May I be a douche and quote myself?

“There are already so many photos of pretty things. So sometimes I like to take photos of ugly things.”

— Griffin, Blake (UNEXPhotography). 27 Sep 2018, 17:12 UTC. Tweet

I even did a (mostly) accurate MLA formatting quote job for you there. But in all seriousness, I found myself in Germany for Photokina this year following my trend of documenting European graffiti and street art.

I really only had one day to walk around, so the majority of these were from a single session, however I do feel like I got a couple of winners. I’ll be running some prints of these for myself soon because the web just do not do them justice at all. There are so many great textures that just are missed when not looking at everything full sized.

I hope you enjoy taking a look at these as much as I enjoyed taking them. Until next time Köln, Danke!

It's probably the timezone, but this is one of the few times in recent memory that I was awake before the sun was. So, naturally, I decided to do something about it.

The morning light was something to see. Even though I didn't get the shot I wanted, I was still pretty happy with what I was able to capture. I'm probably going to try again tomorrow and capture something great. Especially since I know now generally where the sun will rise from.

The rest of the day was mostly filled with class work. Re-learning the basics of Photography. Even though I already have a pretty strong grasp on the concepts that were presented, I walked away with some great notes. If you follow my twitter account, you may have seen some of these. Maybe before the end of the week, I'll transcribe them.

After the classroom, all of us attendees broke off into groups based on our camera brand of choice (I guess you could say that anyway). We were further introduced to our mentors for the week, and given our task:

Every night shoot and deliver 10 final photographs based on the theme chosen for the night. Tonight it was "Shadow and Texture". That was it. No real other set of goals. We then were let loose on the resort. I fumbled around for an hour or so, snapping. I had a bit of a tough time at first because I primarily shoot people (Hell, my business cards said this for years). But as they say "The best things from come outside of your comfort zone".

At dinner, I had a chance to sit down with one of my mentors for the week and had a very emotional conversation about life and my feelings regarding the work I do. He gave me a homework assignment to complete, watch Sue Bryce's video on fear. As we talked about the business of photography and our lives he re-assured me that sometimes it's natural to question yourself. But the trick to overcoming is not to listen. Later he helped me "kill some babies" and get down to my final 10 images. I felt a rush as we went through my first pass. I had missed having someone to go through and receive feedback from.

Below are the 10 submissions for the day. I have probably another hundred other images that I took today, I'm going to sit on them for a while and let them marinate in my mind. Keep your eyes out for those in the future.

I'll end this post as well with a "bonus image" of sorts of the sunset tonight. It's only day two, but I already think that this week will be on my mind for a while to come.

–Blake

Cologne (Köln) Germany - 2018.

Arizona Workshop – Day 2