Entry #7 Hello (hello hello), is there anybody in there?

Reflection time!

There it is in a nutshell; a semi-distorted sense of memory combined with other outside elements. It allows us to perceive not only what happened directly to us, but a ripple of reactions that were caused by our personal actions. If we're forced to write reflectively, can we be honest with ourselves and our peers and pull some truth out of the ordeal, or will we just force ourselves to write creatively in hopes of attaining some kind of academic value? 

I liked the whole idea of doing a blog project right off the bat. I thought it gave us students the chance to be creative and slightly more informal while still performing our academic studies. My biggest problem with the whole project was the lack of class participation. I visited nearly every blogs on the list and what so many had in common was just a general lack-of personal interest in the project itself. The whole experiment was a perfect way for students to think creatively and move beyond the banality of busy-work, but indifference ran rampant and if people aren't interested in their own work, how can they be interested in the work of others?

Being someone who likes visuals, the best part about the project was getting to use some of those visuals I had stocked up on and showcase them for another demographic. Photography is what I do for financial gain so an opportunity not seized is an opportunity wasted. If I can demonstrate my technical knowledge of the craft itself combined with the physical results, it serves to benefit my own "brand" and also give advice or ideas to anyone else interested in this kind of field.

Maybe your head sometimes feels like the picture above, thick and foggy. God knows it happened to me on several occasions, but look beyond the fog though and you can see all the details and subject matter waiting to be captured. In order to move beyond the cloudiness I felt at times during the blog I would have to acknowledge what content was engaging to me personally. When I can begin to relate to a topic by how it affects my personal life, I could begin to escape the clutches of writers-block and flow freely within my discussion.

If there's one thing I learned in particular about blogs themselves from this project, it's that one single post is unlikely to produce the amount of audience-engagement that I'd like to see. Developing a blog is similar to developing a reputation in the sense that one will be unlikely to engage many without a sufficient amount of interesting content. There's a whole slew of people who WANT to share their experiences, ideas, knowledge and griefs with the rest of the world. If a person cannot find the interest within themselves to do the same a similar reaction of inactivity will prevail.

There's a good possibility that this may be my last blog post on this particular blog for a minute. I'd love to keep it up, but I will probably try and find something directly within my own portfolio if given the chance. If I can leave my fellow peers with any advice, it's simply this: find something you love to do, practice it thoroughly and share it with the world. Life is short, if you have to work on something, find a way to make it enjoyable. If you can't take any enjoyment out of your work then you need to rethink the type of work your doing. On that note, I'm off, and here's a picture of a Darth Vader action figure I took to send ya'll on your way (I've been waiting for an opportunity to unleash this). Good luck to everyone, it's been fun!

~Michael Keatley

Entry 6 - Come play?

     I drove around 350 total miles through torrential rain, huge gusts of wind, and some penny-sized hail to get this shot. Not that I particularly had any bit of a clue that I would actually capture something like this, but I did, and it was incredible. Never in my life had I'd seen skies like that before; gelatinous blobs of copper and crimson clouds transformed the atmosphere into an surreal landscape unique to its own. 

     My friend Seth came along for the ride, offering to drive when I had a chance to capture some photos. Before any of the actual photo-worthy opportunities arose, we got caught in a downpour and found some random hole-in-the wall Mexican restaurant, in Kansas of all place. When the storm passed conveniently in time for sunset, it set us up for some pretty intense photos.

     The shot below is actually just before sunset, and I caught it while Seth was doing about 50mph down the highway. It was a pretty intense storm, setting off a couple of tornado sirens but nothing actually touching down. Driving through the aftermath of all the flooded roads afterwards totally sucked though.

