Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Tomorrow’s weather forecast in Hickory, North Carolina includes snow. This happens here occasionally, and the population goes crazy. Local media outlets treat it like a natural disaster rather than weather. It’s just after 11pm as I write this. I’m watching the 11:00 news. The main story is obviously weather. Bulletins along the bottom of the TV screen list schools and businesses that have already announced closings and delays, and the weather hasn’t even started yet.
Hickory hasn’t had a serious snowfall since 1993. The first week of March in 1993, we got about 18-20″, which is a LOT for this area. Driving was rather hazardous for several days because the temperature stayed below freezing. Since that time, we have only had two or three snowfalls that amounted to any accumulation, and those were 6″ or less.
I do love listening to people tell me about the weather forecasts though. I checked the NWS myself this afternoon. The actual forecast was some snow, sleet, and freezing rain with less than 1″ of accumulation. When I arrived at my sports assignment tonight, I heard stories about 5-6″ of accumulation with damaging freezing rain. When i got home, I checked my forecast again and, sure enough, it hasn’t changed.
I would love to hear from some of you who live in areas that do get a lot of snow. Does the media hype it up? Does everything close down?
When we do get a lot of snow here, which is rare, it can create problems. We don’t have snow moving equipment that is very effective at clearing large amounts of snow from the roads.
My personal forecast for tomorrow is:
There will be no amount of weather happening before I have to go take an Anatomy & Physiology test at 7:00am :)
We’ll see what happens…
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
In May 2004, I started playing around with the concept of selling royalty-free stock photography through some of the online sites that do this. After playing around with a lot of different sellers, I settled in with iStockPhoto.com. Since I started, I have uploaded about 90 photographs that seem to have some sort of value in the stock photography market. I haven’t really spent any significant time shooting specifically for stock. I just send things I accumulate that may have some sale value in that market.
Since I started this effort, I have made $1380 with very minimal work. All I have to do is upload the file, assign keywords and categories, and then wait for them to sell. After I have accumulated at least $100 in sales, I can request payment, and the money ends up in my PayPal account within a few days.
I have watched several friends spend significant amounts of time shooting stock photography for sites like this, and a couple of them are now making their living from this income. The amount of money you can make here is directly proportional to how much work you want to put into it.
Over time, my percentage has increased at iStockPhoto, and I’m making more. I currently average anywhere from $40 to $70 per month. Some months are better than others, but the overall average is a nice payout over time.
I think that, in addition to my Signs of the Times project for 2007, I want to add another goal of adding at least 50 more images to my stock library. That works out to about one image per week and should be easy enough to accomplish…
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Tonight’s assignment was to photograph a Western Piedmont Symphony rehearsal. The symphony is rehearsing Meira Warshauer’s “Symphony No. 1 - Living, Breathing Earth” for a world debut performance. Meira Warshauer was in attendance to provide feedback as the symphony rehearsed. My objective was to make photos that could be used to highlight the opening of the performance. Unfortunately, I don’t think this photo will be the one they choose, but it was my favorite from the shoot. Newspapers like to print photos of people :) I covered that part too, but they were much less interesting, IMO, than this one.
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
The only interesting thing I did today was make a trip to the local art museum to photograph a guest lecturer. Sharif Bey is a sculptor and professor of Art at Winston Salem State University. He gave a lecture this afternoon called “African-American Art and Identity: Resistance, Representation and Reception.” Professor Bey spoke eloquently on many issues surrounding art in general, as well as African-American Art. I listened to what he had to say, but my concentration was broken by the term “Outsider Art.” I think it’s a dirty word in the art community. I probably feel that way because I’m an outsider and I always will be. I won’t whine about it though. Artists, and those who collect and purchase art, fall under the same rules of society as any other social class. Maybe this topic will make an interesting blog entry at some other time…
Anyway… Meeting Sharif Bey was a good experience. I was impressed with his lecture and was glad to have the opportunity to meet him. His own art fascinates me beyond belief. It’s powerful. I intend to do some additional research on Sharif and his work…
Face #173 on the road to 1000 Faces…
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
I spent a little time in the park this afternoon. For late January, the weather was actually nice. The temperature was in the mid 50’s. The sky was slightly overcast with a mild breeze in the air. Winter has only peeked out a few times here in western North Carolina, but I’m sure February will be cold.
