COVID-19 and Some Goals

The last two weeks have been absolutely insane, and I have no doubt in my mind that this will be our new normal for at least a few months. As of writing this sentence, the total number of documented cases of COVID-19 in the United States is just under 45 thousand.

Last Tuesday (3/17) I got the news that Mayo Clinic would be cancelling all elective surgeries and appointments that weren’t absolutely necessary, so I wasn’t sure I would have a job this week. As of writing, my position at Mayo has completely changed from rooming patients and scheduling appointments, to screening patients and employees as they walk in the building. Temperature checks have begun on every person coming in, with multiple screening questions asked before we determine if they can go to their appointment, or need to go be tested for the coronavirus.

Throughout the last week, I volunteered for multiple different positions dealing with the outbreak, and Thursday (3/19) around 3:45pm, I was told I would be working 12pm-7pm screening patients every day for the foreseeable future. This started the next day. Every day, and damn near every hour, protocols for screening have changed. I currently have been working since Monday the 16th, and will continue to work my 12-7 shift until the 29th. Thankfully they added in a rotation, so I will luckily have 7 days off after the 29th, and have a weekly rotation start after that. That 7 days on, 7 days off rotation is where these goals come into play.

I’m going to try and be as productive as possible with those days off, but after working 14 days straight, I imagine I’ll be sleeping a lot on that first day just trying to recover from the total exhaustion I’m experiencing now.

My biggest goal during the time off will be learning how to shoot and edit video. There are tons of free programs available for video editing. I’m excited to dive in, but also a little overwhelmed with everything that’s going on in the world, as I’m sure everyone else is. Besides my goal of learning how to shoot and edit video, my other goals are to catch up on sleep, learn some different lighting techniques (pictured above), tire Miah out, and get out to shoot some possible content for these videos.

If anyone has any requests for content, please comment below and I’ll see what I can do! One idea I have at the moment is developing film, and showing the process I go through, but that might be towards the end of my 7 days as I learn to cut together video. Otherwise, l’ll probably take some video of me and Miah doing some training, or random hiking around Minnesota.

Hopefully everyone is getting through this as best as they can, and starting to adapt to our new normal. I’ll update as often as possible, and until then, everyone stay safe and wash your damn hands.

Old Photos

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this at the end of February, so before all of the insanity of COVID-19 was around.

For the past couple months, I’ve been thinking about going through and editing old photos to bring them up to my current standards and editing style. For the first couple of years with my digital camera, I was exporting images in the wrong color profile, which would wash out the colors, making them look dull and lifeless.

P.S.A - There will be a much larger difference between photos if you look at them on a mobile device compared to a computer. sRGB photos will be on the left/top, and ProPhoto/AdobeRGB with be on the right/bottom.

Now, not to go too much into it, but the world, for the most part, uses sRGB; it’s the standard. Tablets, phones, laptops, and any other mobile device, is able to see the sRGB color spectrum, with computers typically showing a bit more into the other color spectrums.

There are many different color spectrums you can physically work in, but there are three main ones; ProPhoto RGB, AdobeRGB, and sRGB. ProPhoto gives you the widest range of colors, sRGB gives you the least, and AdobeRGB is smack dab in the middle.

Because I was editing and exporting photos in ProPhoto RGB, most of my photos ended up looking washed out on mobile devices, but fine on my laptop at the time. For nearly two years, I dealt with whatever strange phenomenon was happening to my photos. I’d bring the photo into Instagram to post it, and all of a sudden the colors were absolute trash. I’d have to re-saturate the colors, boost the contrast, and hope I was close to what I had edited it like beforehand.

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View fullsize

Now that I’m on one of my infamous social media breaks, I’ve actually had the mental energy and time to go through and find those old photos, and edit them like I would today. And more importantly, export them in the right fucking color space. I dug out my old hard drives, plugged them into my computer, and got incredibly lucky when they still worked. All good, photos weren’t gone, but I did have to go through and find the damn things.

