Just A Man With A Camera

Two of my favourite video games that I have played over the last few years are the Hollow Knight series; both the orignal and the recent Silksong. They are games with a high level of challenge, a huge amount of exploration, and plenty of gear upgrades for your character as you explore the world. However, when it comes down to, completing the game relies less on what gear and upgrades you collect along the way, and more on the players skill in battle. You can level up your weapon, add accessories, and aquire more health, but as far as I'm concerned there is no shortcut to winning.  You really have work on your technique and "git gud".

Why do I bring this up? Well, the comparison crossed my mind recently while thinking about the gear I have, and that old topic of G.A.S - Gear Aquisition Syndrome.  Most of us will suffer from this at some point.  At this point it's been talked about to death by countless youtubers (I happened across multiple new videos on it over the last couple of weeks).  I've had it, I've witnessed it, and during my time as a camera store salesman actively encouraged it.  I can happily say that I feel like I'm in a place where I don't feel the pull of any large gear purchases. I have two great camera bodies, some Olympus Pro zoom lenses, and a few other nice fast primes. It's a pretty darn well rounded gear bag that I'm fortunate to have been able to aquire over the years. If there is anything I might add, it's a 17mm 1.8, most specifically for street photography, but I would have to find an amazing deal on it at the exact same time I suddenly fell into some disposable income.

So if this has been talked about to death, why am I talking about it? What do I have to add? I think it's important to step back every once in a while and not look at what you feel like is missing from your gear bag, but what you do have, be grateful for that, and learn to work with and improve your craft with those limitations. In other words: "git gud". For some people in this hobby money is no object and they jump from being curious about a Rebel kit to a full frame body and pro glass without even thinking about it (again, I worked in a camera store and saw it happen often).  But as we all know, expensive gear does not make a good photographer. I would see the results of these purchases, sometimes accompanied by complaints that their photos were not what the photographer expected.  To which I had to gently explain to them that perhaps they should take a class or two rather than blame the equipment.

It also doesn't help that people today are constantly being bobarded by advertising, influencers, youtubers, review sites, and who knows what else constantly showing us some new tech that will make life easier and finally get that perfect shot that is just out of reach. This isn't unique to this hobby. If there is a hobby out there, there are people trying to make money off of telling you what new thing you to buy from their amazon affiliate link so that your art doesn't suck so much. It's kind of crazy to think that there was a time in our media consuming lives were if we saw a half hour infomercial on TV we would change the channel and do anything else. But now they are just called gear hauls and list videos and we gobble them up to find out what new little tech is just a click away that will make our life so much easier.

Something that makes me shake my head is are Reddit posts from people expanding thier kits with overlapping focal lengths, multiple versions of the same lens, and an excess of miscelaneous gear that probably will rarely be used. I see this and I can't comprehend why? Not only why but how? Camera tech has gotten to a point where I don't knwow how it gets better other than noise reduction at extreme ISO's, and how much sharper can some lenses get. I used my last body for nearly 10 years before replacement as my main workhorse (I plan on keeping the old one as a travel/street photography camera for if I ever aquire that previously mentions 17mm 1.8). Maybe for some people it's the shopping addiction. Perhaps it's simply the collector urge to gather more stuff, and if collecting all of this gear makes you happy, who am I to argue with that. I am the last person who probably should be throwing shade at someone for accumulating a collection of impractical things. I have various collections of things myself and someone might walk into my house and ask why I need so many Michaelangelo Ninja Turtle toys. So I get it. However, I know for many photographers it's that feeling like that next piece of gear is the missing piece that is going to push their work to the next level. However, I'm not exactly saying anything groundbreaking here, but there's no shortcut to quality and what they really need to do is put in some practice time and "git gud".  

