I’ve been writing and self-hosting images online for fifteen years now.
What I enjoy about blogging is the potential for infinite writing and posting.
With digital photography I can shoot and post an infinite amount of images.
The ability to host one’s own publishing house is nothing short of amazing.
A few moments after loading the Kodak TMax 35mm film I realized why I had not taken Nikita out before. She needs a battery for the internal light meter (see the needle pointing way up?)
After a few disastrous mistakes I was able to adjust and recover some of the remaining exposures. The first two images shown below are from when the film was exposed to light during install. Live and learn.
A web of linked notes all in one location and designed to connect my thoughts — this is my personal database and second brain.
This pandemic is really taking a toll on my desire to walk downtown and capture people in street photography. So, I’ll just write and share images and remind myself of some basics when I finally do get back out there and face the public.
See these images and more on my photography website:
After re-acquiring Nadia, the Nikon D90 this weekend, I was getting nostalgic of the images made in the past and reminding myself of ideas, tips, tricks and techniques that helped guide me through the years. These reminders are things that I wished I knew back then and can be applied at any time.
Finally: 
Organize and archive your images now. Don’t wait until you have thirty years worth of images that have been stored on multiple drives, duplicated four times on each drive, uploaded to various cloud accounts, shared on social media. Save yourself the frustration and get it all together now. Organize on one massive hard drive and then back it up to a second hard drive too.
Photographers are an isolated lot and we desire to do things our own way, for our own edification. Naysayers will tell you that everything that can be captured in a photograph has already been done so why bother? Well I don’t subscribe to that. Going my own way has always been the goal and there will always be new, creative perspectives to be discovered.
We’ve allowed ourselves to forgo curiosity and exploring in favor of a skewed view of what it means to be self-taught. Let’s be honest, watching tutorial videos on YouTube, or imitating other’s work from social media platforms does not make you self-taught.
We’ve been programmed to squash our creativity by algorithms, “Likes”, and followers and have lost our ability to think for ourselves. Take the risk and explore or lose the chance. It’s time to disconnect ourselves from the algorithms, delete Instagram and innovate. We photographers are independent so why do we rely on superficial kudos from strangers?
Isolating myself from all of that has been helpful to me. The time it takes for me to develop an image I am proud of is better spent than time spent throwing something up on someone else’s platform. The best remedy for improving ourselves is investing more time creating for ourselves than consuming from others.
A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.
I say try a different route. Go your own way, start a blog and add your personal thoughts along with your art. During down days, revisit your older work and revise, recycle into something new.
Think less of other’s thoughts and think more of our own.
So there I was, in a meeting while working from home and this rooster decided to jump up on the window sill with a loud cluck. This isn’t something I see everyday even though the rooster and chickens live in a community garden across the street.
Say hello to Nikita, the 1965 Nikon FT N 35mm film camera I grabbed today. She features a 50mm prime lens, and a 2x teleconverter. I also grabbed 2 packs of Lomography Metropolis and Purple 35mm film and cannot wait to break her in. She’ll be an excellent companion to Penelope.
