For the past few months I've been suffering from the hunger pains of needing to grow and expand my photography. That's been causing me to do some deep soul searching, trying to get in touch with my "Inner Photographer" who's trying to get out.

One of the good things of this hunger is that I'm finding and identifying what it is I want to do and, most importantly, what I don't want to do photographically. The times I try something different, explore a new style or type of photography and it falls flat emotionally and photographically, it means I have listened to my inner creative soul. I have listened to the gentle voice of God directing me away from concepts and I'm just not into. So, I know what I don't want to do. This past week I watched a very famous commercial photographer's video taped during a shoot with a musician. I never heard of the musician before, but the images that came from that studio session made tears well-up in my eyes. The images were gripping, emotional and exactly the type of pictures I want to make.

I continue to thumb through the pages of "The Farmer In All Of Us, An American Portrait" coffee table book at least a few times a week. It's a book based photographs commissioned for the Ram Trucks Super Bowl XLVII commercial. The 2-minute TV spot that stopped everyone in their tracks to hear the words of the late Paul Harvey's classic "So God Made A Farmer" and the photography of 10 top shooters. When I study these photos of ranchers and farmers contained in those pages my spirit soars. The images are gripping, emotional and exactly the type of pictures I want to make.

I'm starting to feel a new drive in my soul that I can't say I've felt before, or at least in a long time. It's a direction I want to go... no, make that, must ...go towards.

Over my 53 years of holding a camera (allowing for about 6 years of my life when my parents didn't let me at their Kodak Pony II 35mm film camera) has been a long-term growth to get to the place I am today. I've had hundreds and hundreds of pictures published during my newspaper photographer days, and Lord knows how many times my right index finger depressed a shutter button to capture. How many of those images, that after the film was souped, never saw the light of day outside of a quick viewing with the 3x loupe at the light table.

In the past, I wanted to be just like my photography heroes. I wished my photos would look as cool, have as much drama and emotion and be tack-sharp to boot like theirs. And I guess, to an extent, I still want to be like the photo big guns. With age comes wisdom? Maybe. With age comes more of an urgency to get my act together and start making some powerful pictures.

I just read another photographer's blog which said, in a nutshell. "Your photos are going to look the same today as they did when you were snapping pictures in high school if you don't put "YOU" in your images." And he's right. How can a photographer have his own style and connect to the art he is making if it's not truly his art? If I'm always trying to make my pictures look like somebody else, they're not my pictures, they are a crappy copy of the famous photographer's work.

I am feeling confident in where I must go with my photography. All the photographic images I have bubbling around in my creative mind need to come out and be birthed. I've wondered why and how a California born and raised guy like me ended up in a small farming community in southern Minnesota. And the move here happened smack-dab in the middle of, but not because of, my "mid-life crisis." I think I now know why. I need to be here and bring to life this vision I have for capturing the people and land of this Midwest region. The farmers, ranchers, truckers, welders, mechanics, laborers, common man. The dirt under the fingernail, sweat ring around the seed company ball cap kind of American worker in this place he and she calls home.

I've set the wheels in motion to get these pictures to show my vision of this place. I will be doing a lot of self- assignment work during 2015. I feel good about this knowing that as I develop a body of work, more work (i.e. - paying gigs) will come about. One of my current photographer heroes, a highly regarded and highly paid shooter, does about 50 self-assignments per year on top of his extremely busy paying photo job schedule.

One of my dreams now turned into a self-assignment is to document as many of the rural, prairie churches as I can. I'd like to do a book with the all the photos I make at the end of the project. I made the first step toward that goal this past weekend. As always, the first frames were crap and I was very frustrated, but by later in the day, I pushed past that negative mental roadblocks, uncooperative clouds and haze and made a few good pictures. More are to come. I have a couple other long-term projects that I am trying to jump start as well at the same time. More to come on these projects as the pictures get made!

A Photo A Day? Not As Easy AS It Seems.

It's been an interesting and busy couple of weeks.

