400

© jmillerphoto.com – Northern Cardinal – Female (Cardinalis cardinalis)

I’m still here…

I’m quietly working behind the scenes, harvesting images from the stockpile of raw photos I have in the archive, and of course making a few new shots.

My winter months were not as productive as I had hoped in terms of knocking down the backlog, but I did get some work done.  Of course I turned around and added to my workload by buying a new lens and then shooting three times in the last three weeks.  A couple thousand more shots couldn’t hurt, right?

The image leading this post represents the 400th image I’ve dropped into the portfolio.  It joined 75 other Northern Cardinal images I have in the portfolio, which tells me I should stop ignoring these birds and start concentrating on something else.  But these birds are so darned fun…

I will post more as I start to work through the stacks…

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346

Greater Roadrunner in South Texas

“Meep Meep!”

Image #346 in the portfolio is this Greater Roadrunner that I made an image of this past summer at a ranch in South Texas.  Roadrunners are funny creatures to observe.  This guy spent a few minutes with myself and another shooter before he headed back into the brush.  One of those sad times when I had too much lens as I missed just a bit of his tail.

Not sure if he will or won’t eventually make it into a frame.  But he’ll definitely have a place in the file folders.

Agent (0)007…

© jmillerphoto.com – Male Ladder-backed Woodpecker (Picoides scalaris)

One of the things that I have aspired to do during my time away from business matters is to work on putting my portfolio into better shape.  Okay, a shape.  Okay, a shape other than resembling the round filing cabinet that the portfolio looked like before.

To this end, I simplified things to make it easier to find what I was looking for.  Birds are grouped up with birds.  Butterflies with butterflies.  And so on.

But the actual images are numbered so that the business end of things (eventually) will be easier to keep track of.

Case in point:  My friend here the Ladder-backed Woodpecker.  He’s filed away nice and pretty in a folder of his species embedded into a folder of birds.  But he is the 7th image in my new sorting and labeling scheme, so he is image 0007.

Originally I thought that going to 4 digits was optimistic.  But with 334 in the portfolio right now and it covers only a fraction of my 7D and 60D images, 4 digits may not have been big enough…

About the Image:
As stated, this is image #7 in the portfolio.  He will be coming to a mat and or a frame near you when I start doing Art Shows again.

Rebooting an Idle Machine

Crested Caracara – © jmillerphoto.com

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”
– John Lennon

I have been really quiet on this blog.  Almost four years quiet.  The best reason for this is the fact that my involvement in doing photography-type business has been quiet as well.

When I last published to this blog, I was still recovering from foot surgery.  What followed was having to cancel the exhibition, I put off trying to make it to a show, and then my non-photographic professional life took off.  I had time to shoot, but I didn’t have time to do the work necessary to put together the photographic business side of things the way I had hoped to.  And four years passed.

As I type this today I am now over a  year into life after ending my first career and beginning my next.  Things are starting to find a normal rut in which I can almost predict my weeks as I move forward.  With that I can start working towards rebooting the photography business aspect of my life and in turn get back out and exhibit my work and make images available for sale.

The plan I’m moving forward with here is that I will start providing some preview images here of the things that I have been working on.  I’m hoping to announce returning to an online presence for selling images by the first of the year.  And then finally I will hopefully have a road map as to when and where I will make my first appearances in person.  Lots of hope.  Hope is good.

It’ll be a journey.  Life will happen while I’m making this journey.  We’ll see how it goes.

About the Image:
This image of a Crested Caracara (Caracara cheriway) was made in a bird blind in South Texas early this year.  It is image #247 in my growing portfolio of images.  It is not available for sale at this time.

So what else have I been up to?

© jmillerphoto.com - Carolina Chickadee

This blog was on hiatus for a long time.  This is one of three blogs that I write for/manage, with this one very much devoted to the selling of my images and the promoting of my appearances at art shows, arts & crafts fairs, and public exhibitions.

I blogged about my quandry of whether or not to do shows this year back in August.  By mid-September I made the call not to do any shows because I had foot surgery coming in early October.  Well, early October turned into early November with some scheduling difficulties by my surgeon.  As I sit here at the start of December, I know without a doubt that as it turned out not doing shows was the correct decision.  The pain still has not subsided from the procedure and I imagine that trying to do a show now would have been nearly unbearable.

That’s not to say that I stopped shooting.  If you read my Assorted, usually Photographic, Ramblings blog, you will know that I have been doing my best to build up the portfolio again.  A quick look at my Lightroom catalog shows 19 days of shooting since I returned to Texas, though granted a number of those were on my brief trip to Ohio in August.

On the horizon is an increased stream of images coming your way in the next couple of weeks, an exhibition in early spring, and maybe (just maybe) a arts & crafts show appearance in May.  Thank you for staying with me and thank you for staying tuned…

New Image: Twelve-spotted Skimmer

© jmillerphoto.com - Twelve-spotted Skimmer (HDR)

Wow, it has been a while since I’ve been able to say this, but there is a new image in the gallery for sale.  This is image of a Twelve-spotted Skimmer is one of my absolute favorites from my time in Ohio.  It is unfortunate that I waited as long as I did to make it for sale, but I made this image late in the summer as I was getting ready to focus almost exclusively on completing my thesis.  So images for sale went on the back burner.  For a while…

But this is the first image back and it is ready to go.  It is available in sizes up to 11×14 and I can say with confidence that even at that size the image is beautiful.  How?  Because it is hanging on my wall at that size right now.

