Take The Trout Challenge!

New stuff over at the Mothership Kreddible Trout Connection (my website) which includes this piece & the story that follows:

Cherry Tree & The Blue Bins

Very little of my work, as I often rant and rave about, is digitally augmented. Occasionally I use the photoshop, but I try not to. I feel that it's a lie.
The reason I'm so adamant about it is that I learned to see the world through the lens, not the photo-editing software. Before digital I'd line up the shot, sometimes giving myself a cramp doing so, shot it & hope that it turned out & wasn't slightly off center or just wrong.

There was magic.

Since I sold out and went digital I've lost some of that feeling. Like I said, I still try to do as little 'post' as possible but, with digital there is another cheat that we don't talk about...
When I first got a digital I visited one of my best friends, Pam, and was excited (if somewhat embarrassed) to show her my new toy. She had been around when I was first courting my K1000 & watched my passion grow. So, there we were sitting at a cafe on Main Street in Vancouver & I was showing her some shots off the back of my shiny new Rebel XT (x-tra trout, baby... oh yeah!) that I'd taken that day. I scrolled and scrolled and amidst her always encouraging 'oohs' and 'ahhs' she had to take a jab as we passed three or four almost identical shots.

'Wow' she said, 'so you can just keep shooting until you get it right then, huh?'
'oh shaa-aa-daap!' I said and kept scrolling as she punched my arm and cackled.

...but she was right.

I used to believe that 'if I get it I get it, if I don't I don't'. Sometimes I'd take two shots just to be sure I got it but, until it came back from the developer, I had no idea.

There was magic.

The immediacy of digital is definitely helpful but it is a cheat. To me anyway. Yesterday I was reminded of the purity and faith of just taking a shot and walking away. The above was the shot. I set it up (& let the two people [who always find their way into even the most deserted streets just to look at me like I'm a weirdo for taking pictures of walls] walk by.) like in the old days, taking my time, and shot it. I looked at it on the display & began, instinctively, to raise the camera to my eye again... then I stopped.
"Hey dummy, the shot is fine. It is what you wanted anyway. You don't need to take it again.
...Uuuuse the Force...

So I walked away and gave myself a new challenge: shoot like you used to. Not always. Not religiously. Just from time to time.

It's nostalgic.

It's magic.

If anyone out there can relate, I'd advice trying The Trout Challenge yourself. It'll bring that old spark back. Now get out there and take pictures of garbage! Cos someone's got to do it!

...or, like me, you can always take the ol K1000 out for a stroll from time to time... it'll appreciate it. So will you.


Tweet

... a little something while you wait...

I'm gonna just start just ploppin random stuff all over this blog. Spend too much time pontificating on what should go here that nothing actually goes here, so...

this is a shot I call

ANTICIPATION

To an actor, the feeling of walking onto a bare stage for the first time and looking out into an empty house is second only to performing to a full one. An empty house holds promise. The seats feel alive with anticipation and are not vacant at all. You can feel them yearn for the ride you’re about to take them on. Your best monologues clamor and lurch to the tip of your tongue only to be stifled by the reverence of the moment. This silence, this anticipation, you imagine placing in the palm of your hand with Iago’s slightest inflection. The silence of ‘I got you’. The silence all actor’s live for. An empty house promises it.

Tweet

Beards, New photos, No photos & Looking to the Burrito Horizon...

Well, the dopamine has worn off and I woke from my hibernation with a beard. The holiday season finds itself in the haze of recent history and I notice the blog is a little dusty. So, consider this a feather duster.

A few updates to share.

Firstly.
The Mothership Kreddible Trout Connection (my website) has been updated. Rearranged some things and added some new stuff in the new folder called The New Stuff (was that redundant?) which will house anything shot since January 1st. It's still just a fledgling folder so please stop by regularly as it needs your encouragement.

