indexhibit

I've been wanting to re-vamp my website for quite a while now, over at mcgregorphoto.com. A while ago, I cobbled together some html that did a reasonable job of showing the pictures I put up. It was automated slightly, to pick up new pictures as I added them, but somehow I never did. This morning I read about Indexhibit and thought I'd take a look. I've tried various Content Management Systems (CMS) in the past, for web hosting. Including the often recommended Gallery Photo Management System. However, they've always been too feature-rich, and hence complex, or just not quite what I was looking for. I wanted something fairly simple, clean and easy to maintain. That includes being able to add new pictures easily. I wanted to be able to organise the images in terms of projects or folios of work. I use flickr for my stream of consciousness images - all the stuff I shoot ends up on flickr. Family images, holiday snaps, more planned stuff, everything. However, flickr is really not good at all for showing sets of finished work. The long-teased flickrfolio might do that, but I got fed up waiting. I managed to resist my natural urge to start with Indexhibit and then spend the next few weeks researching other options, just in case there is something better out there. Instead, for a change, I decided just to try it out and see how it works.

I was very pleasantly surprised how easy Indexhibit was to install. It took me about 10 minutes to get it up and running on my 1and1 hosted site. That includes setting up a MySQL database backend and configuring the Indexhibit install. I haven't done much with it yet, but you can preview the new look. I'll no doubt be playing around with the format and content over the next few weeks but I am impressed by the ease of use and the look and feel so far. At this point I'm really not interested in doing web design, I want to be able to host the images in a clean and simple way. Indexhibit does that very well.

abject failure

On the starting new blogs front. I suppose at least I'm only just contributing articles in this case. Meanwhile, the Austin Center for Photography seems to be off to a great start. A lecture from Mary Ellen Mark next week, then Alec Soth in June.

finding the spine

Had an enjoyable lunch a few weeks ago with a friend who is a writer. I've been trying to make the time to have lunch with people in different creative fields, to try to explore a bit what makes them tick and how they work. She is currently finishing up a book and it was great to get to hear about her process and progress on the project.

One thing that we talked about was how she got started on the book and how she'd been told to find out what the question was. This would be the motivating question for the whole project. Twyla Tharp talked about a similar idea in her book 'The Creative Habit' when she brings up the notion of the spine of a creative piece. In both cases, the fundamental question or the spine idea of a project are the thing you can keep coming back to when you feel you've lost your way. It is the scaffolding or foundation of a project that gets you started, even if everything else really branches quite far away or heads off in a different direction. The spine might not even be visible in the final work but it is what helps to keep you on track and bind everything together along the way. These core ideas don't need to be complicated, in fact I think there is a value in keeping it simple. As an example, the spine idea for my ironman triathlon project is to show the everyman aspect of the participants. That idea helps keep the project grounded, to try to show the normality surrounding the huge task the participants have set themselves.

I was intrigued to find this same idea being expressed by two different people within a couple of weeks. Maybe this could be one of the design patterns for creativity that Merlin Mann is looking out for? Certainly it is a simple notion but it also seems to be a fundamental concept. Find the spine or driving question and keep it somewhere you can see it every day as you work on the project. This might also be a good starting point for thinking about a SoFoBoMo project - discover what the spine of the idea is that you want to work on and run with it. Last year I wanted to explore different expressions and how quickly those change. I wanted to show that a photograph freezes one of those instants but that it really doesn't hold any truth about the subject. The spine helps with the shooting and also helps with the editing. Any time you feel stuck it is the thing to go back to.

blogging explosion

You have to watch these blog things carefully. They seem to reproduce when you aren't paying attention. Right now in addition to this main blog on photography, I have four others that I'm contributing to. Doug Stockdale asked me to give some insight into the photographic exhibitions that are happening in and around central Texas, at his PhotoExhibit site. There is a new post there from me on the Fritz Henle retrospective that just recently started at the Harry Ransom Center here in Austin.

I am also part of the Stills photographic group, who create a collaborative photoblog. Membership is limited to 10 people and commenting is only enabled for people within the group. We've had some interesting discussions in the short time I've been a member. The final photographic blog, Everyday Ironman, is dedicated to my current triathlon project, with additional contributions from the two other writers working on the idea. This is more of an ongoing log of the progress of the project, with typically more photographs than I'm showing here.

I also have an infrequent technical/work related blog, Five Computers, which covers topics of technical interest to me, including data visualisation, electronic design automation and verification.

These blogs are like rabbits. Hopefully I can refrain from starting any more this year.

