Category : Pilgrim’s Chronicles

 

If everything goes according to plans, the eBook Store will be open for business next Tuesday, October 14th!  Anyone visiting the bookstore will be able, with a special code, to down load the book, 7 Steps!  It will allow you to get acquainted with my style of eBooks at no cost!!!!

 

7 Steps For Taking It To the Next Level!

 

This book is a 127 page plan to get through the biggest blocks to becoming a far better photographer.  Lots of illustrating images and the most important key point to help you accomplish your task.

 

The first nine books includes the Foundational Series of six books for beginners and intermediates.

 

The Foundational Series includes: Volume 1.  The Camera Controls (72 pages),  Volume 2. The Eye Seeks:  Brightness Sharpness & Warmth  (49 Pages),  Volume 3. Exposure Exposed (81 pages),  Volume 4. Light (116 pages), Volume 5. The Principles of Composition (125 pages), Volume 6. The Four Things You Need in a Great Image  (65 pages).

 

Three additional books are also in the store;  Building a System For Field Use, The FREE 7 Steps book, and Using Digital Technology to Have Fun (all about the fun things you can do with post processing filters and Monochrome conversions, sort of a idea book!)

 

So how do I need your help?  Let me start by sharing my philosophy of photography eBooks with  you.  I once heard a story about a long haul truck driver who was asked by a friend, “I just don’t see how you do it, driving all the way from New York to Los Angeles!!”  The truck driver answered, ” I don’t, I drive from New York to Pittsburgh, then from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, on to Oklahoma City, then to Albuquerque and then on into LA.”  What he was saying is he breaks the trip up into manageable parts!  I believe that we learn the same way.  The problem with many instructional photo books is that they try to take what someone has learned over 20 years and fit it into 200 pages!  To do that you have to go fast and complicate things.  I prefer to take one simple concept at a time and make sure the person, trying to learn, truly gets it!  I have Scott Kelby to thank for cementing this theory into my method of teaching.  He built a wildly successful business out of a simple concept, “Help them get it!”  If you do that, as they say in Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come….”  Well he built it, and they surely keep coming!  It’s called value!  That’s why I’m part of KelbyOne! People want to learn, and if you make it easy to learn, you will develop a following.  I just want to help people learn the thing I understand best, photography!

 

 

 

 

The first six books are deceptively simple, very deceptively!  I really don’t care if anyone thinks they are a little “light weight”, as long as they walk away understanding things a lot better!  Future books will get more “involved”!  In photography 90% of what you really need to know is in the first six books, the remaining 10% will be spread over a bunch of books, and that is where you come in!

 

I need your suggestions!  After you read the first free book and any other book you buy and read, shoot me an email and give me your thoughts!  Here is what is coming next!

 

The Fuji X-System – A User’s Guide!   * not an every setting book, but how to use the system to make great images!

 

Designing a Photograph – Advanced Composition

 

 Americana Photography – The How To Guide

 

The Story Behind – Americas From 500 Feet I & II  (the best of both books!)

 

My Favorite Images – How They Were Shot

 

Existing Light Photography  –  Shooting in the Almost Dark!

 

So the next step is up to you, jump in and let me know what you think, and by-the-way the majority of my books are only $4.99.  How do you like them apples!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

Once again, how on earth do I think I know enough to write these books????!!!!  In the last 45 years I’ve taught side by side with, and studied under some of the greatest photographers of our age, and I learned things from every one of them:

 

John Shaw   –   Scott Kelby   –   Art Wolfe   –   Jack Graham   –   David & Mark Muench  

Jim Brandenburg   –   Jay Maisel   –   Joe McNally   –   Bill Pekala   –   The Late Galen Rowell

Bob Krist   –   Bryan Peterson   –   L.L. Rue   –   George Lepp   –   Fred Sisson   –  Mark Kettenhofen

R.C. Concepcion   –   Matt Kloskowski   –  Moose Peterson   –   Jim Begley   –   Vinny Colucci

Jim Haverstock   –   Tom Bol   –   and on and on, and on!

