As I sat down here this morning, coffee in hand, I noticed that this will be post number 200 on photomontana.net. Not really many compared to a lot of blogs, but still… for me it’s a bit of a milestone. I seldom know what I’m going to say when I sit down here to do this. It’s been said, and attributed to a few different people, that writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down and stare at the keyboard until little drops of blood appear on your forehead. I go through that every time.

gibbon river sunrise

I’ve been thinking too that for someone who claims that photography is much like music, that it exists in a realm that goes beyond words, I sure do put out a lot of words about it. A contradiction? No. Not really…

Life is full of contradictions. The only way to avoid that is to lock yourself away… to shut yourself off from living… to fossilize. I don’t want to merely exist like that, so I’ll continue to contradict myself. I like to think that even though I’m a 60-something, I’m still growing and learning and changing.

When I first started a photography blog back in 2007 I really had no idea where I wanted to go with it or what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to show some new work of course, and thought I wanted to ‘talk shop’ with some other photographers. I soon found that I don’t really want to ‘talk shop’… I’d rather ‘talk life’.

I dumped that blog and started over with this one a little over two years ago. It’s both about photography and not about photography… another apparent contradiction. Photography is my chosen medium, but I’m not interested in cameras and lenses and various gadgets. I couldn’t care less about f-stops and shutter speeds, and never make note of any technical details like that. I’m more interested in life and experiences and thoughts and ideas. I use the camera to put that into visual form. Not in the sense of a visual diary, of here’s where I’ve been  what I’ve done what I’ve seen, but more in the sense of here’s something that struck a chord in me, that moved me to make a photograph of it. I can’t analyze it or explain it… it’s visual music, it lives outside of words.  Sometimes the song works, more often than not it doesn’t. Like I said…  I’m still learning.

After a couple hundred posts, this blog is slowly finding it’s way. It’s where I think out loud… where I can begin to flesh out where my photography comes from, why I do what I do, the living and experiencing behind it. Some of you are interested in this, many more no doubt stumble across it, stifle a yawn, and move on. That’s alright. This blog is what it is, and it will be what it will be. All I can say for sure is that it will continue to change, hopefully grow, and likely contradict itself any number of times through all that.

So stick around. I appreciate all the thoughts and ideas you bring here. We’ll see where the next 200 take us… I hope I can occasionally give you something to think about and chew on.

pj

I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions in years. I never kept them anyway, so I figured why bother. This year I’m making one though, one I feel compelled to keep.

I’ve yet to really get a handle on how to support myself with these blogs I do. I’ve tried different things — some show promise, others are a waste of time and effort. I’ve made many false starts, made many mistakes, and I’ve missed some opportunities simply through my own ignorance and utter lack of business skills. That needs to change.

So… within a couple of months I will be bringing in some income. Before the year is out I will be a fully independent, self-supporting photographer/blogger. A tall order? Of course. Difficult? Absolutely, but seeing how things are going in these tough economic times I don’t think it’s any more difficult than trying to land a job that will actually support me. Once I reach that point it will be a lot more secure too.

By this time next year, if not sooner, I intend to make a trip to Montana to re-establish myself there. Then I can spend some time going back and forth, spending some time here in LA with my daughter and spending some time in Montana. Her and I can also do some exploring between here and there. There’s a lot of ‘west’ to get to know.

When she graduates high school and goes off to college I can move myself back to Montana for good. Once I do that it will take a couple of D-9 Cats and a truckload of dynamite to move me again.

So yes, it’s a tall order but a worthy goal. I’d better get busy… I have a lot to do.

Stay tuned, and Happy New Year.

pj

One thing that strikes me about photography blogging, and the community and friendships that grow out of it, is that age plays no part. Unless someone actually states their age it’s unknown, and nobody cares.

A few of us are sixty somethings, a few are fifty somethings or forty somethings. Probably the majority of bloggers are in their twenties or thirties, but I wouldn’t bet a paycheck on that even if I had one. A few are even in their teens.

None of that matters, and that’s cool. There’s a lot more exchanging of thoughts and ideas, a lot more give and take between generations going on in the blogs than there is out on the streets. How often do you see fifty year olds hanging out with twenty or thirty year olds in your day to day life? Not often. Humans tend to herd up by age group and lifestyle in the every day world, but far less so in the blogs.

I think that’s a great thing. I learn a lot from those younger than I am.

