When The World Is Cold And Lonely

That is today. Definitely the cold part. A temperature of 19 degrees Celsius it is right now. I highly doubt anyone would argue that it is cold. It’s “shove head into oven and turn oven on time”, for sure.

But I am not going to do that. Instead I am going to try to forget exactly how frickin’ cold it gets in a RV at winter. I am going to distract myself by typing to you. Could you at least seem a little more interested? Please!

It is because of this kinda cold that led to my last hospital visit. Seems the cold dries out my sinuses and that leads to pain in my nasal passages and a feeling of congestion in my ears. Basically, I feel like I am coming down with a cold. Whether this is actually the case is irrelevant. It does become true eventually.

This is one of the reasons for the decision we have made to seek another place of residence. If the place you live no longer provides a safe environment to live, then moving becomes priority. We all must have a safe place to live. The IS the top priority on any human’s list of needs.

Sadly, it seems, my little RV home no longer provides a safe haven. Anyone got room for a slightly used writer, photographer, singer, and amusing voice maker?

Ok, I admit I am bit more than slightly used but I have been maintained reasonably well. I come with all kinds of added benefits. I can and often do produce fairly robust and intelligent conversation. I clean up after myself(mostly), I am house trained, and lastly, I can cook if given the right ingredients. Please use the contact page if any of this strikes your fancy.

While I have been enduring the cold, I edited a few recently snapped photos. I shall share them now.

A Polaroid which my wife claims is out of focus and I claim is in focus. The problem with Polaroids if that often, both of those statements are indeed true.

I went for a bit of a painting like image here.

While my wife yet sleeps, the cold remains in the forefront of my thoughts, but I am thankful. I still have my invisible audience to type at. You distract me from the cold and the loneliness, if only, but for a minute. Enjoy your day!

JB(Axe)

The Long and Winding…

That road, they call life, surely is long and winding. Especially the winding part. You feel fine one day and the next you are so sick you have to visit the Hospital Emergency room twice in two days.

This was part of my last week. It is official, I now am in debt for the rest of this lifetime and probably part of the next. But, the Cytokine storm has passed. I live on, for my suffering and my happiness are not ended.

The walk along the path is clear as it ever was. After the hospital visits, there were days of recovery, some days of insanity as my body tried to reset itself over and over again. Yet, when it was done, I gained a few new insights and was blessed with my wife’s presence for this entire week.

We have made a few decisions that should benefit our lives if everything works out and, most importantly, we were able to spend some time in the great outdoors. That is where the above photo came from and to think it almost was never made.

After deciding my neuropathy was becoming overbearing, we headed back to the car and climbed in. While sorting our things out, I happened to look up and notice the above scene. I saw it and at once knew this was a great composition. With the leading lines of the cloudscape and the sidewalk…heck the scene was half framed for me.

I opened the car door and stepped out. While rolling down the window, I pulled out my cell phone. Propping my elbows on the car window frame, I proceeded to snap a photo and much to my surprise, no photo sound came forth. It was very bright out and hard to see the screen. I was determined to get this shot and tried again. Nope! Nothing! I turned around and slipped the IPhone back into the car, away from the bright sunlight. Then I found the problem.

The IPhone had somehow been moved into video mode.

I corrected this issue and then proceeded to take a number of photos from different angles and distances. The above photo is the end result of all that and light Snapseed editing.

Maybe I will make a limited print of it one day. I guess that in another of those windings that will come when life has led me further down that long road.

I hope you found some value in this post. If you did, please like and share! Lastly, be safe and have a great day!

JB(Axe)

My Portfolio

Yes, I have been very busy taking care of many unexpected things. This has been a very bad year for most of us. But, I did manage to get my portfolio site done. Here is the link- https://jbthomasphotography.myportfolio.com/home This is how the site will look mostly. A few small changes will take place as time allows. Please check it out when you have time and thx for reading!😎👍🤘

Two ‘fer

A couple of things to spice up your lives today.
Coming from the poor side of existence, I am often very reluctant to pay for anything. Life has a habit of screwing me over, the minute things get caught up. With that in mind, I had to weigh it against the importance of my business situation and common sense eventually won the day.

