PICK OF THE WEEK

Growing old and getting soft, I don't know. Well, OK, the old part is a given but, getting soft-could that really be happening-to me?

It all started about a year ago. This gal named Marla asked me to shoot a picture of a girl sitting under a tree to go with some prose she had published.

Not sure exactly what prose was and too lazy to look it up in a dictionary, I figured it's something like poetry and really none of my business. I'd just grab my camera and start lookin' for a gal and a tree on the beach somewhere, shoot the damn thing, send it in to be published and be done with it; poems, poetry and prose are just not in my bag of tricks. Other people read that kinda crap, not me.

Well, after a couple of weeks running around, looking for the right lighting conditions, trees on beaches and trying to get a girl to sit under a tree to match the sketch Marla sent me and after awhile feeling the pressure of my first real deadline for a magazine, I finally gotterdun and sent the picture on its way. Never bothered to read the prose alongside the sketch because honestly, I'm just not into that sort of thing. Poetry, prose, whatever you want to call it; that's girly stuff.

Along came April 2009 and I got an email saying my photo was published in Apogee Photo Magazine under the title Sit and Talk with a Tree .

For the first time, I sat down and read the prose. It was alright, made ya think about life. Poetry being what it is, I had my fill and figured I wouldn't go outa my way lookin' for any more. There's probably enough poetry-minded folks reading the stuff, they don't need me in their crowd.

The year 2010 rolls around and I'm happy just stumbling and bumbling along with my cameras and my dogs. Life is good, even with no poetry, I'm happy.
Then, along came StumbleUpon and I started meeting all kindsa Stumblers.

Someone sent me a share one day and I liked the picture, took a look and whacked it with my ThumbsUp gadget and moved on. I look at lots of photos and pictures, every day, it's my job.

Every few days I'd get a share to look at this gal's pictures. One day, I decided to read the caption. It was a poem. You know, that girly stuff. Well, maybe I needed a break. Grabbed an iced coffee, lean back and read the thing. What the heck.

WOW! It was powerful. So,I took the time to comment, linked the site to my Google Blog and now I read this gal, Neva's poetry every day.

Tell me even though I'm getting old, I'm not going soft. Tell me it's witchcraft at work. Tell me anything you want. Go have a look for yourself and tell me my PICK OF THE WEEK I Will Leave You Alone doesn't just knock yer socks off.

FOR YOU FOLKS BACK IN THE USA, HAVE A HAPPY AND SAFE 4th OF JULY WEEKEND!

THE BACK PAGE: A Shisa (Liondog) Photo

Here's that Shisa again in a different style. I composed this shot vertically just because I know some magazines prefer them that way and by golly that's the way this one got published along with another half dozen, or so, horizontal shots that are getting some exposure on the World Wide Web, right now. This guy already hit my Front Page, once, when he first got published but, I figure he ought to get some Back Page coverage, too.

For awhile, I was posting a Photo of the Day here, on this blog and another Photo of the Day on my homepage. Well, I got busy and kinda forgot about this blog for over a week.

Followers started complaining I wasn't posting, the analytics people sent me my weekly analytics update and told me "Nobody's reading your blog because you haven't put anything new on there".

Well, no kidding; I've been busy writing for other people, some that even pay me to write. Next week, I'll be hitting my two-dozenth publication (Is that a word, two dozenth?). My Spellchek is turned off and if it was on, I'd ignore it anyway. People who read my rantings know I'm not really a dummy but they ezpect something different when they come here to read. So, that's what I try and give them. Everywhere else I write I have to be more formal because I'm writing for someone else. Here, this blog is my playground and I can do whatever I want. so, that's what I do.

Right now, I'm experimenting with POCKET CULTURES LOGO I borrowed off their website.  I hope they don't fire me.  They are some really nice people who were nice enough to make me a Regional Contributor for Japan.  Pocket Cultures is like a worldwide outfit made up of people living all around the globe.  They're not your typical traveler, somebody who just visits a country for a vacation and writes about it like they suddenly became an expert.  These are people who live in the country they're writing about.  Probably, none of them live in a five star hotel but, if they do, it's probably because they work there not because they're on vacation. My kinda people.

If you get a chance, check it out and tell me what you think.  I know, I have a blast reading what everybody else writes and learning about places I've never even heard of, when I visit there.
Visit my FIRST POST and leave a comment and I'll see what else I can cook-up for you. Meanwhile, be patient with me and my BACK PAGE, I'm a busy man!
To be continued...

An Experiment With Flickr

Here's a shot of Masateru Yamamoto (Center) surrounded by Tatsuya Taujino, Hideyuki Kurasawa, Norimasa Tanaka and Yoshimitsu Shinkawa a fine group of folks I met in the village of Ada Kunigami Okinawa, Japan when I was getting ready to climb the mountain just before the Shinugu Matsuri. They were visitors to Okinawa from somewhere up in the mainland and I got the big fellow to sign a release form in exchange for a promise to email him a copy of the photo.

My wife made me these neat Model Release Forms (In Japanese Kanji). They say something like "Put your name, address, email, phone number HERE and the guy with the camera will give you a FREE PHOTO. In exchange for that you give him permission to enter your photo in contests, have it published in magazines, sold in his gallery, or anything else that ain't against the law, like printed on Madonna's underwear she keeps forgettin' to wear.

Anyhow, after emailing the big guy the photo and finding out he wanted a larger size, I asked him if he'd like to have it published in a magazine. The only catch being, everybody in the photo would have to give me their names and consent to be published. Some magazines are picky about things like that, so, I have to make sure I do the stuff legal-like; magazines don't want to get sued and neither do I, over a picture I took.

Well, a few days later Masateru emailed me with everybody's names and not only permission to have the photo published, they asked to be published and wanted me to tell them where and when they'd be published. So, I stuck the photo on flickr and emailed them a LINK to show them their photo with names in the caption and everything. Then, I went about trying to REALLY GET THEM PUBLISHED. I could tell they had been looking and showing their girlfriends, or somebody, because as of yesterday the photo IMGP4586 had EIGHT VIEWS !!!

Last night the photo was REALLY PUBLISHED and I StumbledUpon, Tweeted, Delicious Bookmarked and FaceBooked it. Then, went back and added
my magic to the photo on Flickr.

Them Dudes got A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR HITS, OVERNIGHT !

That's the magic of using Model Releases, your social networks and Flickr, properly and legally. They get their names and faces in print and all kinda folks hittin' on them and I can't get sued.

Gotta run now, though. I think Madonna's lookin' for me!

Twice Within a Week

It's been awhile since I've updated here. I've been too busy researching and typing on other people's blogs and neglecting my own.

It started paying-off, though. Twice in the past week my photos and attempts at writing have hit online travel magazines. This photo of a Mud Festival, along with another of dragonboat races got published at http://www.apogeephoto.com/

Another version of my Bullfighting in Okinawa was published 3 days earlier in a travel and culture online magazine http://www.nihonsun.com/2009/07/03/bullfighting-in-okinawa/

One thing I've learned, recently is that this internet thing, I'm always complaining about is a pretty handy tool when it comes to making contacts. You can meet all kinds of professional writers and photographers, help each other out, get published and avoid getting caught in scams (Which there are plenty of, out there).

To all my friends, photographers and writers: Thank You and have a good week !