My Humble Abode

Why? Well... there's not been anything new in a while -- a long while -- so add that in with my being unsure of what I'd typed, an upcoming job search, and my continued thoughts of turning the blog off, and you'll wind up with where I am today: hide almost every post category too all except "trusted readers" (what I called the security level of user account a heckuva long time ago when I created it -- there's currently no one at that security level, because my account is the only account on my blog.  (Thus part of why I've been considering deep-sixing this blog.)

What is this decision going to mean for the "MyHumbleAbode.com" domain?  Well... For starters, I'm NOT interested in selling it, so don't bother asking.

Secondly, I'll probably wind up leaving this blog up -- and in it's current form -- for a little while as I try and decide what to do.  But I might just decide to drop it back to a single "landing page"... dunno yet.

Whatever I decide to do, it's going to be a few days before I really have it thought through thoroughly.

One thought that I had, ever so briefly, was to switch "My Humble Abode" over to being a division of Jon Warren Photography, but I've been basically talked out of splitting my photographic work into different sections for the time being.

I think what I should probably do, is to make My Humble Abode more focused -- wait, I think I've been told that before.  lol  The problem with doing that is that I'm not sure on what to focus.  Part of me thinks that I should have an online presence for my Programmer Side, but part of me also thinks that I should have some sort of online presence that is purely for close friends and family.

Time will tell...

Stay tuned.

I've been bad.  I've been writing posts via email, but forgetting to log in and actually publish them.  So I just did that with a bunch.  I left the orig date/time alone... sorry.  That means they're buried.

If you've spent any large amount of time in a photography club or hanging out on photography-related web sites, you've no doubt ran across someone saying "Thanks for sharing" in regards to a photograph and directed at that photo's creator.  The use of the term "sharing" has bugged me for a while, but I've not been able to put my finger on why it did until I looked up the definition today.  (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sharing)

Sharing basically implies a whole or partial transfer of ownership of the object being shared.

That is not what is happening when a photographer shows a photo either in person or by including that photo in an online gallery.  Now, had the photographer said "go ahead and download and use my image as you like for whatever you need" then (and only then) would it truly be "sharing".

The proper term, in my humble opinion, is "showing".  As in: "Thanks for showing".  (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/showing)

Showing does not imply any transfer of ownership of the object.
 

I don't care how well composed or how technically good a photo may be if the subject is unappealing.

I think that might be why some people have problems with nude photos.

To me any photo of a guy with his shirt off or trying to look sexy is bad.  Regardless of skill of photographer.  The subject is unappealing and therefore the photograph itself is unappealing.

(replacing "unappealing" with "obscene" or "revolting" also works)

Just my 2-cents worth.

Men should be shown as men and men are NOT sex objects.  Our bodies are disgusting utilitarian objects better suited for work than idolized as a work of art.

If you are a so-called "male model" then you cannot pay me enough to photograph you nude, partially nude, or even clothed.  Sorry.  I am drawing the line in the sand and focusing (both figuratively and literally with my camera) ONLY on photographing the female form.

Male musicians or businessmen are fine -- as long as you are just wanting a fairly straight forward shoot and not wanting something "sexy".  You want that, look elsewhere.  There are plenty of other photographers that don't mind those type of shots.

I'm sitting here taking a break from culling through shots from a shoot and it dawned on me that this part of photography -- the image culling part -- is extremely negative.  Sure, the outcome is that I'll wind up with a few stunning shots, but the means upon which that outcome is achieved is filled with negativity (bad expression, wrong pose, bad lighting, caught a blink, bad angle, etc. etc. etc.) which results in a heckuva lot of the shots being deleted.  Deleting is a destructive process, thus the post title.    Oh and then there's the rest of the post-processing that is really more about removing bad/unwanted stuff from the shot than adding/creating good stuff (cropping, removing blemishes, smoothing skin, etc. etc. etc.)

What's "constructive" about the whole photographic process?  Let's look.  There's the whole set-up for the shoot (picking a background/location, setting up the lights, choosing a shooting angle, choosing an outfit, doing the hair, make-up, etc. etc. etc.

So.  Um.  Which is more prevalant?  I'm sorry to say that to me, right now, at this moment, looking at the whole process, photography certainly looks to more of a "destructive" (or "negative") process than the opposite.  What's your thoughts?

Please, if you ever have to give a presentation of your photographs to a group, refrain from using the phrase "I thought it looked pretty cool" or some variation thereof.  This is the same whether that "group" is a large group of other photographers, just one or two members of your family, or anyplace in between.  Why?

1. It doesn't make you sound professional or knowledgeable.
2. It goes without saying that you thought it looked cool, if you didn't think it looked cool then you wouldn't have included it in the presentation.  Right?
3. It's annoying.
4. It's an easy way to get the listener to "tune out".
5. It shows that you didn't really prepare for the presentation and were just adding "filler" photos which had gone unshown would have improved your presentation.

I've recently sat through two meetings that started to feel as if I was stuck looking at that stereotypical uncle's vacation photos rather than an informative photographic presentation -- that phrase (or some variation thereof) was used ad nauseam in the first and only mildly annoyingly in the second.  However, both of those presentations would have been better had the number of photographs been reduced by third to a half and had the presenter not used phrases similar to "I thought it looked pretty cool."