I’ve been spending some time lately reworking my other blog, buzztail, which I started back in July of 2006. A friend I worked with at the time gave me an old computer. I hadn’t done much with computers until then, and knew even less about what a blog was. I got myself an internet connection, discovered a few blogs, and being the way I am decided that hey… I’m gonna do that too. I think I’ll call it buzztail. Now, over five years later, it’s still there, and it’s still called buzztail.

It started out as a political blog — it was the ’06 election season — but soon started moving toward environmental activism which was my my real passion. A few months later I started a second one called pj finn’s montana photography blog, which went through a few incarnations and finally ended up as this one, photomontana.net.

Buzztail has been semi-dormant now for a couple of years. I’ve done little with it but post a few action alerts about threats to our environment, and to wild places in particular. I’ve even considered retiring it, but decided not to.

Lately I’ve been giving it a new paint job and changing the focus of it to be more of a celebration of wild places. There will of course be some activism and posting about the need to protect our wild lands, but most of that I’m passing along on twitter these days. For lack of a better term, buzztail will be more of a ‘literary’ blog — personal essays, opinion pieces — and the like. We may also be adding links to trail information and maps, and other resources for getting out there. And there will be links to some good deals on outdoor gear from some of the best equipment sources around. I’d like to build it into a go to resource for all the ‘wild hearts’ out there. We’ll see where the next five years takes us.

The most exciting thing to me though is that I won’t be working it alone. Many of you are familiar with Greg Russell and his fine photography blog Alpenglow Images. Greg has also signed on as an author on buzztail, and I’m thrilled. He adds another dimension to the site, and I think he is a very solid and worthwhile addition. I think you will agree.

So… stop on by, see what’s up, let us know what you think, and by all means tell your friends.

cheers,

pj

wall detail #2 -- koreatown

Here’s a third, and final photo from a walk I took around the block a couple of weeks ago. I think it’s a decent photograph, but I’m growing increasingly dissatisfied… dissatisfied as in feeling like I’m getting into a rut here in LA.

I’m feeling like I’m repeating myself over and over again, both in my photographs and in my words. I don’t like that. The last time I felt that way I stopped photographing altogether and didn’t start again for a few years. I’m not about to do that again, but I need to stop and regroup. I’ll take a little time off here and start up again around the beginning of October. Not much of a break, only about ten days or so, but it’s much needed.

I also need to establish some kind of a working routine for all of my internet activity. This blog, along with buzztail are my main projects. I’ve been neglecting buzztail for far too long and that’s starting to trouble me to no end. It needs some attention. I want to work out a posting schedule where I can give it and this one a couple of posts a week. The other sites can be updated as needed — the graphics site whenever I have new things to put up on it, the two dollar site whenever I feel like playing around with that aspect of photography. That one is mostly up just for fun and will be a slow growing thing that I work on when I feel like it. Who knows, it might only get worked on a few times a year, but I like having it up. Makes me feel like I’m actually doing something…

I’ve also revived my facebook and twitter accounts. I’ve abandoned them before because I’d sit there and look at them and realize I didn’t have a clue about how to use them. But I can see where they can be useful so I’m enlisting my daughter to be my social media guru. This younger generation seems to be genetically coded to know just how these things work and how to make good use of them. Maybe she can breathe some life into my social media presence. Can’t hurt.

On that note I’ll also mention that she’s become a blogger in her own right. She posts an occasional photo here, and has started her own blog. It’s new, but she has a few posts up. She’s a talented kid, if I do say so myself, and she shows signs of having some serious writing chops. Rather than tell you about it I’ll let you see for yourselves. Stop on by and let her know what you think. She’s right here…

This post might be better titled bites and chunks, but oh well…

First off, my site photomontana graphics will be launched in the next few days. Like I mentioned earlier, it will be a site where I sell stuff. It will be pretty basic and bare bones at first, and I will gradually flesh it out as I go along. It won’t be my main hangout, but I’ll update it with new releases and information regularly. Look for it live right here on Saturday morning. The link will be active then.

I read a book years ago called “Wanderer’ by Sterling Hayden. A great and honest book, and in it he said that if you can somehow catapult yourself into waters over your head, one way or another you will learn how to swim. Well, I’ve been in deep water for some time now, having managed to do just that — take the plunge. So far I’ve been mostly treading water, lately I’ve been doing some tentative dog-paddling, and sooner or later, if I keep my wits about me, will be swimming like a dolphin. Despite the risks of spreading myself too thin, I’m going to add more blogging to my plate. I don’t want to have all my eggs in one basket as the saying goes. Several baskets makes more sense regardless of how busy I may get.

