Just A Man With A Camera

It's been a rough month since my last post.  I've been training for my first half marathon which has been physically difficult(which I finished by the way, so yay me), but mentally it's been difficult too.  I'm really trying to fight through some creative blocks.  It's been tough to get pick up my camera and actually shoot anything, or do anything creative.  That voice of  "what's the point?" has been hanging out in the back of my head again.  I hate that guy.

So what do I do? Well, I'm trying to fight through it.  I'm watching some photography channels on Youtube, trying to find inspiration from photography and art books, and the other night I finally sat myself down at my desk to force myself to start working on a project.  One genre of photography I do really enjoy is toy photography.  Setting up pieces from my action figure collection, posing them in either some kind of action pose, or a portrait that tries to capture who that character is.  At one time I was much more active with it on my Instagram page (@dazmatoyarts), but after doing a monthly challenge followed by life kind of getting in the way, I got a little burned out on it.  It was also not great for my wallet and my urge to overbuy and expand my collection with things that didn't really bring me joy. However, I sat down at my desk this week to start on a new project.  

With Halloween on the way, every year I try to watch as many Universal Monster movies as I can.  I love the classic Universal Monsters from the 30s and 40s and have a small collection of the action figures NECA toys has produced of them. Last year I worked on portraits that tried to recreate photos of them.  This year I'm doing something a little different and I'm mashing up my love of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the monsters.  You see, not only does NECA make TMNT and monster figures, but they made TMNT crossed with the Monsters. So there's Raphael Frankenstien, Michaelango Mummy, Casey Jones Phantom of the Opera, and so on.  So this year the series will be creating scenes with the two crossed over in some way.  I've already started with Splinter Van Helsing hunting Bela Lugosi Dracula.  I was really happy with how last years portraits came out, so I'm hoping my posing and scene set ups this year can help me take this to another level and recapture some confidence in my work.

It's silly, but it's fun, and it's something that I can do with my camera and hone my skills from the comfort of my basement. It's still a struggle sometimes to even shoot anything but I'm going to keep working on it and try to shut up that voice of "what's the point?"  I know that guy has no idea what he's talking about anyway, but like an internet loudmouth, he's just hard to ignore because it's like he's yelling it in all caps and keeps making new handles to avoid being banned.

My wife has been asking me for the longest time for us to go out and try to photograph the northern lights.  She follows Facebook groups, and I think has an app that tracks the KPI so you can know your chances of seeing them. I don't get that excited about them, and I know exactly why: I grew up on a farm and on a regular basis could see them from my backyard.  It became nothing special because I saw them so frequently. Also, one of the problems has always been that we don't know anywhere close by to go and attempt to shoot considering that we live in a city and that's not exactly conducive to being able to see them. However, by chance on last weekend not only did we stumble upon a place on the edge of the city where we may have some luck shooting, and that night the chances of seeing the aurora were very high.

Now, I've never really put any effort into shooting the the lights, and don't have much experience and luck shooting stars(although I really like the idea of it). That being said, it seems like everyone on social media posts a blurry photo of streaks of light whenever it's in the news that you can see them, so I'd may as well take a shot at it myself if I'm going to call myself a photographer. 

Considering we were still technically in the city, and it was only about 11pm, I wasn't expecting much if I'm being honest, but I'm actually pretty happy with how a few of these turned out.  There wasn't much for purples, but the greens came out nicely.  It was very much a trial and error sort of shooting.  After setting my my framing and establishing a subject in the foreground, I shot wide open at f2.8, 12mm, ISO 800, and then just played with shutter speeds until I found something I liked.

I could have just pointed my camera up at the sky, focused to infinity and shot, but I was happy we were able to actually find a couple locations where there was something in the foreground for reference.  I really like this last one, because it shows off the vastness of the night sky over this farmhouse.  This was a fun challenge for me to do something a little different, and get myself off the couch and out of the house at midnight on a random Sunday night.  Monday morning alarm clock be damned, I had a night sky to shoot.  Even if I walked away from this with not a single frame I was remotely happy with, it was a nice reason to get out and get some reps in.  It just so happens that I do really like this last photo, and now we have a spot scouted for more nights like this.

Well, so much for my one post a week plan. It's been a month, but I'm back at it. I had a plan to talk about something else, and then another thing, and another, and just continued putting it off.  You know how undiagnosed ADHD works right?  So here I am back at something I didn't really thing I'd be wanting to talk about, because I never thought I was ever really good at it, or happy with my attempts: street photography.

