Donate to the podcast directly with the links below.
⚡️Donate any amount from a Bitcoin Lightning wallet ( including Cash.App ) to Billy Newman
⚡️Donate $5 from a Bitcoin Lightning wallet to Billy Newman
⚡️Donate $11.11 from a Bitcoin Lightning wallet to Billy Newman
https://yr.link/lightningpay11
⚡️Donate $50 from a Bitcoin Lightning wallet to Billy Newman
https://yr.link/lightningpay50
If you feel you are getting value from this, please help by becoming a supporter and send some sats.
*New* You can send a Bitcoin Lightning payment direct from the Cash.app
Get a Bitcoin Lightning wallet for free instant transfers
Value streaming payments system enables listeners to send Bitcoin micropayments to podcasters as they listen, in real-time. Start streaming value! It’s easy to remember: http://value4value.io/ newpodcastapps.com
I use https://fountain.fm
If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work, or a podcast interview, please drop me an email.
Drop Billy Newman an email here.
If you want to look at my photography,
If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography:
you can download Working With Film here.
If you get value out of the content I produce, consider making a sustaining value for value financial contribution,
You can find my latest photo books all on Amazon here.
Website Billy Newman Photo https://billynewmanphoto.com/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/billynewmanphoto
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/billynewmanphotos/
Twitter https://twitter.com/billynewman
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/billynewman/
About https://billynewmanphoto.com/about/
0:14
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. But today’s photograph comes from one of the springtime scenes of light and weather that comes through really more often than other places in the world. But it comes through pretty often through the Willamette Valley. And this is a photograph of, of a passing rain system like a big sell of a storm. In the in the Willamette Valley with with a lot of light coming through the low, the low level of it, it’s really cool, you get to see the green grass is kind of D saturated tone in the green grasses that comes up to the rainbow that’s there shining down onto the land, and then you see a bit of the rain as it comes up higher and higher into the darker clouds above. So it was really cool, colorful photo that I liked a lot. And this is what I try and push for a lot with some of my photographs is to is to go for more of an ethereal or dreamlike representation of what reality was at that time. Even though this was just a regular summer storm was rain and some sunlight, I think it really comes across as a special moment this photograph. So it’s a really cool thing. And it’s something I’ve been trying to work on more and more in the photographs I’ve been creating. You can see more of my work at Billy Newman photo comm you can check out some of my photo books on Amazon. And then you look at Billy Newman under the authors section there and see some of the photo books on film on the desert, on surrealism, camping, and cool stuff over there. Really trying to do a lot of scouting stuff, which I’ve enjoyed to doing some scouting stuff through the summertime has been pretty cool, where I’m really trying to go through some of these back roads and trying to like Mark spots in the map where there’s good campsites, which I hadn’t really done before. You know, it was a lot of places, I’ve driven a lot, a lot of roads I’ve been on, especially, you know, like back country roads, to Forest Service roads, BLM roads, and I know a lot of good dispersed camping areas. And really, I understand the context of how to find those areas so much better now that I’m older than when I was young. I mean, when I was young, and I go camping with my dad, you know, we’d go out to Eastern Oregon we’d find some spots and they’d note about this spot since you know, he was a kid and he was going over there and hunting camps and stuff with his grandpa.