Secondly.
This isn't news just yet, but something that might become it. In relation to Firstly I'd have liked to have posted a few examples of the photos I wrote of, but I have just been so MASSIVELY FRUSTRATED by how MINDBOGGLINGLY IMPOSSIBLE it is to arrange photos in blogger that I gave up. Unless I want all the photos in one line down the page... it's almost impossible. To expect to try to put them on in a simple grid... wow. Some posts recently have taken me HOURS to get up & they still look shoddy. This is something that has been an issue for a while now and I have just had it. Why and how the cyber-geniuses over at google haven't come up with an easier way to manage photos within the posting  is beyond me. It seems that with the last upgrade they decided to go back to 1999 technology or something. I've read forums, I've tried to manipulate them as is told in tutorials but they really seem to have a mind of their own. A lot of the writings about how to manage photos within blogger tell you it's easier to manage them within the HTML... if I knew HTML I wouldn't be using blogger now would I? Blogger is for laypeople like me.
SO... so I may be moving ship. Just the blog. Probably Wordpress or Tumblr. I toyed with Wordpress a couple of years ago and found it too convoluted & intricate for my needs so, I'm gonna see what Tumblr is all about. It looks pretty simple and I like what I've seen. We'll see. Any advice would be welcomed and if I've missed the glaringly obvious here in blogger & someone knows 'the trick' please feel free to let me know. Jeebus knows the good folks at blogger ain't answering my calls.

Thirdly. Have Trout Will Travel again! 
Headin' down to San Diego again for a quick photographic jaunt. Seems Col. J needs some new big art for his new regional office & has commissioned yours truly to do it all up for him. Flying down on Thursday after work work to run amok in the land of sand and burritos for three days and returning on Monday. I'll be documenting the city which is something I really didn't get a chance to do when I was down last spring as I was too busy preparing for Artwalk. For those of you who don't know who Col. J. is or what Artwalk is about you'll have to get in the 'it's the Kreddible Trout Photography blog Time Machine' and start waaaay back here. The linked entry was the first announcement of my incredible trip last spring called the Kreddible Trout (part of the) World Tour 2010.
Wow. Almost a year ago. There are many adventures to read following that. Feel free.

Fourthly.
There is no fourthly.

Finally.
We here at Kreddible Trout Photographic Enterprises want to wish you the very best this Valentine's Day Season and remind you that there are only 21 shopping days left til this joyous day. So remember... 

...nothing says 'I Love You' like 

a nice piece of Trout.

Tweet

If this blog were a turkey...

Man.. there's so much news in this here blog post, you'll be making blog news sandwiches for a week! Maybe even a pot of blog news soup! When you're done reading, you'll want to sit back on the couch (or sofa), unbuckle your belt, shake the pictures on the wall with one of them half-belch-half-sighs and pass out for 5 hours!

Makes you wanna keep readin, don't it?

Ok, so where to begin?

A few weeks ago I mentioned that someone from Winnipeg had ordered a print from me. There's a nifty story behind this sale. I get a message on my telephone answering service from a lady who asks me about a piece I have hanging up in a cafe here in Victoria. (Demi-Tasse, formerly Rising Star on Broad St.) The piece is one of my uniquely mounted pieces with the shot 'brownie as monolith' in it.
It's a 22x24 inch print, mounted behind an antique window. It looks a little something like exactly this:

The woman who called was asking about it and, after some phone tag it was determined that the one of a kind unique piece wasn't exactly in her ballpark but a print of 'brownie as monolith' would be. She was heading back home to Winnipeg the next day and it was decided that I'd get a print done & ship it to her. It was to be an x-mas gift and this is where it gets neat. The gift was for her father who's in his 80s who used to be a photographer, used to use a Kodak Brownie and... get this... who's name is Brownie. The photograph immediately set off the 'perfect gift' bells and the rush was on. This was sometime in late November and they wanted to get it framed & wrapped for x-mas. The busy season was on at Canada Post & there was a bit of worry as things seemed to take slightly longer than hoped, but in the end, it got there on time, was framed and apparently Brownie loved his Brownie photograph!

I've sold many prints & am always eager to get feedback, but I was quite excited to get news of this. Quite happy indeed. I'm smiling now, actually.

So, what's next?

