I was just sniffing through some of the stats, and noticed that The Pillar, is almost at 33 grand page views. 2 years now since it was taken, it sure set me off on a tear. That picture started a lot of others...
Cheers, and Thanks to everybody who is looking, watching etc.

~ d

Greetings to any and all that take the the time to read this. I truly appreciate all of the Favs-watches-Collections and Critters that I have received from my fellow members.  I am still balancing on that line between Hobby and Career.  Shooting at a pro level and being able to pay bills and commitments sometimes seem like two different unrelated world's.  With that said, I am committed towards my application to the Magnum Photo agency. Based largely on my body of lifetime work, and the ways that I do and have responded to new environments. Plain and simple. And that is what I am planning out for my summer. A challenge so to speak, to myself, and I aim to find as many new elements as I can. Commercially ( $ ) abstract, nature and a desire to take a voyage into studying the body, something I thankfully, remain intrigued by.

COLOR magazine has featured another of my images in their 2012 Single Image Special Editions. That makes 3 issues consecutively of theirs, that I have been published in. Which is frickin awesome.
I have been asked to continue on as the photographer for the summer concert series that run in this area. Little monetary value, but great exposure for my work and unbelievable access to some amazing concerts. And I am trying to grow that circle too. Like by contacting people like Marilyn Manson and telling him that I will truly do him justice by letting me shoot his upcoming show in Grand Rapids.

And I am going to be putting another large print photo show together for a Funky restaurant here in Sarnia. The show will be hanging in LOLA's for at least the months of May/June. My first show there resulted in 2 sales, but generated a great amount of feedback, and the big punchy prints made the place glow. So it was well received. I am working on a theme now, and have a lot of options as to which parts of my cataloged to feature. I am pretty satisfied with the difficulty of this situation. Ie: too much subject matter to choose from.

And then there is my real job, which I look forward to trading in one of these days. But I cannot say too much about that right now, because I would have to Dance on this keyboard if I could announce it was over.

Bottom line, is that I am in constant motion, most of it is forward. I have too many good friends that I have not given any or enough attention to.  And I feel like a kid still.  My heart remains solid, and is aimed at one person.

Thanks for the feedback and critiques. I will be in touch.
Fraternal, Doug

But I have just been notified that I will be having two more images published in a special edition of B&W PHOTOGRAPHY. Next month is the release of their Single Image Edition and I will have two unrelated images in the glossy magazine.  

The response from the public to the Color Portfolio edition was great, lots of compliments on my featured "water drops" and even some printing requests from afar.
So that is the kind of feedback we all look forward to.  

And with that said, the last couple of submissions I have made to magazines/contests, I have broken the tradition of submitting my old favourites, you know the ones that should be published, but never get accepted.  Well it has paid off in spades to keep going with the new and fresh images.  Which I keep generating.  

Thanks again to all the people who are FAVing my images and making comments, wish I could comment to each of you. And eventually I will.

It really seems like I am actually making some headway into bringing my work, or style of work, to a bigger audience.  And I can only say that hard work is the reason.
So, for the anybody who has dreams or aspirations about working/generating income with your camera,  Keep doing what you are doing, and step back often to see where you are going.

CHEERS

That is not a complaint, but just an acknowledgement that a lot of time has passed, sinced I stopped to smell this rose.

I love all of the feedback that I have received from the batches of images I have posted. Honestly, I have come close to burnout on a couple of occasions, because of the huge number of images I have taken since the spring. And all of the associated desktop time that goes with it nearly crushed me. And I love doing the 2 or 3 simple steps that I do with each image. It is not that I spend any significant amount of time with any image. Just too many in a fairly short period of time.

There has been lots of activity with the images that I have made recently, and once again I find myself in an "outside of the box" capacity, and this time around, I almost see a light at the end of the tunnel. A good chunk of that light has me leaning into a more commercial style of photography. I seem to have found a certain groove in both the public relations end of it ie: I must get paid. (long overdue, save that puppy for another day) and I seem to be nailing any assignment that has either been thrown to me or I have played a part in creating.   Fashions shows, Concert photography, aerial photos, abstact portraits, magazine publications, weddings and stock photography, I have been a busy camper, and loved every damn second. And there we come back to desktop again.

