HAMBURGER EYES

Photo by Zane Grant

I was going through old writings on here about making good photography. I’ve attempted to explain my thoughts about it and even set up some polls in order to come up with formulas but the data seemed inconclusive. (Referencing HERE and HERE.)(Actually this whole frigging thing is about seeking isn’t it?)

We have some ingredients but we don’t have the recipe. We can say there is a secret sauce of luck and magic when something turns out right. That’s what we are doing here is trying to define that sauce.

This speaks of universal truths in a photo that can transcend time and space. As well as transcend technical skill and experience, and emotional and mental conditioning. And most of the time the truth isn’t “good” or “bad” or is that simple to sort out. Which is why there are so many differences in taste.

If you pick any of the ingredients, let’s say “composition” for arguments sake, who’s to say how good it is? To grade it with a percentage, 51% towards good would still be an F. So objectivity vs subjectivity is really the argument. And these things change over time and space.

That infers that the viewership of an image in a particular time and particular space is what makes makes it “good” or “bad”. It seems moot, but it is correct to say that a photo cannot be “good” or “bad” until someone sees it. Including yourself (the person who shot it).

I know it’s not super useful to say that a bad photo is a bad photo because you showed it to the wrong person at the wrong time. But assuming you nailed the timing lighting composition mystery and wonder, none of that will matter if the person seeing it cannot appreciate any of those things. And that will depend on their relation to you or the subject matter as well as their state of being at the moment.

I’ve said before that a good photo is about the presentation of either the shooter’s story, the subject matter’s story, or a combo of both. Now we can say that a bad photo is one that isn’t telling those stories in a universally truthful way to the right person(s) at the right time.

What if the story is pure fiction though? Is it all fiction! Photography is not real. That’s for another writing. Photography is a recording and I’ll order mine with extra truth gravy on top, otherwise I’m not hungry.

Photo by Alex Herzog

Found it. I have been looking for an Android app to edit photos. I recently got a Chromebook ($250) so the hunt became more real for me. There are many and I think I like Snapseed the best. But that’s not what I am talking about. Photopea is the one. It’s not even an app, it is WEB BASED. This means all you need is internet and a browser and you can do all the main things Adobe Photoshop can do.

https://www.photopea.com/

And it is FREE.

I get a lot of questions about how to do stuff and am realizing there are a lot of barriers to entry into the game of publishing. I will start posting some of the tools we use or should be using. I like the Photopea because not a lot of apps have easy to use output controls. You need to output your photos at 300 dpi to have them print correctly.

This is a free Adobe Illustrator alternative. Starting to use this for making graphics.

https://vectr.com/

And this is a free Adobe Indesign alternative. I haven’t laid out a full zine with this yet and it does actually cost money to do more than 3 pages.

https://www.lucidpress.com/

I am really into the idea of web based software. Sure not as many features, but you have seen our layouts and really nothing but photos and photo credits so I don’t need a lot. I have a feeling that I can switch my entire workflow to Chromebook and cloud based computing. More on this as it happens.

Photo by Andrea Sonnenberg

I have lists of ideas for videos, podcasts, interviews, reviews, polls, etc etc. And of course everyone I know has even more ideas for Hamburger Eyes social media, contests, collabs, etc. all for the intention of getting more eyes onto the website. Attention that is.

Within that attention is embedded the dream of “more sales” and not hating on it, this is the arena we have willfully entered. But, as I have been many times before again and again, you get buried by this dream. You get overwhelmed by all this “content” that needs to be made.

Today I was thinking why haven’t I attacked anything on these lists yet. It’s because I just wanna look at cool photos and make some cool zines out of them. That’s it.

I think we forget to keep it simple. I realized that updating this blog is easy. I realized that making these zines is easy. Why make it hard? I guess what I am trying to say is that I have been spending a lot of energy brainstorming in the marketing department when really all the energy should go into creating in the production department.

I agree that we have to step out of our comfort zones to expand horizons, but I also agree that we have to build on our strengths.

The idea is to do more of what your good at. Lots more. So expect more bloggy updates and more zines. You already knew that.

(Just realizing we haven’t posted an “article” since April!)