Photography.Book.Now 2009

Blurb just announced the call for entries for Photography.Book.Now

camera club

Well known artists given the camera club review technique.

g10 vs 1DII

Spent a few minutes last night trying out an external flash on the G10. I used it with the Canon ST-E2, triggering a 580EX speedlight, firing into a custom built light tent (or a big cardboard box with panels cut out of the side). The shot of the G10 is taken with the 1DII with the 100mm macro lens. The shot of the EOS-1 was handheld with the G10 in macro mode. (note the slight difference in aspect ratio between the two cameras)

I was quite impressed with the control available on the G10, in all manual mode. You can switch the flash into full manual too and control the power output directly from the camera. You can also use the standard flash through the lens metering (E-TTL) and adjust the flash power up and down using flash exposure compensation. In this fairly easy lighting scenario, it did really well and produced a great quality image, even handheld. I've heard good things about using the G10 in a studio and it balances quite well with the ST-E2. Certainly better than putting a speedlight directly on top of the G10, which would really unbalance things. The 580EX is slightly bigger than the G10 itself.

For the G10 shot I held a sheet of paper up, just to the camera right of the shot to bounce some light back into the lens opening and add some more light. Small changes like that can make a surprising amount of difference. Overall it might be a subtle change but it can really make or break the feel of the shot.

evening spin

From an indoor spin class, this evening. This time of year, much of the classes are done after dark or before sunrise. Not a lot of available light to work with. I'm hopeful that in a few weeks, when the clocks change and there is a bit more daylight, that I'll be able to work that into the shots. For now, I'm enjoying working with the artificial available light and living with and exploiting the softness and grain that comes with that. My radio poppers arrived today, (thanks to TriCoast Photography) and I'm thinking about starting to work in a little bit of strobe to some of these shots. But I still like the softness and blur.

zoe & bios

One notion that stood out for me in The Creative Habit was a section describing her frustration with trying to create narrative works of dance. Twyla Tharp is known for her abstract, conceptional dance pieces. At one point she tried to create works that had more of a sense of story and flow to them and found that she really struggled to create in that style. While reading Carl Kerenyi's Dionysos she was introduced to the Greek concepts of zoe, which deals with the whole world (it is a root of the word zoology) and bios, which deals with individual narrative stories (a root of biography). She came to the conclusion that she works well in the more abstract, global zoe style but really didn't have a knack for dealing with the bios. Emily Shur appears to express a similar concern, that everyone tells her that she should be working on photographic projects as the way to grow, but her mind just doesn't work that way. She'd much rather explore the whole world and find the pieces that interest her, rather than settle in to focus on a bios narrative photo-essay. She seems to be finding gallery representation or acceptance difficult as a result because everyone wants to see projects presented in the bios mode of creation, while her approach is looking at the whole zoe.

I've noticed this myself if you look at artworks in a coffee store - those typically aren't the result of an Art world selection process and often display an ecclectic, disconnected mix of images, photographs or paintings. Often the greatest hits of the particular artist selected to display images (or who asked the cafe owner first). It is unusual to see any cohesive story or message in those images, other than the common creator of the work. Art gallery shows are almost always in the bios mode of a cohesive body of work on a particular theme or topic. Still often the same creator for all the images, but a much more heavily edited and selected body of work.

Perhaps some people are just wired to look at the whole rather than pull out individual stories and follow them. That's just how their creative DNA is. Projects and themes just might not be right for them as a means to creating great photographs and they could embrace that, rather than always feeling jealous or frustrated.

ideas for lunch

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken

A while ago, I pointed towards a link suggesting ways to become a successful entrepreneur by having lunch with people who've already done well in business and listening to what they have to say. I took the idea and started applying it to my creative development. Over the last few months I've taken a few friends and acquaintances out to lunch and pestered them with questions about 'how they do it'. So far it has been great and well worth the time. I've had lunch with a couple of writers and photographers and received some really valuable perspectives. I also explored some of the projects I'm working on with them and got some great feedback.

One of them did ask me if I was concerned about sharing my ideas before the projects were finished. I think there are two approaches to this; one is to treat everything as a secret. The other is to shout the ideas from the rooftops and let as many people give you input as you can stand. I've found every time I involve another person in my work, I learn something new or get some insight that I'd never have thought of if I'd kept it all to myself. Often I think we are worried that someone will steal our ideas—but really the ideas aren't what is valuable, it is the execution of the idea that matters. Getting help there is what you need. There is a great creative energy that bounces back and forth when you get another person involved in your process. Also I've found that sharing your hopes and dreams with other people can often help you towards them. Someone will know a person who can help you, make a useful connection for you, move you forward.

All for the price of lunch—good value if you ask me.