Recently I was informed that I have been awarded a publishing spot in COLOR magazine for their International Portfolio Special Edition magazine. It will be on the newstands in the first week of September. My second time being published by the B&W Magazine group. This is something that makes me proud and I am really anxious to hear which portfolio, or part of a portfolio is being published. Once, again, I have felt really good about what I was producing, and submitted a couple of serious portfolios. I threw out my compassion and dedication to many of my old favourite images; you know... the ones that are so good... but have never won anything. They did not get submitted this time and I moved to all new work. Even that was 9 months ago.

I recently also submitted a batch of B&W images to the B&W magazines Single Image competition, all new images. June entry, there will be no word on that for 7 - 8 months. At least I am keeping up with this creative burst and know that some of my work is getting out there.

In closing, I really love the Canon 5D mkII. Almost 10 months of use and it rocks. I will have to breakdown and get a remote shutter release so that I can do some longer time exposures as we head into fall.

Snowsculpting is a subject that is on my mind daily. We have a project in the works for the Breckenridge International Sculpting event and will be submitting  a design to Whitehorse for the Air Canada International Competition once again. Those are two solids, with Deadlines approaching...

No money to go off-continent this year. And my girlfriend deserves that kind of energy & decadence when the time is right. I can and will say it, I have a solid relationship with an equally busy and responsible lady. Nice to have that support while I persist and flail away... trying to find that right kind of balance. lol

OK, time to go. I accepted a DeviantArt makeover, thought I had better put up a fresher Journal. And to congratulate so many of you for blowing me away with the steady stream of amazing work, great work everybody and you all make me think !

Feel free to wander in my Gallery; sculpting and misc in the scrapbin ! the further back you go, the further back you.  ( I will edit some of the deadwood again soon, I have been chipping away. )

fraternally, ~ d

It is great to see so many people stop and look at THE PILLAR. I never thought or dreamed that this image would draw that kind of attention. THANKS TO ALL OF YOU.

Thinking about opening a print account just for this image.

I have been on a bit of roll here lately; just found out I have WON a category in the latest Canadian Geographic photo contest. It will be published next month and is a special feature magazine for the summer travellers.
So, I am delighted to be published once again in this magazine.

And I have completed the work on two different portfolios that I am submitting for consideration. Fingers crossed, with a punchy group of images that all work together. Nice to be able to match up like items.

Still too busy in the real world, wishing i had more time for this one.

Keep well, take your camera.

~ d

Well, the tools are dry, my bags are unpacked and the memories are still flooding in.
we had a great trip to whitehorse to compete in the air canada challenge. met with many old friends, made a bunch of new ones, and worked our butts off.

just now am i realizing that we forgot to put the pom-pom back on top of our hunters touque. our only obvious mistake was the mis-positioning of the head. off by about 8 inches. bob, our partner from michigan, did a great job of reshaping the head to account for the alignment issue, you cannot really tell now unless you could see both shoulders. I made a mental note about midnight to remember the pom. oops.

the weather was great for the whole event, except on the last night. the temp dropped and the wind began to howl. only after we had 3 inches of snow. and the snow was a blessing, because, and with no fault to the organizers, the snow was shit. field snow that had been sitting for months, with no new accumulation really, had layers of ice and absolutely no moisture whatsoever.

the blocks, which we helped stomp, just did not have any strength in them, and many times we would punch a hole in the side, and the snow would run out like sugar. thankfully this project did not have anything hanging, or really exposed. but it made finishing the surfaces almost impossible. you sand at the surface, the snow disappears, and the ice sticks out further. pretty hard to work with. but nobody complained, we all had the same blocks, lets have some fun. we did find some beautiful snow, hard packed like a hard wood in an adjoining field, and that is what we used for the tusks and the knife blade. also the cubes of blubber in the kids hands.