Then there's those of us who have made the most out of what we have for as long as possible. At this point, I have the Olympus Pro gear that I always wondered how a meager hobbiest could afford. Most of it came purchased on eBay used from Japan, or deep courtosy of Black Friday discounts, but regardless of the dollar signs attached to the purchases, I feel increadibly fortunate to be in a position to have it. I feel like I fought and clawed my way to get here. Hell, I think one of the reasons I am at this point is because I made the decision to get sober (restricting myself to only have some drinks when I'm on holidays), thus openning up the budget to acquire equipment I only dreamt of at one point in my life. That realization that I feel like I am at the end of my gear aquisition journey fills me with so much contentment and relief. Of course it's not like I won't find something to add on occasion; an accessory or two or maybe some new lights that function differently than my entry level ones. However, it's as if there's one less thing holding me back in my photo journey. Not because my gear was never good enough, but because I now don't have any excuse to focus on the craft and my technique. Taking away that excuse may feel difficult at times, but it is also freeing and simplifies life. If I'm not happy with my shots, I can't blame the gear. I need to work on the craft. I need to take the lesson I learned from Hollow Knight and git gud.

For my last post I wrote about some of my goals for 2025 and how that turned out, so I figured the logical thing to do is move onto what I hope is in store for 2026. At the beginning of 2025, I said that I'm not much for new years resolutions and that still stands, however I do like trying to set some yearly goals for myself to attempt to accomplish over the year. Whether it's making a certain big purchase, going on a particular trip, a fitness goal, or completing a project, I think that it's important for me to set some kind of goal. I also find that it's helpful for me to try set a deadline if I can.  That keeps me on track and ensures I don't just keep telling myself "I'll get to it eventually". Late in December, I bought myself a yearly planner, a nice new notebook, and a set of nice pens to help keep me on track, document my goals, and give me a visual aid for how the year is going which will hopefully help me stay focused. 

• Let's start off with a small one: During the summer of 2025, after dusting off my wife's old Minota SLR and finding a very good deal on a couple prime lenses, I started shooing a couple rolls of black and white film. One is completed and developed and the other is still in the camera. I haven't finished it yet, because early on in the first roll I made the concious decision that these rolls were going to be specifically dedicated to photographing decaying buildings in small prairie Canadian towns that I would come across during our summer road trips. I plan on continuing with this and making a little project out of the images.

• Continuing on with the subject of film, my wife purchased me an Fuji Instax Mini Evo for Christmas, and I would like to come up with a concept for a small project to use it for. Additionally, I want to just take it out with me regularly and have fun with it. Focus on good compositions but not overthing things like shutterspeed and aperature.  Just have fun with what's in my hand, infront of me, and make the most of each little tiny frame.
  

• Winter bird photogaphy. Nothing more to it than that really. I go for walks to photography birds and help me relax in every other season, but I tend to hibernate and avoid it in winter.  Even if I get out only a few times, I want to use it as a reason to get myself off the couce and be more active over the course of the winter.

• I want to get more shots of the milky way this year. Considering it was my first good attempt at doing so, I was really happy with my one milky way photo that I took this year.  That being said, I would like to keep improving and not just leave it at that.

• There are four markets that I hope to be selling my photographs at throughout the course of the year.  These are four specific ones that I think my toy photography prints will do well at.  I would like to do more than just these four, but these are the big ones: PopconYXE, the Cathedral Village Street Fair, Things I'd Kill For, and (if they run it again this year) the Moose Jaw Retro Game convention.

• Something I wanted to accomplish last year that fell by the wayside was regarding portraiture and further learning how to use my studio lights. This includes having the confidence to ask more people to get in front of my lens, as well as giving them direction once they are infront of it. I have a studio space that I can potentially use and rent fairly inexpensively, it is just a matter of finding people to model for me, coming up with concepts, and execute the plan (which all sounds nice and easy, until the monster that is my social anxiety interferes). If I can improve in this area I feel like it will be a big step for me, not just because I want to improve my skills in this subject, but mentally this has been a big hurdle for me to overcome and it will be a boost to my overall self confidence.

