I'm getting closer and closer to having a working photo blog. It's kind of exciting to see everything coming together. I was able to post a picture for my last "proper" blog post, as you can see... That's pretty exciting, too.
Still have some work to do, not the least of which is that I want to think of a more creative title for this blog than my freaking name. I have a love/hate relationship with my name. Sometimes I think it's cool, sometimes I think it's kind of lame.
I'm thinking about getting a flickr account, as a repository for the "lesser" of my photos. I'm thinking the photoblog will be a sort of gallery where I post my best stuff, and flickr would enable me to post photos of my family and stuff that is probably best seen only by my family and immediate friends. I'm pretty sure flickr allows you to password-protect certain directories, so it'd be cool to do that. Also, I haven't quite figured out commenting on the new photoblog...
I'm actually pretty self-conscious about publishing *any* of my photographs. When I was a kid I loved to draw, but I had quite a few bad experiences with art teachers in high school which pretty much turned me off to the "official" art world. As such I never really thought much of any artistic ability I had, and I pretty much neglected it. I have always loved things that are both technical and creative, and photography, like music, is both of those things. As I take more and more pictures, and really get to know the medium, I'm finding even more freedom than I really expected. I had a general idea of the "rule of thirds" and a fairly basic appreciation of color, but I'm finding it exceptionally challenging to try and capture what I find interesting about a scene. There's only one or two shots that I've taken -- out of thousands, I'm sure -- that really strike a chord in me.
It is a lot like music for me, in that certain aspects of photography are really awful and boring. If I hear one more screamo band I'll probably just punch a wall until my hands break. Similarly, pictures of flowers, portrait photography (other than some really weird fashion stuff), and most of the pictures I see on my coworkers' desks of their bright and talented and utterly boring kids almost make me lose faith that anyone can even appreciate what I'm trying to put across.
At the same time, I can listen to something off-the-wall, like old Oingo Boingo, and get inspired to write a fast punk anthem about soldiers in Iraq. I can look at a photo on Yahoo! News and see something that makes me try something different with my camera. The benefit of photography compared to music is that, in photography, at least with my digital SLR, the feedback is more or less instant. I can tell right away if a shot or sequence is going to work. With music, there's a long and often arduous process of recording, tweaking, developing, rewriting, and so forth that has to be done before you see a finished product -- if it even makes it that far. Much of it is dependent on your bandmembers' moods and your way of presenting it to them. Not that it's bad that way -- I love making music, don't get me wrong (and in particular, I love the band I'm in) -- it's just a different type of creativity.
I don't know. I'm just anxious to get the whole blog taken care of and get the photoblog off the ground. I have a ton of pictures to put out there.