2:41
So it’s cool for me to get to go over to the same spot and get to check out that area and stuff. But I think there’s been or at least when I was a kid, I didn’t really understand that the land, like the public land rights that you have, and really how those are organized, like how public lands are organized and what you can do on him and then sort of how it operates. I didn’t really understand the difference between national forest land and BLM land or national Parkland and state Parkland or wilderness areas, National Wildlife Refuge areas, man there’s just so many different distinctions of different things and then also just private property. So I didn’t really have a clear recollection of any of those things. And really a lot of time when it’s public land, you can go on it but there’s some things you can’t do on it like I they maybe hunt in some circumstances, like a, like a national park, or I think you can’t discharge a firearm inside of national park, but for specifically permitted events, maybe probably national wildlife refuges. I think those hunting opportunities are are limited also though, you can still do some things in those areas, I think you have to get permitted and you have to drop tag for that location, I think is what it is. But But yeah, it’s kind of interesting, sort of learning about that, learn how these things go and also finally getting some maps that you can use that you can kind of trust better while you’re in the back country. I think that’s something that’s really helped me kind of understand where I can go and what I can do and i don’t know i mean, we’ve had those map books you know, like that, that 50 page or 100 page book of Oregon and you know, every every page is a 25 mile map of that area is always super useful, how they kind of grid out everything and show you that you know the mile by mile marking and the topography of the area, the different little roads and stuff but even those roads, those mapmakers still got things wrong. I remember to you know, back in like, was it 2004 I think we were out in an area and Southern Oregon near the Nevada border was a Druze reservoir somewhere south of Gearhart mountain. And I remember we were on some, some little, some little road I don’t even know if it was if it was a national forest area, I think it was just in the in between private and public lands as it kind of jumps back and forth in those pretty remote areas. All of it is just remote, desert and forest and sagebrush Juniper, but some of it goes into like ranch land, it’s more managed and some of it gets back into BLM land as this as this little road sort of meander through it. But I remember being out there and noticing that the map on the page was just totally different than the map or the you know, the real world ground truth of where the road went. And I saw Oh, wow, yeah, you can’t really trust the maps to show you the information that you want to see when you need it. Other times too, you know, you’ll see like, Oh, hey, like it shows there’s a road right here. Good deal, we’ll take that road. Well, you know, it shows it’s on the map. So you cut down there, you get on the road, and then it’s washed out like crazy, or it’s super bumpy and like, and just terrible, right? And but it’s the same green roads, the same label, the same marking is the road next to it that was graded and, and
5:49
art was that paved, right? It’s graded gravel, they put more gravel down, I think, is what I’m trying to say they’ve, they’ve made it an easier going road to drive on. But then you get those washboard sections out there. I don’t know if you guys have done that, where you’re driving around in the Forest Service roads and those gravel roads. And I think it’s a natural process of erosion that occurs that creates these waves in the material, you know, as I think, as a rainwater comes down, is sort of naturally over time generates these, these little ripples. And that’s the washboard effect that you get when you’re driving. That’s also the thing that kind of kicks your car sideways when you’re, you’re going a little too fast on a gravel road. So I started doing today I think I kicked it pretty hard side or not, you know, like, it’s pretty loose on the traction and it was starting to tip sideways in my truck. And so I slowed down and threw it into four wheel drive after that, and was able to cruise around out here pretty freely. But yeah, I wanted to talk on this podcast about hanging out in the Fremont National Forest and I just got finished with a huge thunderstorm that came through. It just really finished raining a little bit ago. We were kind of I think when I arrived to today at this Meadows still a few hours before sunset, so I walked around and kind of went along the perimeter of the meadow and then and then I noticed that you know, I mean it’s cloudy. It’s been kind of cloudy today, and there’s