• I do have some goals regarding this blog. I know that I am pretty darned inconsistent when it comes to publishing posts on this page, but I'm hoping I can turn that around over this year.  The goal is publish one new post ever other Friday. That could give me time to discuss a decently well thought out piece and not just rush out something every week for the sake of getting it out every week. Additionally, there one other goal that ties into this one, and that is to challenge myself to do a 52 images in 52 weeks project. I will produce one new photo per week to post on my Blue Sky page.  Most likely it will be posted on Saturday, and then at the end of the month I will write a seperate blog post wrapping up what I achieved that month. What I liked, what I disliked, anything I feel that was interesting about my process. 

It feels like there's alot that I'm trying to accomplish with this hobby/growing small side hustle. If I know myself, at some point thought the year I will probably overdo it, feel burnt out, and need to take a break. I feel like all of these goals are very achievable and it's just all on me to make them happen. There are no outside forces that can hold me back or create excuses for me to fall on about why something wasn't achieved.  Of course life being what it is, there may be a curveball thrown my way at some point, but I just need to keep my eyes on how rewarding it will feel to cross these items off my list for next year. This is my 40th year on this earth and I want it to be overflowing with personal fullfillment.                                          

As it seems is a somewhat usual occurence, I find myself having taken a long break from writing on this blog without having throught about it. Alot has happened since my last post in August. I even had a post half written in early September that I just could not find a way to wrap up well, and then it fell by the wayside. I started this year talking about new photography goals for 2025, so it seemed like a good way to get back writing by covering what happened since my last post, wrap up the last year, and take a look at those goals I started the year with and reflect on how that turned out.

Photographing the milky way

One of the main goals of mine was to attempt to photograph the milky way. My entire life I have been fancinated by the stars. When I was a kid growing up on the farm, I would spend evenings just staring up at the sky and imagining what's up there. At this point in my life, after living in the city for over 20 years, I do the same any time I have the oppourtunity. Any attempt I had previously made to sphotography the starts had turned out quite poor.  Admittedly that was because of a combination of not properly understanding the methods of shooting, not having the correct equipment, and not shooing at the correct time or location. So basically, I did everything wrong because I was just winging it without actually researching any of it.  Luckily, earlier this year my wife's family farm became available to us as a backdrop and perfect place to shoot the night sky. It is only aout 30-40 minutes out of the city, but it is far enough out of the city that on a clear night, during a new moon, the sky lit up like I had not seen seen it since I was a kid on my own families farm.  Once we were able to take advantage of the farm, we only had a couple of occasions where we could go out and shoot with any hope of success, and I'm happy to say that what is one of my favourite photos of the year came from that first night out there.

Sell prints

This was a big one of me. I have spent so many years enjoying the process of photography mostly for myself. I would share my photos on Instagram and get some good feedback here and there, but I was not sure how attempting to sell my work would pan out. I know the majority of my work is really different.  It's toy photography, and alot of people haven't seen that or understand what I'm doing with it. So there was a lot of anxiety leading into it. I spent a lot of time and money getting myself set up for that first market in November, and I'm happy to say it payed off. Not only was that first market financially successful, but I got some wonderful feedback on my work. It was one thing to have friends and family, and faceless commenters on the internet say they liked something I made, but it was a whole other thing to have a stranger come up to my booth and get excited about a photograph I took and pay for a copy of it. I left that first sale both exhausted because it was a long day, but also excited and enthusiastic because it was such a positive experience. A few weeks later another oppourtunity at another market; this time over a whole weekend. There was a lot of anxiety about it, because I knew that there was going to be a very different crowd at this one. Unfortunately it did not work out as well as the first sale, but what I know that not all markets are going to work out, but I also recognize that at this particular market it seemed that no one did well....so at least it wasn't just me! There's plans for next year to keep on moving on and expand into a few different products, and themes for my work

Paid gigs

This is something that didn't exactly pan out the way I hoped it would. Not that I had huge plans for what I was going to do other than hopefully do some headshots, but we will see what happens next year. Something that did come up as a result of the first market I worked was the possibility of doing photos of minuatures for an upcoming tabletop game that another one of the vendors is developing.  Something I did make happen was getting back volunteering with the Queen City Marathon after being away since 2018.  That was a fun gig for a weekend, and the honorarium helped pay for a display calibrator. I think I'll be going back next year, and hopefully I can make some more oppourtunites happen.