     I'm no professional storm-chaser by any means, but I've always had a keen interest in severe weather ever since I was a kid. Maybe it was seeing the movie Twister about 800 times with my parents (seriously, that is like their favorite movie ever), or maybe it's just the fact that intense weather is intriguing to us all. It can be beautiful or deadly with the flip of a coin; Mother Nature's version of Russian roulette.

example 1

example 2

     Both the pictures above were taken on my parents land back in Northwest Missouri. Their house had an incredible view from South, to West, to North, about 30 miles down the horizon in each direction. This was great for me because that majority of storms move from Southwest to Northeast in that area; giving me an opportunity to see them coming my way hours before they would reach me. In the first picture (example 1), that shelf cloud wrapped around the sky for miles. It actually had a tornado-warning on it that I was unaware of while watching the beast come directly for me. It was probably one of the more intense storms I'd ever seen come over their house. The 2nd example is just one of several hundred lightning shots I got while staying with them for about a year on their land. To keep myself out of harm's way, I would attach an intervalometer to the camera to keep the camera shooting while I could step inside the house and watch. An intervalometer is a small handheld device that is attached to the camera and can be programmed to allow the camera to shoot automatically in timed intervals. I could set the number of pictures the camera would take, the duration of time that the shutter would stay open, and the amount of time in-between each shot taken. This was a fantastic tool for shooting lightning because I could keep myself sheltered indoors and minimize any risk of danger.

     The photo above I captured in August of 2011, coming home from a friends house. I had seen some strange clouds in the distance and decided to take a few shows while a couple miles from my parents house. That whole storm-front came in relatively fast. It turned into one of the most defined shelf-clouds I had ever seen. It stretched much further than what I have pictured, but with the sunset catching behind the edge of the cloud-front coupled with the contrasting warm and cold color tones, I couldn't take enough pictures of this scene. The photo below is still the same storm, whereas the picture above is facing almost due-west, the picture below is facing North, Northwest.

     It almost looks like an entirely different storm, but I assure you those two pictures were probably taken within minutes of each other. That storm ended up being pretty crazy as well; knocking over a radio tower in St. Joseph, and collapsing one of those big gas-station canopies that cover the gas-pumps.  I had to drive home underneath the storm when it finally caught up to me, and the wind basically blew me right off the road and into the ditch, not a big deal. The old newspaper I used to work for, have a small article and some photos as well.

    This next shot is my baby though. It was everything I was searching for when driving thousands of miles across the Midwest waiting for nature to unleash one of it's most mysterious phenomenons.

     Bear with me as I frolic about in the nostalgia of one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I started out my day as usual, looking at the weather reports and gauging whether anything was worth chasing after. There were some reports of tornado watches out in Southwest Iowa (which was only about an hour and a half from me) so I decided to go check it out. I stopped by several friends houses on the way to try and find someone to tag along, but had no luck. So I ventured off alone, stopping by one truck stop on the way to try and pick up some wi-fi signal (this was 2010) to try and determine the most productive route to take. The Doppler radar showed a pretty big storm cell headed towards Mount Ayr, Iowa. 

     The highway towards Mount Ayr was pretty much a straight shot East about 25 miles from the interstate. It was probably close to the first hill that I crested above that I saw eerie black clouds in the distance, hanging low from the sky and continuing to loom larger and larger as I approached. Not long after that, the weather radio I kept in my car started ringing; softball-sized hail was coming down just north of me. As I got closer and closer to the storm I started questioning just what in the hell I had got myself into. I've seen a lot of storms and a lot of clouds but these clouds were just absolutely frightening. They were black as night, jagged to a point and beginning to spin rather quickly. 

     I reached Mount Ayr just as the storm was continuing to move through the northern part of town. I stopped for a second to shoot some photos of the clouds spinning over a field, and before I could even get back into my car, the storm was already moving away at a rapid pace. I raced down side-streets trying to find a way north out of town. I ended up finding hwy 169 and started hurling north when not more than 30 seconds later I saw it. A tornado dropped from the sky 2 or 3 miles in the distance. I called 911 immediately to issue a warning and suddenly when I came up over a hill it was gone. 

     I was shaking now, hardly believing what I had just saw. I continued down hwy 169 when up ahead I saw some road-work signs and a worker standing in the middle of the road with a stop sign. Not exactly what I was expecting on a back-country highway, so I asked the road-worker if he knew of a detour I could take. He pointed me to a gravel road directly to my right, so I turned and not more than 20 yards later I saw it again. This time it was different though. At first, it didn't really have a defined shape, it just looked like a huge white mass of clouds touching the ground. To be honest, I couldn't even really tell it was a tornado until about 30 seconds later when it started taking a more definitive shape. I yelled at the road-worker who I had just spoke to, "Hey! There's a tornado right there!". To which he says in the most deadpan, unconcerned tone I'd ever heard in my life, "yea, thought I seen it." He spoke of it like it was an old grocery bag that blew across the road. I had no time for that, I was witnessing an event I had dreamed so long of. 

