A or B?

So today I'm going to pull a "Chase Jarvis." ((No, I'm not going to jump on a plane and ski backwards while trying to get some great photos of snowboarders flying through the air...))

Chase has these interesting posts where he shows two photos and then asks his audience which one they like better and why. Why is that fun? Well, when going through a crap-ton (yes, that's a technical term) of photos it's hard to decide which photos are going to be THE ones you show. In some cases, there's only ONE that makes it out to the public and only months and months later do the rest surface.

I had a recent photo session that where the sun was hidden behind the clouds and the sky was perfect.... for about 10 minutes. I had several photos that I liked, but these last two..... I just couldn't decide which one I liked better:


A)

B)

These were made only moments apart, but they look very different. Which would you pick and why?

Blogging for the sake of blogging

I recently read a post on my local photographers group Mile High Photographers about blogging and how many photos people post on their blogs. There were as many unique answers as there were photographers.

Some blogged 20-30 images while telling the narrative of the bridal party's day.
Others blogged 10 or so to tell their subject's story.

I usually blog 4 or less.

I can't exactly put a reason to why I blog so few photos but I really feel that this blog is for myself. Don't misunderstand me: I'm glad for all 4 of you that read this... but this blog is largely a place for my to put my thoughts to paper (proverbially). Half the time, I just need to get certain ideas out of my head and into some tangible form so I can sleep at night. My photo journal serves that exact purpose: I can't draw to save my life but getting those photo shoot ideas onto paper lets me sleep at night.

Anyway, I thought I might mention that I plan on doing a full month of free headshots. Yes: Free. Not really "Free Beer" ... more like "Free Speech." I need to get the word out in Denver that there's a new guy in town and I'm going to make as much noise as I can. I need to overwhelm the talent agents with "this Jeremy guy" and "the solid, consistent work" that I make. What better way to do than than to show up to coffee with them with a whole book that I've made of my work?

In any case, if you're in need of a good headshot let me know. I've seen some AWFUL headshots on facebook, model mayhem, and even realtor websites... Really, people... get some good work done.... You don't look like that in person...

Oh look... 4 photos blogged!  ;-)

I'm hot-blooded, check it and see...

Photo Challenge: For Carolina

Hello Everyone,

A while back, I challenged my good friend (and photographer) Carolina Yocom to a photo challenge during a Google+ Hangout. The challenge was something like this: Make a photo of yourself staring dead-on into the camera. The reason? She's very good at making self portraits of herself in beautifully lit poses, but never dead-on from the front. She fought with her photo, but her final portrait was excellent. You can see her photo on her blog.

In exchange, her challenge to me was this: Make a dramatic portrait of myself, but.... don't use off-camera flash. She knew what my weakness was! I light almost everything I shoot. I've spent the past year strengthening my "off-camera flash mixed with ambient light" skills, so being limited to what I could use without using off-camera was a challenge.

I fought with it for weeks...designing and redesigning the concept in my head. Tonight, I managed to capture this:

It's amazing how much you can get sick of seeing your own face while editing (for all 30 seconds that I touched this photo)... How do you feel about self-portraits?

Anyway, Caro, I hope you think I did okay. XOXO.


PS- For the photo nerds that always love to know settings for photos.... I don't know how I shot this... but I'm guessing: 1/2" @ f/8 @ ISO200. Light source is a single shop-light from the shed... probably a 100watt bulb. I dunno... I was busy.

Dude, where's my life?

Hello, all 3 of you.

