Have you ever spent two hours on a Saturday afternoon chasing a snail around your back yard?

I thought not….

Well … I have. A few weekends ago I splurged on a new lens for my Sony A100 camera …

… and as I was crawling around my back yard trying to figure out how to use it properly, I spotted this tiny creature resting on a dried up leaf….

It started to move …

… and you’d be surprised how fast a snail seems to travel at this magnification.

The focus on these shots is not great, and I’ve learned a lot more about using the lens since that first day, but I got a big kick out of how close I could get to something that was smaller than a small shirt button and still capture very good detail.

The poor thing must have been camera shy, something I can certainly relate to, so I was careful not to use any flash but it tried to race off the leaf anyway …

… yet the only way out of sight was through a whole in the leaf …

… where it got stuck …

… so I set the camera aside, split the leaf to release it’s head, and off it went, disappearing into the forest…. I mean, uh, pine bark.

The lens is fantastic, definitely the best purchase I’ve made for the camera. I’ve gotten a lot better at predicting how it will react to light and focus at these close distances, so you can expect a huge quantity of photos of very small things — especially buds and bugs — to start appearing here and on my Flickr account pretty soon. I’ve also got a massive set of closeup shots from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, taken over several weekends, that impress even me — and that’s pretty hard to do….

From our friends over at YouTube, here’s Paul McCartney and Wings singing that classic, "Snail on the Run." (It may sound like they’re saying "Band" — but they’re not.) Is the song stuck in your head yet?

A collection of photos of Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery that I’ve taken over the past few weeks is here:

Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery

I’ve organized the photos into loosely-related sets by some unidentifiable criteria for now. Eventually I’ll expand the sets and separate the photos by cemetery section; but I have to take quite a few more first. My earlier article is here, and many thanks to those who stopped by to read it and to those who’ve left comments.

I also updated the sidebar with links to slideshows, by set.

The cemetery was on someone else’s mind this week also. Take a look at this fine article — Living Among the Dead — at Georgia On My Mind.

Bye for now!

I’ve wanted to get some pictures from my August trip to visit my family out on Flickr for a while now, and finally got it done. I took about 500 altogether (digital cameras do make you take a lot of pictures, don’t they?) but sifted through them all, made some adjustments using Adobe Lightroom, and uploaded a representative sample over the past couple of evenings. The complete collection is here: Upstate New York Summer 2007. I’ve also updated “My Flickr Slideshows” in the sidebar with slideshow links to each set.

The first set consists of a few pictures from Chazy Orchards. The number of apples on the trees was enormous; either I had never noticed that before when I was visiting, or it’s a banner year for apples. You might enjoy reading more about the orchards, and their history.

Photo set link: Chazy Orchards

I always enjoy photographing rural scenes, especially in late summer when everything is still very lush and green, but the light has started to tip a little darker toward fall. The Farms and Barns set contains the ones I liked best.

Photo set link: Farms and Barns

Lake Champlain separates the state of New York from Vermont, running over 100 miles and connecting to Lake George about halfway down the states. While I’m not much of a boater, I do appreciate the boats (and the seagulls and the ducks and the lake itself), and spent quite a bit of my time taking pictures from the shores.

Photo set link: Lake Champlain

I was born in Plattsburgh, New York and grew up in a small town nearby. The area has its  claim to various historical events, which you can read a little about here and here. I didn’t get as much time as I might have liked to prowl the downtown area and take some shots, but in this set you will see several historical monuments (the McDonough Monument and a statue of Samuel de Champlain, which looks out on the lake), as well as a few other local buildings and scenes.

Photo set link: Plattsburgh Monuments and Buildings

The Point au Roche Interpretive Center is part of Point au Roche State Park, dedicated to conservation and wildlife preservation, and was a new discovery for me. I got very involved in just wandering around the area and snapping whatever caught my eye.

Photo set link: Point Au Roche Interpretive Center

I just happened to be near a railroad crossing when this train was ambling by. If it hadn’t been dark red, I might have paid less attention … but the red photographed quite well, especially on a somewhat dark and cloudy day.

Photo set link: Trains

My hometown is less than an hour’s drive from the Whiteface Mountain and Lake Placid region. I spent so much time wandering near the mountain that I didn’t get as many shots of the Lake Placid village as I would have liked; there’s a whole lot more to it than just those few shots! More information on official sites for both, here and here.

