Category : Pilgrim’s Chronicles

WARNING THIS IS AN ADVERTISEMENT!!!!!

O.K. in the last few years I have been doing more and more one day seminars for camera clubs,  photo groups and photography dealers.  To be honest I really enjoy them and I’ve been getting great reviews from my hosts.  So as I said this is an advertisement,  I would love to do more and I can tell you how to set one up if you your club, organization or store would like to particpate.

It’s really a win/win proposition as most of my clients have made a nice profit running these seminars and I’ve really enjoyed doing them with the folks that attended.  We usually do them on a Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.  I can structure the days workshop units based on the skill level of the group or do a program that covers all the bases, I’ve done both. So how does the money work?  It’s easy, I will come in for a one day seminar and sometimes add an evening before or a day after, as part of the package for the club or store.  I charge $4,000. plus travel and lodging.  Let’s say the Acme Camera Club in St Louis, MO brings me in and sells tickets for the day for $75. If they get 100 people they clear more than twenty five hundred dollars, if they get 15o, they make over six thousand.  If they charge a fee for an evening program before or a field session the day after the seminar, that is all profit for them too.

Why am I doing more seminars?  I truly enjoy working with an audience, meeting a lot of great folks and not only helping out a club or dealer, and it’s a pay check for me too!  I do about a dozen, 4 day workshops year and the Summit and a couple of other events, but the seminars are some my favorite.  So, here is the sales pitch!!!  If your club or dealer is interested in doing a seminar, please contact me, all my contact info is in the CONTACT window at the top of the page.  Maybe I’ll see you in your hometown someday soon!

Blessings,

the pilgrim

Well the office, my equipment room and projection room are “de-junkified”,  32 contractor bags full of junk; 35 slide trays, 2 tons of nylon and velcro sewn together into every imaginable kind of container, trust me I kept 300 lbs. of it anyway!  A stack of old magazines, paper work 8 feet tall, and soon most of 35,000 color transparencies ( that’s slides to you newbies)!   O.K., some light exaggeration, but I did throw away all those slide trays and a lot of containers and will dump most of my 41 years of slides after a few days of making sure I pull the few that are worth keeping of posterity, my posterity, no one else will care!  Of course I will not throw away family images or anything that is historic, but most all the landscape and wildlife stuff will still hit the skids.

Why would you throw away what it took four decades to produce??!!  Digital images have become so wonderful it is very hard to use the old 35mm slides and get any thing near equal quality.  if you had a drum scanner and really knew what you were doing you could salvage some usable stuff, but the quality of current cameras, it’s hardly worth the trouble.  The only stuff I will keep will be things I can never shoot again, or any kind  of situations I may never see again, and truthfully they won’t last long.

I have loaded 8 boxes (some big) with everything Nikon I had, and it was a lot of stuff, some highly collectible, some practical, and some probably junk, but it will all go to Vinnie Colucci! Vinnie is the Nikon guy in our region and he has given his heart and soul to Nikon and he deserves this collection! Does this mean I hate Nikon or have turned my back on them?  Not at all.  For most of my life I have held a Nikon of one kind or another in my hands, and they served me well, very well!  Somewhere along the trail I woke up and was an older man, shoulder surgeries and, well, age, and I had to go lighter!  The X-System was a blessing and an answer to my prayers.  So I can still shoot high quality, retro cameras, with fantastic image quality and superb lenses, with less than half the weight!

I can’t tell you how much better I feel with so much of the junk out of my life.  Now it’s up to Photo Pro Expo to have great fellowship with some of my dear friends, and some great Graeter’s ice cream, and hopefully entertain the troops.  I will be at the Fuji booth Saturday and hope to see some of you there!

Time to scream for the sky!

Blessings,

the pilgrim

It’s the weekend and I have a suggestion of a few things to think about (ponder)!  Before we get started let me say something.  I write the pilgrim’s Chronicles in hopes that it helps someone.  First it helps me, I daily, try to write about the things that are on my heart, that God is speaking to me about, or that interest me, and I hope interest you!  I am sure that everything I choose to share is not of interest to everyone who reads my blog, and that’s o.k.  We are not all in the same place, have the exact same interests or are dealing with the same problems, so if it doesn’t apply, it doesn’t apply!  I think this will apply to all of us though!

I’m still absorbing the wonderful book by Chris Orwig,  The Creative Fight, it is a deep read, that requires some thought and introspection, but very valuable to help open your creative eyes and heart. The book can be bought on Amazon and as a Kindle book.  I HIGHLY Recommend it!!

In one chapter Chris deals with the issue of dealing with critiques of your work, (and I might add, your life). He shares some very valuable thoughts on just how to deal with both good and not so good critiques.

He says, “You can’t listen to every comment with equal weight.  As an artist, the goal isn’t to be liked by all.  You have to choose where you’re going to stand and then shine your light.  Complying with every critical word will make your head spin.  As Ann Lamott  put it,”   “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”   With your feet firmly planted, you have to decide what to shine and where to stand.

That is a very important thought and one worth seriously considering.  What are you shining and where are you standing.  My goal is to stand on the solid ground of my Heavenly Father’s Truth.  I attempt to Shine His love and Grace to all who can see it.  Is the light in my lighthouse always clearly visible?  No, sadly some times the fog of my self interest, or ego, or confusion dim the light.  However the light must remain on, firing a beam through the fog, because the fog will lift, and then the light will be clear again, it must remain on even in the dark times.

Chris has exercises at the end of each chapter and at the end of this one he says that we should look to only a few people to get our help.  People we trust completely and we know they will help us out of concern for us, not their own self interest.  He challenges us to make a list of the five people we know we can trust, and whose opinion really matters to us, and that we can turn to for  help.  It took a lot of soul searching to complete my list.  My first person was easy, my wife and love of my life, Sherelene, second, Jim Haverstock, a man whose opinion, thoughts and council I always consider deeply and count on.   Then Jack Graham who I respect and admire deeply both as a photographer, workshop leader, but most as a friend and man I admire.  Then my daughter Catherine who has always been there for me, and who I know will tell me the truth, but gently, and lastly my late father, who was always my father and my friend.  Of course I can take anything to my Heavenly Father and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  I challenge you to make your list of five.  Five people you trust. because you know they have your best interest at heart and are not just your friend because of what you can do for them!  Five people you know really love you and are always pulling for you.

Alright, the next thing!  Sherelene has been needing an office and she wouldn’t set foot in the one we were supposed to share because, let’s put it kindly, you could barely walk through my mess.  It depressed her to even come in my office!  So for several days we have been cleaning out and reorganizing, it is almost finished, and now I know what color the carpet is!!!  Something really interesting has taken place during this cathartic project.  I came to realize just how much junk I’ve acquired and how owning anything, even junk, requires your attention, maintaining  it, storing it, protecting it, changing the batteries, all that stuff can rule your life!!!!  So I’m doing something about it!  So far we have carried 16, 24 Gallon Contractor bags out to the garbage!  I already feel sooooo relieved, and I have two more rooms to do, the Darkroom (which now is a massive storage room) and what used to be a projection room, also a storage area, too much stuff!!!!!

I’m going to simplify my work area, and I will be able to do my work with a clear head!  I have long been a proponent of having your gear simple, your approach simple, your compositions simple, now I am going to make my work area simple, well simpler anway!

Blessings,

the pilgrim