It was a quiet x-mas this year & I decided to turn the downtime into uptime funtime cameratime! I had neglected my camera for quite a while. Hadn't really spent any real quality time with it in about a month and a half so, with all the nothing going on I figured it was time to make amends. Pulled out the camera, slapped on the makeshift macro (I won't tell you how to make one, but I will say that there is much fun to be had in disassembling lenses or looking backwards through them... electrical tape can help.) set up my lighting equipment (an old desk lamp that may have belonged to Mickey Spillane at one time) in my studio (the closet that I call an office a.k.a. The Troutcave) set up the tripod (um... it's an actual tripod) and started getting up close and personal with my camera collection:

 So, needless to say I had a fun time. They say you can get lost in macro work and it's true. Imagine suddenly having to navigate your surroundings as though you were a flea. A millimeter can be vast. You can trip over an eyelash. I actually got so into it that I used my 'live view' function on my camera for the very first time. I've had the 40D for 2.5 years and have never even looked at the silly thing. I hate live view. Photography is an intimate process. My eye through the camera is how I want to see the world. Everything else doesn't exist. But, a lot of these shots would have been impossible or else terribly painful to line up any other way so... I scrounged around for my manual and figured out how to employ the mechanism. I tell you, my camera has so many bells and whistles that I have no idea are even there... it makes me giggle. Next year's DSLRs will be coming out with 'post to facebook' functions and internal editing software. You wait. It'll happen.
What...? Oh, it already happened...? Oh.
(shudder).
So that's how I spent my x-mas vacation! Photographically speaking, that is. The wife and I cooked a bird and ate it too. Yum yum.
A bunch of the shots from the series are on ye aulde website-a-reno (click: portfolio - studies - cameras.) and I posted them on redbubble where I then made a truly swank lookin' calendar. Check ca:

Well... that wasn't really that much news after all... just a lot of me rambling... funny that...

It's kinda like I promised you a big ol turkey with all the fixins and I came home with a half-eaten happy meal and a pack of Certs.
Oh well.
How's about I make it up to you all on the next exciting episode of it's the Kreddible Trout Photography blog! where I will do up one of them 'Year In Review' things that seem so popular amongst people in the media who can afford a vacation.

Or maybe I won't. I'm not yet quite sure if I'm lying about that or not.

 ...anyway.

So...

Tune in next time to find out if he's serious about Kreddible Trout Photography's Year In Review and if he is just how in the hell he'll be consise about it without it taking the whole of 2011 to read! 

(It's a nutshell, Trout! Not a novel!)

Say 'goodnight', Troutie.
'Hi Trevor!'
... oh sweet jeebus...

Tweet

Last Big Marketing Drive of 2010!!!

(...oh, er... I mean...)

Seasons Greetings And Best Wishes To All My Loyal Followers!!!

As it is the time of year for businesses everywhere to foist out the final desperate plea for sales, we here at Kreddible Trout Photographic Industries are no different. Firstly we want to thank all 22 of you for following this silly little blog, wish you a festive and yule-tastic holiday season and remind you that Original Kreddible Trout Photographic Artworks can be purchased from my redbubble portfolio as well as through my website. Heck, you can even call me on the telephone & say 'hey Troutie, I'm an art savvy consumer and I want to purchase some of your yummy yummy art. Hook me up, yo!'
And I will hook you up. Yo.

So, to those few of you who don't have to work through it, have a great holiday season! To those of you who do have to work through it... well, y'know, double time is pretty sweet & try and enjoy it none the less!

Peace Out!
-Kreddible Trout

Arts, Crafts and the Cycle of Life

(I wrote this piece a few years ago to post on JPGmag. A conversation I had last week reminded me of it so I decided to share it here. These are the kind of blog entries that I enjoy sharing. I hope you get a kick out of it.)

Arts, Crafts and the Cycle of Life

I went to the Salmon Run the other day and have to admit I was a little disappointed to see not one single salmon do anything but swim or just lay there being eaten by birds. There was no running involved. I thought I was going to see salmon doin The Darwin.

Anyway.

Seems every year for as long as there've been salmon, they've been swimming upstream, spawning and dying. To the population of Victoria BC and some late-season tourists it's apparently quite a site to witness. The vibrant struggle of salmon fighting fierce opposing currents & predators has got to be one of the more impassioned displays of survival of the species nature has to offer. Really something to be seen. Unfortunately we had arrived at the tail end of the season and were left with a river teeming with dead salmon carcasses and scavanger birds. Lots of interesting photo ops but the majesty of nature had been replaced by nature's version of dumpster diving behind McDonald's.

