2016

It’s currently 1:42am on Saturday, December 31st, 2016. 

When I was little, the countdown to Christmas went by in the time it took you to blink. Then before you knew it you were counting down the days until New Year, and until you had to go back to school, and that seemed to go even faster.

But I’m grown now, and the end of 2016 feels like these last few months have staggered and almost crawled to the end.

2016 will probably not be looked on fondly when people look back years from now. I can practically feel the echoing wave of collective sighs of relief when the clock ticks over around the world into the near year. To a lot of people, 2016 has felt like one long drawn out ending. We’re all holding our breath.

Good things happened; of course they always do. It can take longer to look for them sometimes. I feel like this year my photography finally took a step forward – it’s closer to where I want it to look, feel. I’m still not there (I’ll never feel quite “there”, I don’t even know where “there” is) but it definitely took a leap over the seemingly immovable static I had been feeling.

 

Osric Chau, Captain America, Vegas Cosplay Portrait, 2016

 

Rob Benedict, Viper Room LA, June 2016

 

Billy Moran, Viper Room June 2016

 

Matt Cohen, Phoenix 2016

 

I was privileged to get to work with incredible people, to be supported by incredible people. I was able to push myself way out of my comfort zone and found I liked it; no, I loved it. Even when I hated it, even when I was scared of it, I loved it.

 

Briana Buckmaster, Seattle 2016

 

Matt Cohen and Osric Chau, Phoenix 2016

 

Makayla, September 2016

 

Rob Benedict and Richard Speight Jr, Seattle 2016

 

Osric, Vancouver 2016

 

Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, Sunday, VanCon 2016

 

Kim Rhodes and Rob Benedict, PhxCon 2016

 

Angie and Brooke, October 2016

 

Osric Chau, Phoenix 2016

 

Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, Jensen Ackles PhxCon 2016

 

Ruth Connell, SFCon 2016

 

Danielle, October 2016

 

2016 firmly cemented in my mind that portraiture is where my heart and soul is; it’s where I feel strongest, where I feel the most afraid, where I feel the most exhilarated. I was so, so fortunate I had such a wealth of amazing people that helped cement that for me.

 

Misha Collins, Vancouver 2016

 

Kat, LA 2016
Makeup by Vic Righthand

 

Kim Rhodes, LA 2016
Makeup by Vic Righthand

 

Timothy Omundson, LA 2016

 

Rob Benedict, LA 2016

 

But 2016 was an ending for me too. I don’t know what the future will bring, and it was an ending for me thinking that if I just sit back and be patient enough things will happen. I have to stop thinking that way. I need to become proactive and make things happen. Patience is a virtue, but so is passion and movement and action. If I really want this as much as I claim I do, I need to go out and get it.

I don’t know how.

I’m scared.

I will still tell myself I’m not good enough.

But I won’t listen anymore.

It’s now 2:22am, Saturday December 31, 2016. I’ll go to bed, wake up, and it will be the last day of this crazy, unrepeatable year.

Goodbye, 2016.

Hello, 2017. 

Maiden Makayla

I have been wanting to take a historically based portrait of my niece Makayla for awhile, ever since I took her photo for the Exposure contest last year. I feel like she has a particular look that is quite timeless and ethereal and I thought it would be interesting to play with.

We found a Renaissance Maiden costume online (I cannot sew, and I don’t really know anyone who can) and so we decided to set up my lights and try taking some photos today. It wasn’t ideal – the weather has been crazy here, and it was really, really windy. There was nowhere really inside that we could set everything up, so I ended up having to try to make space on the patio outside. In between gusts of wind, we hung up the brown material backdrop and weighted it down to stop it from blowing everywhere (did I mention I really need a proper setup? I really need a proper setup). It was kind of misshapen, and what little sunlight backlit it in such a way that you could see the railing behind the material. I just hoped that I could stand Makayla on something tall enough so that she was in front of part of the material that didn’t have any shadows, lines, or weird looking creases.

My sister helped by doing Makayla’s hair and getting her ready, and then helped hold down the light (so windy …). I just used the one light setup with my Elinchrom Rx4 flash head and a 66cm softbox, camera left, quite close to Makayla to diffuse the light.

