Addicted to Photography

Tone Your Photo Physique with the Photo-A-Day Workout!

2010-02-12T10:07:00.000-08:00

Silly blog titles aside, undertaking the photo-a-day challenge really is a good workout for your creativity and camera proficiency. There are many variations on the photo-a-day theme of course and some push you creatively more than others. You might decide to do a self portrait every day, or just document a little snippet of your day, or you place almost no boundaries at all. The only real constraint is that you make a new photo every day for as long as you decide to challenge yourself.

Sometimes you just have a busy day and the
image doesn't really come together

In my case, I chose to forgo a theme and just focus on making a creative photo every day. To push myself out of my comfort zone I decided right away that not all the photos could be landscapes. Beyond that requirement, I’m just aiming to make as many creative photos as I can covering a wide variety…. landscapes, portraits, abstract, macro… well you get the idea. I’m aiming to complete a full year.

Why is this good for your photographic soul? Well, its pretty simple – you are making art every day. The first few days can be tough and you may struggle creatively at first… at least I know that I did. Heck, it will probably continue to be a struggle but it really does get easier with practice. In some ways, creativity is a skill like riding a bike and you get rusty if you don’t use it often (but you never forget!).

So long as you are doing more than just pointing and shooting then tackling the photo-a-day challenge will also increase your camera proficiency. The more you practice with the camera the more second nature it will become. If it hasn’t already, that camera will soon become an extension of your body.

One more benefit, and possibly the greatest, from forcing yourself to practice with the camera is that your photographic vision will improve. Practice, practice, and more practice will refine your creative eye and you’ll soon be seeing that image clearly in your mind and then making it with the camera. You will be firmly in the artistic driver’s seat.

You'll start seeing everyday objects in a whole new
way once you get that creativity working

Now most of this might seem geared towards the amateur photographer but working pros can benefit from a similar exercise too. The main thing is to push yourself out of your comfort zone and make a commitment to completing the challenge. Maybe you feel like you don’t shoot enough natural light photography in your daily assignments, or maybe you’d like to work on your fine art portfolio? The key is to make a plan and stick with it so that you make time in your hectic schedule.

Hectic schedule? That doesn’t even begin to describe it for me and that is one of the biggest challenges to keeping my photo-a-day promise to myself. With a demanding day job and two children under 4 years old I don’t have a lot of time. But, once I into the rhythm of making a photo a day I found that my mind was always working on the next photo… while I ate breakfast, while I was reading to the kids, on the way to work. For me, the most productive time to make my photo is to find a few minutes when I’m eating lunch to set it up and shoot it. With my mind always background processing the idea it makes it easier get that photo in less time.

Nobody said this had to be a photo-a-day for a year either. Give it a try for a week and maybe you’ll find it rewarding enough to extend it to a month…. a year… forever!

Carpe Imago

2010-02-07T16:49:00.000-08:00

There is a lesson that life keeps trying to teach me and I'm clearly struggling to grasp it.... when a picture presents itself you had better capture it because it might never be there again. This sounds simple right? Well, for some reason it gets complicated when you are out in the world.

Every image is made by the photographer capturing a unique moment in time. Of course, some moments are don't seem very unique, especially when the subject seems static. An interesting barn, a snow covered tree, a mossy rock wall - all these seem like they'll always be there when you want to photograph them. Think again.

Unrealized Image

This lesson is readily adaptable to other facets of life but since my passion is photography that is where I notice it most often. The first time life tried to teach me I was in college at Clarkson University. It was the end of the fall term and I was on my way home from a nighttime calculus final exam. It had been snowing most of the day and as I walked back to my dorm I noticed the trees along the sidewalk had collected a huge amount of snow. The street lamps weren't very tall and backlight the trees rather than shining down from above. I could immediately visualize the final image. BUT... I was tired. I had more studying to do for tomorrow's final exam. I didn't feel like coming back with my camera and tripod. I rationalized not making the image that night - its a tree. It isn't going anywhere and this is Potsdam afterall; it will surely snow again.

Well, it did snow again but the tree was gone. I went home for winter break without getting it done. And then the 1998 ice storm destroyed those trees. All of them. All of the trees along that sidewalk were gone when I got back to campus five weeks later.

That was December 1997. Life gently reminds me of this lesson every now and then, including last week. There was this great old barn not far from my home and right across the street from a nature park that I often hike in. The roof of the barn had a gaping hole in it that roughly aligned with the sunrise. I knew it could be a great picture with the red sunrise glowing through the barn roof. But I dragged my feet never really getting around to it. The barn was finally demolished last week. Maybe to try and teach me this lesson once and for all fate had me driving by the old barn just as then were hauling away the first huge dumpsters of pieces.

Carpe Imago.

-FD-

An Introduction

2010-01-27T18:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my inaugural blog post! I’m just sort of dipping my toe in the water here as I’m new to this new-fangled blogging and honestly not too sure why you should care what I have to say. But hey, it is the internet, the space is free, and so here it goes…

What to title a blog? How much brain power can one person waste trying to decide on a title that people probably won’t pay any attention to anyway? After much debate I finally settled on “Addicted to Photography.” That about sums it up. One recent day I had an epiphany – I’m an addict! I’m not kidding either. I’m fully addicted to photography. We’ll actually to image making in general but my hardcore need is to make images with a camera. It occupies a huge portion of my thinking. If I don’t make images nearly every day then I start to feel a pall creeping over me. Making really good images gives me quite a high.

Fourth Lake as seen from Rocky Mtn. in Inlet, NY

Now that we’ve got that little admission out of the way I can delve into just a little bit more background. Although I’m technically a self-taught photographer I have had a little help along the way. Dad got me started into photography way back. I had the good fortune of befriending the university photographer when I was in college and have learned a great deal from him about “being a photographer.” Carl Heilman’s Photoshop class was also a HUGE asset and I highly recommend it for anyone getting serious about digital imaging.

As a photographer I used to see a fair number of prints each year – mostly landscape and nature. Then we had kids and free time evaporated. Well, it has been a few years and I’m adjusting and getting back to serious photography.

I have a website too where you can see some of my work: www.DaveCrudele.com.

You can also check out my Flickr stream for a more varied sample… not all of which is A-game stuff  (http://www.flickr.com/photos/39968024@N06/)

As addicted as I am, I support my habit through a fulltime day job as an electrical engineer. The work is interesting and sometimes even a lot of fun (gasp!). I work with great people and world-class engineers. And I even get to use different cameras to document high voltage tests… how great is that?

Okay, that is really enough about me. From now on I’m going to try to make this more about technique, philosophy of photography, and other stuff that I hope you’ll find valuable. More to come…

Sunset in Lake Country

-FD-