Long time looker, first time poster?

I have long been a fan of street style photography and photojournalism. The candidness, the spontaneous nature, the realness of it all. It’s one of my favorite art forms, and while I suppose it’s not for everyone, that’s kind of the beauty of it right?

I recently saw a youtube series called “walkie talkies” by a YouTuber named Paulie B. (Link to Channel)

The episode in question was featuring a photographer named C.P. Plunkett. I clicked on it hoping to find something as backgorund noise, and instead found a really entertaining, pretty educational street photo session. At one point he talked about publishing Zines, also mentioning a few of his favorites. I haven’t been able to find them as of yet, but it sent me on an exploration of street photo zines that has been amazing.

Among those he mentions:

  • “People are Strange” by Troy Holden

  • “Too Much Freedom” by Angelo Partemi

  • and works by Alex Webb

On his website, https://straightupstreet.blog/ he has began posting his own Zine series called “Overtime”. I would highly recommend looking at his most recent work, Vol. 2 of the series, called “B**ch, It’s St. Patrick’s Day”

Head on over there and have a look. Amazing stuff.

Side note. I assembled some of my favorite photos I’ve taken in years past in a gallery here called “In the Wild”. Looking at all of these is somewhat inspiring, and I hope to do more of this kind of thing myself soon.

Everyone's a critic.

It’s important to understand that hobbies are recreational. It should be something one does for fun. Hobbies can turn into businesses or jobs, sure, but that isn’t the goal. The definition of a hobby is, “An activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure.” If the person doing the hobby enjoys it, then tada, it’s a success. Simple right?

I’ve had a website for many years. Close to 20. I don’t particularly care who looks at it. I just like the exercise of trying new designs, posting things I like, and having a convenient place to store things like my resume, the occasional file, whatever it may be. I sometimes write here, keep track of milestones, and even use it as a space to process thoughts and ideas.

Again, the thought of whether anyone knows about, views, or otherwise cares about it, has never been a concern. I like it, so I do it. By definition - Success!

In keeping with the recent theme, here are some pictures from the last week or so.

AI - Learning to live with it.

AI is perhaps the first time in my life where I am being forced to really change my thinking patterns. I have been in IT for 22 years, and for better or worse, I have reflexive thought patterns towards problem solving. My brain tends to fire in a certain, almost instinctive way when presented with a challenge. In the last two years I have been trying to force myself to adopt the new kids on the block, those being gen AI tools. I have been experimenting with ChatGPT and Copilot for about a year now, and I still find myself thinking about it second, or third. My goal for this year is to force myself to go AI first when approaching things, in an effort find the value.

I have also been having some fun with Sora, which is OpenAI’s image generator tool. And, it’s really quite good. It will also make video, which is wild. So, here’s some of those.