PixelatedImage Blog

3 Boats, 1000 Buddhas. Photographed at the cave of 1000 Buddhas on the Mekong River in Laos. And I’m posting this from Bangkok. So it’s not really so much a postcard from Cambodia. That’s the next photograph.

 

Banteay Srei, Cambodia, Photo by Eve Hannah

Sitting in the departure lounge in Siem Reap, it’s hard to believe this trip is over. In some ways it’s one of the longest, slowest trips I’ve ever made, everything taking much more care and thought than it’s ever taken before. But yesterday marked 5 months since my accident and I celebrated this morning by dancing in the rain, soaked to the bone, at a small temple called Banteay Srei on the outskirts of the Angkor complex.

Angkor was amazing, but it stirs in me the usual regrets and longings. Unable to climb a steep and muddy hill on the first evening here I sat with a cold can of Angkor beer, watching the tourists, and thinking how much I just wanted to photograph this magical place in great light, without the tourists and the touts they (we) attract, and that I was probably 100 years too late. It’s hard to get to upset about the tourists, without also considering my own complicity. I’m part of these crowds, and I kind of wish I would go away so I could enjoy the place alone. In the end I may be one of the few photographers who has always longed to photograph Angkor and left without taking more than a couple scouting shots and deciding I was happier just wandering the ancient ruins slowly or watching monkeys jump out of trees into the flooded puddles below.

After 2 weeks with the Fuji x100, I’ve decided that traveling this light is bliss, and it’s a luxury I may seldom have. The camera itself is beautiful, well made, and small. It turns on quickly enough, but focuses like most compacts (slowly) and suffers from just enough shutter lag to make it occasionally annoying, and sometimes closer to useless. I still put the battery in the wrong way at least half the time, which is odd because it shouldn’t take much to make a battery compartment that takes a battery only one way, nor to make a battery that lasts a little longer. And I hate the weird gymnastics I need to do to change a focus point. But for all the quirks it’s a great little camera and I like using it, and the photographs it makes, better than any compact camera I’ve ever used.  I’ll keep in in the Jeep and it’ll be my go-to camera for traveling, but I can’t wait to get back to using a dSLR.

And now I’m off to Kho Samet for a week to sleep in, eat pad thai, swim in the warm waters of the Gulf of Thailand, and do all the stretching and strengthening I neglected over the last 2 weeks. When I get home the new book will be nearly out, and I’ve an ailing Land Rover to tend to and Thanksgiving to enjoy with family before getting ready for Mexico and Honduras. See you soon.

By now you know me well enough to know that I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about the so-called photography industry. Weird enough that I even wear a bonnet, right? But the continual focus on gear at the expense of creativity  is why so many who love this craft are frustrated. Too much time on the peripherals – gear and technique – without tending to the core.

If you have any interest in expressing yourself and creating beauty, if you’re more than just a camera-collector but a photographer, then creativity is your core asset. It’s why I pushed so hard for people to read Corwin Hiebert’s book, Your Creative Mix, when it came out. And it’s why I’ve written a third volume in the Inspired Eye series (find Volume One HERE and Volume Two HERE or check-out “The Bundle” below).

The Inspired Eye, Volume 3 is a series of articles about the creative process, specifically for photographers, and I wrote it because the questions and discussions I hear most these days are not about depth of field and selective focus; they’re about creativity and expression and the frustrations we all experience trying to get beyond mere technical proficiency. Technical proficiency is highly over-rated. To be sure, there’s value in it when you need it, but a camera is still just a box with a hole in it. If you can make a good exposure, and focus the camera, the rest is about your choices – your own creative decisions in making a photograph. It’s those choices – your creativity – that make the photograph. If I had only 4 hours to spend working on my photography, I’d spend one hour on technique and 3 hours calibrating my creativity, that’s how important I think it is.

The Inspired Eye, Volume 3, was written for just that, as were volumes 1 and 2, for that matter. If you belong to the Craft & Vision Community, Volume 3 will be delivered to you today. If you don’t (ahem, why not?! Find out more HERE) then you can get The Inspired Eye 3 for $5, or $4 if you use coupon code EYETHREE4 before Saturday, September 24 at 11:59pm (PST). As always during these launch discounts, you can get 5 for the price of 4, this time the discount code is EYETHREE20. If you’re a member of the Craft & Vision Community already, now’s the time to download it.

