Thought I’d hop on a plane back to Indiana with only a couple film cameras with me. Here’s what came of two black and white rolls. 

It’s late and I can’t sleep. Doing this little writeup more so for myself than anyone else. The photo above was taken in May of 2017. I picked up a big Mamiya 645 camera in La and I wanted to bring it home to Indiana to show my family. We were over at my Uncle Bill’s house and I clicked off this shot of the chair just so he could hear how the shutter sounded. This photo didn’t mean anything to me for a bit, but about 3 months later my Uncle passed away. I never got the chance to see him again after we took this photo. This photo is now one of my most cherished photos I’ve ever taken. Every time I look at it I get brought right back to this summer May evening. 

LA is hard and I miss my family a lot tonight. 

- matt 

Haven’t written a blog all year, so here we go. 

With the internet comes many great ways to learn new things. You can get on youtube and most likely find a video on anything you could think of. 

Now more and more I’m realizing this problem with this is that you must really vet the people you learn from. Now I’m not saying you need to run a background check on the guy who did a youtube video on how to change your tail light, that’s extreme. I’m talking about if you’re using the internet in an attempt to further your career at something you must be careful. 

In my case I shoot photos. There are so many online photo magazines / blogs etc to learn from. I used to read a ton of articles on these sites etc. Now that I’m older and looking a bit more into it I realize how most of it is written by people who don’t even necessarily do photography full time. 

For instance people that write reviews on lenses / cameras. Sure maybe the lens that I have isn’t as a sharp as this other lens (according to some guy who shoots grasshoppers in his backyard) but it might work just fine for me. 

There are so many real world working factors that people tend to skip over when writing an article about this or that while sitting behind their computer. 

This isn’t meant to bash blogging (ironic since i’m currently blogging) or writing reviews. I think it’s just a reminder how important it is to look into who is writing this stuff. Click their website and see what their work looks like. 

I’ve read full articles on fashion photographer / working with models etc just to click the link on the authors page and see they are based in Montana and only have one model photo on their website. 

Does anyone else ever share these thoughts of the articles they are writing? Perhaps just me. 

Let me know 

- average photog - below average writer 

- Matt