been thunderheads that have been building up over the location that I’ve been ever since I kind of came over the past the Cascades had been in like a pretty solid string of a thunderheads that have sort of coalesced into big mass over the Cascades some of it here over the Fremont National Forest river mountains these are that I’m in and and yeah it seems like this section in Eastern Oregon was getting hit with a good Thunder a good summer August thunderstorm today which was kind of fun to sit through and go through it was cool that I got rained on pretty hard early when I was driving over I thought I’d get out here and be a little bit more free of it but it seemed like that storm kind of drifted over this way and it was sort of drifting north from here and and yeah, it is a new system but man there’s just a bunch of lightning that was coming through and huge cracks of thunder just big deep rumbles I haven’t heard Thunder like that. And in years and years probably you know where it just kind of stays and like hangs and rolls for 10 seconds 15 seconds it seems like you know you just really kind of like whoa is Can it really still be just cracking and rumbling and rolling. And, and there was enough activity and if lightning activity that was going on there where you’d hear thunder. I mean, it was almost like 45 minutes there where there was just a crack and a roll of thunder almost continuously like it was it was pretty intense. It’s It’s It’s really I think one of the more strong lightning storms I’ve been in in a while but that’s sort of how it goes out here when you have these higher elevations I think I’m floating around up in the 5100 feet or so above sea level. And so it just means I’m up in the mountains where these these thunderstorms get started, you know, they get there. They get there. I think that’s where they they’ll kind of coalesce over these big mountain tops and then float over in the hot weather. I don’t really understand the weather enough to say I know how a thunderstorm starts it doesn’t start now. I’ve just gotten cold enough I’m trying to throw jacket on. Now you got to live through it. I’m really camping. It’s been good. But I’m gonna be out here for two nights I think is what I’m going to do and then tomorrow a cruise out and I’ll try and hit some of these Forest Service roads for a bit. drive around do some exploring mark a couple spots on the map as a as I’m cruising around. I think that’ll be that’ll be a good time but the I haven’t been out here before. I think I’ve heard of a couple friends that have been out in this area that have done some. I think they did a couple scouting trips for a hunting trip that they’re going on in the fall. I think this is an area where we’re one of my friends goes I think they try and drop a tag for not this area. I think it’s a drainage over from here but I think I’ve heard about this area a couple times from from people talking about it too. Yeah it’s cool it’s cool spot it was out taking pictures earlier taking some photographs I’ve been working mostly probably for almost a year and a half now I’ve been working a lot with this 17 to 40 millimeter wide angle Canon lens and it’s a pretty inexpensive lens and you can get it for like 400 bucks maybe a little less if you’re lucky and you get it on a sale time sometimes in the fall as we’re kind of ramping down toward
10:29
for Thanksgiving I think you can get some good deals on it but that’s it’s sort of in the the $400 range I think sometimes maybe it’s more around five or something but I picked it up a couple years ago when I was starting to do some real estate photography or while I was working for Airbnb for a while where they had hired me as a photographer to go into these Airbnb plus listings and get a new set of photographs I was interested in kind of learned about how specific they wanted all those this photographs and this this really specific art style and and you know format of it and it was fine It was interesting to do for a while but but what was cool is that I picked up that lens to get in and do that work. But really after that I’ve been appreciating how much I can do with that wide angle lens and then you know 40 millimeters isn’t way different than 50 millimeters it’s certainly different for the effects of portraits and stuff but when I’m out here doing landscape stuff and I’m trying to take pictures of a lot of this stuff is kind of sketch photos to where I’m sort of going around and midday I’m taking some photos of some different things I want some cat photos and my track and my my little cooler set up in the back here and so all that’s been good in addition to that the the Astro photography stuff that I can do with it is pretty cool because it drops down to the 17 millimeters it’s an autofocus lens, it’s a sealed lens, it’s it’s pretty it’s it’s pretty good in most ways and I’ve really noticed