Two Cents and a Thousand Words

Say what you will about the 2009 American Folk Festival: it was rainy on Saturday, it messed up traffic, there weren’t as many people… I thought it was amazing. This year, instead of learning just about music and culture, I also happened to learn a bunch about people and myself.

I’d volunteered for the Festival in 2007 as one of the people who set up the stages and food areas. I had a lot of fun, and it allowed me to feel more like I was really a part of the festival I attend every year. Unfortunately, my pesky hernia prevented me from volunteering last year, and I didn’t really want to do any heavy lifting this time around. Instead, I decided to push my own boundaries a bit: I volunteered for the public survey and for the legendary Bucket Brigade.

The public survey is an interesting gig. UMaine’s Center for Tourism Research and Outreach produces a 10-ish question survey that combines demographic and festival information. Volunteers from the festival (as well as CenTRO researchers) hit the crowd individually and find people to take the survey by doing nothing more scientific than asking people if they mind being surveyed. The process takes about 5-10 minutes, and the participant is entered to win a festival t-shirt. If they provide their email address for a follow-up survey, they’re entered to win one of six L.L. Bean gift certificates at the completion of the follow-up survey.

Those who know me well may be saying, “wait, Justin did that?” Although I don’t seem it from my presence online, I’m a pretty strong introvert in person. I have trouble joining conversations, and I can never go up to someone randomly and ask a question for fear of interrupting whatever they’re doing or of being denied. But yes, I signed up to be a surveyor, and I found that people were overwhelmingly receptive to going through the process with me. I met some great people of all ages and of all walks of life, and I was able to see a view of the festival that I had never seen before.

Unfortunately, by the end of my shift on Saturday morning, I was so soaked by the remnant rains of Hurricane Danny that I decided to call it a day and go home. Over the course of the festival I put my body through a lot – too much, really – and I’m still somewhat sore from the weekend.

For the past few years, the highlight of the festival for me has been the photographic opportunity it presents. There are tons of great shots just waiting to be taken there, and I love to see how many I can capture. I didn’t take as many photos this year, and I took even fewer photos of the artists than I’d expected. I’d taken some shots on Friday night (including some fun chances to capture some of my favorite UMaine dancers in the parade), but I scheduled Sunday as my best chance to take some good festival photos.

After doing the surveying, I’d decided to push myself just a little bit more and ask people attending if I could take their portrait. That limitation had been the one thing I’d always thought held me back from being the best photographer I could be; I’ve passed up a lot of opportunities because I was too shy or apprehensive to ask if I could take a picture. The surveying changed everything. On Sunday it was easy for me to go up to someone and ask if I could take a portrait, and to my surprise nobody I asked refused. I ended up with some photos that make me quite happy, and the knowledge that I’d grown as a photographer pleased me as well.

(After the festival I received some wonderful compliments about my photography by both old and new friends. I’ve never been able to accept compliments well, but I really do appreciate everything that people say about my work. I’m so glad that people enjoy it.)

For the final hours of the festival, I’d signed up to be part of the Bucket Brigade, the volunteer force that goes around the crowd with buckets asking for donations. This was the highlight of my weekend. The generosity of the people there was overwhelming for me, especially considering the economic situation we’ve experienced lately. As people dropped $1’s, $5’s, $20’s, and checks into my bucket, I smiled and thanked them for coming to the festival. It was incredibly rewarding to watch everyone – everyone – there contribute to the festival’s success, from toddlers in strollers with money from their parents to elderly people determined to move their trembling hands close enough to put a couple of bills in the bucket’s hole.

As I swam against the current of the sea of people walking on Front Street, I noticed the rainbow of blue, yellow, orange, and purple “I kicked in!” stickers dabbling almost every shirt I passed. Over the last few years I’ve had the opportunity to attend the festival, donate to it, volunteer for it, take photos of it, create websites for it, work for a sponsor company of it, and sing its praises anywhere I can. This weekend I realized for the first time that this festival really is about much, much more than just the music that graces the Bangor waterfront each year.

I’ve discovered a guideline for my photography lately: it’s not all about what you intend to photograph. The most interesting pictures may well come from the unexpected or the generally unseen.

It turns out that applies to more than just photography. My mom and I headed out on our annual whale watching trip from Bar Harbor yesterday on the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company’s Friendship V. It was a beautiful day for landlubbers, but as soon as we drove down to the dock we could see the fog planted firmly atop the cold Gulf of Maine waters. Anyone who had done a similar trip in the past (including the ship’s captain) knew that the chance of actually seeing a whale was next to none. Most whales are discovered from a distant blow on the horizon, and in yesterday’s fog there was little or no chance of seeing a whale in the distance.