I spent a while shooting at ducks and a pair of Canadian Geese. After I got tired of that, I put on the wide angle lens. True wide angle photography is a real challenge on digital cameras with the APS-C sensor. These sensors (or the one in my camera) create a 1.6x crop factor compared to their 35mm film counterparts. A standard 28mm lens, which is relatively wide angle on a 35mm camera, works out to the equivalent of a 45mm lens, which isn’t wide at all. The reason this happens is because the digital sensor is 1.6x smaller than the 24×36mm film frame used by 35mm cameras. The physical size of the APS-C sensor is 15.1×22.7mm. So what happens here is that the lens projects the same size image onto the sensor as it would for a 35mm film camera, but since the sensor is smaller than a 35mm film frame, all you get is what falls on the sensor.
To get an equivalent of 28mm wide angle on my digital camera, I had purchased a 17-40mm zoom lens. At the 17mm wide end of that lens, I have roughly the equivalent of 27mm. That worked out fine for a while. The problem was that I really wanted a seriously wider lens than that. I started out with a Sigma 12-24mm lens. It was quite wide at the 12mm end, but I wasn’t very happy with the corner distortion. I didn’t keep the lens very long. When Canon introduced the 10-22 EF-S lens, it made me think about it all over again. I own two digital SLR cameras, and this 10-22mm lens would only work on one of them. I didn’t really want to purchase a lens that wouldn’t work on both cameras. When Sigma introduced their 10-20mm lens, I decided to buy it. I had several friends who had picked it up early, so I watched their results before I bought my own. (I’m very RARELY the first kid on the block to buy newly released equipment. I let other people find the bugs and quirks first.) This 10-20mm lens gives me the equivalent of 16mm on the wide end, which is about as wide as I would ever need to go.
There are digital SLR cameras out there that have the full-sized 24×36mm sensor, but we won’t talk about how poor I am and how much those cost. If I ever upgrade to one of those, my 17-40mm lens will be plenty wide for anything I would want to shoot with it.
When I really think about my lens collection, this 10-20mm lens gets less play than anything else in my bag. I simply do not shoot scenes that benefit greatly from wide angle. Landscape photography is one of the more popular areas where wide angle lenses, and I had landscapes in mind when I purchased it. I’m taking a trip to Chaco Canyon and Canyon de Chelly for a in Arizona during the first part of May. I will shoot some landscapes out there for sure.
Other than landscapes, the ultra-wide angle lenses can be used for dynamic and compositional enhancement (if you view it as enhancement) of scenes that aren’t traditionally suited to wide angle. In the photo above, the young boy is only 12 or 15′ away from my camera. The wide angle lens has a unique effect on objects in the scene. Objects that are closer to the lens tend to be exaggerated in size, while objects farther away tend to shrink. In the above photo, I used the railing on the wooden walkway to create a leading line to the young boy, who is the subject of the photo. That railing is about 6″ wide, but it appears to be wider at the near end due to wide angle distortion. If I had lowered the camera level, it would have increased the distortion even more.
I shot this simple self portrait by holding the camera above me. The lens was approximately 10″ from my face. My head, even though it is already huge, looks even bigger in the photo…
If you have a wide angle lens, what do you have and what is your favorite? What sort of photos do you make with it other than landscapes?
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Hickory High’s Karsyn Jarrett scored 14 tonight as she led the Lady Tornadoes past the Newton-Conover Red Devils, making their record on the season 20 wins and no losses. I think the Lady Tornadoes have two more games in regular conference play, but they are simply unbeatable within our conference. After regular season play ends next Friday, the conference tournament will take place, and then the Lady Tornadoes will be off as a #1 seed in the state playoffs.
