project

Don’t Include Power Lines in Your Photography

Power Line Sunrise

Power lines run all over the place in rural Alabama, no such thing as underground lines.

Since January I’ve spent a good bit of time reading and re-reading all of Eric Kim’s books on street photography. There is so much practical real world advise in each one of his books that they are probably the few collection of books I’ve read multiple times. While we share different philosophies on life, we both share a love of photography, and it seems, a driving desire to continue to learn and improve. One of the reasons I continued to read and follow Eric Kim’s work over the years is he has completely changed and rearranged how I think about photography.

He’s made me re-think how I view my own personal photography, what’s acceptable as a quality image and what’s not, and even what equipment is actually truly needed. All those rules I spent years learning, like “don’t include power lines in your photography” it will ruin the shot, were disseminated by Kim’s books. I think I was 10 years into photography before I actually realized it was ok to include people in the images (my main teacher and book learning early on was 100% nature photography).

When you have been doing something, like practicing photography for 25 years, you don’t often come across new ways of thinking about the art, so it’s been a super refreshing experience so far this year. The ideas below came straight out of one of his books, The Street Photography Project Manual, which I was able to read because of his vision on open source information.

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Update on Photo Project 365 From June 2012 :: P365.me

Project 365 June 2012 Update

Project 365 [Day 199] Waiting for the Rain in the Parking Lot

It’s the first part of July and I finally got around to updating my June Project 365 Photos (read about my Project 365 here). I am up to day 215, as of June 30th, which makes me 58.74% of the way through this project. Sometimes it feels like I’m taking the same photo every day, but I keep trying to find a unique image each day, and so far I have 215 unique images over my my Flickr gallery. My favorite shot (that was not published previously on my site) for the month of June is above, probably because it is a little more abstract. This huge storm came up while I was sitting in the Publix parking lot waiting for Deb to come out, and this shot was the result.

I still have mixed feelings about this project. It’s a pain in the neck, it takes time, it’s every single day with no break, and it’s a unbelievably accurate look at your life one photo at a time. Just like all photography, when I look at each individual image, I can remember great details about each day, just because I took one single photo. The mind is an amazing thing, and images create a very strong reminder in the brain, causing us to remember details we would otherwise have long forgotten. I know there is some psychological reasoning behind this, but once that image is taken, it takes certain details and moves them from our short-term RAM memory and places them in the long-term storage. That’s what I love about photography.

Just 151 more days and photos to take, and I can’t wait for November 29th when I can say it is finished. You can see a few previous blog posts on Project 365 here. To see the full gallery over on Flickr just go to http://P365.me.

Update on Photo Project 365 From May 2012 :: P365.me

Project 365 for May 2012

May is over and June is here. Hard to believe. I’m still working on my Project 365 for 2012, and so far, I haven’t missed a single day since November 29th (the day I started because that’s when my year starts). I am constantly amazed by this project. I have wanted to complete it for 15+ years, and I know why I haven’t up to this point, it still remains far more difficult than I had ever anticipated when I started last November. Something I have found quite interesting is my iPhone is the overwhelming king of this project. I have used it for about 75% of the shots instead of my Nikon, which I hadn’t really expected when I started.

In the same way journaling provides an excellent look back at what was accomplished, or just what happened on a particular date, this project is giving me a snap shot of my day, week, month, and year. Sometimes I have very little to take a picture of, sometimes I don’t remember until I’ve been ready for bed, then it’s a test of creativity to take a photo in the dark, of something interesting. Anyway, it has been a great project so far, and above you will see the snapshot for May 2012. My favorite for the month are below. To see the full gallery over on Flickr just go to http://P365.me.

Project 365 [Day 170] Retreating into the Safety of Our Shell

Project 365 [Day 170] Turtle Waiting to Be Released

I captured this big guy crossing the road over by our house on the way home from work yesterday, and while he was sitting in my truck I took this shot with my iPhone. My intentions were to keep him from getting run over by picking him up, putting him in the trunk, and bringing him over to a new greener pasture (literally) and a nice pond already stocked with his friends. He was quite heavy and as soon as I picked him up his nails pushed my hand off his shell and I dropped him in the grass. Luckily he was only about a foot off the ground, but as one of my little nephews pointed out, his leg was bleeding. It wasn’t bad, but the turtle was startled for sure, and spent the better part of 30 minutes in his shell, refusing to come out even when he was put in the water.

He eventually stuck his head above water to take a breath, and then finally stretched out his legs and swam away into the big open expanse. It got me thinking about how often we shrink back into the safety of our shells when someone is trying to help us, even if the help sometimes hurts. Well, he should be making new friends now, and he also made my Project 365 photo of the day (gallery), hopefully he will stay off the roads now.

Project 365 [Day 158] Tree Swing on the Farm at Sunset

Project 365 [Day 158] Tree Swing on the Farm at Sunset

This is one of my favorite places in our backyard, and of course if you have been around this site for a while you will recognize the tree swing, but I keep finding unique ways to shoot it. I’m working on getting all the photos on my site of this swing to be searchable through “my swing” but they aren’t all up there quite yet. Yesterday afternoon I was cutting the grass and noticed the sun setting right behind the tree and actually took this shot while I was on the tractor, mowing. I later stopped and tried to setup a better shot with Deborah in the swing but none turned out as this one did with the sun right in my face. Today it was my Project 365 photo for Day 158.