A year or so back I started a blog called adventures with a two dollar camera. It’s been on the back burner for months now, but I’m bringing it back to life. It will be about working with film cameras, mostly inexpensive ones. There’s a whole world of photography out there being done with vintage cameras, Holga’s, Diana’s, and others. The image quality ranges from pretty bad to quite good, but the expressive qualities of some of this work is stunning. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, nothing is, but I’m more interested in the creative and expressive aspects of photography rather than the technical and how-to and am fascinated with the work being done with these cameras. I will explore and blog about this subculture. I think it’s worth some serious attention.

In a nutshell, I will have the photomontana graphics site, and I will have three blogs. This one will remain my home base and won’t change much. I will breath some life into buzztail, my enviro blog. Activism is too important to me to let it slide into oblivion. And I am bringing adventures with a two dollar camera back to life today. Will it all be more than I can do? No. I’m eliminating the word ‘can’t’ from my vocabulary and I’ll just get out there and do it. I need to. If I’m to get anywhere with this way of life I’ve chosen I need to give it everything I have. No excuses.

It’s easy enough to say I’m not ready… they’re not good enough yet… it’ll never work… I might fall flat on my face. But if I wait until I think I’m ready I’ll never do it, if I worry that they’re not good enough I’ll never get around to it, the only way I can be sure they won’t work is if I don’t do it. I’ve fallen flat on my face before, many times, and it’ll happen again. ‘Good enough’ will come with the doing. My new motto may just be

…to boldly go where you’re uncomfortable going…

I need to do that now, I can’t afford to wait until I feel ready. I never will… I need to put it out there now.

So I will. Check it out, and pass the word.

Time sure does fly. I’ve been here in LA for six months already, and thought I’d post a few impressions of my first half-year here.

I don’t like it. I could just be brief and leave it at that, but I won’t. There are places that are more appealing than others, but none that really make me feel like I want to stay for any length of time. A few months ago Venice looked like a place I could see as a home base, but the last few times I’ve been there have changed my mind considerably. Earlier this spring it was pretty nice, but now this time of year it’s so crowded it’s like being in an anthill. Not that the rest of LA isn’t crowded, but at least everybody isn’t crammed into a narrow strip along the ocean. They’re simply scattered about everywhere. Venice is cool, but not cool enough to put up with the crowds. Koreatown is as good a place to base myself out of as any. Besides, that’s where my kidlet lives, and she’s the reason I’m here in the first place.

The work situation here is a pathetic joke. It’s not that there are no job openings. Of course there are, but the vast majority don’t pay a wage that a person can live on. Even those minimum wage jobs attract hundreds of applicants. The few that do pay decently are so swamped with applications that you can’t get within a mile of the place. It’s almost a relief every time I get turned down. I’ve always had low tolerance for workplace games and workplace politics and I’m getting worse. The last thing I’m willing to do is grovel and play indentured servant to some young jackass who’s building his management resume on the backs of slave labor. It could be I come across in an interview as someone who isn’t going to behave like an obedient lap dog, who is a risky hire. At least I hope so. I think I’m becoming more unemployable every day. And I have neither the time nor the patience to train for a new field. It would be little more than a new cell with a different paint job. I can deal with being broke, I’ve had plenty of experience, but slavery? No way in hell…

That leaves me only one real choice — to continue and fine tune what I started out to do here a little over a year ago. To build up an income producing presence here on the internet that I can work from anywhere, whether it be here in the library or in my car or in California or Montana or Utah or Timbuktu. Wherever. I’ve made a lot of false starts with it, taken any number of dead ends, and no doubt will take some more but that’s alright. Sooner or later I’ll figure it out. My next step is to get my new website up and running. It’s called photomontana graphics, and I’m setting it up now. Simply put, it’ll be a place where I can try to sell things. Mostly my own things. I’ll have a few different lines of cards available. I’m looking at a way to sell prints. I’ll probably do some affiliate marketing for good books and quality equipment. I’m pondering some ideas for publishing my own books, both ebooks and real hold in your hands books. I might even do a few other photo products. I don’t like to push a lot of useless stuff, but I need to balance that attitude with the need to make a living. It will be a site that’s designed to make money, but hopefully it won’t be cheap and tacky. I’ll probably add a blog page to it too to keep some fresh content going up to keep the Google gods happy.

There you have it… I have much to do. Thanks for listening, wish me luck, and keep in touch.

cheers,
pj