National Chemistry Day
I went to the Catawba Science Center this morning for their National Chemistry Day event to make a few photos. One of the more interesting scenes of the morning was a demonstration of the flammability of hydrogen. Josh Kugel explodes a hydrogen-filled balloon for the visitors to the event. Other demonstrations included a hydrogen fuel cell and some interesting liquid nitrogen experiments.
In Heaven There Is No Beer
Hickory's Oktoberfest is one of the local events that I never miss. In the above video, the Foothills Oompah Band treats the crowd to "In Heaven There Is No Beer." These guys are at Oktoberfest every year, and people love to listen to their traditional (and not so traditional) Oktoberfest-themed music.
Bob Wilusz is another one of my favorite entertainers at Hickory's Oktoberfest each year. He wanders through the crowd with his accordion playing polka and waltz-themed tunes for the crowd throughout the weekend event.
My camera club manned a booth at this year's Oktoberfest for the purpose of promoting our amateur photography competition and selling prints from the members who were interested in doing so. We didn't sell very much, but I think the mistake we made was choosing the non-profit route rather than the business route of renting booth space. There was only a $25 difference in the booth space charge, but we took the cheaper way out. What we got for our $25 savings was a booth space on the outer edge of the square near the railroad tracks. That part wasn't so bad, but the tough part was that we were sandwiched between the political and religious booths. I think this little 'mistake' probably hurt us in realizing the potential foot traffic we could have had at the booth. In the booth direcltly next to us, we had this:
There was another guy with a sign hanging over his body that I just couldn't make myself photograph. He had actual photographs of partial birth abortions on his sign. The preaching and singing at this booth didn't bother me so much, but the graphic nature of the anti-abortion sign did.
I'm all for freedom of speech, so I shouldn't complain, but I do anyway. Due to some recent events in downtown Hickory, the door has been opened to a proliferation of this sort of free speech at all events held on Union Square, regardless of the nature of the event. These people wanted an audience just as much as I did today. At next year's Oktoberfest, they can have their audience, but I'm going to pay the additional $25 to have my booth alongside all the other arts and craft (and junk) vendors away from this stuff. I think that our booth being in this particular line of booths probably kept some of my potential customers away.
Since my mom is now into photography, as well as me and my dad, we're going to have our own booth at next year's Oktoberfest. Hopefully we'll be more successful on our second attempt :)
Honorary First Pitch
The Hickory Crawdads played a noon game today against the Charleston RiverDogs at L.P. Frans Stadium in Hickory, North Carolina. The day was labeled as seniors day in the park. Mr. Bill Bass tossed the honorary first pitch prior to the start of the game. Bill is legendary in local sports... not as an athlete but as an announcer and commentator. Bill was the voice of the Lenoir-Rhyne bears for well over 40 years. He still announces Hickory High football and baseball as well as Hickory Post 48 American Legion baseball.
At the end of the bar…
I had to do a photo shoot in a local restaurant / night club this evening for the newspaper. I saw this guy sitting at the end of the bar. The funny thing is that I see him sitting at the end of the bar every time I visit this place, which isn't that often, but he's always there. He's always drinking a coke on ice with a straw. I never knew his name until tonight. I have seen him around before. He used to work at a local Hardees where I would occasionally stop for breakfast. That Hardees is closed now and has been for quite a while. I don't know where he works now, but I know where he hangs out :) I think the pink glow-in-the-dark thingybobs on his glasses were pretty cool :)
That which has been done
I read a lot of photography blogs. I'm always more interested in what people are thinking rather than what they are shooting in most cases, but I occasionally stumble across something that really makes me cringe. I ran across this quote from this post over on Ted Byrne's ImageFiction blog the other day...
"The Moral: When it isn't your idea in the viewfinder, Don't trigger the shutter."
I can't find much agreement with the idea behind the statement (be sure to read the post on Ted's blog for more context.) The idea that I do agree with, even though it's not stated in his post, is that photographers should always strive for something unique in an effort to differentiate themselves from everyone else who carries a camera. The main theme that I disagree with is that it's a waste of time and effort to duplicate an image that has been done many times before. I suppose that self esteem and confidence may cause many photographers to avoid shooting a scene they have seen in pictures many times before, but there are several points of interest that surface when you examine the entire concept.
Have I seen it before?
If I travel to a new place that I'm not intimately familiar with, nothing I see will be overdone or cliche in my mind. I'm experiencing everything for the first time. I'm not going to spend time considering whether or not some other photographer has worked an interesting scene before I go to work on it myself. If my personal muse speaks, I will listen without hesitation.
I have seen it before.
If I was to travel to Yosemite or some other site that has been worked over and over by thousands of photographers, should I just leave my camera at home? I don't think so. If I'm inspired in some way to shoot a scene that I have seen before, there is nothing wrong with that. The images I produce will be inspired by something other than a previously noted photograph in my mind. The image I create, even if it is identical (let's consider identical for the purpose of discussion) to someone else's photo, is still my photo. It's my personal account of what was going on in my mind at the time I made the image. Should I beat myself up if I discover that my image is almost identical to someone else's? No.
Besides the image...
