Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

After the photo shoot Sunday morning, after seeing the images, the story they tell of my friend and his pup, I'm beginning to understand the direction I want to take with the photography. I want to capture the stories. I don't want to just have the dog sit, or lay down, or run towards the camera, or jump a log. Those are fine and all, but they don't tell a story.  Life is stories. We all live multiple stories every day. And the story we live with our dog or dogs is special. Those are the stories I want to capture. Now I just need to figure out how to make this happen. I'm not a salesperson by any stretch of the imagination. Trying to sell anything makes me sick to my stomach.  But the stories need to be told.

A few months ago, I decided it's time to pursue my love of photography, specifically doing dog shoots. I had left Facebook for a variety of reasons, but in wanting to bring in clients, I knew I had to return and make a page just about dog photography. For better or worse, a Facebook page does reach a lot of people. So my new Facebook page is up and running: Bark & Soul Dog Photography.  Because I don't have a lot of friends on Facebook, with my decision to leave the platform and be gone for awhile, I found I wasn't getting the reach I really need. Enter my best friend, who shared my page with her hundreds of friends, and just from her, I tallied up nearly 100 followers in a day. Since then, the followers have been few and far between. I'm now standing at 112, which isn't great by any means, but it's a start. Even with people becoming a follower, I have yet to secure a shoot. I've had inquiries into what I charge, then crickets. I've done a couple of ...

I've been working on getting my darkroom up and running for three years. Actually longer if you consider the year I bought the enlarger and had it sit in the garage attic. More like fifteen years. When I brought the enlarger home and set it up in the basement of the house I was then living in, it wasn't going to work because I couldn't raise the enlarger far enough up to focus the image onto the paper. Hence why the enlarger went into the garage attic.  Fast forward twelve years and me buying my adorable little house in a little village out in the middle of corn and soy bean fields. This house has a lovely basement. I started my darkroom the summer of 2020, getting everything in place except for making the room light tight. I turned my attention to other things, leaving the darkroom to sit until this summer. This summer I returned to that social media platform I'd left five years ago. Five years of not knowing what others were doing. Five years of learning that it's...

I'm taking two grad classes this semester. A better idea would have been to take one, but hey, when I decide to do something I figure jump in all the way.  So far, I'm staying afloat. Barely. Teaching five composition classes and being a part of "develop a new course" group is a lot. And then there's Teddie on top of all this. Teddie the sweetie. Teddie the needy. Teddie the terrible (but just every now and then, never all the time, thank goodness). I haven't been this busy in my life since the kids lived at home and were involved in their activities. I'd gotten used to the slowing down, the free time to do absolutely nothing.  Now, if I don't put what needs to be completed on the calendar, it doesn't get remembered or completed.  But I'm afloat.  One goal I am determined to achieve is get the darkroom done. DONE! It's been three years in the making, with nearly everything I need to develop the first roll of film, but I've dragged my fe...

After five dog photography shoots, I'm beginning to understand the direction I'm wanting to go.  The dog with its human. I enjoy shooting just the dog, and some dogs are more interesting than other dogs, but the connection between the dog and its human has that something I really want to capture. I don't believe this connection can come from posing the subjects. It happens in between the posing, so I'm constantly pressing the shutter button in hopes of capturing "the moment." I've not been successful with a couple of the shoots, but I have managed to get one or two "moments" that speak to me. And as I write this, this thought occurred to me: Should it matter if any given photo speaks to me? If the photos are really for the owners, shouldn't I shoot with the intention of getting images that speak to them? Is is possible to accomplish both?   I find it interesting, too, which photos the owners prefer. Their choice is often different than my cho...

I had dinner with friends last evening. In their screened-in patio overlooking a wooded backyard leading to a creek. The air cooled significantly as the sky darkened, and at one moment we all enjoyed watching an owl that had taken perch on a tree limb near the creek. While a movie played, we chatted and ate ice pops. I'm pretty sure mine was grapefruit. At least that's what I'm going with.  Not long after the movie ended, I made my way home, which wasn't far. Just a couple of blocks. Cicada, cricket, and frog song drifted on the cool air, and when I looked up, I saw a clear sky full of stars. We've not had a clear night in some time. I stopped in the middle of the street to take in the scene. When I finally arrived home I decided to try and get some night sky photos, something I've never done before. I had no idea what I was doing. I spent twenty minutes or so on the front porch, swaying in my hammock swing as I read an article about astrophotography. What lens ...

I picked up my first camera when I was around nine years old. I started photographing old barns and houses. Silos. Even as a kid, I loved the stories surrounding these structures that were in disrepair, falling down, abandoned. At the time I didn't know how to bring out the best in what I was seeing. Just somehow, I knew there was something there. Fast forward to college. I decided to minor in photography, and it was through these classes that I was able to bring out the best in what I saw through the viewfinder. The photo that truly showed me I have "a good eye" happened during a class trip to Chicago, to the Art Institute. After our tour, we gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Institute. To one side there is a park-like area with seating, trees, and flowers. It was springtime, so the trees were just leafing out. I turned to watch the people and noticed two men sitting on separate benches underneath the trees. One man, a white man, was looking straight ahead. The ot...

Recently I've been sharing some of my photos with friends. One friend emailed me privately, asking if I had at one time studied photography or worked as a photographer because I "have a good eye." I truly appreciated my friend's kind words, and as I mulled them over, I was taken back to my time as an undergrad, when I was studying photography. I loved everything about working with film. Not long into my first black and white photography class, the TA wandered in while I was working one evening. I had just developed an image of a wind chime that hung on the front porch of my parents' old farmhouse. I had achieved a nice range of tones with the image and the TA remarked about this. I was really pleased I was understanding how to work my camera as well as the enlarger and chemicals. I spent hours in that darkroom, determined to learn as much as possible about black and white photography. The professor of the class showed up for the lecture portion but left the lab co...