Single-Serving Photo

In the style of chef Gordon Ramsay, I will now shake my hand in the air beside my head and exclaim that the solution for anyone’s languishing business or hobby is to stay fresh, local, and honest. Though chef Ramsay is usually talking about produce and grass-fed beef, I am talking about capturing scenes right in your own community.

I might have mentioned in passing that my “day job” brought me to New London, Connecticut almost two years ago. New London is a rather scenic city positioned on the bank of the Thames river—very near to its mouth—which empties into the Long Island Sound. Although not without its social and economic problems, it is a historic city with a great deal of architectural and maritime attractions.

I was absolutely floored to be reading The Online Photographer and to run across a stunning photograph taken literally five minutes up the opposite bank of my river (yes, I own the river) in Groton, Connecticut by Tom Kaszuba (check out the post in question, his website, and his Flickr page). As one would expect, he’s received over 60 comments on that photo on Flickr, probably many thanks to Mike at TOP, and all of them are well-deserved.

So anyway, here is the image.

The Lighthouse Sanctuary, by Tom Kaszuba. New London, Connecticut.

Taking a few minutes to look through Tom’s Flickr page invigorated me and inspired me to photograph the very river and scenery surrounding me here in New London. He has captured the coast of the Thames and the city of New London in a unique and flattering way. My hat is off to you, Tom; keep up the great work!

Edit: One of my favorite blogs, Lifehacker, just posted a short article with a similar message, Take a Cheap Vacation in Your Own City. Therein, they suggest grabbing a guidebook for your area (you can usually find them at visitor’s centers, on your city or town’s website, at the city or town hall, or in a local library) and doing some of the suggested activities or visiting the suggested locations. This could be another great way to revitalize your photography without spending a lot or going too far.

Nearly two hundred years after the invention of photography, creations in the medium are finally being considered “safe” investments. The value of photographs as collectibles is rising sharply, to the pleasure of auction-goers and to the woe of some photographers.

Though paintings, sculptures, prints, and other works of fine art have been spotlighted on the auction block for many years and for tremendous money (works by Jackson Pollock and Gustav Klimt—to name only two—have sold at auction for more than $100 million apiece), the world of fine art collectors has seldom been penetrated by even the most renowned photographers.

This, however, is changing. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Dan Heller posted an interesting article called Creative Commons and Photography in which he decries the Creative Commons not only as an ineffective and misguided licensing structure for photographers, but as a detriment to its own ends when used by them. I truly believe that he couldn’t be further from the truth, but because his article was so specific I would be doing everyone a disservice to leave my reaction as a mere sound bite.

After the jump, more of Dan’s rantings followed by more of my rantings, hopefully to end with a meaningful conclusion… But no promises. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in June I wrote an article about the Creative Commons project, Creative Commons: Good Idea?, in which I advocated the use of their licenses for promotional purposes and how that approach ties in with socially-driven sites like Wikipedia and Flickr.

This month the debate over Creative Commons licenses in photography flared up once more, with Jim Goldstein declaring that he would never use CC licenses, and Brian Auer retorting that he had before and would most certainly continue to in the future. Underscoring the points made by both of these fine fellows was an interview I read with author Cory Doctorow about giving away free electronic versions of books that brought many relevant points into play.

I’m revisiting the topic here today, not simply to agree or disagree with anything Goldstein, Auer, or Doctorow said, but rather to paint a picture of why I think the Creative Commons plays a very valuable role in photography in today’s copy-and-paste culture and why you should be thinking very seriously about how it can help you. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to a surge in “community” features being implemented on practically every website, it’s now easier to solicit feedback about your photographs than it is to fall out of a boat and hit water. In other words, pretty damn easy!

Fantastic, you might think, the more feedback the better! Well, true, except that a lot of people calling themselves “serious hobbyists” or “beginning professionals” simply seek out the most positive feedback they can get and live in a world totally isolated from how completely awful their work really is. Paul Indigo asks a question on his blog, Beyond the Obvious: do photo enthusiasts really want to learn? In his article, Paul wonders about the true intentions of people who demonstrate fundamental misunderstanding of the art concepts of photography and blame it on insufficient equipment or software. If these people want to learn, shouldn’t they be more open to feedback? Read the rest of this entry »