A photograph is more than a photograph, or at least it should be. This part of photography gets overlooked too often... not just in photography, but in other arts as well. I don't know what the most photographed subject in the world is, but I'm sure it has been photographed more times than I can imagine, and I'm also sure that a huge majority of those photos all look the same. The missing link in all those supposedly identical photographs is the inspiration behind the image. What caused the photographer to raise the camera? If the sole reason was to duplicate a previously noted photograph, then Ted may be right. If the inspiration came from some inner feeling, then no two images are really alike at all. You, as a photographer, may be the only one who understands the differentiation.
This small detail is the root of the problem. Photographers tend to be egotistical. We want praises from our work. The last thing we want to hear from an observer is something like "Wow... that looks just like an Ansel Adams photo..." We would rather hear "Wow... That's amazing... I have never seen anything like that before..." For some reason, photographers also tend to show their work to a lot of other photographers, which is generally a recipe for disaster in the long haul. Those other egotistical photographers aren't really going to spend much time pumping you up even if they do like your work. They will probably hold back the "I wish I had thought of that" comments... Those other photographers will be the first ones to tell you they have seen your idea many times before...
The reality...
Photography, as we know it today, was born in 1839. Almost 170 years and billions of photographs, how unique do you think you can be? You can spend all your time working on being different, or you can enjoy what you are doing and let your personal inspirations guide you. If you aren't having fun with it, then take up knitting...
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The Stretch
With 65-degree January 6th afternoon, I decided to make another venture to Glenn Hilton Park this afternoon. After watching the ducks and geese for a while, I sorta figured out how to know when they are going to make the pose shown in the above photo. If you watch them in the water for a while, they will occasionally bob their heads underwater several times like they are bathing themselves. When they finish this process, they will raise up and flap their wings several times. If you are ready for it, you can make some excellent photos...
Canvas On Demand
The photograph above shows a 16x24 canvas that is gallery wrapped on 1.5" thick stretcher bars that I just received today from Canvas On Demand. Some friends of mine turned me on to this service recently, so I went to check it out. When you sign up for a Pro account (no charge for this) on their website, they will give you an $84 credit toward your first canvas print purchase. I spent my $84 credit on this 16x24 (plus $15 freight) and I'm very impressed with the result. I really like the gallery wrap option where the image wraps around the side of the framing. This gives a customer an option when it comes to displaying the final result. This piece can be hung without a frame, or it can be framed with the customer's choice in framing as well. Hanging hardware was included with the purchase.
Normally, I'm not really into photography printed on canvas, but I can definitely see the value in it. I'm going to make this option available to my customers. I'm not sure how I would price something like this just yet either. Under normal circumstances, this particular piece (or any of the same size) would cost me $100 delivered. In the artist's game, I would have to sell this piece for about $300 to make a decent profit on it. If I sold it for $300 and paid a 30-40% commission to whatever venue I chose to place it for sale, I would profit about $100.
Traveling Card Project: Getting Started
A few days ago, I mentioned my "Traveling Compact Flash Card" project here in the blog. I have been rounding up volunteers for this project, and we're about ready to get started. As of this posting, I have volunteers from Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Iceland, India, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, and the United States. I think this is a decent turnout for the short amount of time I have been working on it.
The first stop on this journey will be Okinawa, Japan. Our volunteer in Okinawa will only be there until September 7, so that location will be taken care of first. I also hope to collect more countries to participate while the project is in motion...
Traveling CF Card
I have an idea for a new photography project that could be a lot of fun. I'm collecting a list of volunteer photographers from around the world to participate in the "Traveling Compact Flash Card" project. The idea behind this project is to get a single volunteer from as many countries as possible to shoot a photograph on the traveling compact flash card and then send it on to the next person. The ultimate goal of the project will be to publish a book through one of the online publishing sources when the compact flash card returns to me after its journey around the globe.
I just started forming this project today, and I have a few volunteers already. I'm also very skeptical about the success of this idea, but I think it's worth a try. I tried a similar project a few years ago, but it didn't involve a traveling compact flash card. I collected a group of volunteer photographers from all 50 states in the United States who were supposed to make a photograph of their state flag for the purpose of making a large poster print of all 50 flags. I had lots of volunteers, but when the time came to produce the photos, I fell about 8 or 9 photos short of completion and couldn't find additional volunteers. I did find some replacement photographers, and still had difficulty collecting the photographs. I'm hoping this project won't meet the same fate.
I expect that the compact flash card journey will be a treacherous one. I expect to encounter several pitfalls in the project, but I have some ideas for contingency plans. Each photographer who participates will be asked to back up the contents of the compact flash card when they receive it. If the compact flash card gets lost in transit or lands with a photographer who refuses to send it to the next participant, we won't have lost the photographs. I'll be able to send a replacement compact flash card to the last person who made a backup and re-start the card's journey.
I know it would be easier to just find photographers and have them email a photograph. That would be too easy though :) I'll be adding blog entries about this project as it materializes...
Blogging Baseball
Some of you may know that I have been writing a blog account of Hickory Crawdads baseball for the last few seasons. I have been writing that blog on an MLBlogs website for the last two seasons. As of this week, I'm hosting that blog on my own here:
The original site was here:
Stop by if you get a chance :)