When do you know when to call it?

A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach

V1#13 - Jul-16-2019

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS. As I write this, it's mid-July, and it's probably getting old to hear where the heck has this year gone?

It's been a year of many commitments, for better and worse, and that's made it hard to keep the blog current and get this newsletter out. I'm not complaining, since they were things I felt were worth committing to and good things have come out of them, but it's always tough to have to admit I only stretch so far, and as I get older, I'm not as stretchy as I used to be.

I've thought a few times that I was finally getting past this schedule crunch and then realized that no, I really wasn't. This time? Maybe. A couple of key projects are finally done and I've gotten past some needed tasks, and I'm hoping that this time I'm not fooling myself. It's been so busy I've only gotten out birding once since April, and other than macro work here in the house, the camera hasn't been outside at all. I did try to go out birding a second time, but literally as I got into the parking lot my phone went off and it was my boss needing to talk about something, and while I was talking to him, I got email from someone asking if I could help them through some technical problems. I took the hint and went off to take care of things for everyone.

A busy part of the last few months has been the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Birdathon, which is our big spring fundraising event. I've been running the Birdathon organizing committee for two years, and I'm happy to say this year we met our goal ($40,000 raised) and everything went well. I'm also happy to say that I am handing over the committee to a new lead who is taking it over and I think will do a great job pushing it even further.

That was one of two committees I lead for SCVAS, the other being the marketing/outreach/social media group. I'm continuing to lead that, and we're working on a bunch of interesting ideas. I've been lucky to bring on a few new members to help out, and I think things are really getting some good traction.

SCVAS has had a few months of crazy, when the Executive Director decided to retire and then some unexpected staff changes. That's led to a bit of a scramble to keep things moving forward, but the new Executive Director started in June and they're starting to look at hiring one role, and so things are nicely settling down, with a lot of energy and ideas coming in from our new ED. The big challenge we all know we have to worry about is priortizing and focusing on the biggest bits.

Upcoming travel

As I write this, it's Saturday. I expect to release it to everyone on Tuesday, and by then, I'll have gotten on a plane and will be in Boulder for a week with my company. I'm giving two presentations there, and as of Thursday I was still freaking I wouldn't be ready, and by noon on Friday I had everything finished and ready to go. I don't expect to see anything but the inside of the hotel and the taxi, except for an afternoon where everyone goes off to hike in the forest for a couple of hours. Such is the joy of business travel...

I'll then be back, and a few weeks later Laurie and I are headed to Victoria B.C. to visit a favorite city -- for the first time in about a decade. The hotel reservations are made, and I'm really looking forward to getting to know that city a bit again and exploring Vancouver Island.

And then I'll be back for a few weeks, and then... I've finally pulled the trigger and I've booked myself into a photography workshop -- with Art Wolfe. It'll be in the Olympic National Park area, and I must say I'm really looking forward to diving in and pushing myself in new directions here.

Three weeks of travel in three months, for three very different reasons. I'm both looking forward to it and realizing that life on the road for me is fun, but in short intervals, so I'm wondering how I'll feel about this at the end of these trips.

On with the Show!

And with that, on with the show! And thank you for being part of this.

What's New?

Here is what I've written since the last issue:

  • Dance Like Nobody's Watching

  • To Dad: Cecil Rospaw (aka Von Rospach) 1924-2008

  • Averted disaster ("missed it by THAT much")

  • Why you should plan to spend time reprocessing old images

  • Eyes (a body of work)

  • 2017 Best Images of the Year (revisited)

  • The Sandhill Cranes at Merced National Wildlife Refuge

Photos: Half Dome, Yosemite National Park

I have been working to get the blog (and this newsletter) back on a rational schedule, and trying to figure out what topics to focus on and how often I should try to get new content out.

I've decided that I should be able to get two new bits of writing done every week, and that I wanted to start posting and talking about my images again.

So I'm scheduling new writing to come out on Mondays and Thursdays. If I miss a day, I miss it, but I hope I can keep to this most weeks now. And on Fridays I've declared Feathery Friday and I'll be posting one of my bird photography images. Wednesday will be for one of my photos that isn't a bird image.

It just felt right to me to make the first image of these weekly postings to come from a favorite place and be of a favorite thing, and that had to be Half Dome. This shot is from 2015 on a Christmas trip right after a winter storm.

The thing photographers kind of forget to tell people about images like this is that you wake up to a fresh coat of snow and things look magical (and are!) but you have to hurry, because in a couple of hours, it usually warms up enough for the melt to start, and you quickly go from white and magical to grey and slushy. Fortunately, I was around for this one.

When do you know when to call it?

So, when do you know when to call it? When is it time to move on and do something else?

Going on two years ago now, I started up a podcast, Occam's Fireaxe, where I reviewed books. I did it for a couple of reasons. One was I felt that I wanted to understand the tools and processes because in the kind of work I had been doing, it was a skill set I believed was increasingly important to have. The other? I believe podcasts are an important form that an individual can still have an impact and grow an audience in, and I wanted to try it out. 

I like the form and I like the process; I'd certainly look at doing podcasts again in the future. But after a few episodes, I shut Occam's Fireaxe down and moved on. 

Why?

After 3 or 4 episodes I felt pretty good about the production values, and that I had the production and technical bits under control. But by that point it was already clear that the podcast wasn't clicking, either with me or with potential audiences. I saw nice audience growth for the first three episodes, and then it started trailing off.

Even more important, I realized the content wasn't that interesting and the format wasn't working for me. It was a nice idea in theory, but in practice, I didn't think the results were something what I felt deserved an audience. It simply didn't click. 

How does this relate to photography?

I've been really unhappy with my wide angle work for a long time. It just doesn't feel natural and the results are at best inconsistent. 

So, is it time to give up trying to sort out the wide angle images and
focus entirely on my bird work?

It took me a while to sort out the answer to that but the answer was Hell no, I'm not going away. That's why I signed up for this mentoring class David duChemin is running. It's why I signed up for the Art Wolfe workshop this year. It's why I set up my tabletop studio and started shooting macros. 

I was unhappy with my wide angle work because I had set unrealistic expectations for what it should be, and I hadn't spent enough time to get comfortable with the technique to be able to create reliably competent images in those forms. Lack of practice -- and letting the inherent fear of failure take over my brain, which guaranteed that I'd fail. 

I've actually written an essay on that fear, which you'll see on the blog a couple of days after this newsletter is released, and which I'll link to in the next newsletter for you. 

I've spent the last few months studying what other photographers do in the types of images I've been struggling with -- I'll point you at Michael Frye who does a lot of landscape work with his 70-200 as one person's work I aspire to. When I took his workshop in 2014 it was one of the things we talked about, and here I am in 2019 still sorting it out. My fault, not his... (grin)

What I need now is time, which of course has been the challenge these last months. Time, and practice. And I also have a deadline, because I really don't want to go into that workshop with Art Wolfe without having spent more time learning how to best use my 70-200 lens and understanding its strengths and quirks.

But either way, I'm going to have to show images to Art Wolfe soon, and I can either be prepared to create good images, or I can go and learn on the fly. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather get some practice in first...

For Your Consideration

About 6FPS and Chuq

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Want to drop me a note or send my something to consider for the list? Here’s how:

  • You can always send me email at chuqvr@gmail.com

  • Or you can tweet at me at @chuq, or use the hashtag #6fps to point something at me.

See you soon!


And with that, I'll see you in a couple of weeks with the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along.

Until then, take care, and have fun.

Chuq (chuqvr@gmail.com)

Copyright © 2019 Chuq Von Rospach, All rights reserved.