Mike « Mike Pulsifer Photography

20Jan/122

Thomas Reynolds Is A Douche

If you're reading this on thomasreynolds.us, then what you're reading is stolen content. I've already asked him to stop taking my content for use on his blog. More than two weeks have passed and he has yet to honor my request.

Filed under: Featured, Grab Bag 2 Comments

30Dec/100

Brick Shed Re-imagined

This is the product of my revisiting a color photo found in my Martinsburg set (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wvmikep/4694700224/in/set-72157624264209740/) from a different creative point of view.

Tagged as: photography No Comments

27Dec/102

I Am A Photographer…

No, this is not a post about how great I think I am or how great I think anyone should think I am. What this is, however, is about a step I learned some of us need to take to keep our personal growth moving forward.

Back in 2007, I decided to take up photography. It was something I had been interested in for quite some time, yet never had the means, background, training, or guts, frankly, to jump in. I took an introductory class through my local adult & community education program and bought myself my first DSLR. I learned a good deal about light, exposure, depth of field, etc. and managed to be the only one to stick it out in the class for the duration.

At that time, I was using my camera as a rigid tool creating literal representations of the world around me. I was learning about composition, yet you couldn't catch me cropping my photos or daring to let the colors stray from the absolute and literal. Having worked in the technical field for so many years, I was finding it hard to break from the world of ones and zeroes.

Eventually, I would purchase a decent lens (Canon 24-105mm f/4 USM L) and get over my silly aversion to cropping. I was still learning what I could about composition and was getting out and shooting when I could. With a work schedule that prevented me from taking real classes, including those I'd still love to take just down the road at Shepherd University, this has largely been a self-taught affair.

With that said, I did receive some critical feedback from a then-friend & professional photographer from Frederick, MD. We've since parted ways in less than friendly terms, but that won't prevent me from giving credit where it's due. He (for now, let's just call him "Frederick") is very talented and the advice I did receive was sound. However, in one way, he did hold me back. While he got his work displayed in various shows and galleries, he never once suggested I get involved with the local arts organizations in my area. In our last conversation, he claimed I don't think about exposure-related EXIF data because, as he put it, he's a professional photographer and I'm not.

No, I'm not a professional photographer. If I tried to use my photography to put food on my table, I'd quickly starve. However, at that time I had decided to take a risk and join ArtBerkeley and the Berkeley Arts Council. I even dared to go as far as submit a few of my photos for inclusion in a local art exhibit that ran for the month of October at the Berkeley County Offices. By joining these organizations, I've met great people and learned to embrace photography as a literal expression of the world around me, but as an expression of how I see the world around me.

I'd like to think I've grown the most in the last three months. I still aspire to produce images that can be classified by others as fine art. That's my goal and I'll continue to do what I can to learn and grow as needed to get there for as long as it takes. If there's one thing I've learned in the past few weeks, it's that I need to stop selling myself short. As I take the art of photography ever more seriously, if I want others to take my art seriously, I need to learn to take myself seriously (but not too much, of course). No longer should I call myself a "photography buff" or any of the other variations of the self-minimizing label.

Yes, I am an amateur photographer. Being called an amateur photographer is in no way an insult, no matter how "Frederick" spins it. Yet, when it's all said and done, I am a photographer.

I welcome constructive criticism. I'll be featuring select images on this site. Feel free to comment here or where you can see my complete portfolio: SmugMug or flickr.