This photo is running on the front of the A section in tomorrow’s paper rather than on the sports pages. The news desk asked me to get a feature photo from the game if the Hickory girls won (like they could lose!) I had stumbled across this particular idea a while back as I was making some photos of people at the charity stripe. Originally, this was accidental and I didn’t like the idea very well, but I decided to TRY to get it for this particular assignment. I didn’t think I would be able to make this happen, but oddly enough, it wasn’t too difficult to reproduce…
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
This post was inspired by a recent question a good friend asked… What is the difference between fine art and commercial art? Unfortunately, she had been told that her work was too commercial to be displayed in one of her local art galleries. She, like me, is relatively new to photography. I have only been doing it seriously for five years, and she has been doing it seriously a little less than that.
The question is not easy to answer. Fine art is a lot like pornography. It’s difficult to define, but we know it when we see it. That, however, won’t provide a reasonable answer to the question. I’m not sure of the best way to define these terms, but maybe some comparisons would be a good place to start.
Commercial art, in my opinion, is art made for mass marketing purposes. The finished product is designed to be appealing to a large group of people. When we visit gift shops while on vacation, we see postcard racks filled with photographic cards highlighting the scenes of interest in the area. When we visit a local arts and crafts store, we see lots of posters containing scenic landscapes, colorful sunsets, and waves crashing on the rocks, just to name a few. The customers who buy commercial art intend to use it for very specific purposes. The postcards from the gift shop may be collected as memorabilia of a vacation. The art from the arts and crafts store may be used for interior decoration. When interior decoration is the goal of the buyer, they tend to look for images with color schemes or content themes that match existing colors and themes in their homes. The colors and themes of the images are more important than the actual subject content of the art. Art shops usually carry a huge selection of poster and lithograph prints for the purpose of home decoration, and they are all very reasonably priced. These works are affordable to most buyers and they accomplish the goal of interior decoration. An easy way to test this theory is to ask someone about a piece of art hanging in their homes. When you notice one, ask them why they chose that specific piece for their home. The answers won’t vary significantly.
“I bought it because it matches the colors in the room.”
“Someone gave it to me.”
“The artist is a friend of mine.”
You won’t often hear a story about how a specific piece of art reminds the owner of past experiences or their childhood. They won’t tell you how they are moved or inspired by the content of the art. They won’t tell you about subtle (or overt) themes in the image that go beyond what is shown. They won’t see story-telling qualities in an image. They won’t ‘know’ the artist and have an understanding of why a certain work was created.
Fine art may be significantly different that commercial art. It is, however, possible that a piece of commercial art would be considered fine art as well. Fine art is usually based on much more than you actually see when looking at the image. The image itself may not stand on its own as commercial art would. There will be meaning and depth associated with it that goes beyond the image and into the life of the artist. The image may represent some idea or thought through its subject rather than as its subject. The viewer’s connection with the image will often be rooted in an underlying theme or idea.
I have had the opportunity to view quite a few exhibits of fine art images. These images rarely represent anything close to commercial art. While viewing the images, I frequently find that, when viewing them without any specific context, I don’t understand their significance. Some of the images appear to be nothing more than simple snapshots. Others impress me greatly. Some appear to be very random. The ingenuity of the work doesn’t surface until some additional context is provided, whether in the form of notes associated with the image, or from biographical information provided by or about the artist. When an artist chooses to speak to his viewers through visual arts, it’s quite helpful to know the language being spoken or the theme being addressed.
When viewing fine art images, your connection with a particular image will help form your opinion on its worthiness of the label. As I have described fine art, you will quickly come to the conclusion that the audience who will accept the work will be rather limited. Sometimes it requires the viewer to actively pursue knowledge beyond the image. Those who choose to go to that length may be rewarded with a great understanding of what fine art means, but if a connection is not made, a viewer will simply write it off as crap.
In a nutshell, commercial art is widely accepted as good, while fine art is good but not so widely accepted due to its underlying theme or external associations.
I don’t know if this has been really helpful in understanding the difference in these two terms, but I do know one thing for sure. As an artist, the most important goal should be to enjoy what you are doing. If you aren’t, then the type of art you are creating doesn’t matter. If you are, then whatever type of art emerges from your efforts is YOUR TYPE. Stick with it and have a good time doing it. Don’t worry about labels.