I will be spending the next few weeks or months, building a portfolio site for my photos and art. While this website will not be a means to sell anything, it is still needed as a digital business card. To keep striving without any real plan of advancement is just folly. Although I am fully aware of just how good most of my photos are and it is clear many people do agree with that assessment, I need to find an venue that displays my photography(and art) in the best possible light.

The next order of business is also about photography. Up until now, I have haphazardly put together this career choice. I will admit that was not a wise thing to do. Sometimes we get so caught up in things that we forget to do some of the most basic things. In regards to photography, I doubly did this. Not only did I fail to create a portfolio site, I failed to create even a blog. I was under the mindset that the images should speak for themselves. That was a wrong frame of mind.

With the Fine Art America website, it completely lacks any real means of telling a photo or piece of artwork’s tale. It also severely lacks in presentation. Don’t even let me get started in the pricing model of the site, I already wrote about that. Thusly, I shall be creating a blog devoted to the subject of photography in the coming months. This blog will be used in conjunction with YouTube videos, that will teach how I create, what I create. So if you have ever been interested in learning more about photography, it will be the place to be.

Lastly, in regards to the pricing of Fine Art America, I have actually raised the prices on prints. Not because I am an ass. But because I believe that I was underpaid for the photo prints I have sold through there. I realize the pricing there is a bit high for some people. But quality is what you are paying for and the site has one of the highest quality ratings for their prints. The old adage, you get what you pay for, is true for most things. If you really want one of my prints from there, buy the print and go bargain shopping for the frame.

However, I have been looking into considering digital downloads. This can greatly decrease the initial cost of a print. No materials are sold to the customer. They merely buy, download, and print it out themselves.

 

While I would have to go back through my finished photos and make some changes and custom sizes, it is not undoable! It would change the price of a print from $23 for a 8 x 8 to something like $8 for 4 different sized digital print sizes. Of course, these digital items would still only be good for personal use, I.E. home wall art, but that was all that regular prints are good for too. However, before I go digging through 550+ photos for ones to create special digital versions of, I believe asking if anyone would be interested in buying them would be prudent. So, if you are interested, comment with a “Yes” or “I am” or even just liking this post, reposting, retweeting, etc. would be a way of letting me know.

Most photographers I’ve read or spoken with, always say that digital sales is the way to go. I just would like to see some solid proof of that. I was taught don’t believe everything you read, so show me! Geez! I sound like I am from Missouri(the show me state). I can assure you I am not!

Thank you for reading this! If you made it this far, then you made it further than 90% of the people who might read something like this. Congrats! Either you are a true friend, or you find my writing amazing, or you are just bored out of your mind. What ever the case may be…thank you, thank you, thank you! Lastly, if you wish to be notified about the portfolio and photography websites, please do subscribe to my blog. That is the only way I can guarantee that you will get notice. Have an incredible day!😎

 

JB

As for Instagram

I thought since I spoke briefly about 500 px, it would only be fair to include another popular social photo sharing website…Instagram.

I find it remarkable and completely idiotic that people use this site. Any TRUE professional would never use this app or site. Did you know the second you upload a picture to Instagram, they own all rights to it? Yes, they can use your photos and make money off of your photos, without giving you single penny. So why would any serious photographer use this site/app? Seriously! I don’t know about you but my equipment costs far too much to just be giving away my final product, and that is not even considering all the time spent on processing the pictures.

To be honest, I’m slightly miffed at the app/site because I got my account temporarily suspended. Why? I have no clue! They never told me why and they suspended me without investigating. Seems like shady business practices going on there. Yes, I could go back and post more photos, but I most certainly will not. I do not trust any site that suspends people for no reason without investigating and then unsuspends an account with explanation. That is far out of my comfort zone. It should be noted that I did nothing wrong and I have never been suspended from ANY website…EVER!

Instagram also has the same kind of people who do nothing, but follow and unfollow. I think all of these “social” websites need to re-think showing how many followers people have. It seems to force the ignorant into doing stupid things like I mentioned above. If the site is supposed to be social, tell me exactly why the fuck it matters how many people follow each other? That is not social, that is a completely competitive atmosphere!

At any rate, I have spoken enough about this subject to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Time to go rinse! Take care!

Axe