Fantastree

For one month, I have been working at a photography-related job. This is my first employment out of college, and a much better job than I expected to find with a journalism degree in this economic climate.

Our mission is to educate, inform and inspire other photographers. I will be using this page to share some of our stories and insights. Only those I feel like sharing, and only after we get a working website up.

Soon, my friends, soon.

On a related note, being in proximity of seriously talented photographers for the first time in months has inspired me to take this medium a little more seriously. I hope this will show in the things I post from here on out. Snapshots will hereafter be filed under scraps.

I hope you are all having a wonderful 2012.

Have you seen this man?



You have now.

He is a fantastic photographer, with a whole gallery of work well worth checking out (and much more located in other strata of the interwebs).

He was my first college roommate, he introduced me to this website, this community, and this medium of photography which has been my hobby and his passion.

He is now in the process of making a book. This book will feature his photos and his words. It is called A Photo Book For Lonesome Children, and is a very personal, and powerful, piece. I have seen little of it, but I have good reason to believe that the end product will be something well worth your while.

You can find out more about his book on the page below, which features a Kickstarter fund for his publishing process.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/3…

His goal is to get 700 dollars to make this book happen. Pay over 40 and you get you a copy of the book. Sweet deal, eh?

So, go check it out. And happy holidays to you all.

I have a nasty habit of logging into this site when I am tired, drunk, or in a rush. And then not that often.

So I see all this art, but never bother commenting on it. I figure I'll get to it later.

Then it piles up, and I get this intimidating 70 messages icon.

Then I REALLY don't have time to go through and comment on things.

So I present a blanket statement:

You folks who's art I receive in my watch feed are making wonderful and fantastic works of art. I see things that capture powerful emotional landscapes in a single photograph. I see things that push the boundaries of realism in photography. I see work that, though simplicity or simple techniques, manage to convey moods of joy, mystery, buoyancy, and nostalgia. Keep up the good work.

This is a site I joined, in part, to be a part of a community of critical and thoughtful photographic artists. It is designed to be a place where compliments and critique can encourage people to grow as artists, to refine their technique and let praise encourage their technical accomplishments.

At least, that's how it looked when I started. It only really works if people are communicative and proactive about their comments and reactions.

I have not been communicative or proactive. For that I must apologize: You, the people whom I watch, have been creating wonderful art. Would that I had the energy to be an active commenter, and the patience to deal with this site when the server load drags it to a crowd.

Crap, this is turning into a downer of a journal entry.

Well, other business:

I have a job that occasionally lets me be the official photographer at events. That's pretty sweet.

Last thing I shot was a Halloween fundraiser party. It was a blast. I made my own skull shaped flash diffuser (pics coming soon) and did myself up as a zombie reporter. It was fantastic. A live band by the name of S'Cream played Cream, Clapton and Blind Faith covers in top form. They sang an absolutely beautiful rendition of "Can't Find My Way Home." If you don't know the song, it's IMHO one of the best songs of the 1960s: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUW1SG…

I can't exactly post said photos. Well, I can, but it gets to be a mess with copyrights and such. When I have my own website (which is not far away from happening) I will be making those things a little more accessible. Not that I'm THAT proud of my work for those folks, but it is fun.

I have other jobs, because this is a crap economy and one isn't enough. Basically, I am employed doing graphic design for a number of people. That's pretty awesome when it comes right down to it.

And I have a camera in good condition and plans to keep taking photos. That's good, too.

Good times. I hope y'all have a great November!

Sorry, Nikon fans, I've crossed the fence.

This winter break, I bought a Cannon Rebel XTi from a friend of mine trying to escape the clutches of credit card debt. Probably not the wisest decision, considering I just graduated from college and have no job yet, but at least I can be creative with my time, right? Right...

Anyway, my Nikon is next to dead. The slot that keeps the memory card in place is loose, The light meter is off by eight stops or so, the LCD screen blows out highlights (even on underexposed images), and the process of offloading the photos on my computer is agonizingly slow. The new camera is a better deal. More megapixels, fewer problems, and in-camera monochrome settings which I have entirely too much fun with.

Because my friend was particularly impoverished, he threw in a very nice zoom/long/telephoto lens. It is awesome. With it, I shot about 300 photos (mostly of elk battling with big antlers) that I haven't yet uploaded here. Or edited. Mostly I've just looked at them.

My motivation to upload things has slackened somewhat. I'm still posting things that were shot in 2010. These things take time. Time is something I'm pouring into building a web portfolio for some page design stuff. Web design is not easy, but it feels deeply wrong to call it hard work. I could do that for a living...

So that's my story. New camera for a New year.

Hope 2011 is treating y'all quite nicely.

