Cherry Blossoms

(Originally posted on www.glennlewisphotography.com on April 13, 2015)

Cherry blossoms, duh!

I had hoped to write an entry about cherry blossoms about a week and a half ago, and that deadline went by without my writing so much as a single word. I then hoped to write this about a week ago, and that deadline went by without my writing so much as a single word. Then I wanted to finish writing this by this past weekend – April 11th and 12th – and that deadline went by without my writing so much as a single word. Well, today's the day. The cherry blossoms might all be gone for the year, but the annual blooming of cherry blossoms is a pretty big deal in portions of east Asia, and for the second year in a row, I had the privilege of living on the South Korean island of Jeju at this incredible time of year.

The cherry blossoms first began to bloom on Jeju on something like the 25th of March. The next weekend, March 28th and 29th, held Jeju's annual Cherry Blossom Festival. I went to this festival, but didn't bother to bring any camera gear, because in my experience, festivals in Korea are much more about buying trinkets, drinking soju (a clear, Korean rice-wine), and eating street food in tents than about whatever the title of the festival in question happens to be. The Cherry Blossom Festival. The Fire Festival. The Barley Festival. The Flower Festival. Any one of them could easily be renamed "The Drinking Soju and Eating Street Food in Tents Festival." This is by no means meant to be an insult. I love the Drinking Soju and Eating Street Food in Tents Festival! From this point forward, I'll shorten the name down to the D.S.E.S.F.T. Festival.

Several of my friends went to the D.S.E.S.F.T. Festival on Saturday, March 28th, in the early afternoon. I wasn't able to join them until a few hours later, at something like 5 P.M., which gave my friends a bit of a head start on me in regards to liver destruction. I took the bus into town and walked up the hill to the stadium complex around which the Festival was taking place. I was in no way surprised to find my comrades a few minutes later, in, where? You guessed it! A festival-style tent, drinking Korean liquor and eating street food. I promptly joined them and set off towards my goal of having an absolutely miserable Sunday.

After about an hour of playing catch-up, we paid for our food and drinks, and began our trek around the stadium. The stadium in question isn't particularly large, but it is a full-size soccer stadium, and it would probably take 10 minutes to circumnavigate at normal walking speed. Normal walking speed, however, is not something that would have been possible to achieve, even if it were desired, due to the huge number of people – certainly in the thousands – milling about.

I was looking for a new pair of sunglasses, because the only pairs I have are Elvis-style sunglasses, complete with glued-on fake sideburns. The D.S.E.S.F.T. Festival, and in fact all Korean D.S.E.S.F.T. Festivals, are great places to waste money on stupid gimmicky things one certainly doesn't need, and by the time we'd made one full lap of the stadium, I found myself in possession of one pair of admittedly pretty-sweet sunglasses, and four baller-ass pimp rings. Some friends I was with ended up with a toy sword that lights up and makes annoying noises and a matching balloon. Basically, we were super-mature.

Jokey Festival Pictures

This was the state of things when I arrived at the D.S.E.S.F.T. Festival. Throughout this entry, I talk a lot about drinking soju, and while it is THE drink Korea is famous for, and the primary thing I drink when it comes to alcohol, we actually mostly drank maekgolli at the festival. That's the delicious, extremely reasonably-priced, brownish liquid in our little dog-food bowls.

Interestingly, these dudes lived in Geoje, a neighboring city to Tongyeong, the first city I lived in in South Korea, back in 2010-2011. We actually hung out a few times back in those days, too. Now, we both live on Jeju.

Someone's happy.

These dudes don't look all that happy, but they are.

Balla! The total cost of all the rings in this photo was 24,000 Korean Won, or about $20.

My totally awesome, new sunglasses.

 We spent maybe half an hour watching some live music and dance performances on a fairly large stage before wandering back to the tent in which I'd originally found my friends. Another couple hours there, and a night in town left me sunglassesless, and with only three rings. That's pretty much why I didn't take my camera out.

But back to Cherry Blossoms. On the weekend of the D.S.E.S.F.T. Festival, the cherry blossoms weren't quite at their peak bloom, yet. It took another couple days for them to come out, completely. And then, in typical fashion, a typhoon moved in and tore all the petals off the trees less than a week after they first bloomed. But not before I went back to the stadium and adjacent stream upon which the D.S.E.S.F.T. Festival was held, and took a few pictures. Check 'em out.

Good Pictures

A close-up of some cherry blossoms.