      

      The tornado lasted maybe a total a 5 minutes. I had taken some video with an old point-and-shoot camera, but I was shaking so hard and swearing so much that it was hard to deal with. I got my photos though, and I got my experience. I left to go back home giddy as a school-girl, getting lost for about 2 hours on my way back and couldn't have cared less. It wasn't until I got home and decided to take a couple photos of lightning off in the distance that I noticed something was awry. When I had stopped to take pictures in the field before the tornado occurred, I had changed all my settings to the lowest quality possible in an effort to save space if I did come across a tornado, then proceeded to forget that logic in a rush of crazed adrenaline. They look alright for the web, but unfortunately not near up to the quality I was expecting and hoping for. 

    Arizona is not really a fantastic location for storm-chasing and feel like reliving those days back in Missouri is the closest I may get to seeing storms like that for a long period of time. It was a defining experience for me as a photographer and as a simple guy who loves sky-gazing. In the process I learned how to identify weather patters, visual cues, and some crucially-important tips about staying safe. It's a goddamn shame I wouldn't learn soon enough not to fuck with my settings while crazy weather is in progress. Live and learn. Live and Learn.  

     I forgot to mention that no one was hurt in that tornado in Mount Ayr; however, it did destroy some property and probably scared the living shit out of a few dozen people. 

     Damage survey from Weather.gov     

Entry 5: Get Out of My Belly!

Looks like a pretty solid meal, eh? Did I forget to mention that I can cook a lil' bit? This was my first attempt at Cuban steak and beans. The steak itself was bought from a local meat-shop that was close to my house back in Missouri. Everything else though, I have no idea. The beans were canned, probably made in some giant plant and mass-produced across the world. The peppers, tomatoes, and limes were bought at the local grocery store; however, I can attest to the fact that I've never seen a lime tree in the midwest, nor have I ever seen peppers grow in the dead of a Missouri winter.

So where did my food come from? Why am I content putting shit in my body that I have so little knowledge of? How can I begin to resolve this dilemma? Sometimes you have to question your own ethics; how can I call myself an animal-lover when I still buy meat from food conglomerates?This massive system of death-bringers who adhere to a morale controlled almost solely by immense financial pragmatism. Can I break the habit of turning a blind-eye to such systematic ecological discontent?

For many years I considered becoming a vegetarian. While I may use the word "considered" loosely, it's still a thought that crosses my mind somewhat frequently. There's something just so incredibly difficult about breaking tendencies that I've pretty much inherited from birth. Not only has my family played a role in what I eat, but society, media, and advertising have had their fare share with me as well. I've grown up in a meat-lover's culture; bacon on this, chicken on that, 2 quarter-pound patties on a pretzel bun (I'm not gonna lie that was a delicious burger). It's just been recent though that I've begun to see what a callous role I play in the scheme of things.

I never used to pay attention to the hundreds of thousands of acres of cornfields I would pass driving through Iowa to visit friends. I never noticed the pig farms just out of sight, the one's that would leave a faint waft of shit in the air when a good breeze came through. Why is it only now that I start to wonder how terrible a place that must be? I actually knew a couple people who worked at one particularly large hog-farm owned by Hormel near an old house I used to live in. If you don't know anything about Hormel, I can at least tell you this; they make terrible meat that tastes like meat-flavored salt. Seriously, it's not good at all, and the conditions I heard about inside the farm/plant were not even close to better. One lady I knew who worked there had literally the worst job I had ever heard of in my life. Her job was to destroy the runt piglets, usually by means of blunt force trauma, and always while they were still alive. Her go-to for defending her unusually sadistic state of employment was that those baby pigs were sick and needed to be put out of their misery...How noble.

