The last couple of weeks are exactly why I now find myself living in the Pacific Northwest.
Sort of.
So it's no secret that this region of the country has some of the most incredibly beautiful and inspiring fodder for landscape and nature lovers and overall wanderlusters.
If anything, the region is known for its copious amounts of water and incredibly liberal natural display of every shade of green known to man.
It's what I moved up here to explore and embed with.
Between the forests, the waterfalls, the rivers, the coastlines, the almost-religious focus on sustainability and conservation and nature-worship, and perhaps the world's most concentrated populations of tree-huggers on the planet (myself proudly and unapologetically included), it's enough to occupy infinite lifetimes of discovery.
What we didn't see coming (well actually we did) was…
And if you were living with the trauma of being been bit by numerous dogs as a child, you’d hate dogs too.
So when a friend’s friend asked if I wanted to dog and house-sit for her, my immediate internal reaction was ‘NO chance!’
Then she threw a curveball – a Google Images link for ‘Guanajuato.’ This triggered my self-diagnosed compulsive wanderlust disorder (and unreasonable addiction to tacos) and my fingers found themselves frantically replying "YES ME!"
So that was a super fun evening! The one, the only Trey Ratcliff from www.StuckInCustoms.com and TheArcanum.com fame made his Los Angeles stop of his TreyUSA photowalk tour across the U.S. last weekend. There were at least 300 photographers crawling the Santa Monica beach and pier area, all of us learning, laughing, and snapping away.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I just got back from a few weeks in Maine. The main purpose of the trip was to work on a video for Camp Skylemar, one of the most beautiful, efficiently run sleep away summer camps in the country. I’ll post much more about this insanely incredible experience once we’re done with the video in a few weeks, but this post is a quick focus on the 5 days after we were done. Since I had never been to Maine before, I tacked on some extra time at the end of the job to explore the State for a few days.
So this is a little uncharacteristic of me, but this time, I’m going to try to go easy on the words and let the images tell the story. Yosemite is just one of those places…the type that no matter who or what you are, will be affected by it. It’s simply impossible to turn that final curve on Highway 41 and exit that 1/4 mile tunnel 30 miles past Yosemite National Park’s South Entrance, without feeling like time slows down, at least for a split-second, to work out whether or not your eyes and senses have failed you as you try to come to grips with the sheer scale and beauty of the surreal valley that lies before you.
A client I’ve been doing some work with the past few months that you may have seen me post about here a few times, tattoo artist Jun Cha, had the opening gala for his new design/tattoo studio, Monarc Studios, last Thursday at The Well in Downtown Los Angeles. Whether you like body art or not, check him out, he’s insane: www.MonarcStudios.com. At the very least, I’m quite confident you’ll appreciate his work as an artist.
While there are definite similarities in regards to methods and approach when photographing any sort of real estate, there are also important differences to keep in mind, especially when photographing commercial real estate and properties. In the residential real estate realm, they tend to use the images for a few weeks or maybe months until the space is sold, but in commercial real estate, these images are used to sell the business for perhaps years and years, and they might live on a website for just as long, offering the potential client or customer a visual representation of the space.
So this is where it all got real. The experiences, the Networks, The Challenges. It’s all part of the process here in The Arcanum, but all of it, at first, seems a bit disconnected, another virtual forum, albeit a more positively engaging one sans the trolls and the, but, still,
I am now Wasim The Inspired!!
And with that, things immediately get a bit more serious.
So I was recently challenged by a fellow Samsung Imagelogger, the talented portrait photographer Jess Anderson, to take the Black & White Photography Challenge. Basically, I had to post 5 black and white images in 5 days. Anyone that knows me or my work knows that color plays an enormous role in the images I choose to make, so this was definitely a bit intimidating. In addition to a few of my favorites from those recent 5 days, what follows are 5 things I learned and experienced in my little black & white journey.
I can’t believe it’s been a full year since the last one. That photo contest that I was honored to place 2nd and 3rd in last year, the National Park Service sponsored “Spirit Of The Mountain” photo contest? Well, it’s back. I just submitted my two entries, the two you see above, "Family Time" and "Pole Position,” two images taken within the past 12 months in the Santa Monica Mountain Range.
