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Meine Weltanschauung
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This quarter, Columbus State got together with local camera retailer Midwest Photo Exchange and lens manufacturer Tamron for a special "class." This 2 credit class entailed spending the day at the Columbus Zoo shooting with a large selection of Tamron's lenses.
The lens is probably the most important piece of camera gear, these days. You can have the most expensive camera body available, but if you're using shitty glass, your images cannot come out sharp. Take it from me, I have learned this the hard way. Or better yet, go buy some cheap lenses on eBay and you will find out for yourself. Then start saving for the good stuff.
Since I shoot with a Nikon D700 body (which has a full frame sensor), I couldn't use any of Tamron's ultra-wide angle lenses. This was particularly disappointing to me, because I LOVE shooting really wide. I frequently use my Nikkor 18-55mm DX format lens (for smaller sensors) on my D700, which is fine as long as I don't zoom out wider than 24mm. Unfortunately, Tamron's Di format lenses (designed for smaller sensors) have heavy vignetting when mounted on a FF body, so that wasn't an option. So, I concentrated on Tamron's longer lenses.
All in all, I was not disappointed with Tamron's lenses. I shot wide-open, most of the time, which is where a lens is going to show it's weaknesses. I got rid of my Sigma lenses because they were soft wide-open. I did miss Vibration Control (Tamron's version of VR) on their 70-200mm. I do wish I could have compared the Tamron 70-200mm side-by-side with the Nikon, because that's my next big purchase.
View the rest of this set on Flickr.
Notes on images include what lens the image was made with. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| I think that my artist's statement helped give my project a little more direction, but the youth retreat the sisters held last night definitely reinforced it. A large part of my concept is showing the sisters as vibrant, enthusiastic advocates of their faith, and that's certainly what I saw. Even I was surprised at how animated they were, and how effectively they seemed to engage the teenagers at their retreat, as anyone who's ever worked with teenagers knows: they're a notoriously hard to motivate bunch. Sister Vianney even managed to get some of the young men dancing with the group. Have you ever seen a nun dance? I don't think I had before yesterday.
They took a break for dinner where I observed just how close the sisters have gotten to these people to whom they've come to minister. I was sitting next to two kids and Sister Maria Elena came by and spoke with both of them, in Spanish naturally. I asked one of them what she was talking to him about and he said she was asking about his father because he had to go to New York to work. I'd guess there were around 50 kids there, and the sisters seem to have gotten to know them all already, and not just in passing but personal details about what is going on in their lives, and they show interest in them.
View the rest of the set here.
View the rest of the project here. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Bring the Sisters to Columbus Artist’s Statement Joseph L. Harris My goal is to use photographs to tell the story of the sisters of the Missionary Servants of the Word and their ministry to the people of St. Stephen the Martyr Parish and Columbus, Ohio. The purpose of this goal is to give people insight into the reality of the sisters’ lives, dispelling Hollywood mythologies perpetrated by films such as The Sound of Music and Sister Act, which portray most nuns as stoic, strict, humorless and insulated from the community. My hope is that this project will generate not only support for the work of the Missionary Servants of the Word, but also interest in vocations from young American men and women. Traer a las Hermanas a Columbus Declaración del artista Joseph L. Harris Objetivo del artista es utilizar fotografías para contar la historia de las hermanas de las Siervas Misioneras de la Palabra y de su ministerio al pueblo de San Esteban Parroquia de los Mártires y Columbus, Ohio. El propósito de este objetivo es dar a la gente comprender la realidad de la vida de las hermanas, disipando de Hollywood mitologías perpetrados por películas como The Sound of Music y Sister Act, que representan la mayoría de las monjas como estoico, estricto, sin sentido del humor y aislado de la comunidad. Mi esperanza es que este proyecto va a generar no sólo el apoyo a la labor de los Siervos Misioneros de la Palabra, sino también los intereses de las vocaciones de los jóvenes hombres y mujeres. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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Come check me out at the CNote Art Show the weekend of the 25th of September at Junctionview Studios. Some of my abandoned places photos will be on sale there, printed on nice big 11x14" metallic paper. I'll have between 1 and 6 prints on display, unless they ask for more. They look really awesome! Everything is $100. Even if you can't buy anything, you can stand around in front of my photos talking to people about how amazing they are. :)
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The Greek Festival at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Columbus is one of my favorite festivals to attend. The weather is usually great, they have a huge space for performances, the Cathedral s gorgeous, and last but not least, all the food. This year, I was only free to attend on Monday, and Monday morning it was raining. Weather.com called for rain all day, but NBCi said it would clear up in the afternoon.