A closer close-up of a single cherry blossom. At the time I took this shot, all the cherry blossoms weren't quite done blooming. Notice the pink, unopened flowers on the right.

More cherry blossoms.

A wide-angle (17mm) shot of some cherry blossom trees and the night sky. The lights from the city caused the sky to have a disitnctly purple color.

One of the many roads in Jeju that is lined with cherry blossom trees.

I've lived on Jeju for about two and a half years, now, and until the night I took this picture, I didn't know this street, unofficially called "Cherry Blossom Street," even existed.

A brown-eyed bulbul. I took all the bird photos in this album at the schools at which I teach English.

I like that I finally got a little direct sunlight in this shot.

Full bloom.

A chestnut-flanked white eye. I was able to take the next few pictures from the second story of my school, which conveniently looked out, at eye-level, with these cute, little birds.

Also, on the first through third of April, I brought my camera and telephoto lens to the schools I work at, because both of my schools have several cherry blossom trees in their courtyards. I don't know if it would fly in America for anyone to walk around an elementary school with a fairly paparazzi-looking telephoto lens, but here, not an issue. I actually managed to get some great shots of a brown-eared bulbul, and a chestnut-flanked white eye.

The cherry blossoms are now gone from Jeju, now, and I will be, too, in the terrifyingly close future. And it's very possible that I've now attended my final D.S.E.S.F.T. Festival. That sucks. Oh well. New adventures and new festivals await!

Adventures in Macroland

(Originally posted on www.glennlewisphotography.com on March 31, 2015)

NOTE: If you hate reading, just scroll to the bottom and check out the slideshow.

In less than a month, I'll have left the South Korean island of Jeju, my home for the last two and a half years. I've been working hard to save money during my time here, and for the most part, I've succeeded in putting away something of a nest egg that I'll probably burn through much more quickly than I presently care to admit. But because I haven't really acquired much in the way of physical goods since arriving on Jeju, I felt like I could splurge on one particular item that I've had some interest in for a while. A macro lens. After doing some research, I decided to go with the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM and the Canon MR-14EX II Macro Ring Lite. Although it was meant to be a Christmas present to myself, it didn't actually arrive on Jeju until March, but whatever. Now is the time of year that it's actually usable, now that the local flowers are finally blooming. Here's how that whole setup looks on my Canon 60D.

My macro setup: Canon EOS 60D (camera body) with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM (lens) and Canon MR-14EX II Macro Ring Light (ring flash)

I'm admittedly quite clueless about macro photography – this is obviously something I'll need to remedy in the near future – but here's the jist of it. Macro photography is basically the taking of pictures of things from very close range. If you've ever seen a picture of a flower in which you can identify individual specks of pollen, it's probably a macro shot. Same thing if you've ever seen a picture of an insect in which you could clearly make out the compound eyes.

Since I got the lens, I've gone out on several occasions to play around with it. Here are some of the better shots I've gotten:

The Sons and Daughters of Mild Disorder and Confusion (SaDoMDaC) went on a ride on March 15th, a couple days after I got my macro lens.  We visited Geungnaksa Temple, a peaceful location about 15 minutes west of Jeju City, and found all sorts of weird plants.  I noticed that the cabbage growing there looked interesting when viewed up close.  So I came back the next day and snapped this shot.

There were also white cabbages growing there.

Can you guess what it is?  It's a cactus.  A golden barrel cactus, specifically.  I shot this at Hallim Park, a walking garden / park / greenhouse / zoo on Jeju Island's west coast.

Hallim Park also had a tulip garden that was just starting to bloom when I visited in the middle of March.  Here's one whose petals had opened up a fair bit.

I'm not sure what type of flower this is, which is unfortunate because there was a path through Hallim Park that had one side defined by some bushes that were blooming with these flowers.  I spent an hour or more walking back and forth by these bushes, experimenting with my new lens, and trying, specifically, to get shots of bees or flies on the flowers.  The Koreans there probably thought I was crazy.

The tough thing, I've come to discover, about taking pictures of bees, is that what you really want to be visible, and in perfect focus, is their eyes.  But this is tough because when they land on a flower, they tend to immediately bury their faces in pollen.  If I  were a bee, I'd at least have the decency to pose for the dude with the fancy camera who has been chasing me around, from flower to flower, for an hour.

Finally, a good shot of an insect!  Check out the bits of pollen on the fly's back.

