SoFoBoMo – 2008

While I was in China, I did see the notice that SoPoBoMo (aka Solo Photo Book Month) was formerly announced and launched. I see a lot of familiar names in the list of willing participants, including Anita Jesse, Guy Yates, Colin Jago, Paul Lester, Rosie Perera, Kjell Andersen, Matt Alofs, Martin Doonan and of course Mr. Paul Butzi himself. Yeah team!!

I had an opportunity to start thinking about this the week before I left, but I was just not sure of my actual time line of which 31 days and what my book would be about. Thus while photographing in China, it did dawn on me that I seem to be a location oriented landscape guy, so work with it. hmmmmm. So I came up with four or five Southern California icon locations that would be easily accessible to me; Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach and Dana Pt. and perhaps San Clemente. I am now working on the pros and cons for each of these, but at the moment, my node is going towards Newport Beach’s strand.

And I had also thought about shooting film for this project, but I realize that I need at least a 50mm lens for the Hasselblad and that I could probably do the shoot on a long weekend. But it’s going to take me about two to maybe three weeks for the film scanning for the limited amount of time I have available. It takes me about 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 hours per negative scan with my Nikon film scanner and I would be scanning 40 to 50 images to get to the final 35 images. Not much time to tweak the images after that.

So that takes me to the DSLR again. This might be a good excuse to rent a little something nicer if I can do the bulk of the entire shoot on a weekend and then use the following couple of weekends to make any necessary adjustments with my XTi. And that would improve the workflow to make the necessary image tweaks because knowing me, I will need the time, as I am a major tweaker. errrr?? Oh, never mind.

Well, you can bet, I will be adding more thoughts to this as the time rolls on,

Best regards, Doug

BTW, this image was made during the Chinese blizzard when we were stuck on the tollroad between Jiashan and Shanghai and since this is almost monochomatic, not sure if it will be converted with my black & white mojo or stay in color.

Updated note: Per the suggestion of Paul Butzi, I have added a category called SoPoBoMo to keep track of my posts that follow the development of my book project, and I will be adding these updates to my book category as well.

More changes

One of the nice things about 13 hours of flying, you have more than enough time to reflect. And I have accepted that with my blog, that I am going to share those thoughts.  Kinda of getting comfortable with my own skin sorta thing.

From time to time, I create color images from my color photographs.  Huh? Yes, most of the time, I create black & white images from my color photographs, a Photoshop thing. I do enjoy the huge amount of flexibility that I have with black & white, and that may predominately define my work, but it is not entirely how I see a final image. Sometimes color works and I am thinking that one of my series from China may be entirely in color.  As a creative person, I would prefer the choice of medium be determined by the work and not forced into arbitrary style buckets. Where there may be a the sticky wicket is with the decision to mix color and black & white images together in the same series. I think that there is now a greater openness to a mixed image body of work.

I guess we’ll see.

Best regards, Doug

Shanghai – Jiashan – Pinghu – Xitang

My third trip to China took me into Shanghai, then South to Jiashan, Pinghu and a side trip to Xitang. For the most part of the three weeks, I was staying at a hotel (World Expo hotel, not recommended) in Jiashan and working in Pinghu, getting to the lake at Pinghu only once for a late evening dinner with a very large group. I did get back to Shanghai for one weekend and had the delightful opportunity to get to the Shanghai art & photo gallery district, M50. For a quick overview of my impressions, you can find my thoughts that Miguel posted on his blog, Exposure Compensation, for me. Miguel also posted my frustration with the Chinese Blogger Red Guard, as well. Thanks to Miguel for allowing me to be his guest blogger.

This trip concludes the three loosely planned visits over nine months and I racked up a total of 36-1/2 Gigs of images, for a total of approximately 3,450 images, and due to file storage limitations, I had edited out about 25% more.

My first week in China last year, I was kinda of overwhelmed, so it was more of an orientation trip, but in a good way. The second trip for the two weeks, I was beginning to open up to the possibilities and starting to look more at what was there. This third trip, over almost three weeks, everything started to jell and I saw photographic possibilities everywhere! I now have working themes for five series coming out of this experience, which I hope to share shortly. As you might suspect, the photo with this post will be part of one of the series;- )

I also had some frustrations with equipment, especially with the lousily cold weather performance of my Canon Rebel XTi. I will write about that shortly as well. Right now I am just trying to get a little organized, very jet lagged and my baggage is still en route from Hong Kong. As you probably heard, China is having one heck of a blizzard, just as the Luna New Year approaches, which for us in the USA, is like a combination of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all rolled into one. A LOT of people are trying to get home for the holidays, and we almost did not get the plane out of Shanghai airport yesterday. Thus with a tight connection in Hong Kong, I made the flight and my bag did not, the second time that this occurred. So I am thankful to be here at home even if my luggage is not.

Best regards, Doug

Back in the USA

Just a quick note that I have returned from my recent three weeks in China, where they have a blog block, but never the less, I did take some photographs. More about all of that in the coming days, but it is nice to be home!

Best regards, Doug