In reality though, I don't think she enjoyed it at all but she had 2 young kids and there's not a ton of employment opportunities throughout Northwest rural Missouri. I imagine Hormel knows this, and takes complete advantage of it, citing themselves as job-creators while simultaneously running a Hog-Auschwitz labor-camp. Local farmers used to complain regularly about them dumping waste into local creeks that would then traverse through their land as well. I have to assume mountains of pig-shit littered with antibiotic residue can cause an effect on local ecosystems when dumped into the streams that help support said ecosystems.

So why can't I stop myself from eating the garbage that's constantly advertised to me? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not some glutton for junk-food but I have my vices, and have found out that they are hard to let go of. That sweet and salty medley of convenience bores through my willpower like a 2-ton drill, and provides me with a short-term euphoria that could probably be compared to that of sex. Shit, it's advertised to us on TV like porn; busty models atop sports cars dripping ketchup between their bosom, we've all seen it. It's been noted that the sensation our brains receive when viewing a picture of pizza triggers areas of our brains that are generally limited to the act or thought of coitus.

  

That's a "home-made" pizza I threw together a while ago. Of course, home-made only means I bought a whole bunch Kraft, Pillsbury, and Tyson to jam together into a sweet colorful array of meaty-salty bliss. In realty, a whole slew of underpaid laborers and mistreated chickens had to come together and lay down some kind of sacrifice so I could have my ass-fattening pizza monstrosity.

Similar to quitting smoking, I'm having just as difficult a time with quitting my consumption of poorly-made food. I'd like to say that I'm getting better at picking the food I eat though. I find myself buying more cage-free eggs, grass-fed beef, dye-free drinks and food, but I'm a long way off from where I'd like to be. For in reality I'd like to play the role of a good-guy; someone who is not only aware of his environment, but takes a stand against perceived injustices, and just exudes a rock-steady willpower. Now that I've started by identifying the problem, I can gradually move on to a solution. Now it's just a matter of seeing how far I can go with that solution.

Here's a resource I used to help me think about what crops I could try growing in my own home.

If you're ever in doubt about where to go about purchasing meat, you should check this article out.

Entry #4 - See a Still World in Motion: Lightpainting

Lightpainting.

It's essentially a photographic technique in which you combine a long exposure with the movement of an independent light source. The longer duration that the shutter is opened, the more light will be exposed to the cameras sensor. More than likely you have seen a photo at some point in your life where lights from a vehicle trail off in long illuminated lines through the night. Here's example of such with my friend Justin and his nephew on an ATV:

My shutter was open for 30 seconds. While it may look like it was daytime in this photo it was actually taken in the middle of the night. The reason you can see the 2 of them and the ground below them so brightly is because I used an off-camera flash to illuminate them real quick right before they drove down the road, otherwise they would just be a dark blur. Because it's so dark out, the camera is able to capture the trail of red light without too much outside ambient light hitting the sensor. If I were to take a 30 second exposure in the middle of the day, the picture would more than likely come out just completely white from the large amount of sunlight reaching the sensor. The reason some of the trees and and the forest floor are visible so well is because the camera is catching a combination of ambient light from the moon, our campsite, and the ATV's headlights. 

Here's a similar example of "freezing" your subject while still capturing the movement of light: 

This picture of my friend Aaron using poi sticks, was probably closer to a 5-7 second exposure. Once again I used a flash to illuminate my subject. The flash projects at such a fast speed (around 1/16th of a second) that Aaron will appear to be still in the photograph because when the flash is not illuminating him, his figure is almost completely dark, thus the cameras sensor will not capture much light reflecting off him. The fire from his poi sticks will continue to be captured as a series of trails by the cameras sensor because they are so much brighter than their surroundings. 

