The problem with 'community' based photography websites

Social networking, photography, and the art of self promotion....it is, after all, an art unto itself. In order to get your work seen, you MUST get it out there in front of people, right? Right! It is rather a mandatory thing to do, be it on Facebook, twitter, etc etc. But, there are a few downsides to doing it as well, and depending upon the path you take, you may or may not have this happen to you.

Photography 'community' websites, or, art community websites. The good, the bad, and the downright awful. There are some which are great and there are some that make you want to shoot yourself in the head after awhile. Joining and exploring them can be painful, or fun, depending upon the route which you take, and which ones you join. That being said there are some serious problems with most of these which I have discovered.

Who is your target market that you want your work to be seen by? Is it a group of people who's average is 15-19 or is it an older audience who is say in their 30s-50s on average? Determining factors for sure, especially if you plan on selling your work on these sites. Do you want to promote your work to a community or do you want to go outside and promote it to the whole world to see? You can use a photography based community website as a sort of home base, but be aware that some of these sites are encased in advertising that actually 'talks' and makes noise, flashes, and can be infested with malware causing not only you problems on your computer but everyone you send a link to. I don't know about you, but for me, that is the last thing I would want my art to be associated with on a professional basis.

The clique factor. believe me, there is a huge clique factor on photography based community websites, sans RedBubble and Flickr, as I have never seen it happen there. Others though I certainly have. Again, it all depends which site you join, and the dynamics of the site as a whole. There is also the whole issue of disrespect that one can get from members as well, because being outright attacked by a group of trolls is just the 'in' thing to do for the younger generation these days on the internet it seems.

And then there is the factor of egos running amok and wild, like the Sox & Martin dragster from the 60s. It can get very out of control, and on some of these websites, it actually leaves people with a very bad taste in their mouth. One example would be on deviantART where I was accused of manipulating one of the photos by a group admin whose group I submitted the photo too. She declined it and basically said I manipped the shot.



Now let's be honest here, any photographer who takes their work seriously would be pretty offended by that kind of accusation, without question. And this is standard affair on these 'community' based websites. I see these sort of things happen a lot, and it makes me sad, because many times when it is happening, it is being said by someone who has no clue what they are talking about to people who also don't have any idea about photography who are just starting out, and now think their work pretty much sucks, losing confidence in their ability and in their photography. Not good. Not good at all, but it happens a LOT of the time.

So what is one to do then? The answer is quite simple, though it depends on what it is YOU want out of a photography community website. So let's examine this some shall we?

* Who is it that YOU want your images to be seen by?--- Is it an entire community or is it the whole internet? If you look, most serious photographers have a photoblog that they work off which is often ran alongside their own personal website. This is pretty much standard affair in this day and age, publishing their work on facebook, twitter, etc. It is hard work at times, but the rewards can be great. If you want to hear things like "hey great shot!" and have some nice compliments on your work, then a community based website would be better perhaps for you.

* "But John what about other community based websites?"--- First off, flickr. I am not entirely sure I really consider flickr a community based website. Maybe? Maybe not. Flickr is it's own unique entity and is unto itself. Would I recommend it? Yes, very much so. that beings aid if I had to really recommend one single community based website, RedBubble gets my nod. It is clean, easy, 100% free, no advertising anywhere, and they give you a free professional based website as well, called a "bubblesite" which is entirely separate of the community itself. An example of which is my own bubblesite here
I like the ability to have people able to buy my art directly without ever having to sign up to be a member of the site itself, RedBubble handles the printing, shipping, etc and I call the markup %. Again, 100% free unlike so many other sites which charge you in order for YOU to make a profit (usually anything above 10-20%) The average age of RedBubble is 30s-50s and is pretty much strictly photography & fine art focused. This means less drama like on other sites, and it means people who are there for the art.

* Photography forums--- If your goal is to REALLY get valuable feedback on your work and improve as a photographer, you may wish to skip photography based community websites all together and instead head for another community based website completely different in style than the others. Forums. there are truly some fantastic ones out there, and in many cases these are are far FAR better for bettering yourself as a shooter. You can get critiques, feedback, and thoughts on your photography, while having it done in a very respectable manner (read said nicely to you) Which one you join depends what it is you want and at what stage you are at as a photographer. Again, these are all 100% free.

If you are just starting out or consider yourself at an intermediate stage, then these below you may wish to examine:

The Photo Forum
Digital Photography School
Photo Camel
Digital Grin
Photography Review
Photography Corner
PhotographyBB

If you consider yourself to be on the advanced amateur to professional level, then the sites below would be for you.

Naturescapes
Nature Photographers
The Luminous Landscape
Fred Miranda
Photo Migrations
Juza Nature Photography Forums
Bird Photographers

I hope all this helped at least someone out there. What you do with your work, just make sure you take the path which is best suited for YOU as a photographer. Choosing the right path can help you grow as a photographer and better your craft, and quite quickly at that too!