 

 

 

I had the honor of attending a church service yesterday with my son Wesley and his family.  The Grey First Baptist Church has been allowing Wesley’s youth football team to practice on their activity field and it has led to an interesting story.  As it turns out the field has a small hill and at the top is a white cross.  Anytime someone makes a mistake in practice they are told to, “run to the cross”!  Throughout most practice sessions their is steady stream of players running up the hill to the cross and then back down.  At the end of each practice Wes has the entire team run up the hill to the cross, including the coaches, where they kneel, and recite the Lord’s prayer.

 

I was really proud of Wes for influencing his young players in this way.  The pastor at church preached on Run to the Cross, sharing that story.

 

That sermon actually sums up what we must all do if we hope to survive this life, run to the cross!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim

 

What wonderful time I had yesterday catching up with many of my teammates from the 1962-63 & 64 Harlan High School football teams!  It was amazing how many things we all remembered and had a great laughs over.  More than a few times we were teary eyed when our former coach Bill Cricillis gave us one more pep talk about life.  It is amazing that so much time could pass, 50 years! and there would be the closeness of having been a team, still being a team.

 

It made me reflect driving home last night how unbelievably blessed I was to have had, and still have,  such friends, to have been part of such a team.  In our Junior and Senior years we had great seasons, winning the conference once and missed going to the play offs by a single game.  We had a few stand out players, but we were mostly a bunch of good solid football players that all played a role in the victories.  It was really a great experience to see all these men again, five decades later.  It was homecoming for the Harlan Green Dragons last night and we were thrilled to be the honorary captains for the coin toss.  Walking out to the center of the field I told Tom Pope, it was great to be on the field with him again, his look said it all.  In just a glance I could see what I believe we were all feeling, in spite of the fact that these men have accomplished a lot in their own lives, this was a great honor, and we all relished it.  It was a truly special moment.

 

I also thought driving the hour and half home, how many great teams I’ve gotten to be a member of, my family, my church, the His Light team, the faithful friends, the Nikon NPS team, the list goes on and on, but the bottom line is God has richly blessed me to let me rub elbows with such great people, people I’ve admired and learned from.  If you can get to this age and look at your life, and see this much joy, you’ve had a great life.  Thank you Lord for the ride……..

 

Blessings

 

the pilgrim

 

 

 

Glory Days, I was thinking about all those great days at Harlan High School listening to Bruce Springsteen, sing it again!

 

“Glory Days, they’ll pass you by!”

 

Boy do they ever!  But youth is best lived by the young, and there is something comforting about all the wisdom life hands you, or makes you earn!  Knowledge is a good thing, but wisdom is to be coveted!  It will be a lot of fun to see all my old friends today, and re-tell the stories that have grown out of proportion at our Liars Club gathering!  I sure hope no one has the film, I’d rather remember it the way it now is settled, in my mind, as the way things “really” were.

 

I was so very fortunate to grow up in Harlan,  Kentucky.  Thanks to lots of films and tall tales  (some fiction, some not), a place feared by many, but home for me!  It was a different time, with a lot less cares, but some of my best memories are from my home town.  We lived on Ivy Hill, a big hill, to flat-landers, it would be a mountain.  Our house was along the ridge and I could see the whole town of Harlan from my bedroom window.  I have the strangest memories of life as a teenager in Harlan.  Two very distinct memories are of lying in bed at night and hearing the train whistles as the coal trains came and went through the night.

 

The other memory will come full circle tonight.  Our high school gym, where we dressed for football games, was a few blocks from the football field.  When it was time to go to the field for our games, we assembled, had a few last words from our coach, then walked together to the field. Everyone had their helmets on, few words were spoken, and I can still close my eyes and hear those metal tipped cleats clacking on the pavement as we walked to the game.  The intentness of those moments preparing to play is still burning in my soul.  I learned a lot about focus and commitment on those short walks to the field!  Though I wouldn’t last but a couple of plays, I sure would love to make that walk to the field with my friends one more time!  But tonight, it’s time for another generation to build those memories!

 

Tonight, the class of 1964 will have to be satisfied with reliving the memories…

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim