Flickr

Every now and again I look through the newest Flickr up loads. http://www.flickr.com/photos/

It always tells you how many images were uploaded in the last minute. This is what it said the last time I looked. (There were 4,974 uploads in the last minute)

I would call this a holy shit amount!

Most of the time I look it's anywere from 2000 to almost 6000 once and if I had to guess it is usually in the 3000 image range on average.

If you take 3000 x 60 minutes that gives you 180000 phots per hour. Damn.

Then if you take those 180000 image x 24 hours you'd get 4320000 image a day.

You can do the math if you want to for a week, a month or a year. It makes my head swim.

All I can say is who the hell is shooting all these pictures?

What do you shoot and what do you shoot it with?

I really like to listen to and read what Brooks Jensen has to say. Brooks Jensen is the publisher of Lens Work magazine and also has a pod cast that I find very interesting. I just finished reading the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Lens Work and it started me thinking.

What you shoot and what you shoot it with says a lot about you as a photographer. I should also say how you shoot what you shoot is also telling.

I shoot a diverse range of subjects.

I also shoot with a number of different cameras, formats, film, digital, etc. I love working in the studio for the control it gives me.

But when it comes right down to it I love to photograph old weathered wooden things with black and white film using large or medium format equipment.

I guess that says a few things about me.

You be the judge...

David Hume Kennerly

Last night I attended a talk given by David Hume Kennerly a former White House photographer about his new book of photographs taken during the Ford Administration.

It was very informitive and entertaining, he is a great speaker.


I even bought the book!

Projects

In my last post I put up some images from a near by grain elevator. When I showed some of the images to my wife and she thought a series of images of grain elevators might be interesting.

So a project was born.

I did some research on the net and compiled a list of nearby grain elevators. I have been to a lot of these places and don't ever recall seeing elevators in some of these places. I guess I just wasn't paying much attention.

I am generally not a project driven photographer, at least not consciously. Sure I am involved in photograpic projects at work or if I shoot stuff for other people, because these things are really project based.

But I am talking about my personal work. Most times I shoot with a subject or destination in mind, but not really as a project with a specific theme. It is very different to go out and create images for a definite reason and not shoot anything that doesn't relate to the project. That's not to say if the mother ship landed on 1st and Main while I was photographing for the project I would completely ignore it and not take an expsoure or two. I hear that The World Weekly News pays big time for those pictures.

I'm seeing big advantages in shooting with a project in mind. When I look through my older images of the same subject they sort of seem like they could be a project, but most times there is something missing that keeps that body of work from being a true project. When I do a project I'm forced to come up with some kind of a plan for what, when and where I'll shoot. It should make a more cohesive group of images that way.

Shooting Nearby Places

I just bought a new dSLR, last Thursday as a matter of fact.

I am not really into equipment as a rule, though I do seem to have a bit of it, but I needed another camera to use as backup on a couple of up coming weddings that I got sucked into. So I bought a Nikon D60.

Sunday I went out shooting with it. I needed to get to know it so I would be comfortable using the thing. I decided to go over to a little town aout 6 miles west of where we live and shoot the grain elevator that is there. We go to the pub across the street from it two or three time a month, but it just hit me that the elevator might make an interesting subject.

I arrived about 6PM the sun was lower and it lit the place very nicely. Shot all kinds of angles and things close up. There were an amazing amount of things there to shoot and the cool thing is that it was only 5 minutes from home.


So I guess this shows you don't have to travel very far to capture great images.

Amen Sister Emily

This past weekend my middle daughter gave her very first sermon at our church. She is attending Chicago Theological Seminary and is one of the seminary interns at our church in the summer.

She did a very nice job and we are very proud. I mentioned I should take a camera and my daughter had a fit. So I brought it anyway.

You can't tell a photographer to leave thier camera at home, especially for an important event like this.

Fire is our friend

Last weekend I was invited by a photographer friend to a house burning party. Her husband is a firefighter and a small group of us went to shoot the controled burn that the fire department did.

We had a hot time.(pun intended)

What the Hell Happened to Spring?

Well I have to say I am very quickly getting tired of this winter. My good friend Jeff was just finally able to tap his maple trees about 2 weeks later than he has in the past few years. By now he would have gallons of sap and be well on his way to producing surup.

I like to help him tap the trees and I usualy make a few images to document the process. I didn't get the chance to help him this year, so I'll have to visit him and help him boil. It's a good excuse to shoot the shit and drink a beer or two. It's better than watching football.