Just Take Your Camera

I know it’s been a while but I hit my own creative slump recently. I spent 3 and a half years studying Photography for a BFA and I finally graduated in December 2022. Those years studying were so fun and it opened me up to so many different photography types and styles, to the point of trying most of them. When I graduated, our professors essentially told us that now that we are finished with school, we should be set up to immediately start using photography as a way to start up our own businesses, building on what we started in school. For myself, I built up my photography business on the hopes of shooting golf courses and country clubs. I had myself pretty well set up as well, shooting for around a full year at the Galveston Country Club in South Texas, and I shot everything I could at that course. I shot the Bar, Clubhouse, employees, the golf course, and even the groundskeepers and maintenance staff. I made a lot of very meaningful connections and I started trying to build on that as soon as I graduated. But alas, that didn’t happen.

After I graduated, I kept shooting, but the frequency became less and less until I almost just completely stopped. I began focusing more on my day to day, “normal” job and put my photography to the way side. Then I started to notice something as time went on. I started feeling like I was missing something every time I went somewhere. I realized pretty quickly, it was my camera. I know, I know, “but your phone has a camera!” And you wouldn’t be wrong. My personal opinion (PERSONAL OPINION) is that shooting with a phone isn’t meant for professional photography, its more of a last second, “Oh, thats cool”, piece of equipment to quickly whip out, take a quick, not well framed shot for the memory, and then move on with whatever your doing. But, at the same time that I realized it was my camera that was missing, I remembered something my professor for Black & White Photography said. “Just take your camera with you. It doesn’t hurt you and it costs nothing. For all that you know, you could end up with an image that makes you a millionaire.” I am well aware that this is a bit of an exaggeration, but he wasn’t wrong. Where is the harm in taking your camera with you?

So, that’s what I started doing.

Now, I am writing this while on vacation in Georgia, and we went all over the place out here. We even took a sunset river cruise one of our first nights here and what did I not take with me? My f*cking camera. Now, in my “defense”, the weather showed it was going to be terrible. Heavy cloud cover with a pretty high chance of rain. In other words, there was no expectation whatsoever that there was going to be a visible sunset. This, obviously, was not completely true.

The Forgotten Camera - Taken with an iPhone 13 Pro Max

As the iPhone 13 Pro Max image shows, there was in fact, a sunset. And the moment I saw that bright, beautiful orange start peaking out of the clouds, I knew I had messed up. This was just another example of a moment that I should have brought my camera. Maybe I didn’t need my full kit, even just the body and a simple 24-105mm f/4 would have worked just fine for this. So, rather than having a nice, 60 megapixel (Sony a7R IV) image that I could work, I now have an over auto-edited iPhone image; great for memory keeping, no so much for sales or printing.

If you’ve been in a slump like myself, or just having a tough time in general finding something worth while to shoot, just take your camera with you when you go somewhere. Even if its something small like a walk in your local park, around your neighborhood, or going into town to wander, just take it with you. You never know, maybe you’ll take a million dollar image!

Photography - Getting Past the Creative Slump

Do you ever get to a point in your photography where you just lose the motivation to go out and shoot? If you have, you aren’t alone.

Hitting a creative block is just like getting burnt out. You do something so much or with so much ferocity that it breaks you down after a little while, to the point of saying, “I don’t want to do this right now”, or, “This is so boring”. Many of us, if not all of us, have or will hit this block or slump at some point in our creative journey. And this isn’t just for photography; it applies for all creative arts.

A lot of the problem is that we get stuck, we feel like we cant do anything else or, it might be that we aren’t confident in ourselves enough to try something different. Don’t be afraid of this because it isn’t a bad thing. The bad thing is letting this slump or block rule our creativity. Something to remember is that your art is exactly that; YOUR art. Yes, we enjoy sharing our work with people and, if possible, making money from our art but, we still have to enjoy it. There has to be some kind of catharsis behind our making of art, no matter if it’s painting, photography, graphic design, or one of hundreds of others. Loving our art is natural and needed, but what do we do when our art doesn’t feel the same or doesn’t bring that same joy as before?

The first thing is to think about what you love about your art or how you got into your art in the first place? Was it the adventure of finding something new? Was it being able to disconnect from your daily grind? No matter the answer to this, USE that answer. Try something new or different. If you’re a painter, try painting a different genre or, try painting with different paints. Experiment.

Photographers can do the same thing. Try shooting something you have never thought about before. If you are normally a landscape photographer, experiment with shooting a product or experiment with your landscapes with different lenses.

Ultimately, do something out of your comfort zone. You could even broaden this more and completely switch the art. A photographer could try painting or drawing.

