I’d like to think of this as my Contractual Obligation blog.
I have tried to publish four Cemetery Traveler blog posts every month since embarking
upon this escapade in 2010. It’s sort of a personal contract I’ve made. Rarely
have I not met this goal. However, January 2016 has been a trying month for
various reasons. As of January 30th, I had only published two. I
cranked one out yesterday, “Cemetery Road Trip to North Jersey.“
So here it is January 31, 2016, and as my father used to
say, “I’ve got a million things to do!” I temper such notions with something my
daughter Olivia asked me when she was five years old: “Daddy, why are grownups
so busy?” After thinking about that for a bit, I answered, “I guess it’s because
they choose to be.” (As an example, I trudged half a mile in a blizzard last weekend to make the photo at right. Did I have to? No. Need to? No. Was it worth it? That's debatable!) So, tucked in with my millions of other things I need/want
to be doing, I have written what amounts to my Contractual Obligation blog, my fourth blog of January 2016, presented here for your enjoyment.
New Photographic Tools
As I look out from my eyrie on all the cemeteries that need
to be photographed, I find myself with a new tool – an Apple iPhone6. Not only
that, but a friend turned me on to the “645 Pro” App ($3.99, and only available
for Apple products, sorry), which gives you way more control over the image you
capture than the iPhone’s own camera. Resolution is good with the iPhone 6 - you end up with 3MB images - and there are some basic in-phone editing controls. I’d actually made hundreds of photographs
(if indeed these electronic images can be referred to as such) with the iPhone
during the first months I owned it. However, it only recently occurred to me to
use it to make photos in the cemeteries I visit.
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| #BessieSmith |
Why bother, if I have real cameras at my disposal? Well, one
word: “Instagram.” During the opening reception for a solo photography
exhibition I had in the fall of 2015, the owner of the establishment showed me
the Instagram images she blasted out to the universe to promote my show. She
talked me into getting the App and setting up an account. I was told that it
can be used to great advantage as a tool with which to promote your art.
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| #abandonedcrematorium |
So I’ve been, uh, Instagramming (if that is, in fact, an
actual word) new images from cemeteries I’ve recently visited. They’re all “hash
tagged” (“#graveyard,” for example) so people can find them if they look for
images tagged with that word. You see, Instagram, as well as the Internet in general, is text-based – it can’t
tell what the content of your photo or pdf is – you have to tag the file with text. Otherwise, no
one will find it with a word search. In the course of the past month since I’ve
been on Instagram, I have amassed a number of “followers,” that is, people who
will see my images pop up automatically on their smart phones the moment I post
them.
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| #brownstoneangel |
The photographs you see sprinkled throughout this article
were made by me and my iPhone during the (current, as I write this) winter of
2015-16. You can only upload images to Instagram that you’ve made with your smart phone, by the way (you can also add a few lines of text, to describe the
image, point folks to your website, etc.). It is mainly an image-centric method
of communication, not text-based like Twitter. There’s no easy way to upload images from your computer to Instagram. You either have to have
made the image with your smart phone (you upload it to Instagram directly from
the phone), or you need some way (as with Apple’s iTunes) to transfer
your image files from your computer to your smart phone.
So is all this gear and software going to make you another Edward Weston? No. These are tools. You need heart, soul, and talent to make successful photographs. Gear is fun and can open up new possibilities for you, but it won't make you a better photographer. If I sound tech-savvy, I’m really not. With anything ranging
from Adobe’s Photoshop to Apple’s iPhone, I learn just enough to make the tools
do what I need/want them to do! I always fall back on the basic photgraphic principles I've outlined in my book (shown below), entitled, Digital Photography for the Impatient!
So, here it is, 9:34 pm on January 31, 2016. Will I make my
deadline and post this before midnight? Well, Super Bowl is not ‘til next week
and hockey is in the All-Star break, so it looks good. All I need to do is
transfer some of my cemetery images from my iPhone to my computer so I can size
them and drop the resolution. Then I can pop them into the text here for your
ultimate enjoyment!