Sometime during the next few days, I plan to write a rather in-depth entry in my blog about my thoughts on the differences between fine art and commercial art. I was recently asked by a friend to differentiate between the two concepts. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Feel free to leave comments…
I have been doing this for over two years and it’s taken me a while to learn an important lesson in newspaper sports photography. I have thought about this before, but for some reason I haven’t been able to get myself into the proper frame of mind to do it.
Beginning with my next basketball games on Friday night, I will have two objectives at each event I cover. The first objective is to complete whatever the newspaper assignment requires. Oddly enough, that isn’t always easy to do in poor light. The second objective, the one I don’t seem to pay enough attention to, is to get at least one usable photo of every possible player I can, including the head coaches of each team.
This would be easier to accomplish if I started at the beginning of the season. I obviously won’t complete this task for every team in the basketball conference with just two weeks left in the regular season.
I KNOW that I will be asked for additional unpublished photos for use in the newspaper in the future. Sometimes, I have a problem providing what the sports editor is looking for. Being able to do this is dependent on me having a library of usable unpublished photos, especially of coaches and key players in the game. In basketball, those key players would be the normal five starters on each team plus the first two off the bench. In football, it’s going to be the offensive and defensive backfield players, plus the receivers. In soccer, it’s going to be anyone who is offensively active in the game. In wrestling, it’s going to be every kid who hits the mat. In baseball, it’s going to be the pitchers and the sluggers. Those are the ‘key’ sports that I need to work a little harder with.
My next basketball games are on Friday night. I’ll be covering two games, so that means I need approximately 30 photos. They don’t all have to be high action shots like the newspaper assignment requires. These additional photos are most commonly used for feature stories and to highlight players who receive various awards. In reality, I wouldn’t have to accomplish this task in a single game. In most cases, I will cover each team more than once during the season. I need to get a roster early in the season and make sure that I have identified and covered those key players by at least the third time I cover them during the season.
We’ll see if I can be successful at this on Friday night… I’ll try to post the results of the experiment this weekend…
This semester in school, I’m taking a Music Appreciation course to fulfill a humanities requirement in my curriculum. Today’s lesson was “What type of listener are you?”In the course text, listeners are divided into four general categories: Casual, referential, critical, and perceptive. The casual listener is one who enjoys having music in the background to fill the environment with sound. The referential listener is one who listens to music and is reminded of something or forms mental images and scenarios stimulated by the sounds. The critical listener is one who listens to the performance to find fault. The perceptive listener is one who combines two or more of the other types into his or her experience with the sounds.
In photography, or art in general, which category defines your interest in the art? Since most who read this will be photographers, I would assume that the perceptive category would be a dominant choice. We all like to look at art from a few different perspectives. We like to be surrounded by it, our choices from our own collections, and those of others, are probably based on referential reasons, and we are critical of what we see simply because we understand the process of making it. Being critical at that level is a completely natural phenomenon. Sometimes we want to see something the way we would have done it rather than the way it is presented by another artist.
Our assignment in this lesson is to choose any selection of music that we have studied up to this point and write a few paragraphs describing the piece from the referential perspective. I found this exercise to be a completely wonderful experience. I chose Frédéric Chopin’s Etude, Op. 10, No. 12 - “Revolutionary” for my writing. I wasn’t completely familiar with that piece, but I had heard it before. Writing about how the music made me feel and the imagery it created in my mind’s eye was beneficial in several ways. Obviously, I wrote about how the sound interacted with my mind’s eye, but I think this little experiment can carry over into visual arts quite easily. Relating it to visual arts, what you see in most non-abstract art will create some amount of bias in forming your referential opinion. If you see a child in a swimming pool, you will be directed to think about summer weather and events associated with it. Additional thoughts may come from personal experiences below the surface. In music, you won’t get a visual cue, but the title of the selection, or any background information you read about it may bias your referential opinions. A referential perception will often determine whether or not you may connect with a piece of art. If it creates negative perceptions, you may not like it as much as if it helped you recall a happy or fond memory.
Challenge yourself to look at several photographs and connect with them on a referential level. The photo itself may not posses specific qualities that you admire in photography, but you may find them on a different level if you take the time to look.