A black and white version of Mt Sanford and reflection, from one of my favorite viewpoints in Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of the photo.

Hey Folks,

The secret to a productive day of creative work on the computer, for me, is Command Q. Tweet Deck, closed. Mac Mail, closed. Fetch, closed. Safari, Firefox and Chrome, closed. Dreamweaver, closed. Capture NX2, closed, Photoshop closed, Text Edit, closed. iTunes, open, and Photo Mechanic, open. 35 minutes of initial photo sorting/editing and keywording and I get an awful lot done.

Then, Command O and Capture NX2 opens up. Select the images from Photo Mechanic, and hit Command E. Those images open in Capture NX2. Command Q again, and Photo Mechanic shuts down. I do my basic RAW editing, conversions, etc, and open the images in Adobe Photoshop. Command Q and Capture NX2 shuts down as well.

A little more work in Photoshop, then save the tif files, send the various resized jpegs to their respective folders for internet uploading, blogs, etc, and Command Q slams it’s iron fist down once more.

Next up, I might write for my blog, or something in my journal, or work on a few other things I’m writing, articles etc. I usually use Text Edit for that. Then, as I wind those down, boom, Command Q relentlessly fires again.

Dreamweaver for some website work; either writing new pages, or tweaking content in current pages, there’s always something there that needs attention. And thanks to the voracious appetite of Command Q, I can give those pages my full attention. My email box doesn’t Bing, I don’t see the little red square of death at the top of my Google plus page, Tweet Deck doesn’t force its popups over the top of everything I’m doing, and I can actually focus on the work I’m doing; which, of course, thanks to this wonderful world of digitization, is never  close to completed.

Multi-tasking simply isn’t a productive process for creative work without a real schedule and set of boundaries. Distraction and interruption means losing focus, and that’s not a useful way to channel creative work.

And for now, that means Command Q and a cup of tea upstairs.

Cheers

Carl

Web stats, graphs and keywords and search terms - click the image to view a larger version of this "photo".

Hey Folks,

By now, everyone with a website knows something about keywords; in some ways, keywords are your website. Many multi-national corporations have an entire section of their company  marketing team devoted to the study of keywords. What are people searching for, and how do people find your website?

Keywords aren’t all about search engines though; via social media you have a powerful tool to drive traffic to your website. And keywords help enormously with that.

Another reason to not solely focus on search engines is because, well, search engines don’t search; they index. They should be called “index engines”. People search. So as you construct some form of marketing plan/s, think about people, don’t think about search engines. “Personas” is the buzz word advertisers and marketing folks use; What are people looking for that you have to offer?

Here’s a snapshot that tells a story. Guess which single keyword drove this spike upward.

Cheers

Carl

Hey Folks,

It’s that time of year once again. Thanks so much for stopping by to read the blog here and view the photos, I appreciate it.

Here are my pick of images (34) for 2011. I hope you enjoy them.

You’ll find a great list of photographers’ photos of the year on Jim Goldstein’s blog. Check it out.

Thanks

Cheers

Carl

Coyote pup sitting beside yellow daisies, Jasper National Park, Canada. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

BBC = bBS

Hey Folks,

Here’s an interesting article from the UK Telegraph; the first paragraph pretty much sums things up: “The BBC is accused of routinely faking footage in wildlife documentaries, by using studio sets, sound effects and tame animals to portray creatures in the wild.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking: yes, indeed, the UK Telegraph commenting on any media source of ‘faking’ anything is pretty sad. Let’s disregard tabloid integrity for a moment and consider what this is really about (and what’s WAY more fun); wildlife photography.

Wildlife photography does not include zoo and game farm animals; shooting captive subjects, given that some folks are perpetually going to choose to do this, should always be labelled as such, even if only via context (see Darwin Wiggett’s bear photo for an example; and notice that he captioned it regardless).

I have yet to hear anyone explain how photographing a bear in a cage is wildlife anything. The root of the word ‘wild’ is free-willed, not Free Willy. I understand, for certain, there are degrees of what that might mean. Is a zebra migrating hundreds of miles across the plains in Africa before being hemmed in by a fence really free willed? *

The fact that there are indeed myriad shades of gray, woven through every possible facet of our world, does not make charcoal black any less black. We might differ on where 18% gray is, but we know what black is.