I did a self-pledge to take an image everyday for a year..."JKP 2015 Project 365." I quickly found out that getting the camera out and creating an image everyday is a bit harder than I first thought. My photography work tends to be in large spurts. A photo job here, self assignment work there, an event happens and I get several good images from it. Then the “off” days I'm at this computer editing pictures or typing away writing. Some days the light outside is really really nice and pictures come easy. Other days it's cold, windy, dull and dark gray and my motivation to pull out the camera is easy to push aside. Still, I feel guilty on those days that I'm not depressing the shutter button to zap pixels from thin air. I feel the need to download something off my camera to show I at least did something that day.

Back in the days of film cameras, a roll of film could sit dark and comfy in the camera for days, weeks, even years. Processing could get very expensive, so picture taking was reserved for “special occasions.” It was always exciting to get the sealed yellow package of developed pictures from the drugstore photo counter or Fotomat drive-thru kiosk, and just as disappointed when the film didn't “turn out” and the pictures were bad.

Working as a full-time photojournalist during those film days, film didn't sit very long in the camera. It wasn't unusual to run through 4, 6, 12 rolls of film during a full day of assignments. I'd take the exposed rolls of 35mm film into the darkroom and lock the door behind me so an accidental opening would not leak light in and ruin the light sensitive emulsion. I'd carefully wind the film onto metal reels, making sure the film didn't slip off one of the spirals that kept the film apart and allowed the chemicals to flow through and develop the images. Not a good day when film stuck together and those precious images were lost.

I don't want to make the idea of shooting an image a day to become a dreaded chore, but I don't want to just stick the camera out the door, fire off a few frames and call it good. For me, the Project 365 is more about thinking pictures as much as it is actually taking pictures. I visualize images in my head before I ever pull the viewfinder to my eye and punch the shutter. I map-out, if you will how I'll approach a photo. What's the lighting setup – natural or speedlights? What's the background? What mood am I trying to achieve with the picture? What story do I want the image to tell?

Who do I want to photograph next? You? Sure. You! And why not! Do you or someone you know do those gritty, dirty jobs? I'm talking blue collar, wrenches and busted knuckle kind of work??? Please let me know. I'd love to come out to your (their) workplace and make some awesome photos! Drop me an email at jeepinjoseph@hotmail.com.

My self assignment list contains ideas for photographs like a rural animal vet working on location so I can get images to submit for a national farm magazine; A railroad crew that works switching grain cars for a CHS bean plant in Mankato for a national train publication; An agricultural implement equipment mechanic working on a huge combine, steam fitters in hard hats making repairs at an ethanol plant, A local family that makes boutique soaps from the milk products they get from their flock of goats.

This past couple weeks I've gone inside a muffler shop and done multi-speedlight studio lighting portraits. I've been outside in the dark gray wind and cold lakeside with a single softboxed speedlight to experiment with white balance shifting and gelled light source to get a colorful dynamic portrait image. I've gone into my basement model railroad world to photograph a project for a magazine article. 

I sent an image off to my lab for a client's ordered 16x24 enlargement. I just wondered around the building of my “day job” on breaks looking for a nice scenic or winter shot.In-between times, I've been watching videos from my pro photo icons to glean bits of technical and creative motivation to help me be a better photographer.

Did I pick-up my camera everyday and have a photo to show for it? No. Did I have days where I did a lot of pictures and had many good images to show for it? Yes.

Joseph Kreiss Photography is back!!!
www.josephkreissphotography.com

Starting 2015 with something to keep a camera to my eye -- JKP Project 365/2015!
What is a JKP Project 365/2015? 

For me, it’s the simple act of taking a picture every day for a year. The idea isn't new or something I've come up with... The concept behind starting a Project 365 is to make photography an every day event, with hopes of improving the art.  It also has the added benefit of forcing a photographer to slow down and take a different look at the world around them.