The Inspired Eye Bundle! Get all three volumes for just $12. The first two eBooks have new covers but the layouts and content is unchanged.

A quick hello from Laos. We’re on the banks of the Mekong River, and in a couple hours begin a 2-day journey downriver towards Luang Prabang. Yesterday was a long drive through misty jungles and impossibly green rice paddies, around frequent landslides and small towns, with a stop for spicy kao soi for lunch.

As with so many of the Within The Frame adventures, I am surrounded by amazing people that have become new friends, and our times together are filled with laughter. I’m grateful for them and their patience. This is the first travel I’ve done since the accident and I feel slow, graceless, and clumbsy. On the first day we wandered around a village and I went exploring in a rice paddy, my fold-up cane sticking in the mud with every step and unfolding. I emerged muddy and wet and a little sore from the effort, but deliriously happy – it was the moment I’d been working towards for 4 months as I healed.

I’m traveling light this time. Lighter than I’ve ever done. My only gear is a Gitzo Ocean Traveler Tripod, my 11″ MacBook Air, and my Fuji x100. I’ll review the camera later, if the mood strikes. But traveling light is amazing. My camera is always with me, always light, always unobtrusive. I never feel weighed down or ask myself, Should I bring the camera? I’m shooting less, to be sure, and this will never replace the DSLR, which I sometimes miss, but for this trip, it’s perfect. For a week in Paris or NYC, it would be amazing.

There’s more to write and more to tell, but I need to get up and shower and find my people. I move a little slower than I thought I would in the mornings, so the extra time is needed. Next stop is Luang Prabang, then to Angkor in Cambodia. After that I’m taking a week of personal time in Thailand to sit on a beach and eat pad Thai. My physiotherapist says it’ll be good for me, so I’m calling it medicinal beach-time before I come home and start dealing with the Jessie saga, which I’ll update you on then too. Thanks to all who sent emails and cheered from the sidelines as I left for this. I won’t lie to you, I was a little nervous. Thank you.

Two years ago I wrote and published my first eBook. One book turned into two, two became four, and soon there were other authors and this thing we called Craft & Vision. We’ve now got 30 eBooks in our library and while I’m still kind of shaking my head at the whole thing, and we’re celebrating two great years, we’re not sitting still. The times? They are a changing.

Today we’re announcing the launch of the Craft & Vision Community, a subscription-based membership to a year of great photographic education and inspiration.

One of our big questions has been: How can we add even more value to what we do? The first thing we realized is that C&V is not about eBooks. It’s about educating and inspiring. eBooks are just the way we’ve done that until now. And we’ll keep doing it that way; we don’t want anyone’s current experience to change just because we’ve added this. So if all you want to do is keep buying exceptional eBooks for $5 each, you can keep doing that. But we think we can do more. We think we can be engaged on a deeper level. The Craft & Vision Community was created for just that.

C&V PODCAST!

The first thing we wanted to add was a monthly podcast. If you ever saw my old Within The Frame podcast, you’ll have some sense of what I want to do with this, except it’ll be audio only. It’ll be hosted by the inimitable Matt Brandon, and me, and each month we’ll do a great show that includes an image critique chosen from among images our readers submit, and there will be guest spots with other C&V authors, and discussions about issues relevant to becoming stronger photographers. It will also be refreshingly free of talk about the latest DSLR or tripod composite material. We will not talk about hyperfocal distances, and it’s likely we’ll mis-pronounce the word “bokeh” if we ever use it.  The C&V Podcast is about photography, not camera-collecting or pixel-peeping. This will be a monthly audio podcast and it’ll be accessed exclusively from the blog.

The Craft & Vision BLOG.

The second thing we wanted was a blog, a place for you to get, or listen to, the podcast, fill in the gaps between the eBooks, read articles by Craft & Vision authors, and plumb the depths of issues relevant to anyone that loves this craft. The blog will be the heart of our community, and a place where you can interact with topics and let us know where you’re at, what you’re learning, and what you’d like to learn. Both the podcast and the blog will be available exclusively to members of the community.

12 GREAT eBOOKS.

We want to give you as much value as we can through this membership. So we put our brains together and here’s what we came up with. In addition to exclusive access to the blog and podcast, which alone is a pretty great benefit, you’ll also get 12 great Craft & Vision Books a year delivered to your inbox automatically. We’ve been working hard to bring you a great line-up, including titles from me. It’s going to be a great year!

