Inspired

After watching The Lost Land of the Volcano I was inspired to get out search for some wildlife discovers of my own. Granted I may have only made it as far as the back garden and I doubt I discovered any new species but I think I managed to get some interesting macro shots.

Suffolk Birds

Family on the water

Katherine crewing a Lark

Dad at the front of the Squib, back of the race

Wonders of China

The Great Wall - Simitai

Terracotta Warriors - Xian

Terracotta Warriors, Pit 1 - Xian

Beijing

Hutong door

Entrance to the Forbidden City

Inside the Forbidden City

Hutong roofs

Surprisingly delicious

Hutong

Tienanmen Square

Insadong-gil

Closed shop

Fan handles

World's only Starbucks not written in English

Bargain hunting

Fixed Fans

Painted Fans

Green Korea

Mountain Stream, Jeju-do

Bicycle and gate, Hongdae

Party Island Peak, Deokjeokdo

Hallasan Raven, Jeju-do

Farmer in rice field, Nae-ri

What am I doing?

Nae-ri, South Korea

I really enjoy taking photos. Most people who know me know this. I just haven't really worked out what it is that I love taking pictures of the most. I really enjoyed taking pictures of all the sporting events I could at university. I really enjoy the kind of random travel/street photography I do here and there. I've starting to really get into wildlife photography in South Korea. I've also had good experiences with music and event photography.
Unfortunately a lot of the advice that I've read about going professional suggests specializing over diversifying. Being a jack of all trades but a master of none is not seen to be a good position to be in. I just need to decide which area to specialise into. Now specialising into a position doesn't necessarily mean stopping sport photography in order to focus on in on wildlife when both go on outdoors. I just need to work out where my niche in the market is.
My photo website is divided into three sections: sport, travel and wildlife. Within those three categories I need to find a common theme. There is, as mentioned, the notion of all three going on outdoors. That doesn't fit well for me at the moment. I feel that the 'outdoors' doesn't seem to quite encapsulate what it is that I do.
It doesn't help that I'm not entirely sure about what it is that I do. At the moment it's teaching English that's paying the bills. I just don't ever see myself as identifying myself as an English teacher. Nothing wrong with being an English teacher, its a job I really enjoy and am looking to pursue for a few years yet, but its just a inn on the road I'm traveling, not the final destination. Not as I envision it at the moment anyway. The dream destination is that I'm getting paid to take pictures. My photos adorn magazine covers and are the centre of advertising campaigns. They are on the covers of books, they are dotted around the internet. People have them as their desktop backgrounds. I just don't know what they're of yet. Still, I'll keep sticking my camera in front of my face until I take them.
Courtney has always said that we are at our most useful where our skills and passions intersect. I am passionate about wildlife, sports, photography and general adventure. My talents include photography, motivating others and appearing better at sports than I really am. I know that to succeed in the photography business I'm going to have to focus as much on the business side as the photography side, if not more so. I feel as though I'm taking steps in the right direction. I've hoovering up as much of the useful online advise that I can find. Although wading through the countless get-rich-quick schemes looking for useful advise can get quite tiresome. That said there are plenty of useful sources. There are also several good old fashioned books I want to get that will hopefully point me in the right direction. It doesn't help much that I'm at a bit of a crossroads at the moment leaving Korea and I feel as though I've got about a bajillion other things I need to sort out (transferring my Korean wages home, sorting out a visa extension, planning my trip to China, planning my trip home, booking CELTA courses).
Everybody is always busy and its through being busy that we get things done. So telling myself that the reason I'm not taking steps towards my dream is because I'm busy could mean I never achieve my dream because I'm always busy with something else. Plus I'm never really that busy. I've got enough time to update this thing don't I? I suppose the really difficult thing is to create a balance between all the things I want to be doing. I often find myself thinking that I'm never taking enough pictures, I'm never exercising as much as I want to be or I'm not reading enough. All the while overlooking the fact that I'm still managing to do all those things, albeit not to the extent that I'd like to be. (My perfect day: get up before sunrise (without the whole feeling tired from lack of sleep thing) take some dawn photos, go for a jog, have breakfast, enjoy some delightful company, go for a bicycle ride, take some more pictures of the wonderful places we pass through, have a swim in the sea, read on the beach, go for a stroll though the woods, take some photos in the evening light then retire for the evening). So really there is never, or at least very rarely, the perfect time to do things. We just have to make do with what we've got. Which I need to remember for these next few months as everything is going to be a bit of a mess. I've got two weeks until I go to China, about a month before I fly home to the UK, a month there then I'm flying out to Thailand where, hopefully I'll be doing a four week CELTA course, then I'll be looking for a job in Thailand. All the while I want to be developing my skills as a photographer, an entrepreneur and English teacher. Phew. As I said its while we've busy that we get things done.