I headed down around 1PM and I am so glad that I did. When I got there, I had some Greek coffee (which, as far as I can tell, is exactly the same as Turkish coffee, but sold by Greeks) and loukoumades, crispy, warm Greek donut holes covered in honey and nuts. The two things at the Greek Festival that I go to shoot are the Cathedral and the dancers, so I alternated between them. Orthodox churches tend to be much more ornate than Western churches, with beautiful mosaics, icons and lots of gold. I love the candles in the narthex, the entrance to the church. Orthodox people light long, thin candles and stick them in the sand before entering the church Outside, they had three groups of dancers: the elementary school kids, middle school and ZOEE, high school & adults. Despite the generally flat, overcast, bland sky, I filled 4x4GB cards before I left and I'm reasonably happy with the images I came away with.
View the rest of the set on Flickr.
Prints are available for sale, as well as low-resolution files for computer wallpaper. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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Thursday I visited the sisters in the convent to shoot for the Columbus Diocese' newspaper, the Catholic Times. On Tuesday, they had contacted Father Buffer about interviewing the sisters for their Labor Day issue and they wanted photographs. Father gave them my phone number and told them about my work with the sisters. They called and asked if they could use some of my existing images, and asked if I could get a shot of the sisters with parishioners. I accompanied the CT writer to the convent on Thursday for his interview. Unfortunately, there weren't many people around that morning, so I made arrangements to come back on Sunday to photograph them after the Spanish mass, talking to people.
Thursday, I did get a chance to talk with Sister Reyna though (above), and she showed me some of her photographs. She asked me where my photos from Monday were, and when I told her that I didn't have them with me, she told me that next time I should bring them.
Sunday I attended the Spanish mass, where I was able to photograph Sister Vianney (below) with some of the parish' kids, and Sister Maria Elena (bottom) helping parents get their kids signed up for religious education on the last day of registration.
View the rest of the set from today here.
Or the complete series here. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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Yesterday was the first time I've had the chance to interact with the nuns. They've now been in Columbus for a week. At the airport, there were a bunch of people there, and a photographer from the Catholic Times, so I think I went reasonably unnoticed. At the convent, with the cleaning and the renovations being completed though, things were a little more... personal. For some reason, I hadn't expected them to be apprehensive about being photographed, but two of the four didn't want their pictures taken yesterday. One of them however, Sister Francisca, was more than happy to let me photograph her while she cleaned in the kitchen and chatted with people who had come by to lend a hand. Sister Francisca's English is reasonably good, and she loves to practice it. At the very least, it's good enough that we can figure out what she's trying to say.
I got there around noon. Since the Mother had declined to be photographed, I mostly concentrated on the parish volunteers, painting and sanding. At 2 o'clock the sisters took a break for lunch and walked across the street to the church/parish hall where some parishioners had been preparing a lunch of chicken, pork and rice with vegetables. I decided that I needed to put my camera away at this point, and establish more of a rapport with them. We ate, the four sisters, Father Buffer and Adrianna, who is in charge of the parish's Spanish Ministry. I quickly realized that I was the only person at the table who didn't speak Spanish. Sister Francisca kindly explained to me at a couple of points what they were talking about. But it was the first time that I'd been the only person incapable of participating, or even understanding the discussion. Even with the Germans, though I wouldn't have called myself 'fluent', I at least knew enough to sort of follow the conversation.
After lunch, I shared with the sisters the photographs that I'd taken at the Our Lady of Guadalupe procession in 2007, the fund raiser on Cinco de Mayo, the walk-through of their new home, the early renovations, and their arrival at the airport. They seemed to enjoy the photos, and warmed up to me a bit. Father said they would appreciate it if I would send some photos to their order's magazine for publication, 'gratis', a new Spanish word I learned. :) I assured them that this would be possible.
So the real work of the project is beginning, and more slowly than I'd expected. I had foreseen some difficulty from the language barrier, but I hadn't expected so much resistance to being photographed. Though, in retrospect, I should have anticipated their need to get to know me. I'm asking them to let me invade their privacy, for the purpose of documenting most aspects of their lives. I'm not discouraged, I think that I just need to be patient and not try to rush things. I've already learned a lot about this type of documentary photography, primarily that there's a lot more involved than just being there and trying to stay out of the way, and that it's sometimes necessary to build personal relationships with the subjects of our work.
View the rest of the photos from this day here.
And the entire project to this point here.
EDIT: Got a call from the Catholic Times and they're doing an issue focused on the hispanic community, with the new nuns as the lead and they want to run some of my photos from the project. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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With 10 days left until the four Sisters are due to arrive in Columbus, volunteers hurry to get their new home ready.