For me it’s not about seeing whales anymore; we’ve taken at least a dozen trips out to that region of the ocean, and I’ve seen my share of Sonograms and Siphons. The goal is to move into the vast expanse that is the Gulf of Maine, cruising at thirty miles an hour over rollercoaster-like swells until you reach a destination dozens of miles offshore. Yesterday’s trip had a little extra magic: as the boat idled in the offshore water, we all sat silent, listening for the sound of a spout from a whale. The only sounds we could hear were the waves passing and the rhythmic foghorn from a close but not yet visible Mount Desert Rock. The crew members closed their eyes and listened for the familiar mammalian sound. I closed my eyes and just listened to the ocean. I was experiencing a dream, a soundscape I’d tried to replicate hundreds of times in the past.

While out at sea I took a picture of two of the ship’s crew members, Kaitlyn and Laura. I’ve found that I enjoy taking pictures that tell a story, even if the story isn’t visible directly through the picture. Kaitlyn and Laura both study whales and were showing the ship’s passengers how whales are tagged for tracking purposes. In the background is Mount Desert Rock, a remote island 26 miles offshore used primarily as a research base by Bar Harbor-based Allied Whale. Both Kaitlyn and Laura have spent time living on the island for an opportunity to further study their passion.

On the way back to land I took some time to speak with Laura Kennedy, a seabird researcher on the ship who has the rare combination of being from Oklahoma (bonus points) and a UMaine graduate student (mega bonus points). She showed me how the GPS-linked tracking software on her laptop worked and explained what sort of data she hoped to cull from her research. She told me how much she loved what she did as she yelled over the deafening offshore winds while surveying the water for avian life, but her explanation was no match for the smile and tone she used as she spoke.

You may think that a whale watching trip with no whale sightings is a failure. I couldn’t disagree more. The intent of something you do isn’t always what’s most valuable; there’s more as you go deeper.

If you’ve been tolerating my politics-laden Twitter feed or Collage lately, you know I launched a new version of my Pine Tree Photography site last weekend. What’s the change? It’s pretty simple. You can now buy my photos.

Here’s how it works. There are no real visual design changes to the site; the only difference is that when you reach a photo page, you’ll now have the option to add matted or unmatted prints to a cart. View your cart, enter your shipping info, pay at PayPal, receive prints in a week or two. It’s that easy.

As I’ve said before, photography is a passion for me, and I don’t think I’d ever want to have it be my sole occupation. If I can make some money on the side doing what I love to do, though, I’m not going to limit myself. I do love photography, and I love matting (and the whole shipping process) just as much. If you know of anyone who would be interested in some Maine prints, have them browse around the site.

Because I love you all so much, though, I’m not stopping there. I also launched the Pine Tree Photography Stock Collection. While the gallery at the print site of PTP is pretty limited to my favorite shots, I’ve opened up the doors to more photos that might be useful in projects of all types. Again, the process is pretty easy for this. Find a photo you like, pay at PayPal (starting at $30, depending on the size of the download), instantly receive an e-mail with download links to the photos you’ve purchased, use them for just about anything (websites, note cards, flyers…). That’s the stock side of things, and we’re (I’m) all really excited about it.

Also, the photoblog formerly known as photoblog.justinrussell.com has moved to blog.pinetreephotography.com. Same great posts, new great address.

My next project is reviving this blog. More on that in a bit.

(alternate title: “A brief history of my photographic interests”)

I’ve often heard a lot of talk about photographers seeing a shot that they’d like to take (usually said when the photographer doesn’t have a camera handy). It’s happened quite a few times to me.

Although I’ve always loved taking pictures, I really started having a serious interest in photography when I received my first digital camera in 1999. For the next few years, you’d find me out and about on weekends trying to find new places to photograph. I often ended up at Schoodic Point, Otter Point, or Portland Head Light. Once there, I’d take a couple hundred photos of the nature surrounding me and capturing my interest. Three- to four-hundred mile day trips weren’t ever out of the question.

Over the last couple of years, my focus has slowly changed. Maybe I ran out of new places to photograph. Maybe I got tired of driving. I like to believe, though, that it was an artistic decision. I was fortunate to take a photographic storytelling course with Bill Kuykendall in college. Bill, a very talented photojournalist and a frequent photographer at Penobscot Theatre, said something in regards to nature photography that I didn’t believe at the time but that I agree with wholeheartedly now: “after a while, you get tired of shooting rocks and trees.”