Photo set link: Whiteface Mountain and Lake Placid

Next up, in a few days, will be a collection of the pictures I took back here in Atlanta, at Oakland Cemetery, as part of the research for my Exploring Place: History class.  Stay tuned!

In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag writes:

To designate a hell is not, of course, to tell us anything about how to extract people from that hell, how to moderate hell’s flames. Still, it seems good in itself to acknowledge … one’s sense of how much suffering caused by human wickedness there is in the world we share with others. Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned … when confronted with evidence of what human beings are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood…. No one after a certain age has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance, or amnesia.

Sontag’s essays in Regarding the Pain of Others and On Photography have always impressed me, for — among other reasons — the way she moves effortlessly from the public experience of photography to the way we experience it in our minds, and the connections she makes between the two. I was browsing through both books earlier this evening, in an attempt to better frame some comments on a Vogue Italia “photographic essay” described by Cooper in Is Rape In Vogue? You Tell Me.

The images in the essay are generating some discussion about — among other things — whether or not they are pornographic, whether or not they glorify rape, whether or not they glorify war, whether or not they have any aesthetic significance.  I could probably pick any of these, choose either side, and make a compelling and passionate case for or against. What I cannot do, however, is rescue the photographs themselves from what they really represent: the exact sort of psychological immaturity, superficiality, and demonstration of ignorance that Sontag is referring to. The photographs — by virtue of their distance from anything that would actually cause us to consider the realities of war — become little more than the kind of cliche aptly illustrated by their worn out title, Make Love, Not War.

It’s not, of course, necessarily true that all photography of war reflect it’s subject realistically, and I wouldn’t make that claim about photography of any subject. But that doesn’t mean choice of subjects doesn’t matter; the photographs are all integrated under one title, showing obviously related themes that were the explicit choices of the artists involved. As with all art, it is the artists’ choices that are fair game for evaluation and critical assessment.

The photographs don’t strike me as being about war at all. If I pitched a tent in my back yard, donned some military fatigues, slapped some mud on my face, and brandished a squirt gun (even a really big squirt gun), you wouldn’t call me a soldier. You might think I was playing soldier, and question my sanity, but that’s about it. The “soldiers” in these photographs seem about as soldierly as me and my tent; in both the actual appearance of the photographs and the way the models are portrayed, they’re only playing soldier too; or not even playing soldier, just playing.

The images of the men, though, are at least not overtly offensive. The men are, in nearly all the photographs, shown as happy, alert, enjoying an experience in the moment. In the women, however, there’s something else, made even more apparent by contrast with the appearance of the men. In photo after photo, the faces of the women suggest one of two conditions: semi-consciousness or pain. From the America’s Top Model mannequin-like pose in image 3, to the distraught and unfocused or visibly pained eyes in almost every other image, the women are most definitely not being portrayed as living the experience in the same way as the men. Disheveled, dirty, confused, and in pain, the women are so succinctly reduced to objects for the amusement of the men that the conclusion that the images glorify rape is a reasonable one, if not a wholly accurate one. At least early-modern attempts to objectify women (as toys for men) usually showed them looking good. Vogue Italia – in treating us to a helping of soft-core, military-style, repetitious, dull, and vaguely annoying porn — can’t be bothered, and instead serves up images that include … yes, you guessed it, mud wrestling….

To be continued….

So… I’ve been thinking over the past few weeks that I might try my hand at selling photos online, on one of the stock photo agencies. Since I’ve long believed that the best way to learn something was through total immolation … oh, I mean, immersion… I went ahead and filled out an application at iStockphoto and sent in my three (carefully (?)) selected photos.

I have to admit that when I found out that all three of the images were rejected, I had the same reaction of aggravated disappointment that I know I’m not the first person to feel. But it passed pretty quickly as I started thinking about what the reviewers had to say, and even more quickly after I buzzed around some blogs and realized that not only were rejections common, but rejections are meted out by iStockphoto (and other sites, I’m sure) with the same exact boilerplate text for everybody. So my pics were just among the thousands and thousands reviewed, where I imagine the reviewers click a checkbox on a screen to generate repeating rejection notices. No problem; if that’s the business model, it’s the business model — though frankly I think it might benefit the stock sites and the art of photography as a whole if they treated it as an opportunity to share real knowledge as opposed to knocking photos out of an assembly line.