I feel like so much of online photography world(or at least what various algorithms are trying to show me) is focused on street photography. This is fine.  There's a lot of interest for street photography out there, but I've never felt much of a connection to it as a photographer because I think, like I said, I've never felt like any of my attempts have been very good. When I would look at my photos I would think they were bad, boring, or uninteresting. I also feel like I live in a pretty boring smaller city that doesn't lend itself as much in the way of interesting subjects, if not just things I'm tired of seeing photographed or trying to photograph.  That being said, I will be the first to admit that I don't get out much anymore these days.

So this past weekend while my wife and I were visiting family in Winnipeg and decided to check out a creator market, I decided I was going to give it a shot. As one of the youtubers I've been watching lately keeps saying "Just take a damn photo!" Before I could look at any of them on my computer, I had that annoying voice in my head telling me they weren't any good, but hey at least I tried. But do you know what happened? I actually liked a few of my shots.  Crazy right?  This first one I was convinced wasn't any good and would be deleted, because I didn't capture the front side of the man with the bike.  He caught my eye, because he was so well put together, walking his well maintaned bicycle through the market with perfect posture, in a nice cream coloured summer suit, and a bright red ascot.  This man put some work into riding his bike down to the market this morning. Part of me wishes I put this much work into anything, but I do love rolling out of bed and just throwing on some shorts with the most thought I put into my outfit is deciding which of my finely curated collection of Macho Man Randy Savage shirts I'm going to wear that day.  

I missed the ascot and outfit that caught my eye, and most of the bike. Automatic failure right? Well I like how this came out.  There's depth.  The arm in the foreground, the man and his bike, a market vendor, and finally the two people embracing in the background.  I may have missed the red ascot, so I converted it to black and white, and I feel like I ended up capturing how much life and how many stories were going on in this little outdoor market.  I'm happy with it.  Score one for me.

At the heart of this market is The Forks.  It's a permanent fixture in Winnipeg for tourism filled with small shops and places to eat. While my wife and my cousin's partner did some shopping, I snapped this one from a second floor walkway.  Again, I always feel like I'm not the best at capturing what it is about these scenes that looks so appealing.  I get back to my computer an it looks boring or not what I thought I was getting.  But this time I feel like I nailed having the leading lines guide the viewers eye through the image. The rafters in the ceiling are lined up with the tables on the floor, and the repeating pattern of the light fixtures in the centre.  There's even the balcony railing on the left hand side guiding the eye through the picture. 

There was a brief period of my photographic life where I was the band photographer for a popular local pub. I got the gig by doing some work for a friend who worked there. His band was doing a CD release party and I hounded him to let me do photography for them. I was paid with a copy of their CD and a 3 free drinks at the bar. Slightly more than how much you get paid when someone offers "exposure". Did I know anything about shooting bands? Nope. But I knew music, people kind of knew who I was, and I owned an SLR so everyone immediately assumed I knew what I was doing because I had a "fancy" camera that changed lenses. Sometimes that's all it takes really. My old camera store boss once told me a story from when he was young where he hung out with and photographed the Dead Kennedy's because he was at their show with a camera and a notebook. He convinced them he wrote worked for the local university newspaper and wanted to write an article about them.  He did not write for that paper nor did he even attend the university, and it was the 80s so I guarantee they never saw a single frame from those rolls of film. The lesson from this story is that sometimes you have to do a little bullshitting and fake it 'til you make it.  And that's how I started my brief career as a band photographer.

...if you can call it that.  Because while I got that gig shooting bands for that popular local pub, other than some free pints of Guinness I never got paid in any form real currency (which I learned later in life was a recurring theme for people doing work for them). The deal was, I show up when bands are playing, get some shots, give him a CD, he looks at what he wants and pays me for it. Seems simple.  But after being bailed on for meetings, straight up ghosted, and ignored I just stopped going.  So the business side of things sucked hard.  But I will say it was good experience.

I got a lot of photos that I was proud of at the time, but now purge from my lightroom library now when I go through all those old photos. I learned how to deal with low light, navigating a crowd, attempting to be discrete, moving around that space.  But I would also have anxiety about doing it. I've always been a person who dealt with bursts of extreme shyness in social situations, which later in life I've come to learn is categorized as social anxiety. I would stay farther back from the stage because I didn't want to be seen by a crow close up taking photos.  Like everyone was watching me or something and not the band they came to see. When I think about it, I'm sure it's something that developed being the kid who was always picked on in school, often very publicly. So, I would start a show as this wallflower photographer, struggling to make his legs move.  Using every ounce of willpower to just start moving around the room, I would eventually start to feel more comfortable and explore the space more, and get through the night. By the time I was done this gig, I had gained some confidence, lost that self consciousness, and feel like I had improved as a photographer.

