Western Poison Oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum)
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Lettuce
The Aquaponics unit is starting to stand up. True, I did overdose the initial nitrate source, but things seem to be healthy enough to keep the plants in it.
Native Plants Study
©Jonathan Shuler 2014
I'm starting a Native Plants study and I'm already at a loss. I've spent most of my time as a photographer shooting the same subject, people, in mostly the same way, using the same visual language for almost 10 years. My hope is that divorcing myself form my usual subject matter will force me to find new ways of seeing. It's already been a little rough.
Most of my photographic muscle memory is useless in this context. I find myself snapping (groan) away and then asking myself "what am I taking a photograph of?" Documental Botanical Photography does not feel right to me, at least not yet. Maybe I will find a way to marry Koudelka with Weston, but in the mean time I feel like I have a lot to learn.
©Jonathan Shuler 2014
On the Subject of Getting Back On the Horse
Three and a half years ago, my daughter came into the world and everything else stopped. I stopped shooting for myself, and I stopped seeing, and I got bogged down in the day to day work. I stopped telling my own stories.
Or maybe it's that I didn't get picked up for a journalism internship out of college.
Or maybe it's that instead I got a job mostly doing video post production instead of shooting.
Or maybe it's because I got married.
Or maybe it's because I took almost two years off of editorial work to try my hand at a tech startup.
Or maybe it was that second kid that just showed up.
The truth is that I've hard a hard time looking inward and asking myself what I really want to say in my work with out immediately editing those ideas down to better fit into what I think people will like or easily understand. It's a game I've played my whole life.
This is me getting back on the horse: back to writing, back to shooting, back to stories.
Bellagio
Finally got a chance to edit some of my landscapes from Ballagio. I was trying to push my new Fuji to see what it was really capable of in terms of thigns it's praised for (sharpness and dynamic range) as well as the things it's apparently not great at (punchy colors near the yellow end of the orange spectrum).
I think it's fair to say that both assements are true, though I'm pretty happy with the color over all.