over time that I’m not as as absolute of a mandate for me to be shooting at a really wide open f stop you know, shooting at a wide open aperture almost all my photos early on were 1.8 or or 2.0 or 208 or something and I would do that really because I was trying to I was really trying to get because I didn’t have very many lenses I was really trying to get as much effect out of that book k out of that soft background as I could so I was really trying to lean into that and get some photos with it and I noticed with my camera and equipment at the time that it just it just looked better. They just did look better when it was at you know f1 eight I think I just had that nifty 50 Nikon 50 millimeter for the longest time that’s what I did I did my early trips on and did a lot of my portfolio building stuff on that but but I’ve got a different 50 millimeter lens with me now I’ve got it on my film camera in my bag right now which I need to take out too and I’m trying to finish a roll of avatar film it’s been on there for a while and I’ve enjoyed shooting it it’s cool it’s a it’s a new Canon camera to me at least I got it used on kth and spent 35 bucks on it 10 bucks to ship it and it takes a weird battery to it’s one of those 90s film cameras it has this weird it almost looks like a battery pack this it’s like two so it was almost like two double A’s if they were a little fatter but are bonded together in this little plastic pack and then you pop that in there and shoot for a little while I guess and it runs a meter okay so I’m getting by with it but I’ve noticed the film cameras stuff it’s it’s fun to have an awesome film camera it’d be cool to have a Leica and all the lenses I wanted but a lot of the time with that you know the good lenses I have this this new or like canon l glass that I get to shoot through and for film photos and for the variety of images or the variety of lenses i have i can i can do telephoto I can do prime I can do really wide angle all with the modern digital Canon lenses that have you know chips in them that read well that meter well that make contact with or send information back and forth or at least from the lens to the camera I think xao works that works in the autofocus stuff for the digital camera this is this is autofocus Yeah, it’s an autofocus digital camera. It’s sending information back it’s working Yeah, that makes sense yeah, so it’s it’s cool like that’s something I didn’t really have available to me for a long time you know, I think what I’ve probably on this podcast if you go way back in the archives I’m talking a lot about film with a Nikon f4 you know, I mean that just had autofocus that was the first camera like 88 to get autofocus period. So it’s cool to have that in a more flexible way now but what I remember talking about in the past that was that I had like limited options with glass all the time, I didn’t really always have the lenses that I would have preferred. And so I’ve kind of made a collection of that now with this canon stuff, I got a Canon camera and so I can throw all those lenses on and have that same flexibility that I have with my digital set. But just with this, this film body that I get to shoot a roll through so I kind of saved the film stuff When it’s a thing that I want, but what I’ve noticed though for a little while, is that I miss a lot of those moments and I ended up just having the
15:09
the norm, you know, the regular digital camera with me with a bunch of my other gear, whenever going out and trying to kind of just take the camera with me and then I’ll leave the bigger bag back at the truck, so that I’m not really carrying as much stuff with me, I’ve also started carrying, like when I’m out here in the woods and stuff I’m carrying that binocular harness with me, which is kind of cool, you can get them in different sizes, but it’s sort of like if you imagine like a backpack, but what they do is they strap onto the front so it’s right on your chest. And what you can do is Phil is put like a pair of binoculars in there. So you can pull them out and then scatter around with your binoculars, do some glasses, and then pop them back into your into your harness and then kind of carry on with whatever you want to do. But if you leave that empty without the without the binoculars, if you have a smaller camera rig, probably like a mirrorless or a Sony camera, you know, like one of those Sony A 6000s man, if you were a backpacker, and you had a Sony A 6000. And this, this front carry, like binocular pack, you’d be really sad that would be like all the camera bag that you’d need. In fact, really if I’m thinking about ever doing some like over you know, some longer backpacking travel, where I just have to pack everything in a way it’s gonna be something I’m more conscious of. And I think that’s really like the way to go is I’ve kind of been thinking about it a