The area, Goldstream Provincial Park has nature trails along the stream with information posts as you'd expect. 'The Life Cycle of Moss'... 'Dew: Nature's Perspiration'... things like that. We walked along the paths which wound creekside through the woods and soon came upon a little visitor's centre. An information lodge stuffed with stuffed birds to look at, t-shirts to buy & people with beards to explain it all to the city folks. After pushing a few buttons to hear stuffed birds making sounds that the live ones were making outside I wandered out the back where I discovered something quite disturbing indeed. It seems a macabre tradition to allow (and even encourage) children to cover dead salmons in paint and make prints on large sheets of white paper with them. Really, tables full of dead fish and paint lined the outside wall of the information centre. It looked like kindergarten of the disturbed. I was confused. I'm not a parent but I do seem to recall that when I was a child the grown ups telling me not to play with dead animals. Even if I really really wanted to. I asked someone if they do the same thing with squirrels to which the response was mild disgust. A dead fish is ok though...

A fitting homage to the majesty of nature, don't you think? These solemn creatures fight all odds to procreate, battling current, predator and time, and end up being groped by a five year old covered in paint. I heard one kid remark "This is SUCH a good idea!"

Indeed.

I've decided that this is how I want to be remembered. Burial is so passe, cremation is kinda cool but who's ashes are they really? George Carlin once said he wanted to be stuffed full of dynamite and blown up. I was favouring that idea until now. Thanks to the salmon run I have a new idea. When I die I want people to make artsy-craftsy prints of me! At my service, I want to be lain naked on a table so everyone can cover me in paint, slap a big sheet of paper on me and make themselves a print. I can be wiped down and redone until everybody has their own, artistic interpretive print of me to do whatever they want with. Hang me over your mantle. In your office to inspire productivity. You name it!

Just like the salmon.

A fitting tribute to the cycle of life and not in the least degrading.

Tweet

Just call me Mr. June.

Last week was pretty eventful. Here's the rundown:

#1

So, as I've mentioned my shot comin t'getcha has been featured in the David Suzuki Foundation's 2011 calendar and last week, in a 100% post consumer cardboard envelope, it arrived at my door.
So... yeah, like, I get mail from David Suzuki... I'm kinda a big deal y'know... oh, did you get that?... David Suzuki is what I said... yeah... I'm fantastic.
...Oh... it was sent by... oh. A person in the mail room? Hmm...
Yeah, so I know a guy who works in the mail room at the David Suzuki Foundation... yeah, I'm a pretty big deal.

Needless to say I'm pretty thrilled about it. Mr Suzuki himself signed it. Pretty cool.

...you can call me Mr. June....

I'm pretty thrilled to be in the calendar and hope that some of you out there go over to the David Suzuki Foundation website and buy one. I'm pretty certain it's going to a good cause.

 #2

On that very same day (wow it was like x-mas in my mailbox!) I also received a bunch of stickers I ordered from redbubble. A few of my own designs and some others I really like. Here they are displayed around the calendar:

Close-up of my 'nothing is real anymore' design in sticker form (though you'd be much cooler wearing the t-shirt)

#3

I was also asked by the good people at Toast Cafe in Sidney BC to fill their walls with art! I frequent the shop in my 'day job' as a landscaper to get the best coffee on the peninsula. (for those of you who don't know what 'the peninsula' is, it refers to the greater Saanich area of Vancouver Island. Here you go!) They asked me Monday & I had stuff hung by Saturday. If you're in the Sidney area & want a great coffee & a dang good sandwich you should stop in. (I hear they have some nice art on the walls too!)

#4

And finally... I sold a print to some folks from Winnipeg. Someone contacted me after having seen my uniquely mounted 'brownie as monolith' hanging in Demi-Tasse (Formerly Rising Star) Cafe on Broad Street in Victoria & asked if they could buy a print of it. It's to be a gift. There's a cute little story behind it that I'm excited to blog about when it's opened at x-mas.

And I think that about does it for the life and times of Kreddible Trout for the beginning of December. Good things. Not terribly lucrative things, but good things. I like good things.


...and remember our x-mas slogan kids:

Nothin says 'Happy Holidays' like 

a nice piece of Trout!

Tweet