It's not like I don't have enough going on in my life to keep me busy...I have almost too much. And. although I likely snap some kind of image with my camera everyday, this project hopes to keep me honest, pushing me to make a new image everyday and keeping that thought at the forefront of my mind. Rather than leaving the camera in my bag, or worse - at home, it goes around my neck and heads out the door with me, everyday, to capture a slice of that day however that ends up coming together. Back in my newspaper photojournalism days , I wouldn't go into a restaurant, or to the men's room without my camera. I kinda got away from that over the years not working for a daily paper. But, it's something I really want to get back in the habit of doing again.

For me, I'm hoping that this JKP Project 365/2015 will develop into a book ...maybe a 'Year In The Life Of Martin County', or something similar. A record of people, scenes, weather, events, and day-to-day life in South Central Minnesota. That, I'm looking forward to.

I will post the images daily on my Facebook page and do a weekly image wrap-up on my photo blog.

Gone To Film, Be Right Back

Maybe I should say "Film at 11."
How many of this "younger generation" have no idea what that saying means? Probably lots. Back in the day, TV stations shot 16mm film for all their news and sports coverage, and the breaking news footage could be brought back to the studio and processed, "on deadline," hopefully finished just in time to play during the 11 p.m. newscast.
Ahhh, the glory days of film photography! Those were the days. Though I never worked for a TV news outfit, I did my share of film photojournalism over the years in the 1970's and '80's, rushing back to the newspaper office, hell-bent to get those precious rolls of 36 exposure Tri-X into the "Soup," quick washed and slapped into the enlarger "wet" to get a print off to the news desk and the back shop for half-toning in time to make deadline before the paper went to "bed" and hit the presses for the morning edition. Come to think of it, no wonder I have gray hair today! But talk about an adrenalin rush!
(Above Image - Yashica Electra 35 Rangefinder)
Nowadays with digital cameras, laptops with wireless image sending capabilities, the days of beating a deadline have sure changed. Those minutes waiting as the film was being processed, wondering if my pictures turned out, if the exposures were correct - then pulling the full, uncut length of developed film to ones eye with the loupe pushed into the eye socket to see if "the shot" is sharp...those days have certainly slipped away. Don't get me wrong, I still LOVE my digital cameras. (Above Image - Yashica Electra 35 Rangefinder)
That's why the lure of film, for those of us that "grew-up" with film photography, is becoming so strong again. I'm not the only one who has experienced this yearning. From reading on-line photography site discussions, blogs and forums, many of us shooters, young and old alike, are making a pilgrimage back to film. And, with a large shoebox filled with rolls of black and white and color film sitting in a drawer, the call for me was too loud to ignore.
I recently purchased a used 35mm rangefinder camera off eBay to help me "get back to my roots" with photography. Not that I got rid of all my film cameras, mind you. I still have my old trusty Nikon F, Nikon N90s, an underwater Nikon and a vintage twins-lens (two and a quarter) reflex that shoots 120 film in the camera vault. It was the thought of a rangefinder camera around my neck doing "street photography" that made me want to get back to basics and "channel" one of the great masters of photojournalism like Cappa and Eisenstaedt!
I placed a roll of 24 exposure Fujifilm in the "new" old camera, wound it into the take-up spool and closed the back, watching the rewind knob rotate with each advance of the shutter. Without really knowing if the camera was "operational" I shot a mish-mash of images, trying to recall how to "read" the light and set the aperture ring to get a "ballpark" exposure on the emulsion. The biggest surprise came when I took the film in for processing at the local drugstore One-Hour photo lab. "Just do a process only" so I can check the negs and see if the camera's working and if there are any light leaks from the 40+ year-old camera I asked.
"We don't do any orders without prints," was the response! What? Why back in the day I could walk into any lab and say "process only, don't cut" and get the roll souped and negs hanging on the rack waiting for my inspection without question from the lab techs. I guess those days are a thing of the past...like my camera that shoots film. The minimum the drug store mini-lab would do is process the roll and burn a CD and index print...for $9! "Well, alright...I guess," I mumbled to the lady behind the counter who obviously was not even born yet when the camera I used to make the images on that roll was in its glory days!
She didn't know about checking the negs for light leaks or proper exposures to see if the film was even worth transferring to digital CD. And this was with a common roll of C-41 process color neg film. My worries now are in finding a lab that would even know what a roll of Plus-X is, let alone be able to process it without shipping it off to some back alley photo lab in the Bronx then maybe two weeks from now getting it back!
I guess my next purchases will be a set of metal reels, a couple tanks and some D-76, stop bath, fixer and photo-flow so I can develop my own film! Lord...does anyone still stock that stuff???? Needless to say, I did get images, my exposures were good, there were a few minor light leaks on the film that will be fixed with the replacement of the disintegrated light blocking foam around the camera's film door...so life is good and what it comes down to is this. I actually shot a roll of film!!!! How cool is that!