I think we can all admit that flies kind of suck.  No one wants them in their house, or office.  If there's a single one in your bedroom, it can keep you awake for hours as it buzzes around.  And if you happen to go somewhere that there are millions of them around, such as I did in 2010 in central Australia, you'll be fully aware that it is one of the most annoying things to have to deal with imaginable.  Now, with all this said, I have to admit that they're kind of beautiful.  The iridescent coloring is pretty spectacular. 

This is the macro shot I'm most proud to have taken, to date.  Look closely, and notice the detail visible in the compound eyes.

It's quite strange: flowers, and other tiny bits of nature tend to look like things from other planets when viewed up close.  This is the stamen of some kind of flowering tree.  But to me, it looks like it belongs on Planet Xybog-9.

My macro lens is my only prime (non-zoomable) lens.  And damn is it sharp.  A perfect lens for approachable animals, such as this apparently sleepy blue-and-yellow macaw, which appears to be exhausted from a long day of dealing with tourists walking up to him and shouting "annyeong haseyo!"  That's Korean for "Hello!"

A bizarre species of cactus I spotted at the Yeomiji Botanic Gardens, in Seogwipo, Jeju Island, South Korea.  The botanic gardens claim it's a cactus.  To me, it looks like a miniature Sarlacc - the alien that eats Boba Fett in "Return of the Jedi."

A couple lotuses.  These were a bit tough to shoot, as I was constantly worried that I'd tip over and end up in the pond from which they were growing.

Another lotus.

And yet another lotus.  Notice the tiny dragonfly in the upper left corner.  I think this picture could have been absolutely incredible if the dragonfly were larger.  In reality, he was probably only two centimeters (about one inch) long.

A bee approaching a cherry blossom flower.  I haven't yet figured out how to shoot with my macro lens at speeds faster than 1/250 of a second.  So the wings of the bee are very blurry, and even his body isn't as sharp as I'd hoped.  Other than that, I think this picture is great!

Not quite the shot I was hoping for, but this is the best shot of a bee on a flower I've gotten yet.  I like that his eyes are visible, and everrything is in perfect focus.  I guess I'm still looking for a better pose.

One hell of an elaborate flower.  Or, again, something from an alien world.

Shocking, Glenn!  Another flower!  #sarcasm

As I'm writing this, the cherry blossoms on Jeju are in full-bloom. So I'm going to try and give myself a couple opportunities to shoot them in the next week or so. They don't typically last more than a week, and with all the rain that's predicted in the near future, they might only last another couple days. Maybe I'll have some kind of follow-up to this in a future post.

One Month In

(Originally posted on www.glennlewisphotography.com on March 18, 2015.)

I "launched" www.glennlewisphotography.com roughly five weeks ago.  All that was involved in the launch was (1) creating the website, and (2) telling my friends and family about it, and hoping word-of-mouth and social media savvy (which I'm sadly lacking, for now, but am hoping to improve on this in the future) would carry me forward.  And I suppose it has, to some degree.  Ultimately, I would like this website to provide income for me to settle into photography as a career.  Obviously, this isn't something that happens overnight, and it certainly isn't something that happens when there isn't even a "purchase" button to be found on the site.  I'm aiming to fix this specific problem as soon as July, when I return to Colorado.

So, roughly one month in, where do I stand?  I use Squarespace to run my site, and they provide some metrics.  In the last month, I've had 381 "page views," meaning an average of 17 a day.  This is a pretty small number, and even less encouraging when it is considered that a "page view" is not the same thing as a "visit."  A "visit" counts as a series of page views by an individual.  I've only had 84 "visits" in the last month.  These numbers are what they are, and can be viewed optimistically, or pessimistically.  I'm optimistic they will rise as time goes by.

"Fisheye Forest," originally posted March 4, 2015.

It's also interesting to look at trends, such as specific days that gather a significantly higher number of views than others.  For instance, I had 69 unique page views  on March 4th - a huge number compared to my average of 17.  I posted "Fisheye Forest" on March 4th.  Every time I post a photo, I post it here, onwww.glennlewisphotography.com, as well as on my Facebook page, 500px, Flickr, Smugmug, and Google Plus.

Was there some kind of link between my having posted this particular photo and the increased traffic I experienced this day?  Well, I got 232 views of this photo on 500px, and it reached a peak "pulse" of 88.6, an impressive but not incredible rating based on another metric, this time specific to www.500px.com.  By way of comparison, I've averaged about 143 views per picture I've posted on 500px.