little bit it’s like get to get a lighter camera. Or I mean it’d be great like carrying like a 360 camera you know, if you’re going up someone else’s, those are almost nothing as it is anyway but but if you’re carrying like an SLR or something that you want to try and do some some more controlled photography with you had something like a, an A 6000 from Sony or an a seven, seven or three or whatever it is something that size with a lens attached to it, you know, that could fit in one of these binocular harnesses, harnesses and carry kind of route on your front and then you see something you would take it, pop that open right on your chest, pull it right up to your eyes, got straps on it in the harness, pull it right up to your eyes ready to shoot, and you can take photos, or take photos, you know as quick as you want to. So it’s kind of a cool process. If you’re out hiking a lot for what I’m doing, I have my binocular harness, but it’s got binoculars in it. And I’ve been kind of going around and trying to do some bird watching stuff while I’m out here. And so cool Hawk, those posted up who’s looking at me, that’s about all I’ve seen so far. So coyote the other day, that was cool. I’ll talk about that later that but
17:33
but so I had those binoculars in there. And I’ve been kind of going out on these, these shorter hikes and stuff that I’ve been trying to go around and like, just kind of watch some stuff or watch land and kind of keep an eye out. But I just had the camera on my longer strap on my side with that 17 to 40 millimeter lens. And that’s worked really good. And it’s been a pretty flexible kit for me to go around and take a bunch of photographs with so it’s pretty easy, pretty lightweight to work with. And I can kind of move back and forth between those things strapped around my neck, you know, it’s not everything just hanging around my neck with a lanyard, it’s all kind of put somewhere or packed in somewhere. So it’s been kind of cool. But it was good going out and taking some photos tonight, I was trying to get some of the i didn’t i didn’t get any lightning in the camera, though the lightning stone kind of passed as soon as it was getting really dark enough to do like a long exposure kind of thing where I could, I could sort of catch something, something spark and otherwise, you know, you got it, you got to beat the lightning bolt with your shutter finger. And that’s a pretty tricky task to do. I think that’s how they do it, you know, when you get those, you get those like magazine photos back in the day of powerful lightning bolt striking. I don’t know the center of a road or something like that, it’s what they’d show, you know, some kind of power lightning bolt, but the way that they would do that stuff is i think i think it was like it was dark out, you know, are pretty dark out. And so they set the camera up for just a cycle of long exposures. And then they would just kind of let it ride, you know, so they’d have a couple seconds to expose the image to whatever you know, at work, and then they just kind of have that rolling so that when when a bolt of lightning did strike, and it would be captured. And you could go through that collection of capital or you know how I say that, when a lightning bolt would strike the ground, the camera would have already been exposing for a photograph. Because it’s just cycling the shutter on a four second exposure, let’s say something like that. And so you know, it takes a four second exposure stops, processes for a second, it takes for second exposure stops processes for a second. So I think that’s how they did some of that stuff where they, they kind of anticipate. Alright, it’s been a couple minutes. Let’s take a frame now. And then it’s just going to be an event in the future. So we don’t know if it’s going to happen or not. We’re going to wait for this event in the future when we boom see a lightning bolt and then that light then exposes the sensor or the film and the camera. And then you’re left with an image that has that lightning bolt represented in the frame when you’re shooting on a tripod or something like that with with like a short cycle, long exposure. And I thought that was pretty cool, but I didn’t really get a chance to get all that stuff set up before the storm kind of passed me by I did get a lot of cool handheld stuff that was that’s great if the thunder heads and stuff and really unfortunately just in the location that I’m at a lot of that and I guess maybe for the better. But that lightning storm didn’t pass right over my head, it was still a little ways away. So I could see the lightning bolts cracking through the trees can out that distance more, a few they stretched across the sky pretty good too. It’s just a big old, you know, from from east to west. It was like, you know, big old chunk of boulders crack all the way across the sky. It was cool.