 

I had actually planned to try a butterfly lighting setup, and I probably will next time since I have already convinced my sister and Makayla that we should try again when it’s less windy.

I was actually quite surprised how the photos ended up turning out. I think I was better at directing Makayla this time; still not perfect, but everytime I’m doing it I think I’m improving. There are definite poses I had hoped to do that I didn’t get to, so I will try them next time.

 

 

I really like how rich the backdrop material can look with a light vignette in post. I very lightly adjusted the temperature and added the vignette, but other than that they didn’t require a great deal of editing. I knew roughly how I wanted them to look, and I thought they turned out quite well!

 

 

 

 

Makayla is actually really, really patient with me photographing her which I’m hugely grateful for. Now that I have done this style once, I can try again hopefully with some different poses and maybe an alternate lighting setup.

 

Doubt

Someone once said that the only person you should compare yourself to is the person that you were yesterday. I think the same goes for people who create.

(This is one of those times where I completely don’t take my own advice, by the way)

I’ve just been through a period where I’ve felt burnt out and started questioning why I was doing what I’m doing. I couldn’t face editing, or taking photos, and just tried to ignore everything. I was actually tired of it.

We have a tendency when we create things to measure what we create by what is out there already; it’s natural. It’s very human. We see what others are creating, we admire it and on a good day it motivates us to strive further to evolve and learn and create new things, that will in turn be looked at and inspire others etc. It’s a perpetual, self-feeding cycle.

On a bad day though, we look at what others are doing and can’t help but think that everything we’re doing is wrong / bad / not good enough / insert self-deprecating adjectives here. Suddenly what once became a shiny point in a tantalizing distance for us becomes an oasis in a desert that for some reason we’re stuck in but no one else can see. So while your friends or family or even strangers are telling you that what you’re creating is good, you’re thinking, “Yeah, but it’s no oasis is it?” A future that seemed ripe with possibility is suddenly …. Not. You start wondering why you’re doing it, why you are expending so much energy and time and passion (and money!) into something that you’re obviously never going to be “good enough” at. Do people think I’m wasting my time? Are people just being polite? “Oh this month she wants to be a photographer let’s support her, but you know, how long will that last?”

The truth is, people don’t think that way. Sure, your Mum maybe is being polite because she is polite. But we’re the only ones who actively compare our work to other people. Other people look at it from this magical place we’re not allowed in, called an objective space. They see two photographers and they don’t compare them, they just think, “Wow, all these people are giving me pretty things to look at, isn’t this cool?”

So why do we compare ourselves? Why can we see beauty in what others create but not find it in our own work? I am extremely guilty of this. I will look at other people’s photography and say, “Why doesn’t mine look like that? My colours aren’t punchy enough. My focus isn’t sharp enough. Is there some professional filter people run things through that I’m not aware of? Is it a plug-in for Photoshop?”

I can see that my work has an emotionality that people connect with, but I doubt every time I post anything. I think technically I’m not where I want to be, and I feel like it shows. Every. Single. Time. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been excited about sharing photos because I’ve felt like I’ve come far technically – the Louden Swain Saturday Night Special in Pasadena, 2015 and Osric Chau’s Captain American cosplay shoot are two examples in a tiny list.

 

Rob Benedict, Louden Swain SNS, PasCon 2015

 

Osric Chau, Captain America, Vegas Cosplay Portrait, 2016

 

It’s only because I had such a strong reaction personally to them that I felt like they would be successful. The whole process – taking them, editing them, posting them, there was very little of the usual doubt that I have. There was nervousness, there always is. But not the same doubt. It was liberating, and I wish I knew how to feel like that more often, but so far I haven’t mastered it.

The thing about creating, and about photography, is that it is such a personal thing. There are technical considerations that are universal, but other than that it becomes very much about how each person sees the world and how they want to show others how they see the world. There are always many, many photographers at the conventions but each one gets something different. Even pressing the shutter simultaneously, we will all have different interpretations of a moment. That’s what makes it incredible. But we also have to remember that each person is coming to that moment from very different circumstances – over and above different camera equipment, we’re sitting in different places, we’ve been photographing for different periods of time with varying experience levels, we’re concentrating on different things, we’ve focused on what we think tells a story.