John
Technorati Tags: Photography, forums, community, website

The Wildfires Of Boulder and published by The AP

For anyone who has been watching the news lately, one of the headlines has been the Fourmile Canyon Wildfire, which is burning above and behind Boulder, Colorado. This week has been a pretty a busy one for Colorado shooters who have been busy getting photographs of the fire. I have always wanted to photograph a forest fire, and well, I did. It is very bittersweet, seeing something so beautiful yet also very deadly and destructive at the same time. Photographing it from a distance gave us a unique view and vantage point, and using a super telephoto like my Tamron 200-400mm really made for some interesting things.

What floored me the most is when I came home and I posted one of my images on twitter using TwitPic Before I knew what was going on, I started seeing tons of people "re-tweet' the photo I took, and by the next morning it went pretty much viral, landing in front of the photography editors at the news desk of The Associated Press & The Huffington Post. After speaking with The AP's editors in NYC, the photo is now on the AP news wire and being shown all over the world, from Fox News to Yahoo News, to AOL News, to newspapers country and world all over.

Needless to say I am pretty speechless.

I have a whole gallery of photographs from the Fourmile Wildfire located on my website here  if you wanted to see them all. I still have a LOT to process yet and those will be up in the coming days. For now, here are a few below. Please click for larger version.


This is the image which has been published by The Associated Press after going viral on Twitter.

















Technorati Tags: photography, photo, boulder, wildfire, fourmile canyon, colorado, nature, fire, sky, smoke, forest, trees

August means one thing...SUNFLOWERS!

Make no mistake about it, I have a complete love affair with Sunflowers and Sunsets, and every beginning of August I try to find where the fields are at, this year Longmont, Colorado seem to play host to the largest fields I have seen in quite some time now. Still, there are others that haven't even reached their blooming point yet, and are about a week out still, one of those fields is the field which I call an iconic location, where many photographers show up, often in droves, shooting. Thankfully we met the property owner earlier this week who said we can come back and actually on get on the property and shoot once they are in bloom. Something that will give us a unique vantage point compared to everyone else.

There is just something about standing, looking at these flowers for as far as the eye can see just about, with the Colorado Rockies playing a backdrop to these endless fields. Next up, around the corner, Fall will be here, and that is my other busiest time of the year, and I am dearly looking forward to it!

So I thought I would share a few shots with you all to show you all what I have been up to. If you must know, these were shot on my Sony a550 using a variety of lenses, tripod, filters, remote shutter, etc. Clicking on teh links will take you to the larger images on my website.  So who wants to come out and shoot these next year?

---John













Technorati Tags: photography, outdoors, photo, nature, Colorado, sunflowers

Using a super telephoto for intimacy

It used to be I didn't have anything longer in my arsenal than my Minolta 70-300 which I dearly love, but in all honesty I don't use it a lot these days, since I got my Tamron 200-400mm. I really love this lens and having had it for a about a year and a half now, I can fully say that I use it a lot. This past full saw it put through it paces while photographing the Elk Rut in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. It is a big lens and built like a tank, it isn't the fastest at f5.6 continuous but it is sharp. Best thing about the Tamron 200-400mm lenses, is that they can be had for a song over at KEH usually around the mere $200 mark or less. Sure they are used, but you aren't going to get a lens at that price/performance, let alone focal length from anything else pretty much. So if you are looking for something tio start you off in wildlife photography, then I highly recommend this lens.

that is just the thing though. Wildlife photography. That is what generally most think of when you start getting up there in focal length like 400mm. It is pretty much a natural. however, one thing this lens has that many others don't, is 1:2 Macro ability. Close focusing goodness, which, as I have come to find out, can make for some very interesting images at 400mm.

This has opened up basically a whole other world of photography for me, with a whole other shooting style, being able to do things which before, I had never really done, either because I didn't have the focal length, or because I honestly failed to ever see it/notice it. As photographers, we are always evolving, looking for ways to shoot differently, to be more creative with our work, and to try something which we have never tried. When I first got this lens, my sole intention was birding, and it then that I realized what I had been missing on one of the first photoshoots I ever did with the lens. I was looking through the viewfinder of my camera, and I locked on to something which I wasn't trying to lock on to, some cat Tails in a marsh, and then, it just sort of came to me. The wheels in my head started turning, and I started scanning at 400mm with the lens, seeing things, seeing the intimate details of nature which I had never noticed before.

One of the fun things to do with this lens is landscapes from a distance, it is amazing what you can see which the naked eye can not, it has opened up a whole other world essentially which I otherwise would have completely missed. The trees on the mountainside, subtle changes in light, winter weather conditions, etc. Florals also can be a lot of fun, especially in what would be otherwise harsh lighting conditions, where I would never even think of doing a landscape image. Backlighting can be fun to work with.