Some of you may have seen photos such as this before: 

This is Firespinning. To do this, you basically get a chain, attach a handheld metal whisk to it, stuff that whisk with steel wool, and spin the chain in a circular motion. In the photo above, my friend Neil and I were shooting in the dead of winter in Northwest Missouri. That's snow on the ground and it's reflecting the orange light from the burning embers. While it may look like the steel wool is shooting sparks out similar to that of a firework or sparkler, it's not. It's kind of unimpressive in real-time actually. Nonetheless, it still has the capability to burn down forests or property, so it's not a bad idea at all to bring a fire extinguisher with you even if it seems damp outside, and it's probably a terrible idea to do this inside a home or building unless you have your heart set on causing some kind of property damage. Out here in the dry, arid climate of Arizona, you have to be EXTREMELY careful if you're planning on attempting this. In reality it's a good idea to have a group with you in case some kind of trouble were to occur, and to stay far away from wooded areas, especially pine trees. DPS has a good in-depth article on the how-to of firespinning if you're interested in looking into it further. 

The three photos below demonstrate different methods of approach you can use in your compositions:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

In example 1, we had my friend Conan sit down as still as he could, and pretend to drive a car. We used an LED light to "draw" an automobile around him. Then when we finished drawing with the flashlight, we would snap the off-camera flash to illuminate him in a still motion. This took a couple of tries before we got one we liked.

In example 2, my friend Spencer would stand as still as he could, then in intervals we would use the flash and he would move his arms to a different position and we would hit him with the flash again. My friend Seth used 2 different flashlights to make the designs around him and would step out of the picture when we would use the flash as to not appear in the image.

Example 3 is a picture from a few years ago of my fiance, Eva, and myself. We were on top of Shaw Butte at the old burnt-down Cloud 9 restaurant with the Phoenix city lights in the background. This was a 20 second exposure where my friend Dustin used a flashlight to draw the heart behind us, and then hit us with the off-camera flash to illuminate us both. The long exposure here is key as it determines how bright and vivid the city lights in the background will look. At the same time Eva and myself had to remain completely still for the 20 seconds as to avoid any unwanted to blur that could be caused by any of our movement.

In almost all the photos I have shown you, the off-camera flash plays an integral role in the final composition because it allows you to combine long exposures and still take a seemingly normal looking portrait for a person. If I had not used the flash in these pictures, the person would just look like a dark blurry apparatus. However, that is not to say you cannot do lightpainting without a flash. If you search around on the web, you will see many fantastic lightpainting photos where no flash was used at all.

Another incredibly important tool I use is my tripod. It is near utmost priority that the camera remain as still as possible to avoid the photograph from becoming blurry. If you don't have a tripod, use a steady flat surface, something that won't move very much at all such as a table, chair, or log (if you're out in the countryside).

The video I'm about to show you is of Pixelstick. A lightpainting tool I was just introduced to recently and to be honest, this thing looks incredible. It's application in use is unlike anything I've ever seen before and it's results in capturing unique and beautiful content is stunning.

If you or your friends buy one of these....call me, please.

Long exposures and lightpainting are not limited to DSLR cameras. Most point-and-shoot cameras have a "manual" function on them where you can adjust shutter speeds within the camera's menu. Not only that but there are several apps for iPhone and Android. I've listed 2 examples below:

Here's a long exposure app for Iphone and Ipad

Here's a long exposure app for Android

The methods, approach, and ideas you can apply to these kinds of techniques are near limitless. It will take a lot of trial-and-error to get a feel for how much light you can use, or how long your shutter should be open, but don't get frustrated if you come across difficulties. The experimentation process can be empowering, opening up your eyes to the vast amount variables that go into play when making your compositions and giving you an idea of how broad the spectrum is as far as the creative process goes. If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to share what information I can. For now though, experiment, and have fun with it. Find some flashlights, a steady surface to keep your camera or phone on and paint away!

Entry #3 Our Universal Apathetic Nature

When I take my daily commute along Thunderbird Ave, close to the I-17, I always seem to take notice of a specific little spillway near the Northeast corner of 31st ave and Thunderbird. Why? Because it generally gets clusterfucked with an insane amount of garbage and debris. This would seem odd if I hadn't already witnessed scenes like this throughout the city. I've gone on walks through washes near Happy Valley and 67th ave and saw several truckloads worth of broken tile and concrete heaved into the middle of them. When I go hiking near Shaw Butte I see a million Polar Pop cups and beer cans littering the desert with a frightening abundance. Yet scenes like these seem to capture the attention of virtually no one because we've come to accept it as a symptom of normalcy, and probably because we haven't experienced yet what kind of cataclysmic summation should occur when our mass naïveté remains in a fixed state.

