Just for Fun

26 Sep Photography Has Invaded My Every Thought

You hear it all the time, people "viewing" the world in a perspective that is unique to only those in the same career field. With each life experience we gain as we live each day, we wake up and see the world a little differently, whether we like it or not. This perspective greatly skews itself in the direction of topics and ideas where your mind spends a lot of it's time thinking, observing, acting-on, and discussing. We become hypersensitive to these things we specialize our lives around. The "perspective" I am specifically referring to in this post is that of a visual sense, however, the varying perspectives of the world span from the other senses our bodies have (like hearing or smell) to just thoughts. Of course, all of these perspectives are manifested from thought, but they work in-tandem with our sensory organs. It should be no surprise to those reading this that my perspective has been warped by my obsession with photography. Like the blind gain an uncanny ability to heighten their sense of hearing, I've come to modify my sight and how I view the world in photography. My quest in making new and different photography (and in as great of a quantity as I can), puts me in a mode that hunts for anything that can be utilized to inspire, create, or evolve a photography concept. I've become fascinated and an observer of what I've already experienced my whole life, which is light and how it reacts in an unimaginable number of environmental variations. For example, I understand that candle light is faint, very orange in color, where fluorescent bulb is much bright and different in color temperature. I understand that glass, metal, and other like-objects hold reflective properties. All of these things you learn as a kid, but you never really have to consciously think about them in every day life and how they effect your life, because quite simply, they don't real matter that much. Not until you pick up a light capturing device, like a camera, do you start to find an appreciation of everything you already "know." Turns out you really don't know much about it after all. Further more, you don't understand how important the smallest variations in time of day, light variations, surface properties of simple objects sitting in a room, etc. really are until it comes time for you to replicate it accurately with a camera. Essentially, you are observing non-stop, taking mental notes, testing, failing, and learning all over again in a new world hidden inside of the same one you've known since birth. It's a rewiring of the brain, and sometimes it's a fricken battle to accomplish, because you are fighting your whole life's idea of how things are. For me, it's taking what I know about life, shoving that knowledge in to a camera, and looking at it via the lens. This rewiring process can't even begin until you understand the camera and what it is capable of. Further more, with flash photography, the camera and only the camera is capable of seeing what flash photography can produce. After years of observing flash photography produced by cameras and the lighting tools which helped manipulate light, you can start to predictively visualize the world that your camera sees. It's very much a trial and error process, a LOT of observing.

23 May Winding Roads, and Jungles, and Waterfalls, Oh My!

Where to start with this post... Well, let's start with the background story. Last December, I traveled to Maui to photograph a wedding over there. I made the most of out the trip and booked my stay for a week, giving me a couple days of prep for the wedding, then the wedding, and a couple days of pure relaxation on the island after the wedding craziness. These last few days left us seeking fun island activities, and being the adventurous group that we were, we decided on a jungle hike. Now... This hike was located on the eastern tip of the island, we were staying on the west end, so a road trip was in order. For an island, Maui is quite diverse due to the mountains at the center of the islands. Believe it or not, these mountains were large enough to create very extreme differences in climate and landscape on opposite sides of the mountain. It was like experiencing Washington State, but instead of having to drive hundreds of miles, you only had to drive 30 to go from luscious greenery to brown desert landscapes. I would think there may be dryer parts of the island than others, but nothing like this...

04 Mar Ruby – The Narcoleptic Fish

Ok, so have to share a funny story with you guys. Took some pics, as you know, pics are always a good idea with any fish story, right (ok, that was cheesy). I recently purchased a new betta fish, Ruby. Ruby is well... mostly red, and full of spunk. For those who don't know, betta fish are quite smart, have amazingly varying characteristics from fish to fish, and can actually be trained to do tricks. People have trained them to jump out of the water or swim through a hoop for food (seriously, who are you people? Go do...things... just do something, you are making your fish swim through a hoop for it's food). From what I hear, most fish are mostly active at night and sleep during the day. The opposite is true for bettas, they tend to mirror humans when it comes to sleep schedules. So, I've had Ruby for 3-4 days now and I've been watchin' him, seeing how he's adapting, and he keeps me company as I work on my laptop at the desk here.

13 Nov Perma Prints

No, I'm not talking about the good kind of prints, like photograph prints. I'm talking about animal prints, more specifically, cat prints. Long, frustrating story short, I'm getting my shower redone in my bathroom. We are talking complete teardown of walls, tile, underlying cement, and replacing it with all new stuff in the reverse order. So the project is coming to an end (finally), the new walls are up and the cement floor was applied. The contractor doing the work forgot to close the bathroom door after he was done working for the day, and my curious/pain-in-the-ass/relentless cat, Coal, decided to investigate the newly poured cement. Sure enough, I walk into the bathroom and see about a dozen cat prints pressed deeply into the fresh mix. Of course I'm thinking "Ok, so if I was a cat, I'd be curious, and I might take a step in to look around." Why would he continue to step after sinks a paw into cement? How about 12 or so more times? I really wonder about this cat sometimes. As mad as I was, I had to appreciate the humor in the situation and snapped a couple pics with a P 'n S real quick. Maybe he felt like leaving his mark, much like a kid will write his name in a wet sidewalk. Coal can't write so I guess a series of paw prints is the next best thing.