A little more about this image.  This is my one and only High Dynamic Range (HDR) shot in the gallery right now.  For those unfamiliar with HDR, it is done by combining a minimum of 3 shots done at the same time of the same subject.  One shot is purposely underexposed, one is purposely overexposed, and one is done at the correct exposure.  If it sounds like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you’re probably not too far off of the mark.  The images are then combined, allowing detail in both the shadows and the highlights to be seen closer to how the human eye could have seen it.  If you own an iPhone 4 or newer, your camera in the phone can do this automatically.

Normally HDR is reserved for landscapes, architecture, flowers, and other reasonably static objects.  Dragonflies are usually far from static.  I was very lucky to get three consecutive shots put together without the creature moving.  The results speak for themselves.

As I said before, this image is now available in the gallery at a very affordable price for Christmas.

Working Hard to Once Again Work Hard

Still another quick note while I’m trying to get things situated again.  If you’ve been reading my JAUPR blog, you will know that I’ve safely returned to Texas.  The nearest gator to the boat has been getting the house set up.  That task is pretty much done, down to getting the grill setup and being able to break bread with friends, new and old.

With that gator wrapped up, it is now time to get the digital darkroom up and running so I can get to work again.  That is proving to take more time than expected, but we’re almost there, too.  My hope is that once this weekend is consumed by the ticking clock that I will have put the final touches on it and will be able to devote a couple hours each night to refining some of the images I made last summer and making them available for sale.  I also have some administrative things I need to do with my new zip code before I can be fully functioning again.  Hoping to get that done in a week or so as well.

If all goes as planned, by the end of August I will be firing on nearly all cylinders again.  I’m still undecided about doing any art shows this Christmas.  Normally by this point in the calendar I would be prepped and ready to hit the kick-off events in September.  Obviously I’m not there yet.  But we’ll see.

It goes without saying that there will be no calendar this year.  Three days of shooting to date will not cut it.  The images I am reworking and/or creating now will be aimed towards next year’s calendar(s).

And I have a new camera on the way which I’m really excited about, too.

To quickly recap… I’m back in Texas.  I’m getting ready to start working again.  More to follow soon…

The Quick Hello

Just checking in with y’all. I am at the schooling that my employer so generously sent me to and am up to my neck in trying to get smarter. The camera gear and the good computer stayed with friends so I could concentrate on this venture so there isn’t a lot going on photographically.

But I am still with the living, just not making a living behind the camera right now. Stay tuned.

Almost out of the woods

© jmillerphoto.com - Eastern Amberwing

As I mentioned over at Jim’s Assorted, Usually Photographic, Ramblings, I have successfully defended my thesis (insert applause here).  All that is left now is taking care of the minor administrative issues that effectively is the victory lap of getting my Masters degree.  Yes, that was a 400 pound weight you just heard hit the floor–it had been on my shoulders 🙂

That being said, business activities are still more or less on hold.  My full-time employer has one more academic endeavor for me to complete immediately after graduation.  This one will also require an enormous amount of focus, so my business-related activities will still be severely curtailed until I can finish the upcoming schooling and get settled back in Texas.

That isn’t to say that I’m just sitting on my wallet.  I am reviewing images I have worked on over last summer to see which ones are going to be the newest adds to the galleries–I’m pretty sure the Eastern Amberwing headlining this post will be in the first few that make it up for sale.  I am also gathering my images again for a possible showing of my images late in the summer, pending a few other things falling perfectly into place.

And maybe, just maybe, I will be able to get out this coming weekend and make some images.

Good things on the way… Stay tuned…

Blip…Blip…Blip…

© jmillerphoto.com - Halloween Pennant

It has been a couple of weeks so I figured I should probably poke my head in here.

Everything related to the photography business has been on hold since I returned from my time in Texas.  As mentioned then, almost all of my energies have been pointed towards doing those things that will get me towards graduation.  And except for a quick two day break doing other business related to my day job, nearly all of my energies have gone to writing, editing, creating, and graduating.  Priorities…

That isn’t to say I haven’t been thinking about the photography business.  If anything, the thoughts in the back of my head are 99 44/100% photography and photography business while the thoughts in the front are 98% schoolwork.  It helps that I have one of my images looking right at me on the monitors at school–there’s that motivation to push my towards the academic finish line so I can get back to my creative passions.

That isn’t to say I’ve been completely silent online.  Over at Jim’s Assorted, Usually Photographic, Ramblings I have posted three short entries, to include my initial impressions of  the Manfrotto 190CXPRO4 tripod, and a new series that I’m doing on some of my favorite places to make images at (see…I am thinking about photography).  But I know that if I get swimming in the business end of the pool that the water is very enticing and I could spend hours when I only have minutes.

I am about two weeks out from the big, Big, BIG, BIG deadline so maybe I’ll get more into the business of photography then.  Until then it is back to the grindstone, making gold out of lead, and dreaming of getting the camera back around my neck and making some images.