I thought a little bulletin about how things are going would be a good idea. To get started, here is one of my favorite shots from a few weeks ago, that I’ve been really happy with.
Falling Water, 6/13/21. The lesson I learned here was to always, ALWAYS take my time and stick around in a location well after sunrise to allow the angle of the light to hit a scene differently. I was on my way out when this scene made me stop and pull out a telephoto lens. My ‘goal’ subject image turned out pretty lousy. More on this in a future post.
Things I’ve Been Up To
The Woodshop, an awesomely friendly neighborhood music venue / watering hole, hosts a quarterly open air market to ring in each new season here in Chattanooga. It’s a fantastic way to see local talent, and I was super excited to show my prints in public for the first time on 6/19. I even sold several, which blew my mind! It was so rewarding to talk shop with fellow photographers, meet other artists and craftspeople, and step WAY outside of my comfort zone.
So yeah, prints! My website store is up and running and I’ve had a lot of help from my better half Hannah aka theHcreative with it. I’m not good at website stuff, and self-promotion feels icky, but regardless I’ve enjoyed the printing and sales process and feel extremely fortunate to be able to do any of this. I recently rolled out 11x17” paper sizes which nicely fills the gap between my 8.5x11” and 13x19” offerings. Unfortunately, Canon ink is on back order so I’m probably going to have to put printing on hold for a spell.
In my last post I griped about Summer conditions and how I struggle with photography this time of year. It’s been somewhat comforting to learn I’m not alone - a few photographers I admire and follow on social media seem to agree. That said, I did take this image last weekend that I’m really stoked on. I had to focus stack to get everything sharp from front to back, but the wind still stirred the leaves and some softness was unavoidable. But I don’t care, I still like the atmosphere and late afternoon light blasting through the scene. I had to take the saturation way down because the forest was insanely green, and I wanted to emphasize the warmth of the sunlight.
Shirley’s Sunset, 7/10/21. OK Summer, fine. I’ll trudge, sweat, and pull ticks off me, if that’s what it takes. The humidity was killer last weekend, as expected, but added a lot of atmosphere to this shot. I used to use a Circular Polarizer to cut out glare completely in my woodland photos but lately I’m only partially turning it. A little glare bouncing off of waxy or wet foliage helps give a photo more depth, something Adam Gibbs taught me on his YouTube channel.
Street photography and doing more ‘snapshot’, in-the-moment, stuff has been going well and seems to be good cross-training. I’m not getting out as often as I’d hoped but still manage to shoot like this once or twice a week. Despite the intense Summer heat and humidity, it’s still been fun to get out with my pocket camera and iPhone, with the intention of snapping things that look cool. I’ll put some thought into composition, and post processing, but nothing that takes more than a couple of minutes. Listening to classical music or a film score helps me to zone out, too, and block out pesky mental chatter. Here are some example images I’ve posted on Instagram under my non-landscape account, @grumpy_kenny_snaps (which I created for these types of photos).
That’s really about it! I’m definitely still learning all the technical, compositional, and philosophical things, and tuning into masters like Alister Benn, Adam Gibbs, Simon Baxter, Sean Tucker and Thomas Heaton on YouTube when I can. I don’t know why but I’ve found folks with British accents to be really easy to learn from, plus these guys’ images are just plain badass.
To close, here’s a little wish list.
Photo trip to a part of the country I find to be underappreciated when it comes to landscape photography / social media. Put me in spot with no people, hikers, selfie-takers and I’ll be a happy photographer. My family has this abandoned, dilapidated farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere that I’m itching to visit. Plus, I miss my family out there and it would be a blast to see them.
Fujifilm GFX 100S + all the lenses. This isn’t going to happen for a long time but this probably my dream camera right now. I’ll have to sell an organ for this to happen, but a guy can dream.
Fall.
Thanks for stopping by!