A bear in a cage is a bear in a cage, and not wildlife. Steel bars and free will aren’t friends.

Wildlife photography must be about wild, as people photography must be about people. Photographing captive animals is no more wildlife photography than photographing my pickup truck parked in front of the house might make me a Nascar photographer; a photo of me in my stylishly stunning goretex jacket is not fashion photography.

So what is “wildlife”? In thinking of how critically different a captive animal is to a wild one, I’m reminded of a powerful passage by Derrick Jensen in his great book, Thought to Exist in the Wild, Awakening to the Nightmare of Zoos: “A sea lion is her habitat. She is the school of fish she chases. She is the water. She is the cold wind blowing over the ocean. She is the waves that strike the rocks on which she sleeps and she is the rocks. She is the constant calling back and forth between members of her family, this talking to each other that never seems to stop. She is the shark who eventually ends her life. She is all these things. She is that web. She is the process of being a sea lion, in place. She is her desires, which we can only learn by letting her show us, if she wants; not by encaging her.”

That’s what wild is. A bear in a cage relentlessly pacing back and forth thru its own shit is not.

The power of photography is in its capture. What makes a photo so appealing to a viewer is the moment. Reality portrayed on a 2 dimensional plane. If we look through great moments in all forms of photography and ask the question of what is it that evokes a reaction in a viewer, it’s clearly a response to some perceived sense of reality, to some actual experience; even if that sense is simply someone else’s “take” on reality. We understand that moment. We feel it. We relate to it.

I think it’s important that we don’t deny that power, that integral function of a photograph. Photography might, translated literally, mean ‘painting with light’, but that’s a superfluous definition. Photography is most definitely NOT painting. Photography is photography.

When we present that photography as something other than what it actually is we’re not documentarians. It’s a copout to hide beneath the veneer of “artists” as well; the only use of the term “artist” that might be appropriate for those photographers who don’t disclose captive subjects is “con-artist”.

Speaking of such, even the National Advertising Division recently made a similar statement when they banned an ad by Proctor & Gamble for too much digital manipulation. The NAD took things a step further, however, and pointed out that even a footnote isn’t enough; that is, full disclosure should be FULL disclosure: “You can’t use a photograph to demonstrate how a cosmetic will look after it is applied to a woman’s face and then – in the mice type – have a disclosure that says ‘okay, not really.’

Some folks claim that labeling their photographs reduces nature photography to a form devoid of ulterior meaning, but I disagree. We humans label things. We label animals, features, subjects, moments, days, places, etc. We label each other. We label ourselves. And yes, we label our art. We label sculptures as ‘sculptures’, paintings as ‘paintings’, poetry as ‘poetry’, and so on. We even subdivide each form into further categories, and label pieces and subdivisions accordingly. Photography becomes ‘journalistic photography’, or ‘still life photography’ and ‘nature photography’. This is what we do. Its how we know the world.

IMO, the power of nature photography is its expression of the natural world. Portrayals of captive animals as wild animals loses much of the power that comes through our relationships and experiences with nature. I see no harm in expecting artists and documentarians alike to pronounce their work for what it is. The phrase ‘nature photograph’ carries with it certain intimations. A trip to the zoo is NOT one of those.

Cheers

Carl

* PS: the answer to the question about the zebra is (a), yes.

Grizzly bear lying on the ground, rear view, (Ursus arctos), Katmai National Park and Preserve. Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I generally avoid articles built from numbered lists. The Top 8 anything is generally little more than billboardian nonsense.

That said, I read with some interest 12 things you were not taught in school about creative thinking: I’ll ignore the perfect opportunity to comment about the very clear LACK of creative thinking in the article’s title. For now.

The article is by Michael Michalko, “one of the most highly acclaimed creativity experts in the world and author of the best sellers Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), ThinkPak  (A Brainstorming Card Deck), and Cracking Creativity (The Secrets Of Creative Genius)”  - hhhmmm …. I’m seeing a pattern here.

I think perhaps the biggest ‘myth’ we hold about creative thinking is something that comes from this article and others like it.

