Make It Snappy!

11-15 August 2014

Cold Weather Farming

Monday 11 August

This is mostly applicable to non-photographers, but therein lies a lesson for everyone...

If an image that you see, whether it be online, in a gallery or in print media, is so beautiful or perfect, colourful or well composed, why does the masses think that it's just a photoshop edit? It's as if something so beautiful cannot exist in the world, denying that whatever it is, cannot be real.

I've been to many stunning places thus far in my (relatively) short life, I've still got so many to see as well. I've witnessed the very best and very worst that mother nature can provide, I can assure you, that with the exception where there's 30 of me in an image (duh) the rest is not photoshopped. What you see is actually what happened.

Why do we find it so hard to believe that a spectacular landscape can actually exist? Without the computer-aided eye? Technicals aside, have we lost faith in a world wracked by the wretched and apathetic? Are we so stained by the negativity that surrounds us, that we shut our minds to the possibility of true beauty?

Before you tell a photographer that their image is photoshopped in a hurtful tone, (whether it is processed or not) have a think perhaps about how much time, effort, expense and attention to detail went into getting such an image. Maybe for just a second appreciate the beauty, because that is what we are seeking to get out of this online experience. You don't have to agree whether its real or not, but if it has touched you or made you think, the photographer has done their job.

Tuesday 12 August

Clarity.

How wonderful to have the ideas, the inspiration and the advice from my mentors. I have all this information stuffed into my head, after tonights' print critique for APPA. I still maintain that it's scary, I have no idea how I'm going to go! I'll be in Iceland, asleep no doubt, when the results arrive, at least I'll have lost track of the date and when it's being judged! It's back to the editing suites, back to the numbers, sliders and decisions...

Wednesday 13 August

It's getting so hard to keep my lips sealed with the many reasons as to why I'm not posting as much as I should be, why I cannot reveal them! I so want to tell the world the amazing things that I'm working on, the new, big things occupying my inspirations and energies. But alas, all will be revealed...soon.  I am so excited and honoured to be a part of such things, never did I imagine that I would be!

Thursday 14 August

Here's something that has taken a while to learn: make accidents.

Not serious accidents that cost you life, limb or equipment; but the kinds of accidents that make you trust in your ability to see. Take a photo with the incorrect settings for the sake of finding out what it might look like, no matter who you are, you're never too old to experiment! Only by way of experiments do we find out what we're doing, what not to do. But - maybe - just maybe, you'll find a new way of shooting something, a way that changes your entire practice?!