Category: Photography

Self Critiques in Photography

Artistic Ideas, Photography

As we approach the end of summer here in the northern hemisphere, many activities will begin to ramp up after summer vacations. One of those is the resumption of camera club meetings. Many of us find our creative outlet there, along with camaraderie and friendly competition. For the past 7 years, I’ve been a member of a competitive camera club. One of the traditional validations of photographic work is through competition. It’s actually quite natural for us to think that one of the best validations of a photograph comes from having “expert judges” assign a number to it. But I no longer think that. Here’s why.

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One Door Closes…Again!

Career, Learning, Life, My Community, Photography

Back in 2014, I made the decision to retire from full-time work. I was proud at the time that I was able to make a career in jobs I never really loved but that were enough to fund my other interests, such as photography.

In 2021, I decided a little more work was ok, for the first time in a field of interest, and accepted a part-time job at Henry’s, one of Canada’s leading camera and video retailers. This week, that too has come to an end, making room to move forward into new personal challenges.

The job at Henry’s was not just another job. It filled a gap that was years in the making. And it came at a time when the Covid pandemic had stripped away all of my regular face to face human contact. I needed it more than it needed me. So why am I leaving?

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Farm Life

Life, My Community, Photography

I had the pleasure, and it was a pleasure, of visiting a working farm a few days ago. Bragg Farms, in Clarington, Ontario, is home to cornfields, sunflower fields, soy fields, potato fields, many free range chickens and, wait for it, tourists, along with a website and an online store.

I had the chance to spend time talking with one of the owners and it was an eye opening experience. Farm life certainly isn’t what it used to be when I was a kid.

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Passages

Life, Photography

Our lives are full of milestones and passages. Birth being a prime one of course, then everything else that happens along the way. These past few weeks have been full of milestones for me. Another birthday, my first trip outside Canada since Covid, a major move for a family member, major surgery for another family member and the loss of a friend and coworker.

Each was a collection of emotions – I guess that’s really what defines a passage. If there was no emotion, it would be just another day.

I’m left with a desire to share the emotions of those moments, while preserving my own and others privacy. Kind of an odd mix. But I guess we discover things about ourselves as we go through these passages and share them.

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Profit vs. Popularity

Life, My Community, Photography

There was a recent announcement that DPReview (its website, social media and YouTube assets) would be shut down by April 2023 after 25 years of activity. The published outcry has been huge, with opinion firmly expressing the view that this is a big loss for the photographic community.

How is it that something universally popular can be deemed unnecessary? It seems to happen a lot. This piece isn’t a commentary on the merits of any particular service. It’s about the decision-making of corporate owners.

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Technical Skills vs. Artistic Eye

Artistic Ideas, Expertise, Life, Photography

Photography is an interesting hobby/occupation: there is so much to learn to simply take competent photographs. Some (ok, including me) believe that learning the basics is key to eventually being able to express yourself artistically. But some come at it the other way around – using their artistic nature to develop their photographic eye, then learning what is needed to express it digitally, often through trial and error.

I grew up in and worked in very technical arenas – my parents worked in fields where following the rules was paramount and expected, and where training and development were necessary to be able to work in their fields at all. I then spent a career in an engineering company (an electric utility) where “creativity” was not really encouraged and could have devastating consequences.

Then I retired…

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Womanizing Photography

Expertise, Learning, Life, Photography

We live in amazing times. The technological, societal and social changes that have occurred over the past century are mind boggling. I grew up in a small immigrant home, with no air conditioning, no fancy electrical devices (we had a hand-wring washing machine) and no technology of any kind. We got our first colour TV when I was 16.

Today, my life is surrounded by convenience gadgets and entertainment toys of all form and function. I connect more than 20 devices to my home internet network to provide everything from the service to write this post to the automated voice that wakes me in the morning to the electronic keyboard and wonderful online instructor that are teaching me how to play piano. No one born in the mid-20th century could have predicted how far we could come.

Despite those changes, some aspects of our society still could stand with some improvement. Women do not equally participate in all aspects of business, culture and sport. We don’t always get recognition even when we do. Even in my little world of hobbyist photography, the vast majority of people who are accomplished artists and who offer their expertise to others are male. I wanted to bring forward some of those challenges in this post. Maybe some of this applies to you. If so, it would be great to share experiences and advice.

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Hybrid Shooting

Gear, Photography, Tools

YouTube video content creators often refer to themselves as “hybrid shooters” because they use cameras that combine still photography and videography in the same equipment. The term has been mis-used for a long time, and I feel it necessary to set the record straight.

This is especially true today because in this age of multi-channel content creation, I feel that a hybrid shooter is really someone who uses multiple devices to create content, not just one device built with multiple capabilities that is repurposed strictly for video. But first, let’s explore a bit of history.

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Film Rises Again

Interesting Stuff, Life, Photography

Perhaps the most puzzling trend I have seen in photography since I became immersed in it in 2014 is the rising popularity of film photography. The digital revolution essentially killed the still film photography industry in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Storefronts and labs closed, film production ceased, makers like Kodak essentially went out of business. But things have changed bigtime. There have always been the stalwarts that preferentially choose this medium. The puzzle is around young photographers or average non-photographer folk who now select this as their preferred way of presenting their creations. I have some thoughts on why this might be happening.

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Space – The Final Frontier

Gear, Learning, Photography, Tools

One of my goals as a retired senior citizen is to indulge all of the interests I’ve developed over the years, now that I have the time and frankly also the money to do so.

I’ve had a long standing love affair with all things in space and space-related. By that, I mean all things off our own planet. From the early days of the Gemini and Apollo programs in the US, I’ve been gripped by a fascination around what and who could be out there. And of course, Star Trek and its offshoots only served to romanticize the idea that strange, wonderful adventures and discoveries could lie beyond our atmosphere.

I had some good fortune when younger to connect with people that worked on these challenges, at least from the point of view of humans living in space. But I’ve come to realize that humans in space is more of a challenge than we know how to solve right now, and I will never live to see permanent residence of any human anywhere other than on the Earth. But there are other ways to explore beyond our tiny speck of a planet, and I have settled on astrophotography as that method for me.

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