"Family Photographer"

Being the photographer in the family, I get the call to provide photos of everything from a quick snapshot of the backyard vegetable garden to environmental portraits for an up-coming newspaper story. Such was the case last week for my wife Kim, who will soon have her "Local Girl Comes Back Home Story" published in a special newspaper section of the local paper. They wanted photos of her at work at the local radio station.

I feel honored to have been able to be the photographer to make some images of her, rather than the paper's shooter. I knew my efforts would result in more comfortable, natural poses for Kim. I know it can be hard to look "relaxed" in front of a total stranger with a camera blasting away. Plus she had post shoot editing privileges, which further put her at ease. Off to the radio station we went.

So, I set up a two-light rig, with the main shooting through an umbrella and the second light kicking in some fill and hair highlights with a blue filter over the flash head.

The top image is her favorite and then my favorite shot below for fun which is also her personality on air!

Golden Days of Radio

Splitting my professional work these days between photography and broadcasting (with a few hours doing seasonal restaurant cooking) gives me plenty of variety in my week. To combine two of those occupations is fun, too. That's what I have started to do with a new photo project. At the radio stations where I work, the station owner's family, over the years, has assembled quite a collection of vintage radios and broadcasting equipment. I thought I would begin to document these pieces of radio history a little at a time. I wanted my images of the antique radios, etc. to have the look of still being in someones home, since back in the day, the radio was the source of family information and entertainment. I wanted to also show off the warmth and craftsmanship of the wooden radios. I used a single SB flash with a snoot to highlight the radios as if late afternoon or early morning sun was filtering through the windows of the home onto the sets. I did not use any colored gels on the flash. The color that shows is from the wonderfully rich hues of the wooden sets.

Most of the radios at the station are displayed on shelves in the conference room and I didn't want to move them without permission. I have more to do and have a few more lighting ideas up my sleeve for this self-assignment. I think, so far, the results are working well and if you listen carefully, you might be able to hear one of those classic old-time radio shows crackling through the speakers!

On Location "Kick of Light"

I had the wonderful opportunity to shoot some portraits this past week...a High School Senior session and a corporate session for our local Mayo Health Systems medical center. The hospital job kinda surprised me, since I had just sent off an introduction e-mail and link to my website when I got a call to shoot some portraits for a Hosptial Foundation publication.

To be honest these two sessions were the first time in a while that I hauled lighting gear, stands and the like out on location.

But compared to images I might have brought back several years, ('Available light is KING' kind of thinking) these new images have a lot more interest and quality of light to them. As I continue to work in and outdoors with my strobes, I hope to begin developing a "Style" to my images. Back in my newspaper photog days, I always felt that my work was different from other shooters, since I loved bringing back the "in-your-face" action and emotion photos.

It has become very clear to me that with the addition of a 'kick of light' my images are maturing, so to speak and I can begin to tell a story with the light, or just add that little "something" that makes the photo a touch better.

My newest "best friend" is the recently purchased Manfretto "Justin Super Clamp" for my Speedlights. I used the clamp on the hosptial shoot to put a second light into the mix without having to drag out another light stand.