OkDONEthis: Negative Space

I was having a lot of negative thoughts and emotions yesterday. After seeing this photography prompt from OKDOTHIS, I figured, if I'm finding myself in a negative place, why not explore negative space. See what I did there?

By the way, if you consider yourself an iPhonographer, and don't have this app yet, get it. It's a community of photographers who create prompts for each other and share their results and their vision. Its really a wonderful idea. (Unfortunately, it is available for iPhone only, at present.) If you get your hands on the app, you can follow me @mikelancaster.

Attention Seeking: Two Weeks on Instagram

Here's a little-known fact about me: I'm really bad at self-promotion. I tend to focus on getting work done, rather than showing off. However, when you're talking about artistic endeavors, getting attention is part of the work. I joined Instagram about two weeks ago. You have to go where the people are if you want to be noticed, after all. After two weeks with the service, here are some things I noticed.

- The experience changes greatly depending on who you follow. As with most social media, following people who don't post interesting stuff just means you get bored.

- There's way too much emphasis on getting followers quickly. This is a bit of an odd complaint, since I signed up to get my work noticed. My first 3 days were really fast paced. I posted a few snapshots (like the one up top here) and some shots from my portfolios. I was getting likes and followers quickly, but when I looked into the people following me, I found that many of them had shared 7-9 snapshot images and had thousands of followers. There bio information said that they had a surefire method for getting more followers. All I had to do was go to this website and...[Nope]. As an interesting point, all of those "increase your numbers quick" people have stopped following me as of now.

- The photo filters still don't do it for me. I've tried many apps that have the photo filter thing as part of it, and I usually don't like any of the filters. The header image for this blog post does have Snapseed's "grunge" filter applied, mainly because I thought it looked interesting on the barrel of the lens, but in most cases, I like to adjust individual elements of an image, rather than to just apply a filter.

- Applying hashtags is changing the way I think about keywords. My keywording on photos is usually sparse and only relates to how I see the image, or what I was thinking when I made it. When attempting to apply hashtags, I find myself asking different questions.What's another word for the thing I'm thinking? In what searches do I want my image to appear?

Overall, I see what Instagram can be good for, and I've enjoyed the idea of posting behind the scenes stuff as I'm working or setting up a photo shoot. I'm going to stick with it. We'll see what happens.

Aw, Sh*t! - Get the shot

Should you strive to get it right in the camera? Yes, but moments matter more.

This picture is from my brother-in-law's wedding, about a year ago now. It was surely an example of Murphy's Law, because plenty want wrong.

I had been capturing fun on the dance floor when they announced the cake cutting. That's when my light stand went crashing to the ground, wrecking my off-camera flash.

I still don't know what went wrong, or why it tumbled. Did I mis-judge something?  I didn't really have time to figure it out, or to assess the damage.

When I shot the cake cutting, I did so with no flash to overpower the sunlight, which was coming in from all angles accept the front of my subjects. The only thing that worked as it should have, was my camera, which exposed for the sky. I knew something was wrong the moment I looked at the back of my camera

I restrained my internal profanity, understanding it was up to me to pull the photo out of the darkness it was in during post-processing. It was a stressful and slow process to bring the best thing I could out of what I had.

Is it grainy? Yep. Did I lose the sky in the edit? I sure did. Are the colors right? Nope, but better than they were. The camera thought everything should be GREEN. I disagreed.

This shot is now secretly one of my favorites. Maybe because it was a salvaged shot, maybe because it captures something fun and exciting. Either way, it all comes down to the moment. Get the shot.

Responding as a Creative

There's been a lot of talk about the actions of Richard Prince, who sold screen captures of other people's Instagram photos in the Frieze Art Fair in New York. Most of the screen grabs sold for $90,000 each. If you haven't heard about this, The Washington Post ran an article about it on May 25th.

Yes, this image is mine. And it's registered.

It becomes an important issue because of how the internet handles images. Its easy for one to save images from the web and use them as their own. If you're thinking that this only affects you if you use Instagram, you might be interested to know that Facebook owns Instagram.

When I first read this article, I wanted to rant about the importance of registering your work for copyright (that rant will happen, just not today). On copyright, I will say, everyone should do it, especially in today's digital climate. It will not always protect you, but not registering your images is a surefire way to damage any case you might have.

What inspired me to finally write this, is the response by the Suicide Girls, a community of "alternative pin-up" photographers and models. They created their own screen captures of their Instagram images, recreated the prints sold by Prince, using the same canvas, same dimensions and added a new comment, referring to their captures as "true art". However, these prints are selling for $90 each and the money goes to The Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is the way to handle an issue like this, because the legal arguments would start to be more about how "transformative" Prince's subtle modifications are, I think it's better not to make this one a legal issue. 

This example also shows a healthy way to respond to questionable actions online. It helps that the "fight fire with fire" vibe appeals to my more stubborn side. If you consider yourself a creative, or artist, or whatever term you identify as, you have at your disposal an immediate coping mechanism and a go-to mode of expression. If someone misuses your art, make more art. it's really a beautiful move. And something I need to act on more in my life. I have a few photographic projects I could probably make using my frustration as fuel. I need to get on that. 

Further reading/sources
The Washington Post
Distractify

Cohesive Vision

Say hello to my daughter. This was a very fun shot to make, though we had to wait for her to be in a good mood. Thankfully, that happens very often. The most interesting element to this image is that it was made using some tactics that I have used to make images of the guitars in my home. This image is going up in my den and it will go between the guitar shots I mentioned before.

In addition to the black background, I used a similar sharpening technique on the amplifier as I did on the bodies of the guitars. This look should tie everything together nicely. When I make an image, I always have an end goal for it and I try to use it in conjunction with something else. For instance, every shot in my den has the heavy sharpening applied. I'm looking forward to ordering the new print and getting it up on my wall. After this, there is only one other image I need to make to complete the set for the back wall of the den.

Catching Firelight

This was taken while on vacation last summer. I was sitting down in front of the fire with a beer after a hike. I found myself intrigued by the light, as I often do. Unfortunately, the shot fell apart didn't work because my camera couldn't see what I saw. 

I thought it was an apt test for the new HDR stuff in Lightroom 6. My immediate reaction is largely positive, if for no other reason than this now looks the way I wanted it. I'm also impressed that the image remains a .dng file, allowing for a lot of flexibility. That being said, I find that I am very picky about the application of HDR and I tend to like things that look more natural than grungy or surreal, however, I am disappointed that there are not options built into Lightroom to attempt a variety of styles, especially given that they are easily available within Photoshop. If I were to guess, I expect that the HDR options and styles will expand within Lightroom CC, meaning that those photographers who are part of Adobe's Creative Cloud may find themselves having those options later on. Obviously, I have no official idea, but I think it would be a smart move.