Things have just been crazy lately. I started a new day job which has been taking up quite a bit of my time... Well, not so much the job... but how I've had to rearrange everything and get used to a new schedule:

6:30am - Alarm goes off... I hit the snooze button.
6:45am - My wife calls me from her work and tells me to get up.
6:50am - My mother arrives to watch the kids
7:00am - Leave for work
7:05am - Forgot my wallet, keys, brain... head back inside to collect them.
7:10am - Leave for work
7:55am - Arrive at work in Boulder
5:00pm - Leave work
6:00pm - Arrive home
6:10pm - Eat dinner with the family
6:45pm - Play a game with the kids, Usually Scrabble or Candy Land in Deutsche
7:15pm - Kids get sent to bed
7:30pm - Kids tucked in
7:35pm - Kids retucked
7:40pm - Medium-sized-kid retucked
8:00pm - Talk with the wife
8:30pm - Watch a movie or The Colbert Report with the wife
9:00pm - Wife goes to bed since she has to be up at 2:30am.
9:05pm - Work on lots of photo projects that need lots of attention
9:15pm - Realize that I don't have lots of photo projects that need lots of attention
9:30pm - Realize that I need to promote myself better so that I have more projects
9:31pm - Realize that my client base is now in bed and my opportunity to promote to them is gone for the day
9:32pm - Get depressed
9:35pm - Read about what other photographers are doing and how busy they are
10:00pm - Watch YouTube videos and Flickr streams for inspiration and entertainment
11:30pm - Android Sleep tells me it's time to go to bed

That has been my routine for weeks now. I got tired of it so I made fresh flyers to put up at King Sooper's bulletin boards and Starbucks. Made 1/4 page flyers to pepper the neighborhood around a local high school. I put myself on "sale" which is a double-edged sword; People are interested in hiring me all the time, but only jump on it when I have a special running. It lets me be busier, but it makes me feel cheap.... I hate feeling cheap. I work my ass off for less money.... Most people would quit their job if their boss told them to take a 20% paycut... That's what I do to myself when I have a "sale".... I hope my clients realize that... I love them, but it's hard to communicate how crazy things are when you own your own business instead of punching in and out for your check: When I go on "sale" I literally take a paycut.

Anyway, enough loathing: I was able to schedule a shoot with Cassie a few weeks back. That girl is awesome! We had a plan to borrow a wedding dress and go up the hill and do some sunset/bride/whatever-we-can-think-of shots. Instead, it was mucky an rainy and not what we wanted so we went to Plan B.... Plan B was to put her in a tub and cover her in black... I wanted noir and although I didn't push the noir genre at all we definitely got some cool shots out of it. One them is above, but you can check out the rest on my site: bit.ly/JCPnoirbath I hope all 3 of you like them.

I struggle with telling a story... OR "f8 and be there" ain't working for me.

(Hey! Look at me! I uploaded a vertical shot!)

I'm not sure what's been wrong with me lately. I feel like I can't create anything new. I feel like I'm not taking steps forward with my photography. I feel like I'm actually moving backwards.

Winter is always the slow season. Everything slows down except for retailers. Since don't normally book any clients for when it's Below Zero in Colorado I decided to start a new project this winter just to keep moving things along... to keep shooting... to try to work on my story telling. I'm starting the project later this week when an awesome model, Melissa, sits down in front of my camera... But I'm feeling like I'm lost. I want to tell the story of someone I've never met, and Melissa is giving me that opportunity. I can't help but to feel that I'm disconnected somehow.... That I'm completely missing something right in front of me.

I finished watching (parts of it...missed the beginning) Chase Jarvis Live for his talk about building a portfolio and getting it reviewed. I really felt that I was on the right track to getting some new work done to be able to send to Zack Arias and Chase Jarvis (and possibly others that have no idea it's coming) in order to see if I had taken a step forward since my creativeLIVE experience (you know, the one I'm always talking about because it was life-changing...). Watching the talk today I realized that even now I have further to go than I thought... That is road I'm on won't lead to being an "expert photographer" until 3 months before I die of old age. I'm going to be struggling with this stupid light-tight box until I'm dead... but for some reason I had the delusions of grandeur that I'd be really good right now. My clients are more than happy... but for me that hasn't been enough. I'm not happy yet. I need to push harder.

