Jacob Maentz’s Blog

This morning I was called out of the house to look at a rainbow. To my surprise it was a circular rainbow wrapping around the sun. This was the first time I have ever seen this and so I took some pictures and did a little research.

Apparently, this phenomenon is called a sundog. These appear when the sun is low in the sky and its rays catch the thin vapour formed of ice crystals which lies in the atmosphere six miles above the Earth’s surface.

The rays are refracted by the crystals to produce what looks like a halo round the sun.

Sometimes, as here, they display a spectrum of colours from red closest to the sun to a pale blue furthest from it, which has led to them being mistaken for full circle rainbows.

In centuries past, they were thought of as signs of ill omen. These days they are most often mistaken for UFOs.

Pretty cool for a Thursday morning.

• Monday morning and a hot cup of coffee. Going to look at Pocket Wizards for my upcoming events this June. #

Sometimes we can forget that we don’t need to go far to find something captivating to shoot. Last week, while being weighed down by office work, I found inspiration from a least expected place–a papaya tree.

I often find myself sitting in front of the computer for hours, editing, uploading and doing website optimizing. I try not to spend full days doing this, but sometimes it’s inevitable. It’s in these long days that I feel the creative juice leaking out of me. I’m tunneled into what I’m doing and that’s it.

As Freeman Patterson states in his book, Photography and the Art of Seeing, “preoccupation with self is the greatest barrier to seeing, and the hardest one to break.” I have recently felt this statement to be true in life and started some simple daily acts to help prevent this barrier to seeing. One of them being to take my camera and explore something new to shoot.

Last week, I took an hour away from my busy day and looked for something to shoot in my backyard. To my surprise I found more than one interesting subject. I ended up spending more than two hours shooting and had some interesting images in the end. However, what’s most important is I felt inspired and full of creative energy after the shoot.

Freeman Patterson says, “one barrier to seeing is the mass stimuli surrounding us. We are so bombarded with visual and other stimuli that we must block out most of them in order to cope. Instead of seeing everything, we select a few stimuli and organize these. Then once we have achieved order in our lives, we stick with the realities we have established. We seldom try to rediscover the possible value of ignored stimuli, and are reluctant to do so as long as the old ones still seem to be working. We develop a tunnel vision, which gives us a clear view of the rut ahead of us, but prevents us from seeing the world around us.”

He goes on to say, “a photographer who wants to see, a photographer who wants to make fine images, must recognize the value of the familiar. Your ability to see is not increased by the distance you put between yourself and your home. If you do not see what is all around you everyday, what will you see when you go to Tangiers? The subject matter may be different, but unless you can get to the essence of the subject matter through keen observation, and express it through your photographs, it doesn’t matter how exotic your locale.”

Some great words of advice that I hope to return to often.

• just got home after a good day feeding the children of Sapak. This was the first time we ran out of food. At least all the kids ate! #
• Updated my blog theme today.. http://blog.jacobimages.com/ #
• Problems with our DSL and phone line. There is always something to work on with a new place. #
• Heading out for an afternoon shoot. I’m thinking under the old Cebu bridge might return some nice photos. #

This is an article I recently wrote for our camera club newsletter.

We all have a photographic style whether we realize it or not, amateurs and professionals alike. Many photographers, however, never give thought to this with the result often being images that are “normal” or lacking the expression viewers are pulled in with. If we want to improve our photography we need to: First, understand we each have a unique style. Second, reflect on this to better understand why we shoot the way we do, and lastly, use this knowledge to move forward with self-confidence to help improve our skills and imagery.

What is Style?

Many of us think of style as a general term such as portrait photography, travel photography, wedding photography or fashion photography. Although these are common terms used to describe photography styles (I prefer to label these Photography Forms), this article refers to our individual style.