On the other hand, I will say this: as I read what other photographers wrote about their rejections (no links here, sorry; I don’t want to start something), I came to believe that a lot of people are burning up a whole lot of their creative energy getting all spiky over their rejections. It’s really of no consequence that any one agency rejects any one photograph (or ten photographs or a hundred photographs): it seems to me that rejections are something that someone can either learn from or simply disregard and move on, and neither choice is more valid than the other. But whatever choice is made, should be made quickly.

Anyway, I tried to decide what these rejected photos taught me, based on the iStockphoto form-letter. Here are some of my thoughts; the pictures follow and you can click on any image to view the full-sized original (I just learned how to do that! wheeeee!).

The white orchid was rejected because it’s a flower. I knew they didn’t want any more flowers (see their needed photos list here). I had previously read the list, but it just didn’t occur to me that I shouldn’t submit such a photo with my application. Well, now I know; that was an easy one.

This next one was rejected for two reasons: the focus needed to be improved, and the photo “lacked impact” so was not suitable as stock. In other words, they considered it blurry and boring. I guess I could say it’s intended to be a depth-of-field shot, so where the focus should dissolve is largely a subjective opinion … and yet I can see that even as a depth-of-field shot, it would have been better if the architectural piece I’m focusing on was sharp from top to bottom. I know one of my consistent technical challenges is taking straight pictures, both on horizontal and vertical planes; I’m constantly straightening and cropping my pics when I get back from a shoot. Maybe my posture’s bad; if so, I have to learn to compensate (or, hell, just stand up straight!).

As to lacking impact and not stock, presumably they know their market so I accept that. But permit me this one snark: if they think this photo isn’t suitable as stock, they haven’t spent enough time searching their own website. And I still like the out-of-focus eagle in the background.

This last photo was rejected on the grounds that the lighting could be improved. Unfortunately, the response only suggests different ways of dealing with lighting in general, and offers no specifics as to what the reviewer considered wrong with this lighting. Since they are no blown highlights, and the lighting isn’t harsh or out of balance, I’m guessing they considered it too dark overall. Okay, that’s fine … although, realistically, Santa does deliver most of his goodies at night, doesn’t he? In any case, I’ll take this as advice to pay more conscious attention to my lighting when shooting or during post-shoot processing.

Having said all that, what shall I do now? The only rational and creative thing: yesterday I opened an account on Fotolia and have submitted 34 photos (Fotolia doesn’t have a gated application process), all of which are waiting for approval (well, okay, approval or rejection). And tonight I resubmitted three new samples to Istockphoto. Yay, for getting back up on that horse and doing it all over again!

In closing, I wanted to mention two articles I came across while doing some research on the stock agencies. The first is Photography’s Vanishing Middle Class, from the very fine Strobist blog. The second is from Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection, and is called Why Corbis’ New SnapVillage Stock Photography Agency is a Bad Deal for Photographers. These two articles — along with their very well-written comments — touch on so many cultural, social, and market issues that have been made more volatile by the rapid transfusion of digital photography into society, that I can hardly wait to write a detailed analysis of the two.

Stay tuned….

Update:

There have been some nice developments since I wrote this entry. Fotolia accepted 31 of the 34 photos I submitted, so that means I’m officially in the business!

You can see my photos here.

As another important lesson learned, Fotolia accepted two of the photos (Santa and the architectural shot) above that iStockphoto rejected — a probability I had read about in my research that has proven to be true. Like iStockphoto, they declined the white orchid because they don’t need any more flowers; see their list of needs here.

While looking for some information on how to export photos directly from Adobe Lightroom to Flickr, I landed on Andy’s My Enlightenment blog. In addition to featuring some beautifully illuminated photos there and on his Flickr account, Andy also had a couple of posts that included an embedded Flickr slideshow. Off on a different search now, I found a tool called “flickrSLiDR” on the Great Flickr Tools Collection, that turns out to be the same one Andy is using.

The tool is available here and it described in more detail by its creator, Paul Stamatiou, on his site, here.

Below is a slideshow of my photographs from the Atlanta History Center. You can move the mouse toward the top of the slideshow to control the display and speed, and toward the bottom to select individual photos from the set. Or, click on any photo to stop the slideshow and get links to my Flick account.

I seriously love the way this thing works!!

Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.