So what are the plans for next year? I have some ideas which are expansions of what you've read about here, but there are some other more specific projects I want to want to try and focus on. I will be writing about that in my next post and plan on having that published in the first week of January. See you in the new year!

My wife and I recently took a trip across the province to visit our first renaissance fair! Attending a ren fair has never been on my to do list, but when the idea of going was first brought up a very enthusiastic and unexpected "hell yes!" burst out of my mouth. I really did not see that coming. So we got our tickets, a hotel room, and spent the next couple months collecting some items to put together some costumes. Naturally, I was also going to take this as an opportunity to do some shooting, not just at the fair, but to add to my ongoing project involving shooting small towns and villages on the prairies (but that will be a discussion for a future blog post)

There were vendors with increadible hand made goods (mixed in with plenty of Temu garbage that unfortunalty sneaks into too many "art" markets these days), a magician, musicians, weapons demonstrations and combat renactments, jousting, and tons of good food. So lots to shoot right? Well, I found myself struggling with something that I often run into in these situations. I'm all gung-ho to do shooting because there's so much going on around me, but my social anxiety pops up and I can't bring myself to ask someone of I can take their photo.  There were all these people around with fantastic costumes, who are doing it because they like to show off, but for some reason I have it in my head that me asking to take their photo is somehow bothering them.  So most of what I shot was from farther back and either trying to make myself go unnoticed while demonstrations and performances went on.

The day ended with a jousting demonstration which gave me an oppourtunity to put my telephoto to work with some fast action. At this point, as far as fast action I have only tried to catch birds in flight with this camera and lens. While it didn't lock focus or track as well as I would hope, I did manage to get a few shots that I'm pleased with.  There were a few that I liked the content of better than the ones below, but they were not sharp. The tracking autofocus that was locked onto one of the riders, suddently changed to the events presenter who came into the foreground as I was panning across the jousing field. I can't fault the camera and lens too much though, because my position from the stands didn't help much either. There were fences, and other event staff that got in the way of my shots as well that contributed to only walking away with a few shots I was excited about. 

All in all it was a good day. Fun events, good food, good friends, good vendors, and I walked away with a few lessons.  I need to get more practice with my telephoto and camera's tracking focus. I haven't found myself in situations all that often that give me the oppourtity to practice, so that may be something I should put some focus on. Additionally, I need to work though some of that social anxiety about approaching people about taking their photo, especially in situations like this where they are practically begging for the attention and compliments about their outfits. Maybe this just further proves that photography has become theraputic for me.  I'm not only finding joy in the artform, but taking what I'm doing and trying to work on myself and my mental health. It's just proof that little by little, I'm on the right path with what I'm doing.

Last weekend my wife and I took a drive out to her family farm to do some shooting. I had been in not the greatest mood, and getting a little down on myself, but my wife encouraged me to get in the car and take the drive. Naturally she was right to push me out the door, because I came back not only with some images that I enjoyed, but also some plans for a future shoot.

This place has been in her family for generations and is full of old trucks and cars, old tractors and equipment, a barn that's collapsing, and farmland as far as the eye can see. Before driving out there, I had ideas for different landscapes to shoot, but being that it wasvery hazy and overcast alot of the interest that Saskatchewan's prairie skies can provide were not an option. That being said there was a lot of different subjects to take in and work around.  I hoped to find a way to feaure the large collapsing barn, but unfortunately could not quite find the right angle for today, but it inspired plans for the future. What I wanted to do was make a littel project of attempting to document what was once a thriving farm that has become overgrown because of inactivity.  There is machinery and equipment scattered all over, but no activity for one reason or another. This is likely just one of many farms like this scattered across the prairies.

