All Is Full Of Love

All is full of love by Bjork has been in my head for a couple of days now. I don’t really know why, since I haven’t listened to it in a while. I think it was a reminder to be aware of all the love around me. Not just from people, but also in nature. 

On yesterday’s hike to some waterfalls, I spotted this fleeting heart. I say fleeting because the leaf below the snow only looked like a heart because of how the snow was melting. It stopped me in my tracks, because it felt like it was meant for me to find. I’m sure I’m not the only weirdo that has those experiences haha.

At any rate, I found love in CT this past week. Love from wonderful friends and love from nature. Both have rejuvenated my spirit ❤. I hope today you will remember that love is all around you. 

Here are the Bjork lyrics and song if you’re interested. 

You’ll be given love

You’ll be taken care of

You’ll be given love

You have to trust it
Maybe not from the sources

You have poured yours

Maybe not from the directions

You are staring at
Twist your head around

It’s all around you

All is full of love

All around you
All is full of love

You just ain’t receiving

All is full of love

Your phone is off the hook

All is full of love

Your doors are all shut

All is full of love!

The video

Happy Feb 14th

A flower falls, even though we love it. 

-Dogen

I hate to be that guy, but I’ve never been a fan of this holiday. Probably because I spent too many of them alone. Shrug. 

I’ll probably be spending the day eating junk food and doing something artsy to express myself. 

I hope you have someone special to share it with. Don’t forget to spread the love and let your single friends know you love and appreciate them too. 

This hyacinth was shot with ProShot and edited with Snapseed and iColorama. Then I used artista Impresso for the painterly look. 

Dapper Pony

I went for a walk around the farm, while it was snowing, the other day. I thought I was going to shoot the fresh snow on the trees, but some areas were too icy to risk walking through. Instead, my girlfriend and I took photos of some of the 40 horses on the farm. This was one of my favorite outfits.

Shot with ProShot using an Iphone 7. Edited with Snapseed, Mextures, and VSCO.

Upgraded To The 7

Deeeeeep sigh.

Somehow life got in the way of this blog, and creativity in general.

Work. Relationship. Exploring. Work. And did I mention work?

My life has been much busier in Maine than it ever was on the west coast. Thats probably a good thing, but its gotten in the way of my creative time. I have quite the backlog of Nikon images, which made me want to stop shooting for a while. I even stopped doing much with my iPhone 5s. Honestly, cutting back on the iPhone was more about it being on its last legs. The battery was barely hanging on by a thread. The colder weather here was draining it within minutes 😦

Luckily, there was a great deal that popped up at the right time, and I got myself the iPhone 7, which I never intended to get. What a huge jump in technology it is from the 5s to the 7. I’m loving the camera and the video, along with the processing speed. I feel a renewed sense of wonder with my phone and I can’t wait to see what creative things I do with it 🙂

Here are a couple of images from my first time taking it out to play.

The light was pretty cool. I only wish you could also see the snow falling in the light as the wind knocked it down from the trees.

This is what passes for a trail in Maine…

On The Inside

Its whats on the inside that counts. The outside of this house, and the lot, both looked cool. You’d never would have guessed there was turmoil on the inside.

I checked out several vacant homes this weekend. This old doctor’s house was the most interesting. It was big and the layout was cool. For whatever reason, its just sitting in decay now. Its not even for sale. Its a shame too because the lot is awesome.

Shot with the default camera app. Edited with Snapseed and Mextures.

Come On In, Everything Else Has Gone Wrong

There is a 2nd house down the road that looks vacant. When I opened the screen door to look inside, there was a sign with some peeling wallpaper covering part of it. I wanted to see what it said, so I lifted the wallpaper up.

“Come on in, everything else has gone wrong”

And that summed up the vibe of this place. I walked right back out. What I did see in that room was chaos. There were old car batteries strewn about, and piles of garbage. I’d love to explore this place some more, but the musty smell and the unwelcoming vibe make me hesitant.

I find these abandoned properties in Maine to be super interesting. They’re like museums for the people that used to live there. You can try to piece together a picture of who they were, or are, by finding interesting things in each room.

If I find enough of these properties to shoot, I can definitely see myself putting together a story for Stellar. Btw, are any of you using Stellar? I haven’t really been on there since they featured a few of my stories around the new year.