Seeing images of a desolate planet, skyscrapers made of waste, and void of a runaway human race in movies like 'Wall-E', don't strike me as being anything entirely far-fetched. Humankind is shown as a fat, sheltered, dopey flock of space-dwelling citizens who live in some kind of Viacom-wet-dream-fantasy-space-station. Their total existence predicated upon only by their own marketability.

I'm watching Wall-E, with my 3 year old daughter, and I'm curious as to when I have to answer the question, "Dad, is that what the Earth is going to look like soon?".  What the hell should I say? "Well, uhhhhh, no honey, you're too young to worry about those things, here's the iPad, go play." Should I not be honesty with her, and tell her that I think a trend like we're on could certainly have devastating consequences not just hundreds of years from now, but even closer to 50, or 20?

With the immeasurable level of technology that they had in Wall-E (remember that they built multiple self-sustaining space-stations to survive for hundreds of years light-years away from our planet), they didn't seem as interested to use some of that technology to keep Earth's plants and vegetation from completely dying out, and subsequently depriving the planet of oxygen, that thing we need to breathe and live.  Was one more cost-effective than the other?

A Scene from the Film Wall-E

In our present state of technological prowess, we've built machines that take care of half our worldly needs; Vehicles that can traverse through water and space, man-made islands composed of 5 star hotels bigger than towns I've lived in, a complex digital communications network that can keep us from ever having to talk to someone in person, and a tiny little robot that can clean and vacuum your floors for without ever needing a hint of human assistance...yet we use prison laborers to clean the side of our highways

We made life so easy for ourselves but our efforts are in vein. I can have a pizza delivered directly to my house, paid and with gratuity included with ONE push of a button on my phone, yet it took me 3 days to find a place I could buy one of those grabby things you see people using to pick up garbage after concerts and sporting events.  If you find reaching into your pocket too arduous a task, you can always pick up one of those nifty little Apple watches to assist in your online consumerism.

Soon, we will be slaves to our lethargy. People used to be amazed by any kind of technological advance mankind came up with (can you imagine the party they threw for the guy who made the wheel?), now I could show somebody a robot performing brain surgery and they'd probably shrug like I just showed them an old boot laying in the sidewalk. Our obsession with our own personal comforts only serves as a way to keep us weak and unprepared should some catastrophic event should occur and our countries infrastructures go to shit. What will you do when the lights turn off? When you're phone goes out of service? When the only fresh water you can get is collected in coffee cups looming under gray clouds dumping acid rain on your city? We have no idea what kind of indescribable hardships will occur if we, as a civilization, fall apart.

I can tell you one thing though, there won't be some mega-utopian-spacecraft to whisk us away into the quiet vacuum of space. Not in our lifetime anyways. So in the meantime, why not catch up on a little literature that could be somewhat beneficial in case civilization crumbles.

For us desert folk, we have Desert Emergency Survival Basics, or for when shit really hits the fan there's The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook.  Remember those, they'll be great for camping and post-apocalyptic catastrophes. Don't say I didn't warn ya!

Sweet Dreams :)

Entry #2 Why So Serious???

Utilize Negative Space....By Superimposing Your Cat's Apathetic Face Into It!

Take a moment to stop being productive, and screw around for a bit. Many of us spend a great deal of time in our adult life constricted in the manner in which we can behave because we’re expected to be “productive” members of society who follow protocol and get shit accomplished. Therefore, it is also expected of us to not spend lengthy amounts of time photoshopping Steve Buscemi’s eyes onto various celebrity faces or thinking of the perfect meme for your favorite Game of Thrones character (Tyrion!). We are obliged to so many responsibilities as we get older and if we don’t take some time out of our day strip ourselves of the restraints of modern day life, we will likely remember our past days during the twilight of our lives as nothing more than being frivolous pawns in someone else’s game. What do I mean by that? Simply that we become overwhelmed with responsibilities delegated to us simply by being parents, employees, students, citizens, and humans. Unless you're walking around in a dead coyote skin somewhere in the midst of nature, building your own shelters and spending your free-time hunting and gathering, you're probably answering to someone, maybe a teacher, a boss, a step-parent, a loan-shark (I don't judge).

