With a love of architecture and the city of Toronto, I couldn’t pass up sharing on a level deeper than a tweet or retweet.   I’ve grown up in a world where the CN Tower has always existed.  Every family trip to Toronto and every school field trip was filled with excitement as the CN Tower appeared on the horizon.  The CN Tower became a symbol of “We’re almost there!!”

I don’t know what it would be like to see the Toronto Skyline without it’s such iconic figure. In my eyes, it would be just as tragic to see if fall as it was to watch the World Trade Centre fall in NYC.  The skyline is really defined by the CN Tower and I’m amazed that it’s now 35 years old.  BlogTO did a little tribute to the 35th anniversary for the CN Tower and posted a whole bunch of constructions photos.  I’ve only opted to share a couple so that you can become interested enough to go check out more!

The amazing thing I noticed was how the images remind me of the photography we’re creating right now with our iPhones and mobile devices.  I get this wild feeling as if someone was taking iPhone photos today of the construction happening.  In this sense, photography that should look 35 years old actually feels current with a sense of nostalgia.    There is even one photograph that should be shared on the Dear Photograph website – totally amazing.

Go see more construction images!

Take a picture of a picture from the past in the present.

This morning, I caught a tweet by Andrew Dertinger pointing to a project called Dear Photograph. This is a really simple concept and hits me on a number of levels.  I am could not let today pass without sharing the website with you and I hope you consider contributing to Taylor Jones‘ Dear Photograph Project.

Inspiring Use of Moments

How often do you look at your old photos from growing up? Like most of us, it probably doesn’t happen much.  There are a few times in life that I can think we might venture into those old boxes: moving, deaths, births, by accident, and A&E hording episodes.

We really shouldn’t need a reason to look at old photographs of our family, friends, vacations, and milestones.  However, now that there’s a decent gap between the height of film use and digital, we are finding more and more uses for those old prints.

In Dear Photography, you hold up the old print and try to align it with the same view or location it was originally shot in. What happens is pretty special – You get a window into the past. The odd thing is that it feels as if the moment is happening before your eyes. Perhaps it is what it might feel like if you were to look into another parallel dimension.

I’m so inspired by this project because it makes you stop and think. Anything that causes some serious reflection gets your mind into overdrive. I can see the exercise being a great way to express gratitude in my own life.  I didn’t need a reason to make a trip over to my parents house and rummage through old photographs, but I sure have one now.  What a great way to spend an afternoon sometime soon.

If you’re just starting your own family, this is something to imagine your own children doing someday.  It might not be using old 4×6 prints in size 10 Nike shoebox, but it might be of the same concept.  All the more reason to understand that you cannot take too many photographs.  It’s a reminder to enjoy good times and great people with photography.

Inspiring Reuse of Old Prints

The other part of Dear Photograph, that I love, is the creative reuse of old prints in a form that isn’t just scrap booking or scanning to make them digital.  With Dear Photograph, you actually have to interact with the photograph and with the location it was shot in.

Imagine you visited Disney only as a your child – That’s me for you.  I know there are some prints (somewhere) from that vacation at age 5 or 6.  I’ve never been back to Disney and I’m not sure when I’ll get there.  However, I have an idea for the next time I go (which might be when I have a child of my own). No doubt I’ll be grabbing shots for us as a family, but I just might bring along some prints of when I was a child.  Could I find where a photo was taken? Could I ask someone there to help?

This is something that could be done with the Grand Canyon, Grand Bend, Vegas or any old photos in that shoebox. These prints don’t have to sit a box, an album, or a new scrap book. Instead, these old prints can be used almost like us hipsters are using polaroids and instax images these days without the cost!

Contribute Yourself

Dear Photograph is currently looking for submissions and I hope you’ll consider contributing.  If you’re like me, you might have to wait until you get over to where you’re old prints are currently sitting.   Hopefully you’ve already got a Tumblr account and you can just follow Dear Photograph so that you can’t forget about it.  Book a time in your calendar to spend some time on this project – I think it will be rewarding for yourself and you can contribute to a cool collaborative project too.

Visit and Browse Dear Photograph

photo credit: Anonymous via Dear Photograph

Think about photographer Jeremy Cowart.  The easy way for Jeremy would have been to contract out a photographer for his needs while a graphic designer.  Something inside him said to pick up the camera and shoot some of the subjects he needed for his design work.  If he didn’t follow that intuition, we may not have something as beautiful as Help Portrait today.