MONTHLY GIVEAWAYS & MORE.

You’re automatically entered just by being part of this community, and the first one’s a doozey. If you join in September you’ll have a chance to win a gorgeous Gitzo GT 0531 carbon fibre tripod, worth almost $500 from our friends at B&H Photo in New York.

In addition to all that you’ll have full-time 20% discounts on the full Craft&Vision library, so all books will always be $4/ea, and you’ll get one free eBook of your choice from the library.

We were going to insert some slick copy about how this is a $150 value etc., but you know that from the start we’ve avoided anything slick.  Value’s a tricky thing and only you can tell us what a year of great photography education and inspiration is worth. But we’re hoping you think this is a pretty great value. So, how much? That’s what you want to know right? Access to all this is only USD$99/year, or $10/mo. But if you sign up before the end of the month, you can join for only USD$89.00 for the year, and you’ll get in on the first giveaway – a gorgeous Gitzo carbon fiber tripod. We’d love to have you be a part of this. We remain rabid fans of the amateur because we do this for the love of it too, and we’re committed to making this an inspiring year of photographic education. No gimmicks. No lusting after pricey gear. Just great photographs.

Hi folks. The more rabid among you have already noticed that this September is the first month I’ve missed a wallpaper in, well, I think it’s the first time. Sorry. So much going on, my head is swimming. But read to the end, it’ll be waiting for you.

I was released from The Rehabilitation Centre in Ottawa on Friday morning. I walked out after 4 weeks of beatings, grateful beyond words for the progress and for the support of everyone that reads this blog, or follows my social media streams. Thank you again. I’m not out of the woods just yet. My feet hurt all the time, walking takes a lot of effort, and it’s just going to be a while for my body to re-adjust. Even then I’m told I’ll never get even close to normal range of movement on my right ankle, so I’ll be looking for a way to accomodate that and not limp. Still, so grateful! You’ve been so patient with me over the past 4 months as this blog’s been co-opted by news of the accident and recovery. We probably lost a couple of you when I started writing about bed-pans and enemas. Y’all can come back now. We’re moving forward now.

I got Jessie back from NY a week ago and I love having her back. We’ve been driving around getting some wind through the open windows and miles under the tires. I think she’s been smiling as much as I have. Sadly, I’ll be taking her off the road for about a year. She’s a great truck, but there are some issues preventing her from passing a rigorous safety certification. So it’s a good chance to bring her back to former glory and I’m hoping my Dad and I can do that over the next year: fix her little issues, give her a new carbon-grey paint-job, and then forge a new plan. Until then I plan to resume my travels, and at this point it looks like I’ll be spending much of 2012 in the American west in a sand-coloured 4-door 2011 Jeep JK named Emily. I’ll keep you posted.

The big news, and you may be reading this after the official launch announcement, is that we’re launching the Craft & Vision Community: a subscription-based way to experience Craft & Vision. We’ll be launching really soon. Might even be later today. The idea is simple – it’s a year of great photographic education and inspiration for a one-time price of $89 (that’s the launch special, regular price will be $99). For that you get 12 great new eBooks – and our line-up is getting better all the time – along with exclusive access to a monthly podcast, the C&V Blog, full-time discounts, one free eBook from the store, and you’re automatically entered for a great monthly giveaway. How great? This month it’s a $500 Gitzo carbon fibre tripod. I’m excited about this – it’s a chance to more fuly engage with the great community already building up around the Craft & Vision eBooks. And for those that don’t want to join, your experience doesn’t change. Same great eBooks, same great prices. More info to come.

I head to Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand on Wednesday. It’s my first trip since the accident and I’m going into it with a mix of sheer excitement and nervous trepidation.I’m joining Jeffrey Chapman there for Laos & Angkor Within The Frame Photographic Adventure. Psyched.

Photographically Speaking is almost at the printers, wrapping another year of work on something I’ve enjoyed making and am so proud to put my name on. It’ll easily be released, I’m told, by mid-October. Until then, as promised – and neglected – here’s a wallpaper for the month. I’m still hung up on twilight.

Glenorchy, New Zealand, 2010. Click the image to access the larger 1900×1200 file.