The thing with a location like this, I could easily come back here at a different time of day or with different weather and come out with totally different series of images. For instance take that photo of the orange tractor, I shot several different versions of that from differnt angles and with different lenses and which created very differnt images. Additionally, there are so many small details that can be shot all over the place. You could probably shoot a couple hundered images all over the property and not incorperate a landscape at all (which I did, and will likely be an entire post and discussion on it's own). We are planning to come back later in the month for my next attempt at milky way photography and the auraura borelealis. It's close enough to the city that it's a reasonable drive, but far enough out that there should be little light pollution. Additionally, I was able to use the PhotoPills app to find where the milky way will be during this months new moon and it will line up perfectly with the barn in the foreground.

So it turned out to be a good morning of shooting. It's not often I get out of the city and just go walking around a new area so full of photographic oppourtunities which was refreshing. I came back with some good images, a bit of a renewed sense of purpose, and as a solid bonus, on the way home we stumbled across a llama farm who were kind enought to stop and pose for us.

I feel like I've been hitting a wall this last month.  There were two small projects that I worked on that really did not go quite as planned. I started writing this as two separate posts talking about each individual project because they were both quite different. However, the more I thought about it I relalized that at it's core they were about the same subject. 

They were two very different projects, involving trying something different and learning new editing techniques. So there was never any garauntee that it would go exactly as planned, but neither came out as good as I had hoped and it's been kind picking at me. There the part of my brain that is being rational and telling myself that I need to be happy that I at least tried something new, but then there's that side that loves to come out and say "what's the point?" (Here comes that asshole again).  It's tough because nothing came out particularly bad and I should be considering it good practice, but it still feels like I took a few L's in a row. It's difficult to get out of my head and continue being positive and push forward sometimes.

So what were the projects? One of them was my first attempt one of my photography goals or the year: photographing the milky way.  Last week my wife and I took some time off work to visit some family who live south of Winnipeg. The weather and moon phase were going to be perfect to attempt to get the shot while we were there. I bought the PhotoPills app for Android to plan a shot and my wife and I stayed up late to try and get it.  After shooting, watching videos about editing milky way photos, and doing my own edits here's what I came out with: 

It's not a terrible image, and if you squint hard and look right down the centre you can see it a little bit of the milky way. I think I just really had my hopes up that even though it was very faintly visible, I though I could save it in the edit. For as dark as it was looked when we looked up at the sky, I recognized quickly that we were too close to the city, which brought too much light pollution. So that was a dissappointment, and then there was e addition of the fact that I couldn't save it in the edit that just kind of put me in a bad spot about how it all turned out. I'm trying to not get me down though, and my wife and I have a plan visit one her family members' farm next month to take another stab at it.  Hopefully this time we're far enough out of town and the weather co-operates enough for this to work out.

The other project that I have put me in this crappy headspace was an attempt at doing some headshots of my wife and a friend of ours that again didn't go as well as I hoped. I wanted practice doing headshots, and our friend said she would be willing to sit in front of my camera with my wife. Additionally, I wanted to have some images that I could practice doing some retouching on. Lately I have been watching videos about various aspects of portraiture involving simple studio headshots, posing models, and then re-touching them in post.

We shot for about an hour and I only got a few images that I was really satisfied with. I know it had nothing to do with my models, but with my direction.  I feel like the the majority of the head-and-shoulds headshots felt more like passport photos than anything. We then moved to a larger backdrop that I had set up.  Maybe it was that we felt too cramped in that space, maybe it was my lighting, or maybe it was my direction, but I also didn't feel like I came out of that with as much good stuff as I wanted. When it comes to posing, there's no way around it: I suck. I have little experience with it, and no matter how much I read and watch on the subject, when it comes time to tell someone what to do it feels like I come out with "just stand there and look good". I like to think that I'm sure it will get better with more practice, but it doesn't help that I am just naturally an awkward person which is likely why for I have primarily photographed still life, animals, streets, and landscapes. As for the re-touching, that's the one thing that I'm not really unhappy with. It was my first time trying new techniques, and to follow instructions involving using tools and theory from a course that used Photoshop, but then applying them to Affinity Photo 2. As I worked through the images I was getting a better hang of it and things were progressing quicker.

