Sunday, April 25, 2010
Art City Austin
Went to Art City Austin, an art festival here in town with about 190 artists. I saw some really nice work. The two photographers that stood out were Youngbok Park and Clifton Henri. Two other artists that I really enjoyed were John Hung Ha and Ernest Miller, an amazing potter who I have been a big fan of for a few years. And yesterday I even bought my son one of Ernest's small vases. My son is a budding potter and he really digs Ernest's work as well.
Monday, April 12, 2010
A couple of thoughts/comments
The photos I've recently been posting are from the 1980's - my vintage work... One thing that is nice to see is they don't have fix stains on them, so I must have been washing them properly. These older images I'm posting by taking a picture of the print. I don't have scans of my old negatives and my flatbed scanner is screwed up and since this picture of a picture routine kind of works I don't feel the need to get a new scanner. Anyway most of these prints are 11x14 or larger and I sure ain't going to get a big scanner for this purpose. So when you see the strange warped white border of these pictures that is what is happening--I'm taking pictures of the pictures.
Also, I see that I have actually posted 3 straight days in a row--how exciting!...
Also, I see that I have actually posted 3 straight days in a row--how exciting!...
Night Photography
This was taken near lower Wacker under the Loop in Chicago. I used to love going down there in the middle of the night exploring. This was taken with a 4x5 view camera.
Promoting my website and me
A few days ago I posted a link from my Facebook page to a blog entry. I didn't mean to. Over the last year I've been learning internet marketing and I have a few sites on various subjects that make me a little money with various methods. One of the ways I promote those sites is with Only Wire, it's a site that posts pages to numerous social bookmarking sites all at once. Well, I had my Facebook account setup on there and I was posting some of my recent posts from this blog using Only Wire. When I saw that those posts were on my Facebook page I deleted them and since Facebook is so buggy, one post didn't delete. The good thing about that was it got a decent amount of people to see what it was about and I got a nice bump in traffic to my site. My problem is I don't want to be putting posts on my personal Facebook page, basically littering it with my blog post announcements. I have other friends on Facebook that do that and it kind of gets old. So maybe I need to make a Robbie Becklund Photo page on Facebook.
The problem is that I don't like promoting myself. Hmmm, maybe that's why I've never been financially successful at this stuff... I could make a photo Facebook page for myself and tell my Facebook friends about it, that's probably the best way to do it.
The problem is that I don't like promoting myself. Hmmm, maybe that's why I've never been financially successful at this stuff... I could make a photo Facebook page for myself and tell my Facebook friends about it, that's probably the best way to do it.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Digital Free Zone
This weekend I spent a lot of time at the Lone Star Round Up a huge hot rod and kustom car show held every year here in Austin, Texas. It's a great time checking out all the different types of old cars. My favorite type are the rat rods, like the one pictured above. The thing that really hit me when I got home, was I didn't see one person, out of thousands, with a laptop (oh maybe a vendor or two for online payments). And you know that none of these cars had computers in them.
It was very refreshing to see a traditional craft being done on such a large scale. It got me thinking that maybe the best way for me to get back into photography is with film and chemicals--the old fashion way. Really, the way that I am most comfortable doing photography. I am notorious for changing my mind a lot, so you never know.
I think I know that deep down I won't be happy doing digital photography. The cost of the equipment is so expensive. And know that hipstamatic photo iphone app that replicates old instamatic pictures and tries to make images look like they were taken with a holga, well those things drive me crazy. Maybe just to rebel against that digital fakery I should be an analog photographer again. Watching an image come up in the developer and getting the fix taste in your mouth when you stick your hand in it are a couple of the magical wonders of regular old photography that I would like to enjoy again.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
A parade in Chicago about 1985. Parades were so easy to shoot at, I think people just assumed you worked for a newspaper and were perfectly happy getting their picture taken.
Image Swirl
My son just showed me a new neat feature brought to the world by the company that I sometimes love to hate, Google's Image Swirl. It's in beta, but you put in a search term and it brings up related images and you click on one and it will bring up related images to that selection. Kind of cool.