Another Dream:

Someone's at the door. A man is standing on the front porch in a gray post office uniform with a single letter in his hand with JURY SUMMONS stamped in big letters on the front. It was for me, of course. This was a big problem, because I was being called for jury duty in Moscow. This perplexed me a great deal. How, I asked the man, am I supposed to get to Moscow. He answers that it really isn't his problem, and that he had already taken too much time out of his day to come give me these summons. I replied that he was quite a bit late: I was supposed to appear in court that morning, and I was well over 10,000 miles from Moscow. He suggested that I take the subway, then turned on his heel and left. I stood there stunned for a moment, wondering where the nearest subway station was. My mother knew, and I asked if she would drive me there. She agreed, pointing out that not going to work that day was just the kind of irresponsible thing she had come to expect of me. I reminded her that missing work was significantly less important than missing jury duty, which is punishable by jail time and possibly execution. I got out of the car and boarded the next bullet train to Moscow. I watched the scenery fly by as the train flew through town after town.

The voice of a newscaster drew my attention to a large flat screen television at the front of the train car. A few of my fellow passengers were watching without much apparent interest. The story of the hour focused on a Russian billionaire and prominent business leader who had, apparently, been arrested because his latest business venture had involved demolishing inhabited buildings in the city of Moscow because they had become possessed. The man had been avoiding arrest for some weeks now; he owned large parts of the city, including a private airport, and was therefore very difficult to find (and thereby catch). At long last, however, he had been apprehended, and was sitting in his private jail awaiting trial. His wealth and influence, along with some influence owing to his wealth, had allowed him to insist on a jury selected randomly from all over the world. So this, I thought, is why I, along with 11 other randomly selected strangers, have been called to serve jury duty in Russia. That explains a lot.

Meanwhile, the newscast had switched to the man on trial. He was sitting in his private airplane hanger, explaining how Moscow had come to be possessed by demons. Still images of the Moscow skyline were spliced over the newscast, with specific buildings illuminated to show their possession. Some had paper horns stuck to them, others were colored curiously red. Some were skyscrapers, some where small houses or apartment buildings. One was a school, which was painted a dark red and had several pairs of ten foot high plastic devil horns sprouting from the roofs. The newscast cut to a shot of two middle-aged schoolteachers saying that they had never seen the horns before, and that their school used to be painted white just like it always was. Behind them, the school collapsed, folding in on itself like a house of cards. Our man had struck again.

The train arrived in Moscow, and I was swiftly escorted to his private court room. The room offered a view of the skyline I had seen just moments before on the TV. The defendant walked into the room, flanked by two guards. He was carrying a Dell laptop, which he opened up as the trial began. The prosecutor began a lengthy speech. This man, he said, is a danger to the city. Just this morning he demolished a school. He has blown up buildings with explosives, he has set them on fire, and he has irradiated entire city blocks under the guise of his so-called business. The business which he set up to rid the city of demonic possession, which was in itself a preposterous concept. Even if the buildings WERE possessed, said the prosecutor, the collateral damage has been obscene. An entire business district was taken out for the sake of removing a single possessed house, which was several miles from the effected area and unharmed after the evening's bombing. This man, the prosecutor finished, is a danger to this city.

As his speech wound to a close, I caught a glimpse of movement. A pair of missiles flew past the courtroom, en route to a skyscraper that was just visible from the courthouse. The missiles reached their target, but bounced right off it, becoming instantly immobile. They fell to the earth, crushing two small cars and an old woman walking her dog. There was a momentary silence in the court room. It was broken when the prosecutor, now red in the face, uttered four strangled words from the depths of his throat: He did it again.

Chaos erupted in the courtroom. Some people ran screaming for the doors, others began throwing empty bottles at the defendant. The defending attorney began making a very calm and collected speech, while the defendant himself ran out the back door, leaving his laptop and the jacket he had worn to court. My fellow jurors were screaming guilty verdicts at the top of their lungs as the judge slammed his gavel down, begging for order.

When calm had been restored, the judge asked that we take a recess. I was hungry, as was the juror next to me, a Chinese man versed in several languages. I suggested that we try to find some food in Moscow, to which he agreed. We set off up a street that was pleasantly complete; free of explosion debris or ruined buildings. We talked as we walked, mostly about the trial and the state of affairs in the courtroom. It wasn't long before we came to topic of being utterly unable to find a café in this town, a problem that was soon remedied by the appearance of a hot dog vendor.

After we had grabbed a bite to eat we turned around to see the rising sun reflecting off of the courtroom windows. We paused for a moment to admire the view before returning to the courthouse to pass judgment on the man who would try to destroy his whole city just to chase the devils out of it.