Shot this with my iPhone. Edited in Snapseed, Mextures, and Stackables.

Spontaneous Photo Adventure

Now that I live within driving distance of her, Shannon and I can have more photo adventures, which is what we’re doing right now. It’s been just over a month since we shot in Oregon, and here we find ourselves on the coast of Maine. 

We tried to go shoot a shipwreck at this beach, but the sand had buried most of it. There really wasn’t any point in shooting it this time. At least the sand patterns were really cool. 

Now we’re on our way to more lighthouses and a state park. 

When A House Isn’t A Home

Last night, around sunset, we had stormy skies that had a few breaks in it. I was feeling optimistic, so I went for a walk down between the ponds. For a moment, it looked like the sky was opening up right where I needed it to. Unfortunately, it closed back up after 5 minutes, and about 15 before sunset.

Instead of walking back with nothing to share, I stopped at the house on the corner to take my first shot at it. It’s abandoned and falling apart, obviously. There is so much cool detail and texture on the outside. I plan on exploring it more thoroughly one day. For this shot I just wanted a wide shot of the property. Next time I’ll be up close with my super wide angle iPro lens. I may even see if I can have a look around the inside.

Shot with ProHDRX. Edited with Snapseed, Mextures, and iColorama.

The Falls in Maine

My experience with waterfalls in Maine has been pretty underwhelming so far. I saw one of those onlyinyourstate articles on the best waterfalls in Maine, or something like that. Btw, I’m not a fan of their articles. They use sensational headlines to get you to click and share. Usually, the articles are just a collection of stuff for whatever list they’ve compiled, with no real order or justification for the list. I swear whoever wrote the ones for Oregon waterfalls or trips had never been to Oregon before.

But I digress lol.

What I was getting at was, the list of “best waterfalls” was pretty sad. None of them compared to stuff I’ve shot in the PNW. Luckily, my girlfriend is very outdoorsy and knows of falls that weren’t on the list. Guess what, this waterfall was better than any on that list.

This is just an iphone shot because I forgot to bring my tripod along. I had my hands full of stuff that I had to carry to the car, since we had to go to a family birthday party before our adventure. It’s alright though, because I wouldn’t have been satisfied with my photos in these conditions.

At any rate, this particular waterfall was pretty cool. The one challenge that I’ll have when shooting is the amount of visitors that sunbathe or swim out there. I got lucky that a large group had just left, and I got some shots off before a large group came in.

We saw one other good sized waterfall that was also pretty photogenic. I mean, it wasn’t Oregon, but I found compositions that I know the locals will love. It was also a beautiful walk through a green forest that was filled with bugs. Btw, I’ve never had so many bug bites in my life since moving here. I literally wake myself up at night scratching at my bug bites.

And on that note, I’m going to go apply some hydrocortisone cream and go buy some strong bug spray for today’s adventure.

(shot with the default camera app. Edited with Snapseed, Mextures, and TouchRetouch for one bit of flare.)

Made It To Maine

I’ve been in a Maine for a week now. I have to say that this place is the opposite of where I grew up in Silicon Valley. I was pretty worried the first couple of days, because of culture shock. I knew this town of 4000 people was going to be small, but it felt even smaller once I actually saw it. It’s definitely going to take some time to slow down and adjust.

I feel like I’m going to be forced to disconnect from the 21st century and get back to nature. Thats not necessarily a bad thing. The few times that I’ve been able to get out, I’ve found Maine to be incredibly peaceful. There are so few people that its very easy to find yourself in a remote area surrounded by nature.

My biggest challenges are not having a car, cell phone service is spotty, and wifi signal is awful in this house. If I go anywhere outside of civilization, my cell phone is useless, so I need to get a physical map and a compass, since I don’t know my way around. And a new challenge that just popped up is my iMac suddenly lost power while typing this up. Yay for old farmhouses.

Thats enough complaining. Trust me, I could go on about several other things, but I’m just going to have to accept that my old way of life isn’t possible here right now.

On the bright side, I already made a new photographer friend here. She is still learning, but is already creating cool surreal composites. She was nice enough to show me around the other day while she searched for the perfect pond with lily pads. There doesn’t seem to be too much talent out here outside of the two of us, and maybe one or two other people. I suppose thats a good thing for me. She already wants to open up an artist space together to display our work and run workshops. I’m still feeling the market out before I commit to that though.