This took place in I think 2012. Let's fast forward to the present.  My wife is one of the singers for an incredible brass band called The Pile of Bones Brass Band. Recently I did some group photos for them for promos, and told them I would try and get some photos at their upcoming gigs.  No pressure.  I volunteered to do it for them and my wife, and to give me an excuse to pick up my camera.  A couple weekends ago they had a show in the very same venue I originally started this story at.  It felt like it would be fun evening watching their new set, and hopefully get a few good shots.  But the most unexpected thing happened: all that anxiety that I had gotten over years ago came flooding back.  I hugged the sides of the walls.  I stood at the back, telling myself I needed to get wide shots of the band.  But when I tried to move around the room and shoot, I had those same feels that I had forgotten about years ago.  It was like my legs couldn't move all over again.  I had to force myself to move around.

I left the evening with a strange feeling, and not happy with how it turned out.  Normally, when I shoot an band or event like this, in addition to some action type shots of band members playing, I try to get some coverage of each member of the group doing their thing. But I just couldn't do it.  I know it's something I need to work through again, and no one is going to feel let down by me, because it's basically being done as way to fulfill my hobby.  That feeling just caught me off guard so badly, because I thought I left it behind me so long again.  I guess this is one part of my photographic journey I need to work though again.  For what coverage I did get, I'm mostly happy with the few pieces I produced.  There was some difficult stage lighting to contend with which made some band members totally red on one side of the stage, and others a cold blue on the other end. They band is performing again tonight, and I think I'm going to give it another shot.  Not guaranteeing I'll be able to make my legs work any better tonight, but I'm going to attempt to push myself through it.  I did it once, I can do it again.

  

This week I had every intention of getting out and photographing something new, but the week got away from me as priorities of being a homeowner took over (talking to landscapers, tracking down and electrician, trying to get my eavetroughs replaced...fun, fun stuff right?).  So instead I had a look back at photos from my recent trip to Lousisiana that were in part a catalyst for this blog.  Part of my to-do list is to put together a collage frame of photos from the trip.  Thankfully my wife took the vast majority of our photos, because honestly I haven't been all that excited about what I brought back.

I went down there with my camera (Olympus EM5 Mark II) and one 25mm lens (50mm fullframe equivalent for those not in the know of micro 4/3 sensors).  My challenge I assigned myself was to take one lens, shoot a ton of photos, and force myself to be creative because of my limitations.  Like, in my head I'm picturing myself walking around the french quarter of New Orleans, and honing my skills as a street photographer. Can you guess how fast that backfired?  Now it's not that I'm unfamiliar with the lens because it's been on my camera for 80% of the time that I've owned it.  But after a long period of not shooting on a regular basis, this probably was not the time to put restrictions on myself.  I own a 14-150ii, which can't be a more ideal lens for travel, other than I've never been satisfied with the sharpness.  I mainly shoot with prime lenses and those travel zooms have never been known for their sharpness.  It's one thing I might be snooty about in photography: primes are always better.
So I start shooting, and I'm not happy with what I'm getting.  I feel like I'm taking (for lack of a better term) tourist snapshots and get a little discouraged that I'm not getting what I envisioned.  In retrospect, I was just rusty, and trying to not get down on myself, but coming up a bit short. So I just stopped shooting as much. Couple that with travelling with some new people that I only recently met, who I am becomign self concious of taking photos around, and feeling like I'm holding up the group (which was all in my head).  So I start taking less and less photos and just try to take in the scenery and be in the moment a bit. 

Fast forward to the end of the trip and I've shot a fraction of what I hoped I would, and what I do have hardly encapsulates what the trip was about and what we did and experienced.  So I put off looking at them much until now.  And you know what?  I'm still not entirely happy with the volume of what I brought back, but I do have a few that I do enjoy and I'll take that as a win. I'm trying to remind myself that there was a time not very long ago that we didn't document every moment of our lives.  We had 24 or 36 frames on a roll of film.  For a few years in the late 2000s, I worked at a one hour photo lab and saw so many rolls of film get destoyed and summer vactions forgotten because someone openned a camera back and exposed the film, or the camera just jammmed, or (my favourite) a horse at summer stepped on the one disposable camera that they had.

So what did I get that I am happy about? I tried to find a few that I did get that could kind of summarize the trip, capture some happy memories, but also satisfy my need as a photographer to get some "quality" photos. 