See the whole set. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| In 2007, I asked my sister (who is very plugged-in to all thing Catholic in Columbus) about the Hispanic tradition of the religious procession, specifically, if there was somewhere in Columbus that I could go experience one. Coincidentally, she knew just the place: St. Stephen the Martyr Catholic Church on Columbus' West side, where her friend Father Thomas Buffer is the pastor. St. Stephen Church has one of the larger Latin congregations in the Central Ohio area, with over 1000 people attending their weekly Spanish mass, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe was approaching, which is an important feast celebrating a miracle that acted as the catalyst for the conversion of the people of Latin America.
I made a wonderful, colorful series of images from the procession and the mass and party afterward.
( Wide formatted photos ) | | comments: Leave a comment |
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There's this tree in the middle of a field along Route 53, just North of Route 23. We've been driving past it on the way to and from Kristy's folks' house for years and I've always wanted to stop to photograph it.
View the rest of the set here. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I'm looking for an abandoned building within an hour or so of Columbus that is "institutional", so wide hallways with linoleum or tile floors. School, hospital, etc.
Thanks in advance for suggestions. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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ALSO yesterday (it was a busy day) I met up with Loreta at Inniswood Metro Park in Westerville for a portrait session. She's from Lithuania, a country that I didn't really know a lot about, so I had lots of questions about it and we had a great time talking, and made some wonderful images. I hope we can work together again soon!
View the rest of the set here. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So what is all this crap, and why should I bother reading this?
I'd never heard the term "social media" before about 8 months ago. All these people started following me on Twitter who were "Social Media Experts." Apparently, Social Media is the term used to describe social networking sites + things like Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, etc. Now, as with all online resources like this, it can be used for LOLCATZ or for business. At an ASMP meetup last night, there were some questions about Twitter and whether or not it's useful for a business. I'm going to try to explore this. I don't mean for this to come off as cold and impersonal. The people with whom I'm building relationships with on Twitter are my friends. Hopefully, this blog entry will not only tell you have to use Twitter to build your brand and increase your revenue, but also how to be a good member of this community. This information applies just as much for any casual interest as it does to your business. If you're not an entrepreneur, and you're into cars, follow car people. It all still applies.
Ok, so what's Twitter and how does it work?
At it's most basic level, Twitter is a platform to send and receive messages of 140 characters or less. You 'Follow' people, and they 'Follow' you back. When you 'Tweet', your 140 character message shows up for everyone that's following you. You can also send a 'Direct Message' to any of your followers. That's it, in a nutshell. It's so simple, and the simplicity (with a little imagination) is the basis for Twitter's tremendous power.
That sounds pretty simple, and lame. What's so cool about it?
First of all, Twitter is designed to be used via mobile devices. Any mobile phone that is on a carrier that supports short-codes (those 5 digit #'s to which you send text messages to vote for American Idol, or whatever) can be connected to Twitter. You can choose on a user by user basis whose tweets you want to receive on your mobile phone, or you can receive only direct messages that people send you. For smartphones like the iPhone or Blackberry, there are many options for Twitter clients. Applications that run on your phone that provide a more full feature set than is possible just interacting with Twitter through text messages.
This leads me to the second point, Twitter clients. There are tons of options for how you interact with Twitter. You can use the Twitter website, or you can use a Twitter client, an application for your phone or computer. On my desktop computer, I use Tweetdeck. It is designed to break data from Twitter up into more easy to process columns. I have a "Premium" column for people who I expect higher quality content from, an "All Friends" column for everyone else whose content I skim but may miss and a "Replies" column that shows any tweet from anyone on Twitter (whether I follow them or not) that includes '@jlh_photo', my Twitter name. You can also have a column for Direct Messages, but I also get an e-mail notification of those, so I save screen space by removing that column. EDIT (2009-06-26) : Tweetdeck is now also available for the iPhone.
Because the basis of Twitter is so simple, it's also set up to interact with as many other services as possible. Lots of platforms like Facebook have a "status update" that can be linked to your Tweets. So when I tweet, it updated LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, and a bunch of other places that I don't even remember. I've been unable to get my MySpace status sync'd with Twitter.
There are many web-based tools for Twitter as well, to help you stay organized, to help notify your followers about new posts on Flickr or your Blog, to help you find new people who share your interests to follow.
- tweetwhatyoueat.com allows you to send DM's to their account, @twye, whenever you eat something. It tracks what you eat, and you can add calorie or WeightWatchers point values to help with your diet.
- tweetwhatyouspend.com is similar, but for money (naturally).
- loudtwitter.com will take all your tweets once a day and post them all together to your blog on LiveJournal or any number of other platforms.