On the flip side, Jeremy may have realized that the photography part was not for him and that it truly was smarter for him to hire a freelance photographer.  Thankfully, Jeremy’s growth in photography gave him a platform that developed into great purpose.  We’re loved far too much to be left in the same state as the day we picked up the camera.  Call it what you want (it being the Muse, the Universe, God, Source Energy), you’re going to be transformed as you make the effort to live purposefully.

A book wouldn’t have helped.  You could read about this all day but it’s the interaction with life and the world that will allow purpose to come to us.  We just need to show up and make the effort. While I might not pick up my camera every day, I am editing photographs or interacting within the photography industry everyday.  Sitting down every morning to edit a photoblog image and post it became a ritual.

This morning the ritual was in full force and I started to write this blog post.  The post is nothing to do with the image I was sharing on the photoblog, but when I opened the window and started writing, this is what came out.

Take-away?

You and I may not have purposeful project yet and it may take a long time for it to surface from within you or for your Muse to communicate it to you.  Interact with your interests and follow your intuition.  Maybe it is time to pick that camera up for the first time or revisit it.  Sooner, rather than later, we’ll all be shooting more purposeful photography.

In the mean time, keep building your platform!

Since posted a vintage ad from Kodak recently, we thought it only fair to share a vintage look at the cover of Life Magazine showing the Polaroid camera.  Even today a polaroid camera creates magical emotion around it as the image comes out of the camera and slowly comes into focus.

I took my new Fujifilm Instamax 210 to the Chris Guillebeau AONC Book Tour Event and when the image was taken and came out the top, the crowd cheered.

Also note that the cover image is full of children surrounding Dr. Edwin Land and his magic camera. Kodak was marketing to use of its brownie camera to children too.  While the vintage ad I shared of Kodak didn’t show kids, there are more ads that do.  You’ll see.

We originally came across through the ScanZen Tumblr Blog.  Thank You!

scanzen:

Edwin Land of Polaroid demonstrates his new invention. LIFE, October 27, 1972.

(via)

Each week our newsletter includes 5 links to articles from other photography websites and blogs [sometimes we even go outside photography to help make points]. I’ve always included a short little blurb as to why you should check it out. With the structure of the newsletter, I can’t get too in depth because the thing would end up going on forever and I’m already having a hard enough time shortening it up. The big benefit is that subscribers to the newsletter get the links early and if the these awesome people check the links out, they’ll form thoughts and options on the articles too. Thus, the newsletter is a springboard from which we can later discuss specific things that we found interesting or connected with.

See this on the Photoblog too! Before and After Editing

One of the articles shared was 101 Things Learnt about Street Photography by Eric Kim on the Invisible Photographer Asia. 101 things is a long list and it may cause some to shut down. The list is actually pretty good and I recommend saving it to Evernote, DEVONthink, Delicious or whatever you use these days.

Here are 10 of the 101 things learnt about street photography that I connected with:

10. Feel free to ask people to take their portraits.
15. Go explore—serendipity is key.
18. Pretend like you’re taking a photo of something else.
22. Don’t worry about the fear of shooting in public. It will go away over time.
36. Grain is beautiful.
45. Street photography summed up in one sentence: “I could have taken that photo but I didn’t”
50. Street photography is not just about the photos, but the experiences.
91. There are always photo opportunities regardless of where you are.
96. Keep a journal of your shooting experiences. Track your thoughts and development as a street photographer.
100. Live life.

Within this short list, there are a number of points that this photography website is all about. Nuwomb isn’t simply about street photography but there is a journey that a photographer goes through while experimenting with such a type of photography. I recently did some event photography and, while I wasn’t on the street, I looked at it much in the same as street photography. Much of the 10 points were hit and considered as I shot the event.

If you’re already checked the list out because of the newsletter, what did you think? If you have a blog then go list your 10. If you haven’t joined the newsletter and would love to know about these rad photography articles ahead of time – hit up the newsletter sign up here.

This is intense! I saw the article on The Huffington Post and instantly connected this image to the Day After Tomorrow movie.

It’s not currently snowing in London, Ontario but I expect it’s got to start up very soon.  I’ve got an event to photograph at 7am tomorrow morning and I’m a bit unsure if it will be happening.  The snow has shut down our city multiple times this winter already.