(This was shot with the default camera app on the iPhone and edited with Snapseed.)

 

King of Hearts

A couple of years ago I took a bunch of photos of animals at the natural history museum in NYC. I thought I would do something cool with them eventually. And it only took like 2 years for me to play with a few of them.

This was edited in Snapseed, Mextures, and iColorama.

Wild Art

Sometimes books catch your eye when you’re browsing at the bookstore.

I finally caved and went to buy one of those adult coloring books, but I also looked at the photography and art section, just to see what was there. This one book stood out to me, and gave me ideas for an edit, so I took a photo.

If you don’t have a coloring book, you should definitely consider getting one. It can be relaxing, but also great for your creativity. Not surprisingly, there are free coloring book apps too, if you search the app store for “adult coloring books.” Tapping isn’t the same as making the strokes on paper, but its free.

Heres to 2016 being full of wild art. Find your limits and push yourself beyond them!

(I used the default camera app, snapseed, and icolorama to create this.)

Another Shell Beach Sunset

I’ve been down in California for over a week now. Most of the sunsets have been uneventful. A couple of days ago I decided to go down to the beach anyways, to take in whatever materialized.

Skies like this don’t motivate me to shoot at sunset. However, clear skies are good for astrophotography, which I’ve been doing a bit of the past 2 nights. Last night I did something totally new and challenging. I had a model that wanted to pose nude on a beach under the milky way. I was really nervous about being able to make the images work, because I didn’t think there would be enough light to freeze the model in the image, but I managed to improvise with a flashlight and got some good shots.

Back to this photo, on that particular day, I ended up playing with some apps, trying to compare HDR apps with the new relight app that I was given a promo code for the other day. The best shot I got (above) was taken with ProHDRX. Thats not to say its the best app. I need to do serious test shots on a tripod, instead of handheld. I have a bunch of stuff to do when I get back to Oregon, so I hope I remember to compare those apps soon.

Shot with the iPro super wide angle lens using ProHDRX. Edited with Snapseed.

Mossy Grotto Falls

We lost power for a little bit the other day. It was a good thing, because I’ve been getting distracted a lot lately. The lack of electricity helped me focus on doing something creative. I decided I should go through all of my images on my iPhone and see what I haven’t edited yet.

I found this gem from mossy grotto falls in the columbia river gorge. I thought it would make a nice painterly image, so I took it into iColorama and worked my magic there. Then I took it into Snapseed for some finishing touches.

Choosing Gratitude AND The New Copyright Law

Call me crazy, but I’m choosing to view this whole stolen photos thing as a blessing. All the stress and aggravation has been a great reminder that I can still create my own reality. I get to choose how to react to everything. I’ve been able to move past the negative feelings by being present and choosing to be grateful instead. I hope those affected by that thieving website don’t let it ruin their day. Its ok to allow yourself to be upset, for a while, but its also a good idea to choose to be happy, in light of the situation. Life is too short.

There’s not much I can do to keep people from stealing my photos. Truth be told, its incredibly easy to remove watermarks, and logos, from an image. You can even steal from sites that don’t allow you to right click and save the image, by doing a screengrab. The point is that if its online, it can be stolen.

Something these thieves can’t take from us are the experiences. They won’t know the peace that I experience when I’m out shooting scenes like the one above. They don’t get to spend time in nature with other talented photographers. They don’t get to be in the creative flow while I shoot and edit. All of those moments are worth more to me than a few sales of a stolen image.

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While I’ve got you all concerned about image theft, I’d like to take this opportunity to let you know that copyright law in the US is about to change…for the worse. The deadline to voice how copyright affects you is July 23rd!

I highly recommend reading this article on Petapixel. If you have time, you should watch/listen to the video on that page. This new copyright law could be pretty scary and make it easy for people to steal our work, and then copyright it as their own. We may even find ourselves in a world where everything we upload to our personal facebook page needs to be copyrighted, or we risk companies using any and all of our photos, in their advertising campaigns.

If you’re willing to take the time to submit your thoughts to the copyright office, this page will give you ideas for what to include in your letter. If you think its not that important to have your voice heard, keep in mind that they don’t have a lot of input from actual artists that are affected by copyright. The majority of voices in their ears are lobbyists that want to make it easier to use our work for free.