Starting around two or three years ago, something new started to appear in my photos: people. The most likely initial cause of this was probably photographing dance concerts at the University of Maine; from there, I found that capturing movement and emotion wins over rocks and trees any day of the week. It’s unusual to find me without a camera at a concert, a play, or a sporting event now, and I usually try to send the photos along to someone participating in the event so that they can use them for whatever they like if they choose.

Since I mentioned concert photography, I might as well touch upon the American Folk Festival. I take hundreds of pictures at the Festival each year, and it’s one of my top events every year to photograph. Last year, I wrote a bit about the missed shot that still haunts me: the entirety of the in-parade staff from the Bangor Daily News talking before the parade begun.

I’ve also found myself doing weddings for a few of my friends over the last couple of years. It’s amazing to look at the photos from weddings a couple of years ago compared to ones I took a couple of weeks ago; the entire subject matter is different. There are more stories in the photos, more expressions, more life, really. I always tell people I have a very photojournalistic approach to capturing events, but really I just enjoy emotion.

One of the aspects of photography I enjoy the most is that you learn to look at your experiences in a different way. You notice little things that would often be missed. At the same time, though, it can be a bit distracting; you can miss the actual performance or event while you’re looking at the “meta.” I’ve told Molly (one of the dancers at the University) that I’ll probably have to start going to two of the concert dates: one to photograph and one to actually watch the concert.

In April of last year I posted a quote from another BDN photojournalist, John Clarke Russ:

If you are a photographer and you take photographs for a living, you don’t do it for the money and you don’t do it for the glory. You do it because, somewhere along the line, in the course of any single day, you find yourself saying, “I need a camera to look at that.” And there’s a point in your life when you find that you’re stuck with it and you only look at life through that rectangle. Hopefully, you see life in a way that is different from how others see it.

Last night I went to the Penobscot Theatre’s performance of “Guys & Dolls.” The show was directed by Nathan Halvorson and was supported by the participants of PTC’s musical theatre camp. While my ears heard the Broadway numbers, my eyes saw the actors and singers in the wings encouraging their friends and Nathan encouraging the campers. It also turned out to be Nathan’s last night with the campers, and after the show there was an emotional farewell on stage as people exited the theatre. It made me wonder how many people in the theatre saw the stories surrounding the one being portrayed on stage. It also made me want my camera.

I have a feeling I’ll be seeing shots for the rest of my life.

Due to the fact that I’m just short of insane, I’ve decided to start another blog. This one’s pretty simple: the photo blog I’ve always wanted. If you enjoy my photography and would like to hear a little more about the stories behind the photos, check it out. It runs off of my Flickr account; if you subscribe to that feed, you won’t see any photos you haven’t already seen. You’ll just miss out on a little fun and a little storytelling.

http://photoblog.justinrussell.com

The blog is designed to work in cooperation with justinrussell.com/photography, my new(-ish) portfolio site. I hope to use the blog as an incentive for me to take more pictures; we’ll see how that works out.

And, of course, it’s now part of Collage.

I’d like to apologize to regular and occasional Two Cents readers for my hiatus over the last month and a half. I’ve been busy (big surprise), and my mind has been in so many places that I just haven’t grounded here in a while. For the people who read the blog instead of Collage (or for the people who read everything and are wondering what the heck all these releases are about), I’d like to give you an update on the so-called Justin Russell Network. It’s fairly lengthy, but it’s hopefully at least marginally informative.

Web development

Sephone

I head to a place called Sephone for around 40 hours each week. A majority of my time is doing custom work for area businesses that I unfortunately can rarely share, but my favorite part of the job is what I like to call our content products. These applications and services give people the ability to control their own sites without having to call us up to make changes.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been really fortunate to have some time to devote to our best-known products, datAvenger and datAvenger lite, and we’ve released a new version of both this week. (I posted about the datAvenger release on our blog.) I’ve also been able to write a podcast management service called SephoneCast that I’m excited to see in use pretty soon.

thinglobe

A couple of weeks ago I released thinglobe.com, a geo-based service for user-generated media. Quite simply it maps where videos, photos, and thoughts were created on a map. I have a ton of stuff that I want to do with it, and as of now I’d call it my flagship project by far. I’m really, really excited to see where it leads, and it’s just a cool service that I like to use myself.