Creative thinking is NOT about Einstein or Beethoven or Mozart or Edison or Walt Disney. That kind of talk doesn’t promote creativity; rather, it stifles creative thinking. Because you’re NOT Einstein. You’re NOT Amadeus Mozart. Statistically, such people don’t exist. We can’t aspire to some to, or be expected to simulate, what doesn’t exist. You’re not, and won’t be, Picasso.

Who are you? You’re Sean Quigley. You’re Randall, of Honey Badger fame. Or this guy. Or Alan Becker. The point here is not that you and I aren’t famous. The point is that creative thinking is rarely the grandiose and celebrated. It’s the small, inconsequential and often fleeting ideas that drift by our space sometimes.

That’s what creative thinking is about; it’s through the practice of that, the repetition of paying attention to our muse, even to, no, especially to the tiniest of ideas that come our way, that those really great moments happen.

And they do happen. But are we paying attention?

Cheers

Carl

Brown bear, Ursus arctos, standing raised upright and rubbing her back against a birch tree in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

I can’t imagine my father ever calling himself a “professional University lecturer” or my brother referring himself to as a “professional math teacher”.

The word professional means many things; but when it’s followed with a vocation, such as “photographer”, it doesn’t mean that you enjoy photography a lot, or that you speak politely about it, or that someone bought a print from you. It doesn’t even mean that you have a website. It doesn’t mean you teach workshops and lead tours, either.

Show me a professional photographer, and I’ll wager a dollar I’ll show you someone who’s struggled to pay their rent, who’s sold gear to make their car payment (or sold their car to make their gear payment), someone who’s eaten peanut butter sandwiches because that’s what was available to eat.

A professional photographer has made real sacrifice to do what they do (there are always exceptional cases, with trust funds, a wealthy spouse, etc). It’s a risk. It’s giving up an awful lot to choose to pursue a particular vocation. It’s losing on that risk, picking up, and swinging the stick again. And again. And yet again. Repeat, infinitum.

It sounds much more glamorous than it might be. It means you take the bus sometimes, it means you sit in the rain and wish you were somewhere else. It means you sometimes take a lower price for a sale because you need shoes. Pardon my French, but it means you’ve been sh** on. It means you’ve wished, cursed and swore that you had chosen some other manner to live by. It means you say ‘yes’ when you think ‘oh sh**, that gig sounds like hell’. It means you say ‘yes’ and then that gig actually IS hell. And you then say ‘yes’ again. Still you pursue it.

Being a professional photographer (or musician, or actor, or writer) doesn’t just mean you’re good at what you do, or that you’re very passionate about photography. It doesn’t just mean you spend time promoting yourself. It doesn’t just mean you write invoices and receipts. It doesn’t simply mean you work hard to ‘get the shot’ (it doesn’t mean you use such ridiculously lame phrases as ‘get the shot’, either). It certainly doesn’t mean you have a facebook/twitter/google+ page.

It means you took a step. And another. And another. You consciously chose a path less traveled. You stepped into an unknown world and wondered ‘how should I live?’ It likely means you’ve also wondered ‘will I make it?” That’s an incredible dilemma to have; and for many people, continue to have. It’s a very different place to be in.

Being a professional photographer means you’re probably not striving to become something else (though some certainly do); you’re not doing it to make some bank while you try to get your law business off the ground.

The term “professional photographer” means so much more than how you see yourself, your own sense of identity, though that’s certainly a part of it. You ARE a photographer. It’s not a simple advertising slogan. It’s not just a banner for your website. It’s real, folks, and it does mean something. And to every professional photographer out there, hats off to you.

Cheers

Carl

Boreal forest and reflections in a small kettle pond, Copper River Basin, Wrangell - St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

It’s often said that art can teach us how to live. This is true, yet it’s also commonly misinterpreted. The product of art, what we call the photograph, or the lyric, or the dance, doesn’t teach us how to live. The product of art, these artifacts, can show us how someone ELSE lived.

On the other hand, the making of art (which is REALLY where art is), can teach us how to live.

This process, the making of art, illustrates how we might live; how we might be fully present, engaged, conscious. More fully alive.

The act of creating is a portal by which we might be connected with creation itself. That’s how we should live.

For most of us regular, “non-Dalai Lama” folks, the process of making art is one of the very few things we do where we might experience that realm of consciousness and presence. Making love might be another. I think sport, what athletes call being “in the zone” references that same state of being. A connection with the moment so powerful we’re aware of nothing else but that moment. Aware of nothing else, because there is nothing else, nothing but the present.