Project 365 [Day 155] Time to Get Down to Business in Uganda

Project 365 [Day 155] Business Mission Trip to Uganda

Today we (Cornerstone Church) sent off two staff members (Brian and Jack in the red and green shirt center above) to Uganda for a short business trip. Right now as I write this they are high over the Atlantic on their way to Amsterdam then on to Africa. This has pretty much become an annual planning trip for our church to prepare the way for our mission teams who will travel to Uganda later this year. For the last several years we have sent 3-4 teams a year to Kampala, Uganda to work in and around Kampala, Gaba, and Buloba. Most recently we have partnered with a mission group out of Atlanta called Sixty Feet who are trying to work in a few remand homes in Uganda (see Uganda photos from a previous trip of mine).

This year, once again, we have 3-4 teams including the one above, who will head over to Uganda to partner with our brothers and sisters in sharing the love of Christ with others. Today this photo is my Project 365 image for Day 155 (full gallery here), can’t think of a better photo of the day today than this.

Project 365 [Day 145] Photo Editing Day for Project 365

Project 365 [Day 145] Editing Day for Project 365 on My 27" iMac

Today was editing day for Project 365. I am truly amazed at how difficult it has been to keep up with this seemingly simple task of taking one image a day for 365 days. I have managed to keep up ok with actually taking the image, although some days it has come right down to the wire, but trying to keep up with posting said images has been a difficult task. I could have made it a little easier on myself and just posted raw unprocessed iPhone images on Instagr.am every day, but that just isn’t my style. So this photo above is, yes, a photo of my office where I am processing my photos, but that’s what I did today. To see the other P365 (or posts) images just go to the gallery at http://p365.me  over on my Flickr site where they are arranged day by day.

Update on Photo Project 365 from March 2012 :: P365.me

Project 365 March 2012

Just wanted to post a quick update to my Project 365 (also known this year in the gallery as P365.me :2012), which was started back on November 29th 2011. Today makes Day 127 on a project that has been on My List for years and years now. Taking at least one unique photo every day seems to be a simple, easy thing, but in reality when you really start to attempt something like this you quickly see how many things can get in the way. Honestly the only thing making this possible for me at this point is my iPhone, otherwise, time would have its way. I would say 80-85% of all my P365.me images have come from my iPhone, and without it, this project would most likely be all but impossible. For a more detailed explanation visit my Project 365 page.

The image above represents March 2012. This is one reason why I really wanted to do this project and stick with it. It is a snap shot (literally) of a month in time. I try to make each shot unique, but when you get buried into the depths of routine sometimes it hard, and you end up with a lot of shots in the car, and of the dog. The cool thing is, I can remember every single shot, where I was, what I was doing, and so on, and I can do the same thing for shots I took 10 years ago. Images are such a powerful reminder of time and place.

[On a side note, I have several pre-dated posts that go along with this one that are finally ready to go on the blog. Between that and me having to manually re-code each blog post from my transfer from wordpress.org to wordpress.com my rss readers are going to still get some old updates. I’m sorry for spamming my rss readers, I wish there was a way for me to change it until all the updates are done, but there isn’t, sorry. I’m trying to get all the posts updated, time permitting, so it will stop hammering my rss feed.]

Greyhound MCI-9 Bus Conversion We Called Home :: Throwback Thursday

MCI Bus Conversion Before Painting

The post for this Throwback Thursday is an “On This Day 10 Years Ago” post (from this point forward OTDTYA), which I now realize is actually getting into a time period that is presented on my blog. The very first posts on my blog were in March 2001, which we posted three articles about our bus conversion in the photos above. I still need to go back and post-date some blog posts for that time period to fill in the gaps, but the two shots above was what Deborah and I were doing on this day 10 years ago. After we picked up our used (former Greyhound) bus from Ocala, Florida, we drove it back to Alabama, stripped it down on the inside, and then “shelled” it with plywood (image on the right side at the top), starting a long long long process of converting it into a motorhome we would use and live in for about 5 years.

It was about 10 years ago when we got our first digital camera, an HP Digital Camera 2MP gem, we used until I bought my first DSLR, the Nikon D100 a few months later. These photos were the very first set of images that were taken in digital form. From this period prior, almost all our images are taken, and still stored, on film. One item on my list is to take 1,000,000 photos, and since I can’t count the film images until at some point I can get them all scanned in, this started a count of digital images that still goes on today. So far I’m up to about 350,000 images taken, and it all started about 10 years ago, just about this time of year.


Cornerstone as a Multisite Church Only Weeks Away

It always seems that the busier things get the less time I have to just post a simple photo and put a caption on it. I’m sure this is the same with every blogger I just try to keep up regardless of my schedule, oh well. My house went from a nice calm state over the new year holiday to crazy in a matter of a few days once the semester started back up again, but one other reason is pictured above. I took that photo with my iPhone about a week ago during a planning meeting for Cornerstone at Lee-Scott, our new multi-site location, and right where I am standing is where we will begin worshipping in February. The sheer volume of things to be done by everyone has grown wildly, but the time to open is almost here.

I have been reading Matthew for the last few weeks and this morning I ended with those famous words Jesus spoke after the resurrection in Matthew 28. In the Greek πορευθέντες (poreuthentes) is difficult to determine a proper tense, but when you try to translate it to English, it all comes out to be an action. Having gone, as you go, while you are going, and go therefore, are all common translations, but “GO” puts the emphasis on the imperative character, which gives the sense of a strong “go” in the missionary command.[1]

That’s a complicated way to say, it’s an exciting time at Cornerstone when 9-10 months of planning comes down to two characters in the English language… G-O. That work has been going on for a while, and that part is almost here. Make disciples… (over at Lee-Scott), that work is just about to begin. Today this image servers also as my Project 365 [Day 50] photo (see the rest of the P365.me :2012 here).

[1] A More Accurate Look at Matthew 28:19, By John A. Finton.