If you’re wondering about the term “Snowtorious B.I.G” here’s the quote from my Sister-In-Law:

The term “snowmageddon” is so 2010. I prefer Snowtorious B.I.G – Kerri Kriwokon

I feel for all those traveling at this time as I am certain this is terrible.

There are still a few more images show on the Huffington Post.

Image GOES-13 via NOAA

I usually don’t pay much attention to commercials. Perhaps marketing podcasts like Six Pixels of Separation are rubbing off on me. Either way, the Panasonic caught my attention tonight.

We absolutely loved this commercial! Hopefully other photographers can sit back and laugh with us. What’s so great? Well the photographer is doing a presentation and a group of snobbish professional photographers are asking questions about aperture, shutter speed, and dealing with lighting situations. The presenting photographer cannot properly answer the questions because he just went out and took great photographs with a digital camera from the Panasonic Lumix collection.

I’m not a digital media marketing guru like Mitch Joel, but I really do appreciate this commercial. In my eyes, the commercial and the way the presenting photographer is portrayed is amazing when you think about passion and vision. It’s also playing on the democratized creative renaissance that we’re experiencing.

As the tools for creative photography get better and better, everyone is capable of producing great photography. You don’t have to be a great photographer to get great photographs. You just need to get out there and get in front of more interesting subjects. We love the playfulness of the 30 second spot.

What do you think of this Commercial from Panasonic and it’s message about photographers?

- Michael David Murphy

I believe there is merit in the response from Jorge because of the quality of photography found within his photoblog.

- Jorge Quinteros

Playing devils advocate is actually quite an interesting exercise.  Mitch Joel does it really well within his media and maketing podcast when talking with Joseph Jaffe.  Most often the two of them agree on issues but being to take a look from the other point of view for the sake of debate.  Sometimes, their candid conversation can take on new insights through the exploration of devils advocates.  That is my intent with this article. The freedom presented from digital photography activates an abundance mindset that allows a photographer to develop and allow for an artistic vision to emerge.

Over-Shoot and Max Out Your Memory Cards

The idea behind over-shooting isn’t to encourage mindless photography.   In my experience, exploring through photography and taking many pictures to do so has massive benefits.  The act of pressing the shutter is about becoming present within a space.  Often there may be times when you get into a place and think there is nothing interesting to photograph.  I always feel as if many of these photographs will become practice shots and not something that gets uploaded, shared, and printed.

Approaching photography with a mindset of digital abundance allows us to to develop a space or subject and really connect within it. Your initial reactions are worth paying attention to but it’s also very important to go beyond.  Maxing out your memory card space doesn’t mean that you didn’t envision your shots or put thought into each snap.

I can recall, from the David duChemin CreativeLive workshop, the idea of “sketch images.”  David started to relate photography with art and explained that painters don’t create a painting on the first attempt. There are sketches, thrown out paintings and other things that occur before the finished product emerges.   Sketch images are practice shots.  Not every image you shoot is going to be the photograph you blow up to 70″ x 40″ or even shown to anyone else.  Often you use can use a sketch image to test the light of the scene too – this is the massive advantage of our digital era.

While it’s true that you can shoot pictures of everything thanks to the digital camera, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try or that you’re killing a kitten with every unused image on that memory card.   No one is going to care if you came home with 1 great image and only took 1 photograph.  The only reason you came home with 1 great photograph is because you didn’t shoot more.  Not every location is massively inspiring, and I get that. What if we put aside our ego – the one that says this place is boring and unworthy of my attention and photography skills – and decided to explore via the lens? More often than not, you’ll start to open up to the locations and come away with great images.

There is no such thing as taking too many pictures.

The Park in New Orleans

While in New Orleans, we stumbled upon a park (photo above) that had an amazing atmosphere.  It was such an amazing atmosphere from the corner entrance that I wanted my tripod to make sure I could get the perfect HDR shot.   Even though I had been taking multiple exposure photographs handheld, I didn’t bother to take any here because I thought I would get the perfect shots later.

Later never came.

We never got back to that park because of other things to do and time flying.  I bet I could have got the shots without the tripod. I am ashamed that I didn’t capture the scene upon first view.  There was plenty of space on my memory cards and the risk of an imperfect HDR photograph would have been worth it now.  The very risk of more handheld brackets could have helped me to become a better photographer and challenged me in the digital darkroom.

The digital camera really does give us the freedom to take photographs of anything and everything we want to.  We should take advantage of that abundance mindset or you may regret it later.  Just because you take photographs of everything doesn’t mean you have to share them with anyone besides your pet. Just always take pictures!