How about Flickr?  "Fisheye Forest" only had 70 views on Flickr.  And Google Plus?  Uh, I'm pretty clueless about what the hell I'm even doing when I get on Google Plus, so I don't really have any idea.  My Facebook page?  It's got 7 "likes," which is among the most of any of my photos.  (Not particularly encouraging)  And I'm not sure that anyone in the world has viewed my Smugmug page, at all.  It's basically a clone of this site, and in the future, I'll have to consider if it is really worth keeping both of them up and running.

So far, this post reads like a bunch of "here are some not-encouraging factoids about my photos," so let me now mention the things that have happened in the last month that ARE encouraging.

"Sanbangsan Sunset," originally posted February 26, 2015.

I have over 21,000 views on 500px.  I think this is good.  There are photographers on 500px who probably get this many views in a day, and perhaps I will, someday, too, but I am happy with this number, given the limited time I've been using the site.

I posted "Sanbangsan Sunset" on February 26, 2015.  It's odd, but for some reason, specific photos really take off on some sites, but not on others.  On 500px, this photo only reached a "pulse" of 48, which is not an impressive number by any account.  However, the same shot was chosen by Flickr to be featured on "Explore," which basically means it was shown on Flickr's front page.  It gathered over 8,500 unique views and over 200 "faves."

My Google Plus profile has over 52,000 views, even though I have no idea what I am doing when I use it.  These numbers are encouraging.

I am ultimately concerned, though, that all these metrics are kind of meaningless.  The sites on which I've been posting my photographs are generally used by other photographers, and artists don't make a living by selling art to fellow artists.  Ultimately, I am going to need to get regular folks to take enough of an interest in my work that they'll be willing to shell out a few hundred bucks to display something I've made on their walls.  I've got some good ideas on how to go about doing this, but none of them are really applicable until I get back to the US.  Until then, I guess I've just gotta keep doing what I'm doing.

To Post or Not to Post...

(Originally posted on www.glennlewisphotography.com on March 10, 2015)

... that is the question.

I've been putting my photographs all over the place in an attempt to "get my name out there" for a couple weeks, now.  I have accounts on Smugmug,500px, Google Plus, Flickr, and of course, Facebook.  My goal, for the next year, and hopefully significantly longer, is to post a single picture, every day, on each of these sites.  There will be days, like when I am traveling, that I won't be able to post.  And that's fine.  I'm posting in this way because if I were to simply post every picture I deem worthy of posting at once - like, now, for instance - what would I talk about and show off to try and garner interest?

Choosing what to post is quite difficult.  I purchased my first DSLR in 2007, and between then and now, my hard drive has accumulated (as of May 10, 2015) 41,594 .jpgs.  I'm not entirely sure what that means as far as pictures I've actually taken in the last 8 years, because I've certainly deleted many more pictures than I've kept.  My hard drive also has 10,467 RAW image files.  These are duplicates of .jpgs, but duplicates that I deemed to be of high enough quality that they may some day be worth editing.  I have 6,778 .tiffs.  These are images that I've created by editing the RAW image files.  All told, my eloquently-named "Pictures" folder contains 69,581 files and 1,813 folders occupying 729 Gigabytes of hard drive space.  Trying to edit and sort through this number of photos in order to choose those that will ultimately be posted on all my sites has been quite an imposing task, but one upon which the last couple years on Jeju have allowed me to make tremendous progress.

And it is here that one difficulty (of many) appears.  How prolific should I be?  Obviously, the more pictures I post, the lower the average quality will become.  I've looked at profile pages of some excellent photographers on 500px who have been members for years and years, and some have only 50 pictures posted.  The fifty pictures some of these photographers have are of unbelievable quality, in some cases better - and I hate to admit this - than the 50 best pictures I've ever taken.  But, in the case of these photographers, they only provide fifty pictures to look at, which I think has a legitimate downside.

Similarly, there are photographers who have thousands of photos posted.  While many of these thousands of photos might be of excellent quality, there are too many 'mediocre' shots for these photographers to stand out.

I don't know where I want to fall on this spectrum.  I tallied the photos I have already posted, as of today (141), and those I intend on posting (390).  531 pictures, total.  That seems like a lot.  And that doesn't take into account the shots I'm hoping to get on my next adventure, which begins in less than two months and will likely be the topic of my next blog post.

I just removed a few pictures a couple hours ago as I thought about this issue.  Here are the four I took down:

Trashed.