That's one decent thing about being a poorly-networked freelance photographer, I don't have to abide by whole lot of upper management, and get the benefit of generally working freely. but there’s a dilemma that I will come across pretty frequently when editing wedding photos I have taken; I grow frustrated with the repetition of technique and subject matter. The organizing, the right poses, the teeth-whitening, all those things that are necessary to keep your media looking professional and making your client happy tend to become more and more of a hassle after a while because simply put, they’re not very fun, at all. Sure, it’s satisfying to see your images take shape and garner their own individual appeal, but that feeling can be short-lived. The tediousness of maintaining a professional appearance and attitude comes with a consequence that can more often than not result in you having to place limits on your style and imagination.

To break the cycle of repetition I need to force myself back to the basics, back to the point of why I even spent a stupid amount of money on a magic box that takes pictures. I do it because it’s fun, because there’s so many ways it lets me utilize my creative self.  The satisfaction I get when I capture a lightning bolt in the middle of the night, the suspense of seeing what happens when you keep your camera’s shutter open for 2 minutes and wave flashlights and glow-sticks around like a bunch of kids hopped up on MDMA, or simply giving myself the opportunity to laugh my ass off after I photoshop a picture of my friend canonballing into a pool in his tighty-whities and overlay it with a galactic background, angel wings and a viking helmet, all those things provide me with a great deal of joy, laughter, or pride. That last example is the one I actually want to draw focus on for this post.

Photoshop is an amazing tool, and it is capable of a seemingly-infinte number of applications and uses as far as digital media is concerned and is pretty much regarded as the industry-standard for photographic post-production. It doesn’t always have to be so serious though.

One of my fondest online memories was 3 or 4 years ago, when one friends post on Facebook turned into an epic Photoshop battle between a couple of other friends and myself. I turned friends into cats, I turned friends into Han Solo and Chewbacca, I turned one friend into Gollum, and in return, my friends found some of my pictures from my early high school years (braces, acne, goofy smile) and had their way with them. There was something like 92 comments within an hour and a half and it was solid gold. I hadn’t laughed so hard in as long as I could remember. I had such a good time that I hadn’t even noticed that in hindsight, I actually was kind of being productive in the sense that I was honing my skills in photoshop through trial-and-error, repetition, and brainstorming ideas.

Maybe your friend wanted a change of scenery? 

Being productive doesn’t always mean earning a paycheck at the end of the week, or studying until your brain shuts down. Being Productive can simply be taking thoughts, ideas, and emotions from the activities you perform during your life, and utilizing them at another time, whether it be a technique you learned while photoshopping a friend making love to a panda bear or sharing that same story with your co-workers around the water cooler, you ultimately get to decide on your own what is, and what is not productive. You are not bound to the judgment of others. Eat, drink, be merry, and photoshop your friends mercilessly!

Please take a minute to view these wonderful masterpieces  posted by Kotaku.com from some our friends in South Korea.

If you don't have any friends who use Photoshop and want something 'shopped, or if you would like to practice on other people, here's a good Reddit link where folks are generally a bit more accommodating to your actual request.

Entry #1 - A Critic in a Glass House

276/B - By David Thorne

 

 

I was unaware that a pie-chart could be so epicly comical. I was in tears, and by the end of the email correspondence between Simon Edhouse and David Thorne I could hardly breath I was laughing so hysterically.

If you have ever been on the internet before, you have most likely heard the terms “troll” or “trolling” used. To put it bluntly, a troll is essentially someone who is a dick to people (generally on the web, but not limited to)  for the sole purpose of gaining amusement from their reactions. A debate with an internet troll is similar to a dog barking at his own reflection in front of a mirror, there is no real opponent and you’re really just perpetuating your own emotional reaction. David is a troll, and he trolls very well.  

