Photo Journal #13

Yesterday, I used an AI image editor to create alternate versions of my photos. The results were both amazing and terrifying. Some images, especially those with faces, ended up looking like horror film stills. I had the most success with obscure, blurry images that didn't prominently feature faces. Nonetheless, waiting for the new images to develop was enjoyable; it reminded me of waiting for film to be developed.

What really impressed me was that Dall-e, the software that generated the images from my photos, provided four variants of each image. Seeing them together made them feel even more powerful. This highlights the potential of repeating the same image with multiple subjects and having a well-defined process.

The color accuracy was also impressive, and I will definitely take away color palettes from Dall-e's interpretation of my colors.

While this was a fun experiment, I don't see myself using AI in my commercial photography anytime soon. However, I do believe that AI will soon become a mainstay in commercial advertising and the art world.

In each slide the first images are interpretation of my photos made by Dall-e.
In the second slide is a screen shot of my reference images.

Photo Journal #12

It’s been a 4 months since I’ve last posted on here which feels strange because I used to post on here nearly everyday.
I like the idea of keeping this going though because it serves as a time capsule for my work.
If you take the time and dig back far enough you’ll see a younger more eager photographer’s work and part of me misses that struggle.
There were days when I would work back to back manual labor jobs and just have an hour of sunlight left to take my photos for the day and I’d never miss photographing that last hour of daylight.
As you grow in this career you start to see your other contemporaries making unspoken rules for your work to take place.
For example magazines, agencies, and other creatives often won’t work with you if you don’t have a full team of people to accomplish your vision.
I understand this but I also love the idea of focusing on the individuals story and who they are as a person when I am taking their photo.
As corny as it sounds photography is a dance and when you have 20-30 people on a shoot that dance has a lot of moving parts in order for it to work properly.
So for me I like to take each shoot as it is somethings need 50 people some things need 2 you can’t put a one size fits all blanket over your process.

All the best,
Atticus

Photo Journal #7

It’s always hurt my confidence.
Comments made with negativity directed at me.
I’ve always pined over them to see what I could fix and each time it chiseled off a piece of who I was.
Actions are either made out of Love or out of Fear; in those times, I would respond with fear.
Afraid to lose the approval of others so I would regress back into to a shell too tight for my being.
Finally, in my awareness, I no longer lust for the approval of those individuals projecting their insecurities on others.
When you respond with love you feel loved.
When you respond with fear you get fear.
I know which side of the coin I want to land on.

Photo Journal #4

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt true hate but I know I’ve felt true love.
It doesn’t leave much room for other feelings.
I first understood these conflicting feelings when I was a young boy.
I’d spend hours thinking about my father’s killer and how I’d wish that moment didn’t happen.
Very quickly I realized I would drive myself insane wishing for my dad to come back to life because things don’t work that way and thankfully these mental bouts opened me up to a lot of love (Followed by my mom’s amazing breakfast feasts every weekend.)
As I’m nearing 30 I look back on my life and I can see how cyclical things are.
For the first time in a while, I’m experiencing hate again in some form or another, maybe it’s jealousy or maybe I’m annoying who knows but the bottom line is I have some people in my life that don’t like me and they have made it a point to make that evident.
What hurts the most is that I care for these people and I think we can all relate to that feeling but the bottom line is people like this are toxic.

The best way I can put it is shown in a study done by Yale.
They asked a graduating class in a survey if they would rather take a job after graduation where everyone in their graduating class makes $400,000 per year or they make take a job paying $300,000 and the rest of their graduating class makes $100,000.

Over 90% of the students chose the latter which blew my mind because even if I don’t like you I still hope that you achieve all that you want to in life even if that means you’re doing better than me.
Even now it is still astounding to me how jealous people can be and thankfully I attribute the overwhelming love my mother gave me to my sense of security.
As disheartened as I am to have to deal with 2 people that are really pestering me I am really grateful that I don’t feel the need to hurt people because of my insecurities.

The reason I’m writing about this here is to remind myself to kill people with kindness which is something I wouldn’t have done as a child.
I was once extremely reactive and I’m sure I can still be at times but I’m trying to remind myself that life is a marathon.
By killing these people with kindness now I see no improvement, for lack of better words I’m still getting shit on but in the future, I hope the kindness will float to the top.