Some articles that I have personally read bring up the idea of setting a schedule. For me, i’ve been in this creative slump and had these blocks before and I tried doing this. For me, it didn’t work. My opinion is that creativity doesn’t follow a schedule so, you cant really plan this. With that being said, I think for someone else, that may be the right thing. Stuff like this is subjective. It will work for me but not others and vis versa.

Now, maybe another problem is that you’re overthinking your art or you’re being too rough on yourself. For me, when I started my journey in photography, I didnt care about the outcome of the photos, I cared about just going out and taking them. Be spontaneous. If you think of an idea for your art or something new, follow it. Just keep doing something.

Ultimately, there are a million different things you can do to try and get out a creative rut but, the biggest thing is to not stop trying. Don’t just stop creating as a whole. Keep working on new things and talk to your fellow artists. We are all family and we all want to do the same thing at the end of the day.

What slumps have you hit? How did you get past them? What would you suggest to your fellow artist? Lets us know!

The Start of Something New

Starting something brand new is almost a daunting task. Will you keep it going or is it a phase where you love it for a few months and then you find something else? Are you afraid of failure or are you willing to take the failures as learning opportunities? For many people, photography is just like this.

Photography, for me, was a random find. Once I got back home from the Marine Corps, I was lost; and to a degree, I still am. I jumped jobs for around a year, doing security work and fueling planes at an airport in Denver. I met my wife, we moved in together, ended up in the job that I have now, and have pushed through it for over 4 years. once my wife and I moved in together, I found that she had an old Sony a300 with a single kit lens. I told her one day that I wanted to go out with the camera and just wander around Boulder, CO with this little 10.2 megapixel DSLR.

I am not afraid to admit, nor should anyone else, I had no clue what I was doing with it at the time. So, we walked around and I took photos. Once we got home, I realized something. I was the happiest I had been in a long time. Walking around, taking photos of anything I wanted and anything I could. I didn’t think of the camera, I didn’t think of the people around me. I was sucked into the world around me without a care in the world. I was paying attention to nature, little details that I otherwise would never have thought to notice. I did this a few times and then decided that I wanted my own camera.

So, we went out to Mikes Camera Store outside of Denver and I picked up an “old” Nikon D3100, a cheap kit lens, and a memory card and just started shooting. I took my camera everywhere with me. Went to the mall, had my camera. Went to work, had my camera. Anywhere I went, I had it with me. I just kept it with me. Of course, as time went on, and as a new photography enthusiast, I had the notion that gear is what made a photo good. For those that need to hear it, gear does not make a photograph good, the photographer makes the photograph good.

Anyways, I went on for about a year, upgrading my gear almost continuously, and trying different types of photography. At one point, I ended up with a Nikon D7100 and a Fujifilm X-T2. It was at this point that I started to move forward in my photography journey and got into shooting drag races at Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, CO. This short lived experience is what really kick-started my love of photography. Getting photos of something that not many people are able to get, and being in an area that almost no one is able to be. There was no money involved for me (aside from the obvious expenses of paying for more and more new gear) because I had agreed to be unpaid by the contract photographer on the track. It was here that I realized that this experience for me was far more valuable, at least, for a while. The more I learned, the more I wanted to monetize the skills that I had been taught for high speed photography. Getting a usable photo of a car going 200 mph past you is not as easy as most people would think. Come the end of the race season, I left and went back to street and landscape photography with the occasional portrait session with a friend of mine at the time.

In the middle of this still fairly fresh pickup of a new hobby, I decided it was time I went back to school to get a degree. I decided that I wanted to get a degree in Political Science from Johnson and Wales in Denver as an online student while also working full time. I got started and very quickly realized that I didn’t want to do that. I finished my first semester of school and then withdrew. Then, I decided that I wanted to make photography my job. So, I enrolled at Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design to pursue a degree in Commercial Photography. This, of course, was a turning moment in my life and I caught a lot of flack from family. I decided that I don’t want my life to revolve around making as much money as I possibly can. I decided that I wanted to be happy and to do something that I genuinely love. So, here I am.

Through my school, I found the types of photography the I love. I will say though, It took a long time to figure it out. I’ve shot a ton of different types of photography and found my passion lies within landscapes and street. My own reason for this is that you get to shoot something that will never be exactly the same after that shot. It feels genuine, un-staged, and emotional. With all of this being said, learning new things is what makes you better. Although you may not think that high speed motor sports or portrait photography plays a part in landscapes or street photography, it does nonetheless. You understand framing, leading lines, foreground and background importance. You may not be having to pan-shoot a landscape but, you learn the movements for quick shots when that animal runs by that you’ve been trying to get a shot of for the last 3 days.

My goal with this blog is to not only help with understanding photography and toss out ideas but, its also to learn. I want to hear your stories about how you got into photography, why you chose it. I want to also learn from you and have a conversation about your photography. Let me know your stories and what you think about photography today.