I think what makes it so difficult today is the rate at which we can find information is so fast that we seem to expect ourselves to be able to learn just as quickly. The technology is so advanced that there isn’t the slow burn of learning how to process a photo in a darkroom, or really lining up a shot and being deliberate like you would using film because you don’t have as many chances to make a mistake. Film was very unforgiving compared to digital photography. Because that side of it comes relatively quickly (it’s still not easy, but you know what I mean), it’s too easy to think you’ll be the photographer you want to be in the blink of an eye. But things like photography don’t work like that. The people that I look up to mostly have been working for ten, twenty years longer than me. To them I’m probably an upstart who wants everything to happen for her straight away.

Instead of thinking about who we want to be, we should try to be gentle with who we are now. Doubt is normal. It keeps us honest and keeps us learning. If we felt 100% sure of everything we would never try. We would never push ourselves in directions we didn’t think we were capable of. We’d become complacent, and our work would suffer. As long as we don’t let doubt cripple us, we need to use it.

And I know it will take me time to listen to this, and I know I’ll go away and still compare. But I’ll try to focus more on comparing who I am now to who I was when I first started and there’s a surprising distance between the two of us. There’s no doubting that, and that’s something to be proud of.

24/52

This isn’t a photo I took today, so technically it probably doesn’t count. I took this photo of Misha in 2012, at All Hell Breaks Loose here in Melbourne. It’s interesting to see how far I’ve come. I can look at this photo and sort of see the foundation of a “style” – the “tightness” in the way it’s framed, the unusual angle, the way he’s looking outside the frame – that are all things I still do today. But I can also see so many problems; the degradation in the detail because the camera’s ISO is pushed too far beyond it’s limit, the softness in the focus, the lack of detail in the shadow, the editing.

Because it’s a JPEG file, I can’t really go back and try to salvage and edit it in a way that you could with a RAW file. So it will always be the way it is. Flaws and foundations and all.

Fifth Annual Exposure Photography Awards 2015

I’ve recently entered a competition.

I’ve only entered a few photography competitions since I started up properly again, and I realise I should try to enter more. It’s hard to put your work out there for judging, but it can also be a very worthwhile exercise.

So when I saw this Exposure Awards, I thought I would try and enter. It’s a big international photographic competition, divided into two categories (both of which you can enter).

THE EXPOSURE AWARD

• $15,000 cash grant
• Private photo reception at the Louvre Musem in Paris
• Global press and publicity,
• One weekend in Paris at the W Hotel
• Limited edition broadsheet of your work distributed at the Louvre event.
• The Exposure Award is granted by our jury panel.

and

THE VOX POPULI AWARD

• Free to enter!
• $1500 cash grant
• Earn votes and be part of the digital show at the Louvre Musem in Paris
• The Vox Populi Award is selected by public vote.
• Upgrade your entry at anytime to be eligable for the Exposure Award.

 

I thought if I was going to enter I would go all in – so I entered into both categories. For the Vox Populi Award, I needed to receive at least 100 votes and over 100 original comments.

 

 

I was completely and utterly blown away by how supportive everyone was of my work. At last look I have 1231 votes, and 223 comments with 9 hours to go. The comments were incredible and made me cry. I had no idea people felt that way about my photography. When you put your work out there, it often feels like it’s just being lost in a void and no one is really seeing it. To get that form of feedback was something I will never forget.

There were a couple of snags along the way. The Facebook comment system the site was using kept playing up, and on a few of the days I ended up with no comments on my page. It turned out to be a site-wide problem, and luckily the organisers were aware of it and had kept track of everyone’s comments! It wasn’t even the eligibility that worried me, it was the fact that I might have lost all the amazing things people had taken the time to write. I usually screencap things like that, to go back and read when I’m feeling low or feeling like giving up on my photography.

Then on the second last day, I found out that I was actually supposed to have model releases for everyone featured in my entry photos. That meant pretty much the entire Supernatural cast. This was entirely my own fault for not reading the fine print well enough, but now I had to work out how I was going to do it. I could either try, or I could remove most of my photos from the entry.

In the end – again I’m completely blown away by how lucky I am – I have ended up with almost everyone’s permission. I still can’t quite believe it!

There is 9 hours left of voting, my entry is here if you wish to take a look! https://stardustandmelancholy.see.me/exposure2015