Deleted.

Removed.

Taken off the site.

I like all these shots.  I think they're objectively good... but probably not great.  The two images on top - the crows and the bee - were in my South Korea album, which had 59 pictures already - probably more than what is needed for what I feel will ultimately be one of my weaker albums.  More specifically, while the crows are kind of cool because of the black and white contrast, they're just crows.  Everyone's seen a million crows, and no one wants to purchase a print of a crow.  As for the bee, I have a fair number of better bee shots, and a fair number of better flower shots in the same gallery, so it probably isn't worth keeping an inferior duplicate.

The bottom two shots are from my Nepal album, and raise another difficulty.  I'm aware of my subjectivity in deciding what is a 'good' photo, but I'm not sure awareness is enough.  I like these shots, and again, I think they're good.  And while I think viewers might find the picture of the donkeys interesting, it faces the same difficulty as the crows.  There probably aren't many people out there that want to purchase a picture of donkeys.

I'm now realizing, as I type this, that pictures like these will make good filler for this blog, as I move forward with this whole endeavor.  They might not be sale-worthy, but perhaps an accompanying story will make them at least post-worthy.  On the blog, if nowhere else.

Is 531 pictures too many for someone just trying to get into photography professionally?  Maybe.  I guess I'll have to give this some more thought.

When Being Professional and Being Honest Collide

(Originally posted on www.glennlewisphotography.com February 22, 2015)

I launched this site a little over a week ago, and I'm still trying to figure out in what direction I should take it.  This dilemma applies specifically to the professional vs. honesty conflict I have to deal with when thinking about my photo comments, and blog posts, etc.  This probably isn't a black-and-white issue, so wherever I land will be neither 100% wrong, nor 100% right.

The honest truth is that I am not currently a professional photographer, but some clarification on the way the terms are interpreted is necessary.  I'm not a "professional" because I don't make my living at photography.  Yet.  Perhaps within a year, I'll be able to unhesitatingly claim to be a pro.  That's the dream, anyway.  Having looked at a fair number of "professional" photographers' sites, I can confidently (although, admittedly, with an unfair bias) conclude that my work is good enough to exist, and hopefully stand out, in the world of "professional" photographers.

So for now, do I make my site, and my comments, and captions and the personality I try to portray on everything I do related to my photography, clinically neat, politically-correct, and for lack of a better term, bland, in order to appear professional, while being self-aware that this is not an honest reflection of my personality?  Or do I make non-PC jokes and write my captions casually, as though I were talking to a friend?

It's tricky.  I pride myself on my honesty.  I want my writing to reflect my personality and opinions, but I'm aware that making jokes about praying mantises eating their siblings isn't likely to help me sell pictures of a praying mantis.  But this is something I would likely joke about when telling a friend about my interesting photo I just took of a praying mantis.  So what do I do?  I guess I toe the line, for the time being.

One nice part of being unestablished is that I can write blog posts like this, since in all likelihood, no one will read it.  Years from now, who knows.  But for now, I guess it serves as some kind of a photography-related diary.

"Dear Diary, does anyone have any thoughts or opinions on this matter?  If so, they're encouraged to leave a comment."

First Blog Post

(Originally posted on www.glennlewisphotography.com on February 14, 2015)

First blog post.  What to talk about?

Well, after years and years of talking about trying to turn my photography hobby into a career, I'm finally making moves to make it happen.  One year from now, I'll either be earning enough money at this to, you know, eat food and stuff, or I won't.  In which case I'll probably be teaching English somewhere sandy and a bit behind-the-times on social issues.

So what is involved in trying to "go pro?"  Hell if I know, I'm pretty much hoping to figure it as I go, and hoping that the quality of my photographs will be sufficient to carry me forward.  Getting this website looking how I want hasn't been particularly difficult, but www.glennlewisphotography.com is only one of several places I'm trying to get my name out.  I'm making "Glenn Lewis Photography" accounts on Flickr (I think it's a few years past its prime), 500px (which seems like a good site for sharing photos), Smugmug (where I basically have a clone of this site up), and Facebook.  If I ever get a more modern phone than this one ...

...maybe I'll even have to get Tweeter or whatever it's called.  Man, I'm already a grandpa, and I'm only 32.

I think that's enough for now.  I'm going to have to make an effort to update all of my websites and blogs and whatnot pretty regularly from here on out, so I guess I'll try and keep these things brief, so I don't run out of stuff to talk about.