Individual style is our trademark or uniqueness and is not only portrayed in the final product or pictures we produce, but it is also characterized in how we go about getting those images. Photography style can be the type of lenses we use, the angle we choose, our subjects or lighting. Style can also be the way we shoot; in a studio, on the street, low profile, high profile, where we go, how long we go for, how we interact with the subject, our personality, and even our post-processing.

Understanding our Style

Although all photographers have a unique style, many never recognize what theirs is and simply continue their work with no clear direction. It’s important for us to take time and regularly reflect on the components that make our individual style. As we begin to understand and reflect on our style we become more comfortable with ourselves, better understand our motives as artists and the message we are trying to convey to our audience. Reflecting on our style can open a challenging and lengthy discussion in our heads, but one I believe we all need to have as photographers. Our style is not something that can be defined overnight. It is something that continues to develop the more we shoot and the more we get inspired by others work.

Some questions to help us reflect on our style.

1. Why did I begin to shoot? What was the motivation?
2. Is the process of taking pictures more important than the final images?
3. Who do you find most interested in the images you shoot? (Demographics)
4. What are you trying to express through your images? A message?
5. What types of subjects are you more frequently drawn too?
6. Are there certain places you feel more comfortable shooting?
7. What other photographers work are you really drawn to?
8. Do I like to carry lots of equipment or use just one lens?

Ultimately, style should represents who you are - YOU. You must challenge yourself to find your personal statement and step away from what is “normal.” Think of the photographers you like… can you define a certain style in their work? I’m sure you can, and I’m sure these photographers have taken the time to reflect and refine their individual style.

Sometimes it may be hard to answer these questions or the answer is not clear. The more we get out and shoot, the better we will be able to answer these questions and others like this. If we don’t often shot, we cannot not expect to find answers and refine our style.

Moving Forward

It’s like anything in life, if we are confident with ourselves and what we are doing it will be reflected in our final output. By being comfortable with our style, knowing our style, and realizing you have a unique style, enables us to focus and improve our photography. Having direction helps us to better deal with the challenges that always arise and gives us some clarity along the way.

Here’s a quick analogy I came up with. Driving down a long road in an old car with our camera in hand. The road represents our own personal style. This road could be windy, straight, narrow, wide, bumpy, smooth, wet, dry, etc. depending on our unique style. The bystanders on the side of the streets are our audience, the people who will see our message through our images. As photographers we are constantly driving down this road we call our style trying to convey a message to the people looking in on us (our audience). Now, as we develop our skills, get inspired by other artists our style improves with time. This is a good thing! We always want to improve our photography, while holding onto our individual style. Improving our style can be represented by the kind of car we are driving in along this road. We started out in an old beaten up car and as we improve and refine our style we get into nicer cars, a Porsche perhaps. Although our car will hopefully get nicer as time passes, our road will stay the same, because that is unique to each one of us.

This article is really just a starting point. I encourage us all to look into this topic further and share any personal insight that may be helpful as well.

The more I find myself in front of the computer, the more I want to be away from it doing something else. Particularly, being out in the field and taking photographs or spending more time with my kids. Let’s face it though, if your images are left to sit on your hard drive; is it likely that those images will ever be used? Perhaps, if you are a well known photographer and have returning clients who need particular images. Even so, with the digital age and flux of emerging photographers, every advantage to get your images out there could work to your advantage.

Today there is an overwhelming amount of free and open source technology where you can showcase your images. It can be quite daunting to decide where to upload your images/portfolio to; photoblogs, microstock sites, your own website, flickr, multiply, to name a few. Dan Heller gives some great advice on the pros and cons of hosting your own photography website and the business of photography. For me, I want to rank as high as I can in Google searches for particular photo keywords. I have tried to accomplish this by hosting my images on my own stock website in addition to other photo sharing sites, like Flickr. Again, Dan Heller covers this topic very well in this article.

It’s inevitable that you will spend a good amount of time on the computer uploading your images, adding captions, keywords, etc. if you want to rank well in search engines. However, when there are ways to make this process easier and less time consuming it’s good to explore available options.

