Andy Adams from Flak Photo was kind enough to post another of my photos on his site. I’m really excited to have one of my new photos from Somewhere in Middle America featured. It’s always a nice confirmation when new work is well-received, and I’m excited to have continued support for my work from Andy.

I’m at the end of a 10 day east coast world-wind tour. Last weekend we drove to Alexandria, VA for my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday, then a bit farther south down the Shenandoah Valley four 4 days of skiing and snow activities with the kids. We’re ending it by visiting friends in Akron, OH this weekend, then back to Michigan on Sunday. With a sick kid that has given us no sleep all week and some multi-hour white-knuckle freeway drives through blizzards, I can’t say I’m going to be returning well-rested, but hey, there’s always summer.

I’ve completed a much needed update to my website. Work from a recent project: “The Histories Beneath” is now up, as is an update to “Somewhere in Middle America.”

“The Histories Beneath” marks my return to color photography (in reality I never left). I wish I had some nice, coherent statement as to what the project is about, but I don’t. What I can say is that if the work is successful, the connections between the superficially disparate subjects across the series will be apparent, at least on an intuitive level.

“Somewhere in Middle America” contains a handful of new images and what I feel is a tighter sequencing that more accurately reflects my intention for the project.

I have also  gone back to using Flash for my portfolios in order to create a smoother viewing experience (I was an early adopter of Flash, then left it in frustration over the difficulties of keeping a Flash site updated at the time). Some research into Flash and xml integration led me to a create a Flash program that would allow me to port my existing look into Flash while still making updates dynamic and very easy to do. I know there are already lots of fantastic Flash modules out there that allow for this, but none of them gave me the flexibility to make things look the way I wanted. Besides, as you already know from my last post, I like to tinker with things.

Both these projects will remain ongoing. Hope you have a chance to check them out!  

About a week ago, the battery died in my car. Apparently mine wasn’t the only one to die in our beautiful -1° weather (-16° with wind chill), because Sears told me it would be 2 hours to put in a replacement. 

“2 hours!” I think, “I can do it myself in much less time than that.” I called a friend with an attached garage (unlike my neighbor across the street, after 7 years in Michigan I’m still not acclimated enough to the weather to be willing to work on my car outdoors in the winter), and she informed me it was available for my use. So I grabbed a new battery and off I went. After 3 hours and another trip to Sears to replace a contact that I broke, I was off and running with my new batter installed. I showed them. Later on that evening, I was thinking about what a glorious thing it would be to spend two hours somewhere outside of the chaos of work or home to just read the paper.  There’s a point to all this, as well as I’m sure a lesson to be learned, but damned if I know what it is. 

In an unrelated incident, my primary camera broke later in the week. The shutter lock jammed in the locked position, making it impossible for me to take a picture.  This camera is pretty old school- not meter, not batteries, no chips, no sensors, etc.

My thinking- “There’s no way I’m paying $150 and sending this off for three weeks to have someone fix it. I bet if I just open it up I can find the problem right away.” Well, I’ve gotten it open, bent a spring and knocked at least one more piece out of place in process, only to discover that the inside of this thing resembles an old watch more than a camera (lots of tiny gears). My current thinking: “I just need to open it up a little more so that I can get right at the shutter lock- one more panel off the camera will do it.” Stumped as to how to get that panel off without inflicting irreparable damage, a quick internet search  revealed a site that would sell me a repair manual for the camera, which I am now waiting to receive in the mail (the $43 dollar cost of this will put me over the $50 I estimated as my monthly photo expenses in this post). With replacing the parts I have and will inevitably continue to break, I’m confident I will have the thing back and working perfectly within 4 weeks and for under $200. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

Here I have been spending the last month or so thinking no one was reading my blog (this might still be true), and I come to find out that two of my blog’s features related to some of the best aspects of blogging- comments and incoming links- have not been working.

I believe the comments are now working due to the re-emergence of spam comments (the lack of spam should have been my first clue that comments weren’t working in the first place). Incoming links, however, are still not showing up. This is what I get for trying to manage my own blog… 

I’m really disappointed to think that I might have missed some comments from people. If you post a comment in the future and don’t see it show up, please let me know!

I spend plenty of time on this blog talking about the emotional and psychological cost of being an artist. What about the financial cost? Here are items from my most recent credit card statement that deal with the cost associated with the privilege of being an artist:    

This was a bad month in a financial sense (my cost this month will probably be under $50), but in no way unprecedented. I usually have a few months like this every year. It’s not unique to photographers either- my artist friends in other media spend as much or more than me just on supplies. I try not to let worries over cost affect my work, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

It seems most of my posts dealing with news related to the larger photo world begin with something along the lines of “in case you haven’t heard.” There are some good reasons for this:
1. I am usually not the first to find out about said news.
2. It usually takes me a little while to actually get around to writing about it here.

So, for those one or maybe two people out there that are reading my blog alone in the ever-growing world of photo blogs more timely and in touch than mine, I will keep reporting news of interest as I find out about it. 

So, in case you haven’t heard, Jorg Colberg, writer of the Conscientious blog, has started offering portfolio reviews for $75. In addition  to already proving he has a great eye for photography through the quality of work showcased on his blog, and some degree of influence in the photo art world (he co-curated a fantastic show with Jen Bekman last summer) it sounds like Colberg is taking a very thoughtful and conscientious (sorry for the horrible pun. I just couldn’t resist) approach to this new endeavor. Liz Kuball has a detailed account of Colberg’s review on her blog, and it sounds like he is providing a level of feedback that is difficult to come by. I would be jumping at the chance, but alas, he has disqualified Critical Mass participants from participating at this time.

I am constantly frustrated by my inability to find good avenues for productive feedback on my work. While I have lots of close artist friends, I have very few close photography friends that can provide critical suggestions for my work. Portfolio reviews like The Meeting Place or Review Santa Fe are great in this respect, but they are very expensive, and promoting work is often the first priority of attendees, which can make open discussion of the work’s shortcomings difficult. Colberg is providing an interesting alternative, and I am most curious to see how it all develops.