So the next time you are out with with a super telephoto, don't forget to take a minute and notice the smaller, more intimate details around you. You very well might be amazed at what you find!
--John

Images below shot using my Tamron 200-400mm lens on Sony and Minolta dslr's.



















Technorati Tags: photography, photo, technique, tamron, telephoto, intimacy

Springtime In The Rockies

Springtime in the Colorado Rockies, a time of the year which I have always loved. Recently went up to the Mount Evans Wilderness area to try and capture the change of the seasons and to see if winter was still holding on. In some places it certainly was, to say the least. Though Spring was certainly in the air and the combination of the 2 seasons made for some interesting conditions. What astonished me was a couple tourists wading through the river where I shot the long exposure shots at....folks that water is freezing cold! Probably barely above freezing, and the result of spring melt off from the mountains....no thanks I will pass with doing that anytime soon in bare feet! A great time though, and it was nice to experience the resulting conditions!

How art touches us

This post in it's original form, appeared originally in my journal on devaintART located here I have modified it some the re-write here.

Today, while checking my comments on my work on deviantART, I was stopped cold in my tracks by a comment that left on one of my photographs. I came upon a comment left by =Wrath-n-Ruin that really just stopped me cold in my tracks.
It was left on my photograph "The End Of The Day" which is below here.

=Wrath-n-Ruin "I just wanted you to know that I bought this print for my mother a few days after my father died to remind her of him (sunflowers were his favorite)...she never got the chance to frame it because she died a mere 7 weeks later, but she loved it dearly. She loves it so much, in fact, that the flowers we used for their funerals were inspired by this piece.

This picture now hangs above their photos in my bedroom.

I can't even express to you how much I love this photo and the meaning it now holds for me and my family, which makes it all the more special. When I presented the print to my mother, she said that it reminded her of hope, that there is still beauty even in the darkest of places. Thank you so much for sharing such a wonderful piece."

Never in my life....would I have ever thought that one of MY photographs would have that kind of power, and I don't even know what to say, I am beyond floored. Literally speechless, completely.

Art touches us in so many ways, like few things in life ever can. It touches our soul, it touches our hearts, it has the ability to take us somewhere else, if even for just a little while, to let us get away...and it leaves us with a forever lasting impression. Few things in life can do this on such a regular basis. Few.

When I read that comment, I was left feeling completely smacked upside my head. Not knowing how I should respond to her, in fact, I haven't yet. Maybe I will just link her to this journal, I don't know....I mean how to your respond to something like that? That isn't a comment, that is a reality check full of power.

Comments like that, make being an artist worth it all. To know, that one of my own photographs touched people like that, is just a serious "wow" moment that leaves me laying on the floor.

I just wanted to share this all with you. Amazing, what one single piece of art can do isn't it? Art=life, as I have always said.
---John

thoughts, photography, art, emotion, impression, photo

The Long Landscape

  A couple days ago I had the chance to once again shoot up in Rocky Mountain National Park. Naturally I jumped at the chance at being able to visit one of my favorite photo destinations. What awaited was a display of Winter battling Spring in full force, with snow showers, full on snow storms, combined with sunlight at times, making for just very dramatic atmosphere. I really love the time of the year in the Rockies of Colorado.

  It got me thinking though as I was shooting around Hallet Peak, as I shot with my 400mm surveying things, panning for interesting detail and composition. Today I thought that i would take a few minutes and write my thoughts down and share some examples of this photo shoot with you all....so about the title of this blog post "The Long Landscape"....

  How many of you own a lens that is 300mm or greater? Usually we think of such lenses for shooting things like Birds, Wildlife, etc...but how many of you have actually tried shooting a landscape with it? Zoomed all the way in at max focal length? In a sense it is kind of like macro photography, how the goal is to capture things which the human eye often can't see, only this time we can sometimes see it but we don't have the ability to really notice the fine details and intimacy with the human eye. It is literally like shooting a whole other world, noticing things we would have missed otherwise.

  When I was looking through the viewfinder while shooting, I kept saying out loud "wow...just wow!" because of the things I was seeing that I couldn't see without a long lens. The trails from the snow tumbling down the mountainside, the Pine trees completely untouched by man, sitting at 12,000 feet high, and how thyey are battling the early Spring snowstorm. The light as it reflected against the falling snow....the finer details.

  Often times shots like this can give an excellent sense of emotion, atmosphere, and as I said, intimacy. I often find that compositions in shots that are done in this style can be stronger and also more powerful. The ability to get in close and really work the scene with a ling lens, studying it, taking your time, and really examining it, can be incredibly rewarding.

  So next time you are out shooting a scene, try it and see what you get! You may very well be shocked at what you find when looking through a long lens! Here are a few examples that I recently took using this technique. Focal length was between 300 & 400mm using a Tamron 200-400mm on my Sony a550.
John

Photography, photoblog, nature, outdoors, technique, telephoto, zoom, ideas, Rocky Mountain National Park, photo, mountains