walt had the whole group sing for his birthday. how many times do you get serenaded in 5 different languages. I have to say that the time i have spent within the circle of snow-sculptors, it does not matter where you are, is one of the richest and warmest experiences i have ever encountered. this group of artists knows how to work, how to help each other deal with hurdles, and most certainly... knows how to party when the tools are dropped. 24/7

i created a great souvenier. being such a unique landscape with a long and storied history, i asked for the penultimate book on the yukon/goldrush. i was told that the pierre berton book KLONDIKE filled that category. so i bought it. then in a flash of inspiration, i had all of the sculptors autograph it for me. what a beautiful thing to have all these great messages, in so many languages, scribbled into the front of book, relating to that specific place. it may become a habit...

and i like that.

the top 3 spots were awarded. and i believe sincerely that we would have taken the 4th spot out of the 11 teams. we put a great effort into this beast. Were soundly complimented by a couple of elderly Inuit women who said we had it almost perfect, and they loved the concept. and that is all the support i need for projects like this. i love to tell a story, and carve something that is 360 degrees.

our guts were also a notable hit, with the public and the other sculptors as well. the trend, and i like to say i rest pretty close to the origin of this, ( delayne too ) is the use of balloons, filled with water. people have been using them for eyes etc on sculptures. well we made intestines and organs out of them. filled a globe with ice tea to make it look like the walrus's bladder. we had balloons hanging everywhere, and pretty well filled the abdominal cavity of the walrus with a spaghetti factory of shaped ice. to the point that it was hanging out... awesome.

this was my only sculpture this year because of a broken hand. so i am chomping at the bit. maybe carving in argentina in august would make me feel better. better call Fernando and see what's up...   

cheers to all, and bring on the spring. i have to go. thanks to sean for asking "how did it go?" we had fun!

Time to get pumped up about our upcoming snow sculpting competition. Our team is traveling across the country to compete in the Air Canada International Snowsculpting Championships.  I have just posted our mauquette that we will be working from. The final sculpture will be 11 feet tall and 18 feet wide from nose to tail.
Years of making cuddly and cute sculptures, this one is a reality check. A father handing down the generations old techniques of survival.
Tools sharp; check, long johns; check

wow, talk about being blown away by the response from people. thanks for speaking up.
will be revisiting the drops in a while, but i have lots of other needs right now. time and money. not enough of either. the last couple days have seen the VIEWS number jump a couple of grand, so i have to chuckle about it. this response to one of my images is definitely a first. the previous big hitter was my punker in berlin, and barbed wire surrounding the gas house at buchenwald crematorium.
both stark black and white images. so i am really glad to see these splashes of colour, literally.

i have some ideas in store for the next droplet attempt. you'll see it here first.

thanks again

~ d

Holy Shit,

NEVER HAVE I EVER CREATED AN IMAGE THAT HAS GATHERED SO MUCH SUPPORT. AND I MEAN SUPPORT FROM AROUND THE WORLD. THE IMAGE THAT I SUBMITTED "THE PILLAR", IS STILL RACKING UP FAVS, TREMENDOUS COMMENTS, REQUESTS, ADDITIONS TO GALLERIES AND LOT OF OTHER SUPER-POSITIVE SPIN-OFFS.

THE GORY DETAILS: IN THE LAST 7 DAYS, THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN VIEWED 23,652 TIMES, AND BEEN FAVed by 3350 PEOPLE.
AND THE NUMBERS KEEP MOVING UPWARD.

THANKS FOR ALL THE COMMUNICATION. NO WAY I CAN GET BACK TO EACH OF YOU. BUT THE FAVS AND BEING WATCHED BY SO MANY PEOPLE LATELY, IS HUGELY APPRECIATED.

I AM NOT GOING TO CHANGE A THING. YOU WILL SEE MY VOLUME OF WORK COME AND GO. THE SUBJECT MATTER WILL VEER SUDDENLY IN A NEW DIRECTION FROM TIME TO TIME. LIKE THIS VENTURE INTO DROPS. SUCH IS LIFE.

NEXT PROJECT WILL BE TO PUT MY SONS FACE ON A DROP...

You have all made this one of the simplest and happiest days I have had as a photographer. My little forray into the macro shooting of these drops, was right up my alley. Kind of a specialty of mine, but once again, something that I had never tried before.