There are many times in my life I wish I could’ve responded to bill collectors with reckless mockery but have ended up turning face and offering formal tidings like a good little boy. To be honest, the only time I’ve ever trolled anyone real hard, was when a friend of mine asked me to photoshop a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket in a photo I took, because she didn’t want her boss to see it.  I followed that request by removing the bulge in her pocket, then cutting out her image and placing it inside an image of an old opium den next to three disheveled, half-naked Asian men. She was not half as amused as I had hoped, but her husband laughed his ass off.

The blog itself is a collection of trollings and satirical pieces accompanied by simple digital graphics that are frequently dripping with sarcasm. It’s a nearly sure-fire solution for a laugh when I need one and leaves me constantly wondering what kind of musings I could come across if I let go of all the seriousness.  

Mike Olbinski's Blog

Imminent: by Mike Olbinski

 

The second blog I’d like to discuss, is Mike Olbinski’s. I’ve spoken with Mike on a handful of occasions and admire his work thoroughly. As a former amateur storm photographer, I’m always blown away by his weather shots. He has an incredible eye for composition and always seems to be in the right place at the right time.  When I began shooting HDR (high dynamic resolution) photos, it was because of Mike. I randomly came across some of his on Flickr several years ago and was blown away by the color vibrance and detail his photos displayed. After some brief dialogue he gave me some tips and pointers about shooting HDR and it helped tremendously.  He has since gone on to become a fantastic nature and portrait photographer and an associate of TVN (Reed Timmers storm-chasing company).

His blog is relatively simple by all means. A white background with simple links on the left side, a panel of images with brief summaries on the homepage showcasing his work with weddings, family portraits, and weather. Overall the blog gets by on it’s content alone and the set-up is unique if you compared it to what you might consider standardized blogs (one post at a time generally scrolling downward). There’s nothing particularly striking about it’s design, but it’s effective and doesn’t get bogged down by any unnecessary clutter. Furthermore, being that the guy was basically an inspiration to me when I was first getting started in Photography, I have a natural bias to enjoy and admire just about everything he puts out.

Lindsay Horn Photography

Photograph By: Lindsay Horn

                            

The third and final blog I checked out, was Lindsay Horn’s photography blog. I wanted to find a blog that seemed to have a substantial amount of effort put into it, but at the same time something that I didn’t necessarily like.

I have nothing personal against Lindsay by any means, and I visited several similar sites before choosing hers. Her photos are well-composed and visually I quite like the main header for her page, but the rest of it is rather unappealing to me. A gaudy, tiled patterned background sticks out like a sore thumb. The borders and frames around the images she posts come off as cliché and uninspired.  Her style of photography is rather contemporary, and while I’m sure it works for her particular audience, and is also something I also have to conform to on specific occasions (certain clients, or assignments and such), it comes off as insipid and repetitious to me, images I feel like I’ve seen a million times over. This is the problem when viewing anonymous family portrait portfolios, I become instantaneously bored unless there’s at least some level of comic irony involved.

Consider where in our previous blog, Mike Olbinski puts a great deal of focus into showcasing his weather and outdoor shots. It gives his blog a significant amount character by not only demonstrating his multiple avenues of interests and skill-sets, but also giving his readers a greater variety of content to explore. When a photo blog consists of nothing more than a singular, limited theme, it tends to get old fast, and begins to appear unimaginative. Look, I love Greek food, as many times that I’ve said to myself that I could eat Greek Pita’s steak schwarma every day for the rest of my life, in all reality, I’m completely full of shit. Repetition is great for honing a craft and a necessity if you want to excel at said craft, but it’s not particularly useful when it comes to eating the same food, listening to the same band, or looking at examples of photos that ALL follow the same theme and genre and really only serve to try and sell one singular idea. I should be wary of throwing stones in my glass house however. If I’m quick to critique her for these things, what will my peers say of me if I can’t pony-up and adhere to the the critiques I’m so quick to dole out.

These are things that I will need to think about while picking out the direction and substance for my blog. I need to be open, keep my ideas broad, and focus on how I can discuss and explore the subject matter while simultaneously keeping them entertained. That’s basically what a blog is to me, an avenue of entertainment. If the content becomes stale, you’re gonna have trouble keeping people interested, if everyone becomes disinterested, than really all you really have is a speaker in an empty room. If that’s the path I take, than I’m better off buying a diary than maintaining a blog.