My wife exploring a beautiful garden at a haunted plantation:

The French Quarter before the chaos of a Saturday night:

A gigantic pair of alligators, one appropriately named Big Boy

When I decided I was going to pick up my camera again and start shooting on a regular basis, I decided that I may need to take some sort of a back to basics kind of approach.  When you don’t know what to shoot or are feeling burnt out, you’ll often end up telling yourself something along the lines of “I would pick up my camera, but there’s just nothing to shoot”.  When really, maybe you should be saying “I can’t think of anything I would enjoy shooting”.  There is a whole wide world out there to photograph.  There’s far from nothing out there to take pictures of.  Sometimes you need to revisit a subject you gave up on a long time ago because it doesn’t interest you anymore, or you thought it was played out.  I had that frame of mind about photographing flowers. 

Yes there are a billion photos of flowers on the internet. Frankly, I don't particularly like looking at photos of flowers. I have flowers in my yard, but they are kind of just for my wife and the bees to enjoy. But this is about working on honing skills. So I need to open myself up to photographing things that I may have thought were boring, mundane, or played out.  Where I’m at right now, I feel like I just need to get my reps in.  Besides, it’s been so long since I was photographing something other than my action figure collection (there will be plenty more of that in future posts, don’t worry about that), that anything outside if that is kind of outside of my comfort zone.

So a few weeks ago when my mom was in town visiting, we did a family trip to the local flower conservatory.  It was something different, that none of us had been to, and a good excuse for me to take my camera out of the house and get out of that comfort zone.  Even though I was still kind of in a “flowers are boring, I guess I’ll just do this to say I tried” headspace, I found myself pleasantly surprised with the results.  I didn’t try to do anything revolutionary.  I just tried to focus on composition, exposure, you know: back to basics.  What kind of caught me by surprise was how not boring it was, and the variety of subjects there were.  I’m sure this sounds painfully obvious, but in my head I was saying a “flower is a flower is a flower”. But when you stop and think about it for more than two seconds you realise, it’s an excellent location to work some photography muscles.  There’s opportunity for macro work, to make bright colours pop, to work on isolating the head of one single flower to accentuate it with a shallow depth of field.  Now I really understand why people who taught classes out of the camera store I used to work at would do field trips there.

I’m not saying that I’ll be coming back here regularly.  Heck, I might not come back for a few years.  But it’s a solid reminder that there are photographic opportunities all around us if we can just get out of our heads and not worry about what we think is boring, and take a step out of what we are used to.  It may not be the most exciting content, and I may never look at these again, but it was a worthwhile exercise and felt like a step in the right direction for me.

At one point in my life I went everywhere with a messenger bag that had room for a camera, and a notebook. While I never thought I was amazing at either, I had a passion for both and eagerness to practice each craft, and continue growing and improving. Unfortunately, at some point one of the writing slowly disappeared, and I picked up my camera less and less. How did it happen? I think I started losing confidence in my writing, and found myself saying more and more “what’s the point?” As for the photography, part of it is that I think I simply burned myself out on it. I worked at a camera store for about 4 years in the first half of the 2010s. I got bogged down on having the latest and greatest gear, always chasing that next gadget that was going to improve my work. Also, continually seeing people with less knowledge, that I had to teach how to use their gear and the principles of photography,continue to get work and build their small businesses started building some resentment. When I got out of that job, I went from shooting for pleasure on a regular basis to just not shooting at all. That phrase of self doubt, “what’s the point”, migrated from my thoughts about writing and infected how I thought about photography.

The truth is, I really miss both of those things. Photography has been a part of my life since I was a kid. I have always been somewhat known as the family photographer (one of my proudest photographic moments was wrangling over 100 relatives at a family reunion for one group photo with limited head and face swaps in photoshop). When I was too old to get toys for Christmas, I got cameras and Santa left rolls of film in my stocking. Yet, somehow this passion slowly started burning out. Even though I know that when I have an active creative project that I’m working on, I always feel like my mental health improves. The problem is, over the years I have tried to pick up my camera more and more, and back pedal when “what’s the point” pops back into my head. Social media platforms like Instagram at first I thought would help, until you get into worrying about likes and follows, and all that made up stuff that doesn’t really matter. It's also so easy to fall into the trap of constantly comparing your work to other people. One thing I would like to do with this is not worry about views, clicks, comments, and potential monetization. I want to do this for me, and if anyone else comes for the ride, so be it. Below is a photo I took back soon after I bought my first DSLR, and the first photo I ever sold a print of. I had such excitement about photography back then. To create an image that I was proud of, and have others be genuinely excited about it

So what’s the point of this blog? It’s my latest creative endeavor to attempt to recapture that excitement and passion for photography and writing. Are they going to be the greatest photographs ever? Are they going to present some new, groundbreaking photographic theory? No. But it will be an attempt to reflect on my photography, and ideas surrounding what I do and do not enjoy about the art form, and hopefully help to reignite a spark in my photographic journey.