And your response to ONE of the images, has been keeping me in stitches since I submitted it last night at 2:00a.m.
In that time people, I have had 1036 FAVS in the last 18 hours. Never in my life could I have imagined so many people getting absolutely smitten by such a repeatable image. I say repeatable because there are many ways of doing the same task. Not always will the results be the same, but you get my drift. So many people take pictures like this. But to be swamped by questions and requests and digital pats on the back, but some spectacular artists, has overwhelmed me. I am humbled and gracious.

This image, THE PILLAR, has been added to over 170 COLLECTIONS, and right at this point in time, it has been viewed 4500 friggin times in 18 hours.

Thanks to everybody for standing up and speaking out about this shot.

Now for the rest of the water drop pictures, I will be months responding to the individual clusters of Favs and Collections. I must have done something right, because never, has a technique of mine been so well received.

I am constantly in awe of the talent here within D.A., and today, you make me feel like I belong. So there.

Good Night and great shooting to all of you. There are some individuals that will be addressed specifically, I appreciate all of the comments. I have posted two images in the SCRAPBOOK section of my GALLERY. They are iPhone shots of pureadrenalin and I at play last night, with the kitchen set-up that created most of the recent images in my Gallery. It explains the bits and things in the pictures. Alludes in no way to the amount of beer or alternatives that were used to create any of the images in this gallery or anywhere else on the planet....

later, ~ d

Hey, to all the people who have jumped on THE PILLAR, I have to say a big THANKS. Never in my 5 years with D.A. have I submitted a picture that has unanimously been so accepted before. Within the last 10 hours, I have over 320 FAV's on this shot alone, and 60 additions to COLLECTIONS.

So I am blown away by the success of these water drops. I have said it before, Arwenarts gets first shout, then richallen for offering alternatives.

I have alot of things I still wish to do with these things, and will continue to do just that. AND THAT IS TO PLAY.

Thanks for all of the comments. Right now, there is no way in HELL I can give feedback to each comment. SO, THANKS EVERYBODY.

It is a nice way to start the year.

Life is fast. Not always the speed I would choose. And there is a real mixture of good and bad in my life right now. The good stuff is just rolling out of me and along its own course. Creatively, thankfully I do not need exotic locations or demands on myself to create certain projects, because right now. I seem to be responding really well to whichever environment i find myself in.

I have produced a limited edition print, and it is nearly sold out. Not just any print, but one that is 40 inches wide. And people love it. 2 LEFT, that is it.

The new Hospital in town will have a copy of it installed the first week of January. A pretty significant installation from my end. And the United Way just successfully auctioned off another of my images. My 3 month show at LOLA's Lounge was a huge success, with two sales of images. It is nice to say that after that show in Sarnia Ontario, I now have one of my photographs hanging in a home in Denver, and the other is in a waterfront Condo in downtown Toronto. Go Sarnia.

And of course, there is Farmboy Fine Arts. This extravagant west coast design firm, recruited me last year to be one of their contributing photographers. Within this time, they have sold 15 of my images to hotels or the hospitality industry. I am honoured still. And cannot wait to give them some of my recent work to play with.

Have struck gold with my new Canon 5D MKII. What a beautiful camera.

Work is work, that is all i can allow myself to say right now. I put in a great effort. I love working with people, that is what makes the world go around. But it is difficult sometimes to keep all the pieces in the air.

Madly in Love with a spectacular woman! Cannot let that one stay under the covers. Blending families, finding and accepting the right fit to things. This is what pushes my buttons. Trust is huge.

Snowsculpting, is upon us. We have a solid project for Whitehorse in the Yukon in February. And our application to Sapporo is on their desktop. Locally, I do not know if I will have time to do a demo piece at the Sarnia Snowfest or not. I would like to chip away at something with my son. And that once again comes down to available time...

It would be impossible to fill the last year into this journal, but it was sadly out of date, and needed to be tweaked.
I really do appreciate your comments and critiques. My photography is really a thing in motion, and I am not going to limit it to one or two subjects, it is part of who I am. And yes, I would not mind giving the flowers a break too, but they seem to bring out the detail nerd in me. And there you go.

To be continued, and a great Festive Season to each of you.