This won’t be the last time I talk about the act of over-shooting and opting to not take photographs to improve as a photographer.  There is  a chapter in my eBook – Organic Photography Growth – that I believe to be very important for getting better as a photographer that challenges this entire article.  I’ve touched on the idea in the free portion of the eBook that you get when you join the newsletter here.  You can sign up below and I promise to get it updated soon to the new design!

What this goal means most of all for me is that I will dedicate a very large portion of my life to creating art. It means that my life will be intertwined with photography in a significant and meaningful way until I die. It’s a discipline to ensure that I live my life in such a way that art will play a significant and prominent role in it.

-Thomas Hawk
(from interview on Chris Guillebeau blog)

I wanted to title this post “I hate Thomas Hawk” because of his goal of 1 million photographs. I didn’t want anyone to think that I seriously hate the dude though. His ambitious goal to take and process 1 million photographs is one of those ideas I wish I thought of!

Hawk has a wicked legacy goal. I see what he’s doing and I can 1000% appreciate it. The goal even inspires me, as indicated by the post on it. The greatest part of something so ambitious is that it should open our mind to start thinking about our own photographic quest in life. Hawk does just that, at least for me!

What is Your 1 Million Photographs Goal?

Life is short and it’s likely that you’re well into life now.   I really like Thomas Hawks goal of 1 Million finished and processed images. Could you beat him to it? Is there anyone else attempting to beat him to it?  I say that as if it’s a guy trying to run the 4 minute mile – I don’t mean to.  The goal is a huge amount of work and becomes a life dedication.   Currently, Hawk is uploading 50 finished and processed images per day.  These images can serve as other works of art in the future.

Here is where I start to resonate with the idea of taking many photographs. I am a massive fan of personal photography projects, and while 1 million photographs is the mother of all photo projects, I would say why put a metric on it.   Life can be about a series of stories and moments.

Why not make your legacy goal to be something more idealistic than measurable. In Rockstar Business by Adii, he talks about specific measurable goals as outdated and to apply a more Rockstar approach:

This point of view aligns with the desire to have a reason why you do everything. The creation of idealistic goals can then be carried out in any way, but you just so happen to use photography for how you go about the goal achievement.  As I write and think about the concept, I am presented with a number of new ideas within my own head.  I know that you’ve got them too.

Why not mix metrics and idealism? Look, no matter what, you are the one that can set your own rules and write your own goals.  I know that photography is a great passion but just being “passionate about photography” means nothing anymore. Ask yourself why you’re passionate about photography. Passion is easy, right?

Challenge the mediocrity of the day to day lifestyle. You’re welcome to join me.

I’m still digging deep for locate how I convey my own legacy, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.  What’s your quest? What can your camera help you do?  Who’s up for challenging Thomas Hawk? *wink

Craving some awesome portrait photography work? I was recently and some television program decided to show me a quick piece on the photographer that shoots the Photo Bumpers for Saturday Night Live.  I was instantly reminded of how much I love the images on SNL, but I didn’t know the photographer.

Mary Ellen Matthews is the photographer for Saturday Night Live.  She’s been doing the job for years upon years and hearing about her really inspired me.  She is really creative and creates the photographs starting on the thursday before the show airs on Saturday night.  She has a great way of inspiring the guest host and snagging wicked shots. Her style is an inspiration and I can tell she is very creative.  The bit on her mentioned she usually shoots against white backgrounds so I assume she ads the funky, pop art colors during post processing work.

An amazing episode recently featured the sexy Betty White! The photo bumpers below of Betty White’s hosing of Saturday Night Live are awesome! Imagine she’s your Grandmother for a moment and then think how amazing it would be to have your Grandmother in these edgy shots.

You’ll also notice the small fascination I have with Tina Fey (She is hosting tomorrow May 22, 2010 as well).  I loved her shots and I had to include them.  The 2nd one with Tina Fey ironing is really cool because I’ve always thought to do shots like this for engagement photographs.  The engagement photos would include the guy though too – he might be holding next thing to iron.    I know it sounds bad, but it would be fun situations that old married couples sort of settle into.  Another shot would be one with the husband mowing the lawn or working on the car and wife brings out a beer.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy these photo bumpers from Saturday Night Live and that you’re left with some inspiration to go out and try some edgy work.