Other photographers could hold the measuring stick up to me and I'd fall way short in their eyes. I shoot darker sets... I don't light from every possible angle... I don't want "happy" photos.... I don't shoot photos that are perfect... I don't run them through the photoshop mill until they're unrecognizable. What's worse is that newer photographers think that they're good when they're awful. This new society of photographers is a mess. It's awesome, but everyone thinks that they're the next (your favorite photographer here). Am I awful and I just don't know it? Knowing how exposure works and how to get an image from my camera to print is one thing... but telling a story and communicating what I'm talking about.... it's so much harder. It's become apparent to me that I need to tell more stories... I need the practice... I need the depth in my photos.

Shooting Models isn't going to give me depth in my photos. I need to shoot Actors. Models might be able to stand there and look cute, but I need people who can emote... who can cry... who can feel something while I'm shooting them.

What will help me? I need to find regular people with stories to tell... but most people are SO FREAKING HESITANT to tell their stories! I mean, who wants to tell a story about what they had for breakfast? Who wants to tell a story about how they ripped their jeans on the way to work? Who wants to tell a story about the time that their house got broken into and their hard drives and electronics were stolen of their infant daughter... the same infant that was just diagnosed with a terminal disease? Some stories seem to mundane for people to even remember. Other stories are so painful that they might not want to think about them...

I'm lost. I know what I'm doing, but I don't know what I'm doing. Being able to push a shutter button isn't enough. I'm not moving forward from this point until I figure out where I should be headed.... even if where I'm headed isn't where I end up. I need to do something unexpected.

Create. Share. Sustain. NSFW

One thing that Chase Jarvis has always seem to promoted is this: Create, Share, Sustain. I have an easier time with the "Create" part than the other two. I don't share well with others and I'm barely sustaining. I struggle this all three ideals in some way.

Create: Since I've baby-stepped into photography this past year I've been working on getting a TON of personal work done. I've been shooting the things that I've been wanting to shoot and planning the stuff that I think I want to shoot but haven't worked the details out yet. I have a little notebook that sits at my bedside that I scribble notes into on a regular basis. I sketch out drawings or ideas that I'd like to see done but I haven't figured out how to do them yet. The ideas have problems that stand in the way of completion, but they are still viable. Maybe I'll take a photo of it sometime if someone is interested.

Share: I'm always ALWAYS nervous about sharing. It's not that I don't want people to see it. Quite on the contrary: I want people to see my work, but critique is hard. You know what's worse than critique? Apathy. I would rather someone tell me that my work is worthless and I'm never going to make it as a photographer than have someone look at something I've created and just say "meh" or even worse: Move on without saying a word. It's half the reason I barely show my work to my wife: She says nothing often. I have to coax and goad her into commenting on my work, but often I only hear something about the photos she likes, but she's quick to tell me when something in the photo is distracting. It's helpful since she gives me the perspective of a potential client. I have photo buddies that can tell me what's wrong technically, but the client perspective is just as important to me.

Sustain: This is barely hanging on for me. I'll put together a shoot and I'm getting better at logistics, but only because I'm trying to take bigger and more complicated projects. I used to be able to barely hang on with just me and the subject. Now I've worked up to the occasional Location scouting, booking, MUA+H scheduling, client confirmation, and managing to throw some personal work in the mix of all that while I have everything lined up. But I'll be honest: It's exhausting. I can see why the bigger guys have crews and teams and indentured servants to take care of some of this for them. I exhausted myself so thoroughly leading up to and during a shoot that I made myself sick. Not Cool. It's hard to feel free to create when it feels like someone mixed concrete in your gut. The photos turned out great, but I was definitely in need of some down time when the job was done.

So what should I do about this stuff? If my ideas I want to create are viable I need to plan them out and shoot them. I need to get over my fear of everyone ignoring my work. I need to take better care of myself while I'm ramping the stress from these jobs up.

The first step I can take right now (like... NOW now) is to start sharing some of the work I've created. I'll quit hiding behind the newbie rating and just throw stuff out there. Please, if you like my work: Tell me what you like. If you hate my work: Tell me why. If you simply feel nothing for my work: ....okay. I'm my own worst critic, but hey.... I'm sharing.

Speaking of sharing: More from this shoot (NSFW) is on my site. Oooh look at me! Sharing! <fingers-crossed>