Just an update as to what I have been doing lately. Because I have been photographing this poor little  plant over the last 4 days, and frankly, i love what I am seeing and the results, from my end, are off the scale, but it is time to move on. My work with the extension tubes has led to me worrying less about focus, and more about conpressing the scene in front of me. My best results have been with the 70 - 200 mm lens attached to all 3 extension tubes. There are some historical conflicts in using these two items together. The tubes are simple devices that allow you to focus closer than your lens is designed to, and the optical power of the zoom lens not only allows you to focus on something far away, but there is a tremendous compression of near and far with the bigger focal lenght. Add the two together, when you are looking very closely at a small object and the scenery becomes very confused and compressed. There is a very fine line between in and out of focus. This is where being able to play with the focus "fall-off" and placing details in the background, that helps create the painterly images that i have filled both of our heads with in this last week.

Sorry and happy at the same time. I can appreciate too much of a good thing.

So I will give it a break, and go look in some of the neighbours gardens and see how I can transfer this technique before all of the plants are dead. Honestly, these are photographs that have not been stepped on in Adobe. These are how they left the viewfinder and have been LEVELED with 5% contrast addition at the end.

Thanks for all the comments, there is more to come. jUST IN A DIFFERENT COLOUR.

Had a great summer, shot alot of flowers and found some other interesting items, without really going anywhere. And that is fine with me. When you go out targeting subjects, many times you walk right past other juicy items. But this is no lecture.
I have made a move forward and stepped backwards to do it. Having shot medium format at several points in my history, when I made the move to digital, it was not without some regret. Very satisfied with digital, I still yearned for some of the energy derived from a roll of medium format transparencies. With the help of ebay, I tracked down an old medium format rangefinder camera called the FUJICA GW690. This camera produces a negative that is 6 cm tall and 9 cm wide. The lens is absolutely beautiful with tonnes of crisp constrast and the equivalent focal length of a 39mm lens.
Kind of a strange length, but I have some ideas. Several images that I have posted lately are from this camera; gangway, technicolor sunset. This camera was made in 3 seperate time frames and mine is the original from around 1978.
And after much procrastination, I have replaced my tripod as well.
And then this past Tuesday, I had major surgery on my left foot and will be on crutches for about a month. (pictures in SCRAPS, "BRACE YOURSELF")
So I will be updating some old files and digging through film that needs to be scanned etc.
As soon as I can put my foot on a chair comfortably for some length of time.
This could be the ideal cleaning of the system that has long been overdue. To actually go through the old master files and delete things, lots of them. And hopefully I can post some long lost gems.

Be back in the fall. Biss

It is hard to get back into the groove of using a certain tool. And I have successfully done well without it for quite a while. But I know better, and will go get it right now...
Having some fun with close-ups, I will not saturate the page with too many. My camera has been in my hands quite a bit lately and of course I like that. When I have a chance you will see what has been catching my eye of late. Going back in time a bit and putting extension tubes between a big lense and the camera and shooting up close...
(where is my tripod ?)

Just a note, one that is way overdue. Thanks to all that have made comments, and sorry for my lack of response to quite a few users. I appreciate each word.  
In the next week or so I shall be posting some recent pics again, and maybe you will see a shift in my work that will happen shortly thereafter. What I have been doing alot lately, is to work without a monopod/tripod. Playing within the flexibility of the digital format, and staying away from overdoing any photoshop corrections. I still like to think that I only work with what was possible when I was in the darkroom. What has resulted are alot of images that are captured with barely enough light, alot of improvising and targeting of images that will cross over the barrier and into the abstract realm. The recent spate of shadow images are a good example.  Not that these are not purposeful images, but they are by and large, taken on the fly. I trust my hands and regularly work with 1/10th of a second shutter speeds.
I am going to slow down and start supporting the camera. I will still shoot alot of images at wide apertures (which I love), but there are so many things happening in and around me lately, I am going to ground my eye, take dead aim and see if I can put a different spin on things for the next little while. My subjects will not shift, and I will not hover any longer over my subjects than I currently do.  "PARALYSIS BY ANALYSIS" is a good way to describe the image that you just cannot find when presented with something... and you just cannot get the image you desire in the viewfinder. Keep walking.
Now that I have committed it to words, I will make an effort to do just as I have promised.
To all, have a great summer!