Post 24

When I first became interested in photography, I went on the prowl for a good photography magazine. At first, I considered magazines such as "Aperture," that have amazing photos in each publication, but I decided to go for something that also had content that I could learn from. I decided to go with "Popular Photography." "Popular Photography" doesn't have as many jaw dropping images that magazines such as "Aperture" have, but "Popular Photography" posses articles that could, and still do, help me grow as a photographer and teach me a few valuable things. My mom has a subscription to "Popular Photography," so I was already somewhat familiar with the publication. I received my first issue in the mail in July of 2011, and its articles have helped me in different ways, and the reviews help me decide what I should consider and what I shouldn't. The only downside of the reviews are that sometimes the reviews are aimed towards equipment or cameras that I wouldn't even consider, such as point and shoots, and other "novice" like equipment, but that's what happens when a publication tries to appeal to a wide audience. The biggest, and most noticeable and annoying, downside of the publication though, is the amount of advertisements in the magazine.

For those of you who don't know, advertisements are how magazines and newspapers make their money. The subscriptions basically cover the shipping costs of the publication.

Now, I'm all for a decent publication like "Popular Photography" doing whatever it takes to continue surviving in order to provide information to it's readers, but after noticing that I could easily read everything in "Popular Photography" cover to cover in less time than it takes me to eat a meal, I decided to count how many of the pages contained an advertisement in the most recent issue I received. I counted 57 pages out of 112, or 51%, of the magazine's pages either have ads on them, or are entirely ads.The pages that contain ads, and aren't completely an advertisement, are sometimes the majority of the page, with less than 20% of a page with an ad actually being content from a writer of the magazine. I can't help but find this a little ridiculous. Does "Popular Photography" really need these many advertisements in their publication in order to continue making their magazine? I would hope so. Because I would hope that if they didn't, they would make the right choice by having as little advertisements as possible in order to provide more content, or at the very least make the magazine more enjoyable to their readers.

Post 23

For those of you who aren't familiar, and therefore don't see often, with my website, Facebook page, or Flickr page, I took photos for the UW-Whitewater Dance Team today. Here are the photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danpomykalski/sets/72157632191530501/

This was pretty fun day. All of the girls were extremely nice, and my contact was happy with the photos. As a photographer, there are some people you work for that treat you like dirt, and then there's some people who give you the utmost respect. I would say today was the second. Overall, I'd say today was pretty successful. I got to take photos for two hours and I'm estimating the payoff will be about the equivalent to what I made in two weeks at my old job.

Post 22

It's been a while! Just when I thought I wasn't going to be able to think of something to talk about ever again, I went and surprised myself. It seems so obvious now, too, and it should have been one of those things I had discussed right away.

But first, I want to give a quick update. I have a website now. The current website is temporary, but the domain name will remain the same even after my permanent site is up and running. The domain name is: www.danpomykalskiphotography.com, so be sure to add my site to your favorites. It's not much right now. Just a photo of Peyton, a way to contact me, and a very, very brief description. 

I also just had a shoot a few days ago, but am unable to share the photos until a little later. I'm very excited to share these photos with you, which will be on my flickr page: www.flickr.com/danpomykalski. I'll let you know once they're up. I'm really happy about how these turned out, and can't wait to show them.

I have a shoot this Friday, and I have high expectations for the results. I'll be sure to upload of those to my Flickr page as well once I'm done editing them. 

Now, for the actual topic of this post. 

Modern technology has made it extremely easy for almost anyone to pick up a dSLR and achieve "professional" image quality with a few presses of a shutter button, and then a few clicks of a mouse. It wasn't long ago, when being a photographer was more of a specialty, with far less Uncle Tom's with a low end dSLR shooting a wedding for free. I'm not afraid to admit that this ease of achieving decent results really attracted me to "photography," and made it much more accessible. If you're doubting what I'm saying about photography being much easier now than it was even ten years ago, take a look through Instagram. I've seen people achieve great things with a phone equipped with a decent camera and applying cheesy filters. I've also seen plenty of terrible photos on Instagram, where people try to be artistic, or try to make it look like they're a photographer, because Instagram gives one that false sense of being able to take a decent photograph. The difference between the photos that I pass over and the photos that make my mouth drop, is photos that are taken by someone who has "the eye for photography" and the photos taken by someone who doesn't.

It's hard to explain what "the eye for photography" is, exactly. I can tell when someone has it from their work, and I can tell when someone doesn't. The eye can't be taught. Someone with endless amounts of money can buy the best equipment, but their photos will still look terrible compared to someone with "the eye" working with a little point and shoot. 

So what's the point of this post? To let you know that anyone can say they're a photographer, but there are certain qualities that separate the photographers who can manage to be successful today and the photographers who are successful today who would have been successful at any point of time. The photographers who have "the eye," a knowledge of equipment and how to use their tools, and photographers who manage to create great results no matter what equipment they're using.