8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Category: Jubilant July

Chapter List

  • Monochrome Me

    A month into a photo project that is forcing me to post more black and white photography left me pondering an important question about the niche: what is so great about monochromatic images?

    I tried to wing this to the camera. I turned the camera on my own face (to practice some of that voice work on camera thing I’ve been doing) and attempted to talk about light and shadow and tonality and contrasting subjects, all of it in a meaningful way that didn’t make me sound like a tourist explaining that this thousand year old monument was neat-o, huh?

    It occurred to me half way through filming that while, yeah, I love the vibe of black and white photography, what has been captivating me about it as a photographer lately is that it is a kind of simple constraint.

    As I wander through my fourth decade of photographic hobbyism I find myself wrestling with a paradox: I could go buy more expensive equipment, travel to interesting places, and photograph amazing sights with pixel perfect clarity—like everyone else.

    Or I can find a voice of my own.

    I can try to stand out for my own style.

    Try to tell my own story.

    Try to to turn the camera into something more than a photocopier for the instagram top ten list of popular photo subjects and instead shape it into a mirror for me.

    And it isn’t (just) about the black and white.

    No.

    Rather, it’s about shaping the experience with the camera, locking in the effort to a set theme, or sticking with a single lens for a span of time, or putting the camera into monochrome mode and… and… AND… finding constraints that challenge me to break out of the perfectionism trap.

  • Selfie Guy

    I took a walk with my new camera.

    I wrote about this about a week ago, having just bought a new action camera (an upgrade from the three similar models I’ve owned over the last decade and a half) I decided to give my vocal chops a test drive.

    So, I took a walk with my new camera. And the dog. And the rain. And a glowing mindset of finding a quiet place to make a selfie-video.

    I’m not sure if that’s the right term. I spun the camera around to face myself and tried to do some vocal word-craft based on a fifty word point form script I put together on my phone, doing my darnedest to record a coherent vlog-like video and do something I’ve never really done before: spin the camera around and put my face in the lens and not the viewfinder.

    A runner ran by once and gave me a sidelong glance.

    The path emerged from the woods alongside a freeway exit ramp and at least half a dozen guys each in their F150s turned their heads ninety degrees to offer a lingering stare at the dude and his selfie-stick so obviously talking to the camera.

    It’s a vulnerable thing this: becoming the performer in a one man production crew in your own neighbourhood when you’ve never done this sort of thing.

    I had been planning to make a whole series about this effort, but the time commitments of recording one of these every week, editing them, and then trying to write knowledgeably on the effort punched me in the face harder than if one of those truck dudes had pulled off to the side of the road to do it for me.

    Expertise is earned. I get that. But I think I may need to force this effort a little less.

  • Canada Day-ish

    Being Canadian means our annual celebration of national pride falls on the exact-ish half way point of the year. Where New Years Day is the first day of the year, Canada Day, July 1st, is on the first day of the second half of the year.

    This year also happens to be the day when I mark the exact six month anniversary of this writing project. It’s been half a year of daily-ish blog posts.

    What that means for the site is that after six months of working on this project, I have accumulated one hundred and twenty-seven (plus this one) posts on some meandering thoughts on creativity and pursuing a creative-ish life.

    Routine can lead to profoundly interesting things. Iteration of effort, keeping at something through incremental addition and improvements can break through the overwhelming perception of size and complexity and spark a kind of driving force that can make anyone successful-ish.

    Readers may have already noted that I am an evangelist-ish for the the incrementalism of things.  Doing a little bit each day can simply get the work done.

    And on a day like this, when I’ve crossed yet another milestone and keep going, posting the next post and the next and knowing that there are likely a few more in the queue even as you are reading these words, is the best I can do to show by example of what twenty minutes of writing per day can accomplish-ish.