So I’ve gone and done it…I’ve hitched a ride on the food cart of the Ello train to sample their wares. Here's how our honeymoon together, our first week, has gone so far. A friend sent me an invite, I logged on, I created a profile (as quick and easy as a username and a short description), and immediately was like, WTF? But then I noticed an actual WTF button on the page. I knew we had a future together.
he next few days in Big Sur were nothing short of magical. We woke up the following morning, our first in Big Sur, and figured the most logical thing to do would be to hit the beach. And, well, who are we to argue logic? The universe led us down the 3/4 or so mile hiking path from the campsite, through a covered canopy of trees that straddles the Big Sur River, all the way down to the quaint cove that makes up Andrew Molera State Beach. We spent several hours here sunning, swimming, playing, fighting off the seagulls that boldly flew off with half our food, and watching the surfers slowly but surely converge at Molera Point as they anticipated the swells from Hurricane Marie, the category 4 that had hit Baja California earlier that day, to come ashore any moment. And boy did they!
So after the kayak melee in Morro Bay, it was time for Stephen Chiang, the photographer I was assisting, and I to drive up north to San Francisco for the job the next morning. Put two photographers in a car, give them the choice between A. a straight and direct, but boring route, and B. a windy, curvy, 2-hours-longer scenic route through Big Sur, and, well, you can guess which one they’re going to choose 11 times out of 10. So up the curvy Pacific Coast Highway we went, absolutely one of the most beautiful and scenic drives in the country.
It began as a work trip. Well, sort of. I’m finding more and more and more these days I’ll fish for any excuse to leave Los Angeles...just the thought alone gets me excited. So when Stephen Chiang, a photographer friend that I occasionally assist mentioned he needed an assistant for a gig in San Francisco, I jumped at it. When he mentioned it would begin with a night of camping in Morro Bay State Park, and end with 4 nights of camping in Big Sur, that wasn’t just the icing on the cake, that WAS the cake.
So if you haven’t heard of it yet, you need to hear of it before yet. Like now. Right now. It’s the future of learning and education, it’s based on the master/apprentice model, it was created by Trey Ratcliff, and it's called The Arcanum.
The idea is simple…a master chooses an apprentice, and the apprentice learns the craft. The craft in this case is photography. The execution…is seemingly brilliant. Using today’s technologies - everything from real time screen sharing and VR on-location sharing - mixed with a structured and tiered leveling system, and you have yourself what could be a glimpse into the future of education.
So this one's going to be a little different. I recently had the insanely humbling experience of being a guest on the popular Improve Photography podcast with Jim Harmer. We recorded the show with the understanding that it could, or could not be, posted. Well, the team at ImprovePhotography.com were gracious enough to post it this week. The topic we discussed was '5 Photo Projects You Can Start And Finish In A Weekend,' and
So I fought it for a year. And I fought it hard. I didn’t want to rent it. I wanted to rightfully own it. The way I have for years. The way we all have for years. Why should I have to ‘rent’ the software I need for my work? Why can’t I buy it anymore? It made no sense. And it didn’t seem right. And it didn’t seem fair. So there was only one thing left to do. Rent the software. Yeah, that’s right, I did it. I made the switch to the Adobe Creative Cloud. And here’s why it finally just had to happen.
So this is what was supposed to happen. My landlord’s friend has a condo up in Mammoth. He wanted new pictures of it in order to prepare rental listings for the coming winter season. It hasn’t been rented in several months, so I figured this would be a good week to go. I got the green light from him, from the landlord, and off I went, driving along the Eastern Sierras of California…the ‘Range of Light.’ A relatively painless drive to spend a few days in a part of California I’ve never been to, take some pictures, get some writing and some work done in the solitude of the Sierra Nevadas for a few days, and then head back home. Well, let’s just say, that got derailed in a big way, spontaneously turning this into much more of an adventure than I expected.
Photographers bread and butter depends 100% on their camera and their camera gear, and the simple fact that this gear must be on our backs at all times, very often in sketchy situations and locations, lends to the necessity of insurance for their gear. There are many options for insurance tailored to photographers and creatives, so here are a few of those to check out:
