Denver County Fair Post-Show Wrapup

A HUGE Thank You to all of my new friends who dropped by my booth at last weekend's Denver County Fair at the National Western Complex!

I've never shown at the Denver County Fair previously, and it's still a young show, with 2015 being its 5-year anniversary.  I admit I felt some trepidation when I started hearing about things like the Kitten Pavilion and Davey B. Gravey's Tiny Cinema.  I'm used to art fairs, gallery showings, and other affairs where everything's quiet and subdued.

This was not that.

Thunder and cacophony abounded throughout the entire Complex, with contests, classes, dancers, bands and poetry readings coming from every available stage, and those stages were everywhere.  There was a huge kid's area, the biggest model train setup I've ever seen outside of a permanent installation, food and diorama contests (sometimes in the same contest, with Peeps dioramas), an art gallery as big or bigger than any retail location, cosplay characters roaming the aisles, and none of that even touches on the vendor booths that were present.

Every imaginable type of booth was there, and then a bunch more you never dreamed could exist.  Not only clothing, food, souvenirs and storm windows, but also fortune tellers, booths hawking other conventions, knives, sculpture, travel, and I don't even know what else.  Local Legend Kenny Be had a booth too, offering giant prints of his utterly fantastic new Colorado Map.

My Booth at the Denver County Fair!

Other than meeting new people, the biggest highlight of the whole Fair for me was seeing the poetry reading contest, when one of the guys from Poetry on Demand was delivering a particularly dramatic reading during one of the contests on a nearby stage.  His mic had some feedback, but instead of standing there waiting for someone to do something, he instead used that opportunity to put the mic in the stand, walk out to the front of the stage, and quite forcefully address his audience one-on-one, intimately and aggressively.  It was so effective, he got the most rousing, cheering response of any reader that day, and it was very well-deserved.  I don't know his name, but if anyone does, let me know and I'll update this entry.  It was truly unforgettable.

In the end, it was far from ordinary.  One might even say it was off-center.  But it was a larger gathering than any of these individual groups would probably experience in Colorado.  And despite (perhaps because of) the disparate nature of all the groups, everyone got along just great.  There was no rivalry or territorialism, only fun, and people who came only for their specific interest still got to experience other cultural phenomena, and interact with people they would otherwise never see.

I had a great time, and if you did too, I invite you to go again next year.

See you then!

Ted Stevens Helps Me Prove It's Not Your Gear

Longtime readers will recognize that I spend a great deal of time telling you that it's not what gear you own that's important, or how much, but what you do with it.

Today I start to show real-world examples of this being the case.  To start off, I'll use Ted Stevens, who is currently traveling around the USA finding adventures to get into.  Here's one of his pictures from Arches National Park, one of my two favorite places on the planet, highlighting Skyline Arch and the area around it.

Skyline Arch, taken by Ted Stevens

This is quite simply a wonderful shot.  Here are the things that I find to be "right" about this shot:

1. The foreground - we see something of interest that catches our eye, and is in focus
2. The background - this is obviously of interest as well, and it's framed so that we can see the entire formation.  Although it's mostly in focus, it doesn't need to be in perfect focus, as it would compete too much with the cactus, and make the image as a whole feel "flat."
3. It tricks the eye into looking at both the foreground and the background.  While most people would be content to shoot only the Arch (and you can see thousands of examples of that kind of thinking on the Web with this very formation), Ted decided that highlighting the cactus, something usually overlooked in such a grandiose location, would be more interesting.  But to hold our interest, he added Skyline Arch, so that we could judge both of them in context with each other.  Neither one detracts from the other, they only add together.
4. The Sun is behind the Arch.  I wouldn't have even thought to do this, but having the Arch in shade prevents it from drawing too much attention away from the cactus.  We still see how majestic it is, enhanced by the oblique sun hitting portions of the Arch at an angle.  mostly shadow, with a few highlights, but we still see the entire formation.
5. Objects of interest are scattered around the frame, following the Rule of Thirds, rather than being centered.  The Rule of Thirds doesn't always need to be followed, but doing so is quite effective in this case.

Search for Arches Skyline Arch on Google, and look at what everyone else, even pro photographers, are shooting.  Ted;s shot has given us more context than most other shots, showing Skyline Arch in its natural environment, rather than trying to show nothing but the Arch.

So what big full-frame camera and expensive lens did he use?  Did he have to buy a special tripod to get so low?  Was this shot 45 of 76 in trying to get the best shot?

No.  He used an iPhone 6 on full auto mode, handheld.  First try.  Because he cared about what he was shooting, and took the time to get it right.

Now get out there and take some interesting shots!

Sigh... Another Waterfall Shot?

I found an interesting entry in another photographer's blog, who shall remain nameless, talking about how he loved photographing waterfalls, but didn't do it too much because he hadn't figured out a way to make money doing it.  It seems as though everyone has a camera, there are waterfalls everywhere, and people just don't want to buy a picture of something they see all the time.

The same can be said of so many photographs of nature in all its forms.  There's an almost uncountable number of people taking pictures and putting them on the Web and Facebook, resulting in such viewer saturation that there's no reason to buy them.  Why pay for a picture of Maroon Bells when you've seen a thousand views of it already?

It's an interesting problem for the professional photographer, and not many people have figured out how to get around it.  No matter what you're shooting, no matter how long you waited for the shot, how much time you spent in the lab processing, no matter what nifty technique you used, you'll find an almost identical shot done by someone else, and it might be done better.  Even if it's not as good, a professional knows that not many people can tell the difference, so it can still be a little deflating to see the sheer volume of like-minded people.

I didn't mention the photographer at the outset of this post, mostly because I didn't think his waterfall shot was all that great.  There wasn't really anything wrong with it; the colors were very nice, he had spent some time processing it to make it look very sunny and pleasant.  But it didn't speak to me at all.

Don't get me wrong, art is art if it speaks to someone.  But in trying to start that conversation, any artist must first come up with a conversation that's meaningful to them.  What I'm saying is, I would have deleted that picture, and tried to take another one that said something that was important to me.  Only then can an artist communicate with someone else, and only at that point will money be made.  If that particular photographer was thrilled with the shot he took, then more power to him.  But I want to speak to people who are driven by different things.

So I'll put my money where my mouth is.  Here's a picture I took of Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite earlier this year.

Bridalveil Falls, Yosemite

It speaks to me in a vintage, foreboding sort of way.  It reminds me of the Hudson River School of painting, and is all the more interesting to me because it wasn't taken at the lookout point.  It was taken at a spot where most people wouldn't even think to look up, much less try to frame a shot.  To me, that helps make it more unique, and the lighting makes it timeless as well.

I'm interested in whether or not this picture speaks to you as a viewer on some emotional level.  If it does, I'm willing to send you, absolutely free, a signed 8x10 print of this picture to hang in your home or office.  Drop me an email, and I'll get it right off in the mail to you.  I'll need your mailing address, obviously, so don't forget to include it.  But I'm also going to put you on my once-a-month mailing list, if you're not already on it.

Have fun with whatever art you enjoy!