Microreviewer

A week before thinglobe came out I coded up microreviewer.com, a service for giving short (very short) reviews of local businesses via Twitter. Microreviewer was, in short, a way for me to try a few things out, and I’m quite happy just letting it sit for a while. I’d rather focus my attention on other projects (thinglobe).

Collage

And no, I haven’t forgotten about Collage and justinrussell.com. I’d love to switch Collage over to run off of a service like FriendFeed at some point, and the very preliminary stages of a justinrussell.com redesign are in the works. That’s pretty much it for now, though.

Photography

justinrussell.com/photography

I recently released version 2.0 of justinrussell.com/photography, my photography portfolio site (and the winner of the “Did You Know There Was a 1.0″ award). jr/photo has a couple of purposes. First, I have a link to send to people who ask if they can see some of my photos. Second, it boosts my confidence that I occasionally take good photos. Third, it’s a home base for my photography no matter where it ends up going in the future.

But really, if you want to see what I consider to be my best photos, head there. It’s also the home to the snazzy new justinrussell brand logo.

Pine Tree Photography

Remember Pine Tree Photography? PTP is my showcase site for nature and landscape photography. I have big plans (really big, actually) for PTP, but frankly they’re just not on the top of the list right now. At some point I want to build it up, but it’s just not there right now. Still, it’s a good place to explore some of my best photos in my most popular genre as of yet.

flickr.com/justinrussell

In order to make use of the $25/year I pay to Yahoo! for Flickr, I occasionally post photos there as well. To be honest I haven’t taken that many photos lately, but when I do the best ones will most likely end up on Flickr.

Writing

Another New World

Another New World is my passion about technology put into words; you just wouldn’t know it by the frequency of the posts. Out of all of my projects, I’d really like to devote more time to ANW, but I’m just now getting back into a writing mood. (Doing code for forty or more hours a week is sort of draining when it comes to text on a computer screen.) I really hope this picks back up.

Two Cents and a Thousand Words

I’m sort of unsure about the future of Two Cents; everything seems to be covered pretty well by other services (Twitter, individual blogs), so the posts here won’t be very frequent. If you want to stay in touch, I’d really recommend Collage instead.

The Small Steps Podcast

Small Steps is at a standstill. I love doing it, but the interest I was hoping for just wasn’t there. Also, there are a number of other podcasts doing the same kind of thing really well; I’d rather not reinvent the wheel. Search around; there are some great podcasts out there!

Thanks for sticking around. With the new stars of the top three (jr/photo, thinglobe, and Another New World), I’m really looking forward to the future. Be sure to let me know what you think about the current status, too!

Quite a few years ago, I set an annual goal for myself to complete all the outstanding things I had to do by the end of the year. The reasoning behind the goal was to start out the new year fresh and hopefully stay on top of things throughout the year.

This year will not be one of those years. I don’t like goals.

This past year was tough for me in some ways, and it was great in others. Overall, it was a year spent trying to figure out who I am, what I enjoy, and how I should be who I want to be. I made some progress, but a lot of the year was just spent thinking.

I have a lot to do on my day off tomorrow, but I’ll hopefully have a chance to write a fairly extensive post about the things I want to focus on in 2008. (Call them resolutions if you want… I don’t want to.) I really don’t want to spend a lot of time dwelling on the past year instead of moving onward and (hopefully) upward, so I’ll just end this last post of 2007 with a few of my very-very-favorite photos out of the approximately 4,500 save-able shots from the last twelve months (for comparison, I took just about 2,000 in 2006 and 1,800 in 2005). Some have deep emotional attachments; others are just cool shots.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I enjoy keeping my friends and family in the loop about up-and-coming technologies. In that spirit, learn about three in this week’s Edge tekk article, Groups, Tweets, and Avatars.

If you follow my Collage, you may have noticed that photos have been strangely absent from my work lately. Tonight I uploaded a few photos I took downtown today along the Kenduskeag Stream. It was hard to capture the magnitude of the water level in photos.

John Clarke Russ, assistant photo editor and photojournalist at the Bangor Daily News:

If you are a photographer and you take photographs for a living, you don’t do it for the money and you don’t do it for the glory. You do it because, somewhere along the line, in the course of any single day, you find yourself saying, “I need a camera to look at that.” And there’s a point in your life when you find that you’re stuck with it and you only look at life through that rectangle. Hopefully, you see life in a way that is different from how others see it.