Like I said about the milky way shot, these aren't terrible images. The more I think about it and reflect as I write this, I'm think more than anything I'm disappointed in myself and my experience.  Or more accururately lack thereof. I feel like I am behind.  Like I should know these things already or be better at them for as long as I have been taking pictures. Like this is something that I should have gotten out of the way in my 20s and not when I'm pushing 40 and trying to make a run at this photography thing. I've been trying to keep that annoying voice that says "what's the point" at bay for so long that when things don't work, it seems to come back with a vengeance. I want to make this leap from feeling like an amateur to someone who can be comfortable with calling himself a professional, but I'm just not there yet. 

Unless you're talking about the song from The Tragically Hip's 1998 classic album Phantom Power, I've never been the biggest fan of fireworks. (yes the album is a classic and it is my favourite Hip album AND I will fight anyone who doesn't agree with that classic album classification). Some people get really excited about fireworks and it's a highlight of their summer to sit in a park and watch explosions in the sky.  Don't get me wrong, it's not like I want to be a debbie downer and I don't see why people may enjoy them, and if that's you then that's cool. You do you! But with the exception of my one day in Magic Kingdom, I've never seen a fireworks display that left me in awe (and lets face it, the fireworks were just a part of the larger show at the end a magical day). Even as a kid when we would go to the Canada Day fireworks, it was neat but I don't remember ever getting really excited about them. That being said it seems like you can't be a photographer and not take some fireworks pictures in the summer time. So with Canada Day being this week I picked up my camera and tripod, drove up a big hill overlooking the city, and parked my butt in a camping chair with a bag of sunflower seeds and waited for the sky to darken.

Now to preface this, I have never taken what I would call a good photo of fireworks. In fact I don't think anyone would consider any of my previous attempts at fireworks good. If you saw them you wouldn't even give me the phony "wow good job!" that a parent gives their child after recieving their hundredth piece of macaroni artwork that mysteriously goes missing from the fridge. Plain and simple, they sucked. So as much as I'm not a fireworks afficianado, this year I was going to at the least try to rectify my previous poor attempts. To stick with the childrens artwork analogy, I was going to level up from macaroni art to at the very least some kind of painted decorative rock that goes to live in grandmas garden. In the couple days leading up to Canada Day I watched a video or two and did some reading about fireworks photography what settings I should be using. I had a pretty good idea before this, but wanted to reinforce that I had an understanding of the theory behind it. Luckily even if I started to botch it with manual settings, I had an ace in the hole: OM System computational photography!

OM System's Live Composition mode quite frankly sounds like cheating. You turn it on, hit the shutter and as I understand it, the sensor only records new light that hit it rather than continuously exposing the entire image. So the shutter stays open like it does in bulb mode, and when a burst of fireworks go off, it only records that new burst. Sounds great right?  Well, when I things started happening I found it kind of finicky and slow because it had to process the image between shots. In the end none of the shots I tried with it worked out. Maybe it was just me and how I was using it, but in this case cheating didn't work out. So onto the next OM System feature: LiveTime Mode! It's like bulb and Live composition, but different and doesn't leave you hanging processing between shots. I've used it before for shots of the aurora borealis and it's worked great. This time was similar.  When you open the shutter you get a live preview of the image being formed over a series of frames. I think it worked well, but I think the biggest thing was after trying both of these modes, I didn't feel like I was getting exactly what I wanted to I just went back and did it the old fashioned way. I set my desired f-stop for the depth of field that I wanted and just openned my shutter up for two, then 3, and then 5 seconds.  Honestly, I think this is where things turned out the best for me (this is your lesson to not take the easy way out kids).

So in the end the photos were alright but didn't blow me away, but I'm happy enough with my progress, I spent an nice evening on a hill eating sunflower seeds with my wife, and I put in some reps on my photography journey. Nothing really to complain about there!