My online work flow begins with uploading my images to my own stock website. I am currently using Gallery2 software and I use a remote interface called GalleryRemote to make uploading easier. This is where I add titles, descriptions, keywords, etc to all of my images. This is the most important place for my photos to be, because this is where my photos rank the best on searches (in addition to the place where customers can buy the image). After my images are watermarked in Gallery2, I use a module called Gallery2Flickr which exports my images to directly to my Flickr account. This module alone saves me a lot of time. With a push of a button my photos are exported to my Flickr account with all of their titles, descriptions and keywords. I couldn’t imagine spending the time to re-upload my images to Flickr manually. Flickr is a great place for photo sharing and getting more exposure (many of my sales have come from first seeing the image in Flickr). Additional, some of my Flickr images do really well in search rankings (especially with Yahoo). I always make sure each of my Flickr photos has a link back to my website. From Flickr I can import my images to Facebook or MySpace with another push of the button. Life is getting easier.

I am also exploring more the use of RSS Feeds. Currently, I have a photo RSS Feed for all of my new images. I have noticed that I receive a lot of links back to my site from the submitted feed, which can’t hurt search rankings.

That’s a little information about my online photo workflow. I would love to hear some feedback or other ideas that people are using.

The last two months since my last blog entry have been busy for my family and I. We returned to Cebu City at the end of October after spending eight months visiting family and friends in the States. Its always nice to be back in Cebu and to see our family and friends here as well. We have been in the process of building a new house here for the past year. Construction continued while we were in the states, but the past two months we have been going full throttle trying to finish it. We are about two weeks out now from moving in and we are very excited to make the transfer. The house is not too big, but it is tall (four stories). We love the patio on the top floor and it has a great view of the mountains in Cebu. Watching fireworks on New Years from the patio was a family event and we could see them in all directions.

Panoramic view from our patio.

Aside from the excitement of moving into our new home, my wife gave birth to our second child on November 26th. Baby Amaya Mary. She is a cute one and her brother loves to give her kisses. She’s already getting big and before we know it she will be walking around like Liam.

Baby Amaya

This time of year is busy for photographers in Cebu with weddings and events in peak season. I have been fortunate enough with all that is going on to take a few assignments. I have posted some images below from two weddings and other events I have covered since arriving back to the Philippines.

Wedding at Maribago Blue Waters Resort

Wedding reception at Waterfront Hotel Cebu City

Turkish Ambassador to the Philippines with Guests

On another note, two good friends of mine from my Peace Corps days came to visit. It was great catching up with Matt and Alex and it was just like old times hanging on the beach, having some drinks and good discussions.

Matt and Alex with Dive Master Tata in Malapascua.

I’m looking forward to a fruitful 2009 and spending more of my energy on traveling and capturing beautiful images. I have spent a good portion of 2008 developing jacobimages.com and coming up with business ideas, etc. I am looking forward to getting back to more of the photography side of the photography business and doing what I really enjoy. I hope you will be patient and continue to check back to see what new images I am able to post in the stock gallery. Thanks for reading and see you back here soon.

————

I went to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga this past Monday with a good friend I haven’t seen in a long time. Wally Van Sickle and Sean Kelly from IDEA WILD were in town attending the Society for Conservation Biology annual conference. IDEA WILD purchased equipment for the winners who participated in the Conservation Leadership program. The Conservation Leadership winners were attending this conference and the reason why Wally and Sean came to Chattanooga. I’ve been living about an hour from Chattanooga for the past three months and this worked out great, because I haven’t seen Wally in over four years. The last time we saw each other was in El Nido, Palawan doing some diving.

We had a day to hang out and we decided to go to the Tennessee Aquarium to see all the critters there. We were all very impressed with the quality and design of the aquarium. One of the best aquariums I have been to. It was also nice to see on display many of the native species to Tennessee and the Cumberland Plateau.

I thought I would share with you some images I took at the aquarium. I would recommend a visit to this aquarium if you are in the area.