- twitterfeed.com will watch RSS feeds, and send a tweet when it detects a new post on your Blog, news feed, Flickr, or anything else that uses RSS.
- twitterfone.com give you a phone number that you can call to tweet, or listen to your followers tweets.
- twitpic.com gives you an email address to which you send an image, and it tweets a shortened link to it (primarily useful for tweeting cameraphone photos.)
- tr.im, bit.ly and many other URL shortening services will take your long link to something you think your followers might want to read and shorten it to the smallest possible size to save those 140 characters for an explanation of why people should follow the link.
- There's also a Greasemonkey script that you can use to quickly tweet articles from Google Reader, I use this A LOT, and my followers appreciate the articles I share.
These are just a few of the third party services available to build on Twitter's powerful basic service. Some of them like @twye and @twys are very specific, but really how you use these is only limited by your creativity.
Why would I want to use any of this?
There are disagreements about how to "do" Social Media right. I'm just going to give you my ideas on that. You use Twitter to build relationships with people. As offline, your professional relationships can be divided into two primary groups. (Potential) Clients and Colleagues. Colleagues are others in your field (I follow many photographers all over the world) with whom you can exchange news or seek and provide advice. Everyone else are potential clients. I consider marketing on Twitter to be precarious. I try to get my name into people's heads so when they need a photographer, they think of me first. Of course, the trick is to do this without being spammy ("Hey, I saw you tweeted that you are engaged! Got a photographer yet?"). This approach has paid off repeatedly since I've begun using Twitter.
So we know HOW to tweet. Tools to do more with Twitter than just tweet. And the kinds of people we want to tweet with. Now, how do we find these people?
search.twitter.com is a powerful Twitter search engine. Wedding photographer in Portland, Oregon? Search for 'engaged' and put in your zip code with a radius of 50 miles. Now you'll see any tweet with the word engaged, in that area. And there's an RSS feed for it, so you can subscribe in Google Reader and get these new tweets all the time. Follow these folks, they're potential clients. Don't bug them, just try to tweet things that will be useful to them. Local news, stuff about wedding planning, sales on wedding stuff. If you do it right, when they're ready to look for a photographer, they will check your website first.
There are blog posts a-plenty with lists of photographers that are worth following on an International level. This should be pretty self-explanatory, how to interact with colleagues. Tweet news about new cameras, sales on gear, new software you've tried out. Follow local colleagues (search.twitter.com) and trade info on local services. Renting a studio space? Check with your local photogs for feedback on the value of your various options. Size, cleanliness, quality and selection of gear. You get the idea.
A question that was asked last night was how often you use Twitter. This is not a simple question, because Twitter's not something that you sit down in front of and use exclusively. Twitter is something to use on the side, while you're doing something else (like reading Google Reader). I'm going to use tweetstats.com to try to analyze how much I tweet. Just over 57% of my tweets are "replies". That underscores the need for Twitter to be a two-way medium in order to build relationships. When someone tweets something, respond to them. When someone responds to you, engage them. My daily average is 38 tweets. Of those, about 21 are replies to someone else. The rest are going to be links to articles, links to my blog posts, links to my photos on Flickr. Ways to get people to look at my work to build my brand in their minds, or to help other photographers or ask them for help.
Keep an eye on the conversations from people you're following. You'll find other people to follow, pretty soon you'll have a decent sized network. If it starts to feel overwhelming, look into other Twitter clients like Tweetdeck.
If you "do social media right" then you will begin to represent your industry in the minds of the people that are following you, and when they need someone who does what you do (or even better, when someone they know needs you) they will go to your Twitter profile and click on the link to your website. Then your portfolio takes over with the added benefit that the potential client already has a relationship with you. You should know what to do from there!
Of course, none of this means you can't tweet the occasional video of a cat playing piano, or information about how delicious your lunch was. What you're tweeting reflects you and your personality. If all you do is tweet silly videos and banal details of your day, then you probably won't be very successful. It's no different than interacting with people personally.
One last tip: Make sure you upload an avatar image, preferably of yourself or your logo, and fill out the bio with pertinent information about yourself. This will make you more likely to get people to follow you back when you follow them.
EDIT (2009-06-26) I lied, another last tip: I've found it works better to follow back everyone who follows you, and then unfollow them if they are spammers or are irritating for whatever reason. Socialtoo.com is one service that will auto-follow anyone that follows you.
So if I've managed to convince you of the potential of Twitter, go ahead and sign up an account and try it out for yourself. And give me a follow.
I'd love to hear any feedback on this post. Leave a comment. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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Meine Weltanschauung
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ghandiavelli's journal