20:53
So I got some photos of the thunderheads, the sunset, the the big field out here, it’s cool. It’s a nice area. But I was also thinking about some of the other stuff that I want to be doing tomorrow. So I’m out in the Fremont National Forest, I’m going to be heading I think, maybe south from here, and I’m going to try and explore a couple areas that are still open. Or I guess it’s all open publicly, this is like a pretty large contiguous section of of national forest land here. And really like that’s a big part of Oregon overall, right? It’s like 53%, public lands. It’s cool. Yeah, if you look at a map, you’ll see the cities and you’ll see like the highways and stuff. But if you have the right map, it’ll show you where the BLM land is and where the different national forests are. And it’s cool, this whole area of the Northwest is just, there’s a lot of public land that you get to use. And there’s a lot of open area that you get to go to and, and yeah, now that I’ve got a good map of the outdoor off road, roads and some of the terrain and stuff with some good notes, and I’m able to kind of move around and get out to a lot more places than I had before. So it’s been cool. The app that I’m using is the on x off road app, it’s, I think 2999 a year. And so pitch that out, picked up this app, and then you can download offline, these, these really detailed off road maps, they’re supposed to show you all the trails, you know, even just walking trails, all the roads, all of the like the pieces of information you’d need for kind of moving around in the back country and really as surprising as it is as remote as a lot of these places are people go here, you know, it’s also public land is managed by the the forest department forest Forest Service. Yeah, I think a lot of the stuff managed by the Forest Service, the BLM stuffs managed by the BLM. And that’s why these roads are as good as they are or maintained. And that’s why I like when trees are down on these mountain roads, you know, someone has to go through at the beginning of the year and cut all those out, rip them out filling the potholes, all that sort of stuff. So all these areas are, are known about and you know, kind of managed in a pretty significant way. In fact, I think, more so to come in the future. I think they just announced yesterday or the day before that they’ve passed the great American outdoors Act, which I really don’t know the first thing about, or, or what it does or doesn’t do, or what puts in or leaves out. But I think part of my understanding is that it’s supposed to change some of the funding mechanisms that go into supporting the the maintenance of these public lands that are out here across the country, but really significantly out here in the western states. So it’s, it’s pretty cool. I think, before that it was like, well, we should spend, you know X amount of money, but there’s a more important place for that money to go. So it wasn’t like a guaranteed amount. Sort of what I understand so if I understand it correctly, there’s like I think they’ve said $3 billion a year of mandated funding for projects. I think here in the back country, BLM land, Forest Service land and like national wildlife refuges and stuff so pretty cool. But yeah, I think that’s gonna, well maybe we’ll see a change in that I think it’s supposed to better fund the operations of BLM and forest service people as they’re going through and trying to get these areas ready for, for the public to be using more regularly. So it’s cool. I think it’ll mean a lot over the next few years or what maybe we’ll see how it, how it kind of transforms some of the way that these these areas are managed. I think maybe it’s more for mining, I probably shouldn’t even speculate. I’m not sure at all, but it’s pretty cool. I’m excited about being out here and doing some camping and stuff dealing with this thunderstorm. I think it’s one of those things where by the morning, you know it’s going to be or at least well I was looking at the weather it should be mostly cloudy, partly cloudy, mostly sunny tomorrow for a while. So It’s pretty cool. I’m excited to be hanging out, do some cabin stuff, do some podcasting. I’m in the back of my truck right now like I was saying it was rain in early after this thunderstorm so I got that canopy on my truck. And I’m nice and dry, nice warm, kind of feels like I’m just inside somewhere. So it’s, it’s a cool cool rig, having the four wheel drive, having the canopy on the back, having your staff and your sleeping area, just kind of set it back there and I’m ready to go. So I’ve been having a good time being out here and
25:31
it’s been pretty good. Pretty good trip so far. I so appreciate you guys checking out this podcast from me. I’m gonna do a couple more podcasts while I’m out here on this camping trip. And I’ll I’ll try and try and set up a little backlog of them on my website. I think it’ll be a good idea. Now I kind of take their breaks and stuff from it. I’m sure no one, no one keeps listening when it when it is there. But hey, if you listen to this end of the podcast, shoot me an email. Time for the plugs. It’s Billy Newman that photo.com if you want to check out my website, see some of my photographs, check out more podcasts that I’ve done, or books that I’ve tried to put together which is maybe what I’m going to try and do out here to try and get some photographs for another good book.