This is how to live. Conscious, alert and engaged. Fully present. The gift art holds is not for audience, but for ourselves, those who practice it. Most of us rarely acknowledge that.

In looking through the viewfinder, we look at ourselves; at our world, our lives, our experience. The moment of us. Every picture we take is a self portrait. The process of making those photographs, of composing and playing that music, is the process of living, of being alive. It’s the process of being ourselves. The process of creating, of creation; that’s the process of the universe itself.

Art doesn’t simply teach us how to live, and illustrate our experiences and moments in time. Art is life. It’s who we are. Art is Creation.

Cheers

Carl

Borwn bear in the forest, fall colors, searching for salmon in a river. Brown bear (Ursus arctos) Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks

A few quick updates: though nothing is ‘final’ on the interwebs, it seems; the internet goes to infinity, I suppose.

The end of every summer/fall I’m busy with office work, paper work, reports, emails, photo editing, processing, prints, website updates, website tweaks, writing, photo submissions (Oh, how I detest that word “submissions”; yet it’s so wonderfully apt, isn’t it?) and heaven knows what else. It’s not so much fun, but (apparently) it has to be done.

Lately, here’s a few of the projects I’ve been dealing with and fires I’ve put out.  Many more to come.

• New album added,  Gates of the Arctic photos
• New images added to the Wrangell – St. Elias Coastal Range album
• New images added to the Aurora Borealis album
• New images added, and some updated design, on my Alaska Photos portfolio page
• Finally added selections to a Mt McKinley photos page
• A Google Plus page added for Alaskan Alpine Treks, my guiding and photo tour business (come on folks, go ahead and add that page to your best G+ circles; thank you)

Another change I’ve made with the site, but less visible to everyone here, is I changed my email server from my web host’s server to gmail. Highly recommended move, and not to difficult at all. Gmail has a way better spam filter, and much more adept tools with their auto responder, etc, than lunarpages email server does.

I can still set up my Mac Mail program to retrieve and send emails, so it’s all handled and managed locally for me, but it comes thru gmail, rather than my webhost. Anyone having issues with spam, for example, thru their website’s email, I’d definitely recommend making this move.

One more change; I’ve disparaged coppermine gallery in the past, because they can be pretty hard to deal with. That’s putting it mildly; pita is more appropriate. I know, I know, it’s free software. But there’s no excuse to be so disrespectful toward people when they ask a question. But, the last few dealings I’ve had on their forum asking for some help they’ve been much better, and I actually was able to implement at least some of the changes I wanted to get done. So kudos to the folks at coppermine for being a little more user-friendly.

I also just had an article published, an op-ed piece on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain. The piece is driven by the recent debacle in Congress when AK rep Don Young tells an invited guest (essentially) to shut up. It’s a little outta control. The article is on Alaska Dispatch.

I won’t mention the new Alaska Photo Tours page I put up, but I will mention a lengthy article I wrote recently on “How to Photograph the Aurora borealis“; a 3 part comprehensive guide to shooting the northern lights. I think it covers most of what you might want to know about photographing the aurora.

Speaking of which, I’m about to go give it a whirl; enough of this writing already.
Heading out the door, folks.

Cya

Cheers

Carl

A brown bear patrols the river's edge at dawn, searching for spawning Sockeye salmon. Brown bear (Ursus arctos), Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

For regular readers here, you might well know of the photo tours and guiding I do with Alaskan Alpine Treks. I’ve just now set up a page to compliment those photo tours here on Skolai Images, and you can be the first to visit by clicking here: Alaska Photo Tours.

I’m currently booking 3 photo tours: the ever popular grizzly bears in the fall tour (2×1 week tours), both of which are almost full for 2012. I’m also booking 2 Alaska aurora borealis photo tours for winter/spring in 2012; March and April. And the Skolai Pass Alaska landscapes backcountry tour is a great summertime trip; July and August seem to be the popular dates for that trip.

You can find all the info you might want, and links and pictures, over on the new Alaska Photo Tours page.

Give me a call or drop me an email if you’re interested. Thanks so much.

Cheers

Carl

The difference in audience between a discussion about art

& a discussion about SEO and social media

says what about our priorities?