I sucked at color back then, but I was abysmal at sorting my photos. It took me about 30 minutes to actually find the photos I wanted to go through. I knew the month and the year of taking the photos, but ended up combing through every single folder on the drives to find them. I had two specific trips I wanted to re-edit; my trip to Glacier National Park, and the trip we took to Canada for Miah’s first birthday.

Each of those trips had hundreds of photos, so I restarted the culling process (think picking and choosing photos to work on) and found some keepers I had for some reason ignored back then. I went through the Montana pictures, and honestly, I have no idea how I walked away with any keepers at all from that trip. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and missed focus on multiple shots that would have been amazing. How do you miss focus on a mountain? I have no clue how, but I somehow did on at least a quarter of my shots. That was disappointing, but I’ll just chalk that down to being young and ignorant. It doesn’t happen that much anymore.

So, even after missing focus on a ton of shots, I then ruined the good ones by exporting them incorrectly. I have known for years, what kind of potential the photos had, but was either too busy or too lazy to really try and tackle the issue. I’ll admit, it did take a lot of work. I spent a good 10 hours over the weekend editing the photos again, but I’m glad I did. I no longer cringe at photos whenever I see them.

This whole process has taught me a couple different things:

1. I’ve come a long way in what I know, and what I’m capable of doing with a camera,

2. Proper storage and organization of photos can be incredibly helpful if and when you need to go back to find them,

3. And lastly, editing photos with a fresh eye can help find those photos that you once glanced over.

A photo I glossed over from Miah’s birthday trip to Canada.

A photo I edited with newly learned skills to improve the original, which I had cropped significantly to get rid of unwanted things in the frame.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got to say about this whole matter, so I’ll just throw a bunch of other comparison photos for the rest of this and hope whoever is reading this can learn from my mistakes.

Comfort Zone

Over the past few months, I’ve begun to realize how much I really love taking photos of people. Taking a photo of someone I know well makes the whole process incredibly easy, as they’re already relaxed. I’ve also realized that street photography (think candid moments of total strangers) terrifies the hell out of me. I’ve been working on it with some of my smaller point and shoots, and occasionally my medium format cameras, but the whole thing is a little nerve wracking.

Shot with the Bronica ETRsi, Sunny 16, self developed and scanned. Fuji PRO400H

Street photography requires quick actions to capture the moment, and typically the image becomes more powerful when the subject of the photograph is in some way interacting with you.

But, I’m an introvert, so interacting with total strangers is an absolute no-no for me. I’d much rather just sit back and wait for something to unfold in front of me. As I think shows in the photo below, it works sometimes.

Just sat and waited. Canon Sure Shot. Kodak Portra 400.

Another personality trait that I so graciously acquired, perfectionism. I hate failure, so if I don’t think I’ll succeed fully at something, I might quit at it halfway through just to avoid that failure. I’ve written about failure before, and also the benefits of recognizing those failures.

Performing in Madison, WI. Canon Sure Shot. Kodak Portra 400.

So to stick with the spirit of failing and pushing my personal boundaries, I’m going to give myself a challenge for the next thirty days. Take one portrait, of one stranger, each and every day. Just the thought of it makes me uncomfortable, which is exactly the reason I should, and need to do this. I’ve done weird little personal projects from time to time, but never anything so far out of my comfort zone.

It starts today, so expect to see another blog post pertaining to this one in about a month and a half. Until then, enjoy some more random photos :)

Canon Sure Shot. Kodak Portra 400.

Canon Sure Shot. Kodak Portra 400.

Canon Sure Shot. Kodak Portra 400.

Preservation

I’m still trying to wrap my head around what happened and why, but a friend of mine passed this weekend. I got a call Sunday night from one of her friends who I know from the rock climbing wall in Mankato. I didn’t know how to react, and I was in a state of shock until later that night. After that phone call, I raced home and started searching for the negatives I had of Abigail, the ones I had taken almost four years ago.

I don’t remember how exactly I met Abigail, but I know we both shared a passion for photography and rock climbing. She was bubbly and always smiling, and it was contagious. She became one of my better friends that year. We spent a lot of time together, whether it was rock climbing, hiking, photography, or just hanging out at her apartment listening to music. When I started my film class in the spring semester, Abigail was absolutely ecstatic to help.