26:19
You can check out more information at Billy Newman photo comm you can go to Billy Newman photo.com Ford slash support. If you want to help me out and participate in the value for value model that we’re renting this podcast with. If you received some value out of some of the stuff that I was talking about, you’re welcome to help me out and send some value my way through the portal at Billy Newman photo comm forward slash support, you can also find more information there about Patreon and the way that I use it if you’re interested or feel more comfortable using Patreon that’s patreon.com forward slash Billy Newman photo. Yeah, this summer, I’ve been trying to do a lot to work to get together some new photos, some new stuff to try and kind of build a base and then move from there a little bit. But I’m really excited to try and put up a bunch of the older portfolio photographs that I have. And I was really happy to work on the website a lot this summer, I kind of redesign a bit of that, you check that out tell you anything about it’s a billion human photo.com. And I try to strip out a lot of the unnecessary parts and I’m trying to kind of hone it down a little bit. So it’s a little cleaner, but it’s gone. Well, I’ve tried to set it up a little bit more. So it’s stream based, if that makes sense. You know, we’ve kind of moved toward like the Facebook stream, the Twitter stream, the Instagram stream. So I’m trying to kind of move it to where, like I talked about on the podcast before where a lot of the media stuff that I put together, the video clips, the photographs and stuff that wherever they do end up going whatever sites I am populating, like flicker and Instagram and Facebook and all the rest of it, that’s kind of what’s shown on the website, or you know how the website’s going to try and automatically pull that stuff and ingest that into the website. So I don’t have to do it as much. And that’s kind of been fun. Actually, it’s kind of cool doing that. But the thing that I need to do, the part that still left is I need to go through my photo portfolio, kind of the long term portfolio of images I have, and I’m trying to go through and select what would be good to show the work that I’ve done so far. And I’m trying to do that in a way that’s more developed than I had before I’ve gone through and I’ve selected, I’ve kind of picked the photos that I like a lot. But I’ve tried to do a couple different things. And hey, another truck. That looks like a few times of gravel in the back. So what I want to do, though, with the photo stuff, and what I’ve kind of been trying to work out a little bit is to go through Instagram or to go through Facebook and to try and select my favorite photographs, but then also just select the ones that have been sort of chosen by the market. That’s another idea that I’m trying to go for what what do people actually like of the pictures that I take? What are the ones that people seem to connect with the most. So in one level, I’m trying to find all those photos. And then I’m trying to sort of remake those photos or re edit them or you know, kind of re republish them in a way that looks sort of new. And that’s cleaned up a little bit in the way that I can I can edit and create stuff now. So part of the step is that and then the other part is to sort of learn what people like of the photos I’m making that I want to go out and try and make more of that. Or I try and dig in a little deeper on on the part that seems to get the most traction or that seems to be seen as the most valuable. So what are those like what I’ve noticed?
29:39
Well, yeah, what I’ve noticed anecdotally so far is that the low light stuff or the Astro photography, the night photography, the landscapes where there’s stars matched in the background seem to really perform really well. And I really love trying to take those photos and I know a lot about how to lay out the stars that I would want in that foot or you know, I know where the stars are I know how to kind of line some of the landscape stuff out that I know how to expose for it. So that’s a part that I’d really like to get into and push for more of what seems to be a draw the photos that I take. But on the other side of that, too, I really want to do more, more fine art photography, that’s what I really liked, and was kind of drawn into when I first started taking photos, even way back on film, before I knew how at all, but I really liked the fine art side of it, where you could go through and try and put the nicest elements together or, you know, try and put a landscape together. But I liked that side of it a lot more than the product or production side of it. In a sense, at least. And I’ve always been really interested in the fine art photographers that are out there, or the fine art landscape photographers where you see some of the advanced kind of work that they put together, some of the ways that they’re able to put real pieces real elements into a photograph, it’s always seemed so cool, when you’re really able to be in tune with that sort of stuff. And I don’t know, I’ve just always loved the old landscapes, and, you know, old Fine Art images from the past. So that’s kind of the stuff that I’m trying to get into. But organizing this stuff has been interesting. So I’m trying to use this program called Scrivener. And maybe I talked about it before or maybe a while back, I talked about it. But Scrivener is kind of interesting. It’s this, and I talked about it yesterday, no, but it’s this writing application that I’m trying to get into. And it seems like it would take a few tutorials to really figure out it’s a little bit more in depth, hey, gravel truck, it’s a little bit, it’s quite a bit more in depth than something like Word. Even though Microsoft Word is sort of an industry standard that everyone has sort of learned on for the last 1520 years, it really is a little bit more specific to like an essay for at least the way I’ve learned it. But it’s more specific to the essay format of word processing, where you’re trying to get a page accomplished, you’re trying to edit through that or you’re trying to edit through kind of a single document. And Scrivener is sort of laid out in a way where there’s a few more pieces on the side of it, where it’s really supposed to be a research applicant, or you’re supposed to kind of compile