So some aims for myself:
> get back into the habit of exercising regularly, I've done it before, I can do it again.
> start a 365 project to make sure I'm taking pictures regularly.
> learn a new thing about business or photography every week, and write it down.
> start entering photo contests

Consumerism/Anti-consumerism

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy. ~Eric Hoffer



At the moment I'm living a fairly spartan lifestyle. Everything I own will fit into a couple of bags, it has to if I want to take it home with me. Yet the things that I do have are generally quite energy intensive: mac laptop, graphics tablet, dSLR, lenses. I tend to swing quite wildly from a fairly anti-consumerist/environmentalist outlook on life, to thinking how wonderful the new ipod touch looks.
A big part of my desire to reduce my consumption is to reduce my impact on the world. This year I've already flown a couple times and will be making at least three more international flights in the near future. Big CO2 emissions right there. That said, my day-to-day life is fairly low impact: I take to bus to and from work, I'm trying, fairly successfully to not use plastic bags and I recycle my plastics, tins and glass.

During my final year at university I took an environmental politics class so I have a fair idea of how bad the state of affairs are at the moment. I'd certainly like to do more to keep up to date with current environmental issues. I listen to a few podcasts here and there but just keeping abreast of the issues isn't enough, especially when done through electricity guzzling gadgets. This revival in trying to do my bit has been sparked by the trailer for the film No Impact Man, a film about a New Yorker who for a year tries to ensure that his family and himself have zero environmental impact. Some may think that do such a thing would require serious curtailments of their comfortable living and I for one am eager to see just how big the adjustments are that they have to make.

This led me to thinking, just how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to help reduce my impact on the planet? I suppose the wise thing to do would be to first workout what my current impact is. I'll let you know how that goes. But just doing a mental checklist of the things that I do have, I don't think I could do without many of them. I love digital photography, and hoopefully through wildlife photography I will be able to use my skills to raise awareness of environmental issues so no getting rid of my camera. Which means I need my laptop. And my external harddrives. I could probably do without the graphics tablet but I don't think that adds much to the equation. I don't have a car or a motorbike, but I do tend to sleep with the air-conditioning on. So that's something right there I could deal with.
The next major impact I have would be the traveling I do. In just over a fortnight I'm flying to China for a week, then I'm flying back home to the UK for about a month, then the plan is to take a one way flight to Thailand. I do have the option of offsetting that through a company that specializes in such things but I don't really trust many of them. Partly because I don't really understand them. How does my money offset my carbon? Another thing to look into. Before leaving university I came up with the idea of traveling the globe without flying. The idea of a world trip is beginning to lose interest for me as my time in Korea has taught me the value of staying in one place to gain a more complete experience. So perhaps I could look into more terrestrial travel for the shorter trips I hope to be making. It might mean more time and money, but it will lead to a better understanding of the distances I'm traveling and the way the landscape changes, experiences that are difficult to have from 30,000 feet.
Just some of my rambling thoughts.

Raptor Pee

After dinner we were walking back towards my apartment building when, circling overhead we saw a small bird of prey. I really need to start learning whats what so I can identify these critters but from here on in it shall be referred to as 'the raptor'.
The raptor settled on a building adjacent to mine, which my building overlooked. As I live on the top floor of the 12 floor building I decided to stick my head out the window and see if I could catch another glimpse of it. Well I was scanning the neighbouring building for any bird forms. Some way off there was a magpie on a rooftop, but my raptor, it appeared, was gone. Dejected, I hung my head and there, perched on the open window 4 floors below was the raptor. Excited about being so close and the unique perspective I rushed to my apartment, hastily attached lens to body and rushed back to the window.
Alas the perch was bare. I gave the surrounding windows another looking at before once again hanging my head. On the roof of the building next to mine, quite far down, there was a woman with two dogs, so I watched them for a little while. Then something moved from within the eighth floor. It was wing. The raptor was in the building.
Figuring that waiting for the elevator would take too long, barefooted I dashed down the stairs. I reached the eighth floor and tentatively poked my head around the corner. Sure enough, inside my apartment was this gorgeous bird of prey. I gingerly eased my camera to eye level and managed to just snap off one frame before the decided that it no longer wanted to be there and slipped out the window.
Hoping to get some shots of it gliding through the evening sky I dashed to the window, It was when I reached the window that I stepped in a puddle. A puddle that was directly under where the raptor had just been perched. I didn't managed to get anymore shots of it, but such a close encounter with an animal such as that was a great experience for me.

Website Update

Finally got round to putting up some more of my earlier nature shots onto my photography website. Hope you like what you see.

RSSSPPPP

This was a brilliant little puppy Courtney and I stumbled across on our walk today. A little timid at first but very excitable.