On one of the many dreary spring mornings we had that year, I headed over to Abigail’s apartment to hang out with her and her roommate Brooke. My assignment that week for my photography class was to shoot portraits, so Brooke and Abigail became my subjects for the day. I pulled out my brand new light reflector and started bouncing light around like any photographer with a new tool would. I moved them all around the living room, which had nice white walls and an open window, essentially acting as one giant light reflector.

Abigail wasn’t very good at acting serious, but at the time that’s what I wanted to photograph. She dealt with my requests and gave me her all the entire time. I photographed her and Brooke for maybe 30 minutes, or as long as it took to finish the roll of film. After I got done shooting, and since it was still morning, Abigail wanted to do her thing and make some coffee. I don’t know where she got the idea from, but she heard about turkish coffee readings. Turkish coffee is very finely ground, so when you finish drinking it, all of the grounds are left on the bottom.

The method (from what I remember) goes like this: drink the coffee in one go, and flip the cup upside down on the plate. Let it sit for a few minutes so the grounds have time to settle. Different patterns and shapes carry different meaning. After my coffee sat for a bit, Abigail flipped it over and gave me the news. (Sorry for the proceeding picture as I took it with my phone over 3 years ago)

Abigail saw the creature that had formed, and described it as a demon that was haunting my life. At that point in time, I was drowning in my depression, and knew exactly what that demon represented. Abigail asked if I knew what it could be, and I told her I had a couple things in mind. We hung out for a couple more hours, I said my good byes and headed home with a lot to think about.

Abigail was the first catalyst in me getting help with my depression. I think I told her later that night about it. I truly do not know where I would be without having met Abigail. She was an incredibly positive influence in my life, and I will always be grateful for having the opportunity to know her. I’m especially grateful to have these pictures of her. They bring a lot of emotion to the surface, and help me remember that day and the others that followed.

So I’ll end this emotional roller coaster of a post by saying this: Please take pictures of the ones close to you; friends, family, whoever, just take photos of them. The more time that passes, the more meaning they start to carry. Holding the negatives with Abigail on them brought me a weird happiness, but one I’ll hold onto for a while.

Abigail, thank you for being in my life, I’m going to miss you a lot.

Drive and Direction

Every second or third Thursday, I go and see my therapist. I’ve been seeing him on and off for the past year and a half. He’s been absolutely instrumental in helping me with my direction, my personal issues, and life in general. He inspired this blog post, so, thank you Jeff.

Almost every person you meet along your way in life, has a passion of some sort. Some people have a passion for sewing, maybe painting. No matter the craft, bringing an idea into fruition is one of the most validating and rewarding things you can do. Holding something tangible, something real, that you made, it’s pure bliss.

At this very moment, I’m surrounded by different cameras, film I have developed myself, and photos I made are hanging on the wall. It’s clear to me that this is my passion. I love learning about the world around me, but this is the one thing that I have always come back to. It’s one of the few consistent things in my life (Miah of course is one), and sometimes that consistency provides solace in this hectic world of ours.

For the past two years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to turn this passion that I have into a career, something I can do day after day, and still be happy.

Jeff explained the situation as this (not exactly):

Passion is the engine, the fuel that makes the car go. People have the fuel, the energy, but they don’t always have the ability to direct themselves where they want to go. The steering wheel is that direction, it’s how you channel that passion.

The artist’s dilemma, how do I make this my reality? When you’re starting at the bottom, you won’t just fall into success. You have to sit down, figure out a plan, and execute it. I’ve been slowly piecing together this steering wheel, so I can finally drive the car with the roaring engine, where I want. It’s slow, there’s lots of friction, it’s frustrating, but I’m figuring it out.

I applied for a part time job, making more money hourly, but will be working much fewer hours in total. In this particular situation, getting a new job and no longer working at my full-time gig is the catalyst that will kick my ass into the next step. It’s motivation to keep pressing forward; motivation to make my dreams a reality.

I’m on the right road, at least I think I am. Wherever it takes me, I’m excited to see where it goes.