32:04
different documents of text research or photo research and kind of put that together. And then you’re able to sort of assemble a larger writing project from there, which I think is kind of interesting, like i’d figure like book authors would use a writing program like this to work on their character outlines. And their story outlines their plot summaries, and then they would work that into the manuscript that they would make into their book later. So I just think it’s kind of an interesting way that they seem to be going, or that the program is built to sort of go about it. So I’m trying to get into that and do it well. But one of the aspects I’m trying to do is to put in all the portfolio of photographs that I have, into this Word document, and then sort of sort those photographs, and write about those photographs a little bit to see which photographs really seem to connect with me, or connect and connect with an audience the most and, but also a photograph sort of have a story associated with them, I love that. Like, if you would follow me for this for a second, you would kind of see that there’s a difference between the photographs that are going to be the most monetizable the ones that you can make money from like, let’s say portraits, let’s say business portraits for some company you could get, you could get some money for that. But you wouldn’t really want to post that in your portfolio of work necessarily, you’d want to like, at least in my case, what I’d like to do is show some photos from the imnaha River Canyon, like where we were last week on our photo trip. So you kind of want to move into that stuff. But you don’t, it’s not gonna be the same sort of thing. Like those landscape Fine Art photos are just, you know, the landscape, travel, adventure, tourism sort of stuff, that’s all going to be on one side of it. And then the other is going to be, you know, senior portraits, business portraits, event photography, wedding photography, that sort of stuff. So there’s sort of two sides of, of a portfolio. One of them’s a photo product that’s valuable for money. And the other one’s a, an art piece that’s valuable because of its aesthetic. And those are sort of different things that you’ve kind of, as a photographer, you’re trying to build both of those up at the same time, it’s sort of like two different routes that you have to work on at the same time until they sort of merge together and unify. So it’s got an interesting part of it. And that seems to be part of the process that I’m in right now is trying to figure that stuff out. So some weeks, it’s, I’m working really hard on the aesthetic side of the photography. And then some weeks I’m working really hard on the monetizable compensation based side of the products that I want to try and build as a photographer that’s in business, right? And there are those are interesting challenges. But I guess I’ve been doing it for a couple years, and it’s kind of fun, at least to a ticket to still be doing it. So a couple of things that I’m trying to do is I’m trying to go through and build a new Lightroom catalog of all the photos that I’ve taken this year and all the photos from the last couple Will your second organize those and do a little bit of what I’m talking about. So I have this kind of tighter collection of maybe the top 100 Top 200 Top 50 some number in there of of well laid out photo essays and stories with an image you know that’s kind of what I’m trying to get to especially for like the, the social media content side of it, I want to try and have that ready to go with a higher frequency almost all the time. So I’m trying to get everything kind of pre produced, right? Does that make sense? One all the portfolio photos pre selected and then ready for me to go if I want to, if I want to post those, I get those out on any given day. So it’s interesting, it’s kind of a cool project. I worked on it a little bit to work on it a little bit here and there when I can but that’s another part that’s kind of tough. I mean, gosh, I haven’t even finished my website yet. Which I guess the last part is still just this I need to it’s kind of what it’s been waiting for is I need to finish the selection of the portfolio and then I can build the portfolio gallery and put that up on the website. But so far, it’s been working great just to send the y’all over to Instagram. I think that’s where most of the stuff goes. That’s where all the current content goes. Anyway. Thanks a lot for checking out this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Hope you guys check out some stuff on Billy Newman photo.com a few new things up there some stuff on the homepage, some good links to other other outbound sources, some links to books and links to some podcasts. Like this blog posts are pretty cool. Yeah, check it out at Billy new minnesota.com. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode and the back end