I have just published new policies regarding rescheduling and cancellations of shoots.  Here's a few notes as to why I felt the need to enact such policies.

I've had several shoots scheduled that never actually happened either because of one excuse or another (validity of excuse does not change the fact that it is an excuse) or because the person simply didn't show.  I've been sloughing those times off... well... I've been trying to slough those off.  But this last one must've been the proverbial straw that broke [this] camel's back.

I have (maybe it'll change, but I don't know how) so few shoots and I realistically only have two days each week in which to do shoots that any cancellations are annoying.  I know.  I know.  S*** happens.  Yeah, well, I've never had a boss that took kindly to the whole not showing up at all bit.  Sure, they've pretty much all allowed a day here or there for being sick or needing to have work done on the car or the house.  That said.  If I had a one or two day contract (oh wait, I've had those) and I decided that I wasn't going to be there for whatever reason, I'm pretty sure that I'd never be allowed back the next day at that client's office and I'm pretty sure that the contracting firm that set up the contract would drop me immediately and never set up anything else.  Even still.  In this town -- as small as it is in some industries -- I'm pretty sure that word would get around pretty darn quick that I did that and I'd be needing to move out of town in order to find employment.

So.  That brings us to my new policies.  Hey.  Look at it this way.  That whole 24-hour minimum notice bit is generous.  I was recently talking with another photographer in town that requires a minimum of 48-hours notice and I'm pretty sure (although where escapes me right now) that I've read/heard of a one week minimum notice.

If this winds up meaning that I'll be shooting less models in the area, then so be it.  I put too much into prepping for a shoot to be the "nice guy" "push over" that I've been any longer.  This is not a hobby for me.  I am trying to start a business here, so it's about time that I started treating things of this nature as a business.

Update: I've added policies addressing several other topics that have either been a result of my first-hand experience or my learning from other photographers' problems.  I figured that since I was in there typing up some policies, I might as well finish the job and do them all... well, all that I could think of at this time.

I've moved a few things around on my site(s) with regards to my blog "My Humble Abode".

• (On JonWarrenPhotography.com) Removed the ability to view my blog "in-line" on that site, using that site's formatting.  This might be temporary, but I've kinda gotten tired of having to tweak a few different stylesheets whenever I want to make a small change.
• (On MyHumbleAbode.com) Moved the search form from the sidebar on the right to the header.  This freed up some space and (I think) made the site look "cleaner".
• (On MyHumbleAbode.com) Added a link (via logo) to my photography site "Jon Warren Photography".  I wasn't really "advertising myself" on my own site, which wasn't making sense to me -- now I am.
• (On MyHumbleAbode.com) Added (or, rather, re-added) a random image from my photographic work.
• (On MyHumbleAbode.com) Added a page that contains all quotes that are randomly displayed in the upper right corner of the site.  (At least it's all now, if I add some I'll now have to remember to update this page.)
• (On MyHumbleAbode.com) Removed the page of "thumbnails" that were really just a multi-columned listing of all the posts.  I'd never liked the use of the term "thumbnail" to describe what that page was, but didn't feel like modifying the plugin code to change it.
• (On MyHumbleAbode.com) Made a few minor tweaks to the widths and positioning of things -- mostly sidebar related and possibly not even noteworthy.
• (On MyHumbleAbode.com) Made a few minor tweaks to the colors of the menu items to help it out by visually separating sub-menu items.
• (On MyHumbleAbode.com) Finished adding descriptions to all of the post categories (viewable when visiting a category directly or by "hovering" over the category in the menu).

I have decided to de-activate my Facebook account.  That site (in my humble opinion) sucks!  I struggled (and as such got frustrated) with the site's navigation and inability to actually find people.  I don't want to have to fish thru pages of search results to find someone.  Plus the whole concept of letting the world know when you do any little thing on the site (or being told when any of my "friends" do any little thing) is completely pointless and annoying that I have to go manually turn off those notifications for any new feature that they add.  I am on networking sites (like MySpace) to help network with people in an effort to start my photography career.  That's pretty much it.  Sure, getting in touch with friends from the past is cool, but it's not the reason that I'm on those sites -- that's a secondary benefit and as such I find any site (like Facebook) that insists that is the only reason why you'd want to be on a networking site completely useless and a waste of my time.

And once again the very wide-spread documented occurrances of Microsoft's ineptness when it comes to implementing a browser that follows published standards has bitten me in the ass and pissed me off.  If I only had a dollar for every time that's happend...

This time I'd taken a look at the HTML Entities and decided to use the "upwards double arrow" character to indicate that a menu item was going to go to another site (the entity is ⇑ and should basically look like ↑ "↑" but have two "tails").  Works just fine in Firefox.  Well.  I'm at work and was wanting to use a similar character only pointing left or right for a particular need.  Work's standard is to use IE.  Yep.  You guessed it.  It didn't show up.  It's in the font that I'm using.  WTF!

Sigh.  I'll just have to settle -- something that I shouldn't have to do -- with the "upwards arrow" (the one with the single "tail").