With this blog, I want to introduce people to photography, no matter who you are. If you’re shooting on a phone, you just got your first camera and have no clue what to do, or if you’ve been in photography for years. If your a novice, hobbyist, or professional, I want this to be a place for anyone that has a love of photography and its inner workings.

I am excited to hear your stories and your insights and I cant wait to hear from you.

Landscapes - Be Prepared for the Worst

Landscape photography is what you make it. It can be enjoyable or, it can be a beast that is tough to conquer. One thing that Landscape photography almost requires is time. Some may say, “But you’re just going out and taking a photo of an area of space? Why does anyone think its hard?” Well, in some circumstances, that may be correct. You can have no plan at all and just go somewhere and take a landscape photo. It may turn out great, it may not. As many of us know, that opinion falls on the eyes of the beholder. Personally, I don’t think there’s a photographer on the planet who hasn’t just gone out somewhere at random and taken some photos. I mean, that is photography. Part of the fun is being somewhere new, doing something that you love to share an experience.

With or without a plan, things can go wrong in a heartbeat. Living where I do, south of Houston and a 20 minute drive from Galveston, I love to go and take sunrise landscapes over the water of the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, when you’re shooting landscapes, you aren’t going to be standing indoors, at least majority of the time, so you have to somewhat expect what kind of weather you’re going to be shooting in.

In the little spot that I like to shoot from, you are on the farthest east point of the island, on a little outcrop of beach. If you live on or near a coast line, you probably already know, but weather can change in a heartbeat. I went out one day, nice and early in the morning (a little too early honestly) to this favorite spot of mine. I watched the weather report pretty closely and somewhat knew what to expect, or so I thought. I got out onto the beach while it was still basically pitch black. Like I said, little too early. There was some cloud cover but, that is exactly what I wanted; some high clouds to bounce a bit of that nice, soft, blue light back down onto the water. I got my gear set up, set up my tripod, and got my Canon EOS R with a 70-200mm f/2.8 from Sigma and I sat and waited. Some ships were coming into the bay so I decided while I waited for the sun to rise, I wanted to get some long exposure shots of the ships coming in to get some nice light streaks. I went ahead and opened up my aperture as wide as I could and set the shutter for a full 30 seconds. I grabbed around 10 shots and then, as I was looking through the pictures, I noticed that there was a fog rolling in with the ship I was shooting. At least, I thought it was just fog. Aside from what was in my camera, I couldn’t really see the fog with just my eyes. I switched over to my 24-105mm f/4 as a small amount of light started coming up at this point. As soon as I started grabbing some frames, I felt some sprinkling rain start falling, immediately, I started to worry. I had read that some people were experiencing problems with the weather sealing on their Canon EOS R’s and the R Mount lenses but, with how little was falling and how light it was, I figured it would be fine. I packed some camera rain covers anyways right? I’ll just put them on if I need them.

Suddenly, you could hear a noise coming from the water that wasn’t just waves breaking. There was a roar coming from the water and getting closer. Without blinking an eye, it started to downpour. The moment I felt a large drop hit me, I went to my bag to grab the rain cover… It wasn’t there. Without taking my camera off of the tripod, I grabbed my gear, zipped up my bag, and sprinted to the car that was about 150 yards away, all while trying to keep my camera as dry as possible. I got to the car and, as gently as physically possible, tossed my camera and tripod in the back seat along with my bag. I got into the front seat soaked from the rain, my lower half covered in wet sand. I sat and just got angry. How could I possibly forget the rain covers? And then I realized, I had cleared out my bag for this short trip and, since the weather report showed no chance of rain, I left out my rain covers and left it to chance. I sat and waited for the rain to pass, all the while, the sun was slowly starting to rise. Finally, the rain stopped completely and I watched the clouds for any sign of more. It started to dry out and so I grabbed my gear once again and went back to the same spot that I was in before. I set back up and go to start taking some photos. I look in my camera to check the shots and they seemed a bit foggy so I checked the front element, grabbed my lens rag and wiped it off. Take another frame, still fogged. I grab the rag and wipe off the view finder since it was also fogged up a bit on the outside. I take another few frames, and they are all fogged so, I decided to look into the lens. Sure enough, one of my inner elements are completely fogged up.

Shooting landscapes seem easy enough at first, and some times they are. The biggest part of it is being prepared. Don’t hike into the mountains with nothing but a camera and expect that nothing will go wrong. Take time, watch the weather, check your gear, and check your gear again. Just because you’ve done it before, doesn’t mean you cant fail. Research where you want to go, where you’ll park the car, how far you’ll have to walk to get to your spot, how long will you be there. Take your time in planning if you can. If you do just want to go somewhere at random to see what there is, just think ahead of time, “Do I have everything I may need for this?” You may not think of absolutely everything, but at least you know you tried at the end of the day. Just be prepared to be uncomfortable.