One takes "Tulum"

Since I became a photographer back in 2013 I’ve always felt that I have to constantly make photographs.
I’ve always loved that feeling because it drives me to make some of my best work but for this trip I really wanted to put myself first and my photography second.
It’s been years since I’ve had a real vacation because I’m usually photographing endlessly while I’m traveling.
With the idea of actually having no plans and no goals other than to enjoy myself my friends and I went to Tulum for a very hectic week in the sun lol.
The photos I took in Tulum were almost all only “one takes” meaning I only took one frame of a particular subject and if I nailed it great and if it came out like shit then oh well.
There was something freeing about switching up how I shoot and also having no pressure to deliver these images to a client.
This trip was just for me to enjoy being in the moment and not just watching the moments happen.
Hopefully in the near future I can find sometime to write down some of those memories for you guys here.

All the best,
Atticus

Sculpting

As each year goes by I’ve realized just how much life is about doing the things you don’t want to do.
Taxes, bills, emails, paperwork, work, and so many other things to name a few take up so much of our time.
My work happens to be photography and Burnout is definitely something I’ve dealt with from time to time but the way I’ve always gotten around it is simple, I just shoot through it.
Instead of finding more jobs to shoot though I take time to photograph things that I am interested in which helps me reframe my vision and keep up with my editing style.

The photos you see below are of a sculpture my friend (Ian Swordly) is hand carving out of marble.
Having worked with marble countertops in my college years I understood how impressive this was but when you see the sheer size of the stone it’s pretty jaw-dropping.
Thousands of hours get put into one of these sculptures and it’s all done one chip at a time.
Not to mention you need a forklift to move this 1200 pound piece of marble.

The interesting bit here for me is the overlap between all hobbies.
You hear people say '“mastery comes from practicing one skill for 10,000 hours” which may be true but if you put in 1000 hours you’re going to be pretty damn good.
As I say so frequently on this blog consistency is the key to everything.

So if you want to get better at something be consistent and if you’re worried about burn out make time to have fun with the skill you’re learning.
With photography being my job that also means making time for personal work.

The last point I want to touch on is something I heard a few months back and it was called the “2-minute rule”.
This is a rule people use when they’re trying to form a habit but the key is to start extremely small, 2 minutes to be exact.
The person who spoke about the rule had a client that lost over 100lbs in a year by showing up to the gym for 5 minutes every day.
For the first month, this person could not exceed more than 5 minutes in the gym.
The goal here was to be a healthy and fit person and by starting with 5 minutes at the gym he tackled the biggest hurdle of his goal which was “going to the gym every day”.

Now for this guy stopping at the gym every day after work is engrained in his routine.
If you’re looking to improve on an area of your life this year or to learn a new skill try starting with the easiest task first, showing up!

All the best,
Atticus







Snow day.

This has been a tough week for our baby girl Rowie.
Currently, in Williamsburg, there is an outbreak of Leptospirosis which is a disease spread from rats.
Luckily Rowie is safe and healthy but due to the poor maintenance of the dog parks in our area, Brooklyn is quickly becoming a ghost town for places to bring your dog.
So far 4 dogs have already died from this disease in Williamsburg and they expect the numbers to rise.

The biggest challenge we’re having is where do we take our dog to exercise and train that is mentally stimulating for her?

Most of the parks are nasty and the nice ones don’t allow dogs off-leash which I totally understand that.

With all of that being said it’s important to enjoy the good times cause the tough times are sucky but they make us who we are.

Placing restrictions on your creative processes is one of the biggest tools I’ve used in my career.
When I was in art school I thought these restrictions were bullshit and I tried to find every way I could to get around them.
At the time I didn’t understand that the restrictions were meant to push our minds to think creatively.

Although the dog parks are closed Meg and I have been forced to get creative with how we expend our dogs physical and mental energy.
This can only help us in the future when the weather is bad, or the parks are closed and so on.

Don’t be discouraged by the bumps in the road or even worse an entire route being closed, find your own way around them.

Birthday weekend.

The photos featured below are from my birthday weekend back in december.
This year I don’t have any big goals instead I chose to swap them out for small daily rituals and here’s why.

Back in 2017, I started journaling daily.
Sadly in 2021, I let go of my daily writing.
This practice was once something I did every morning from 2017-2019 and most mornings through 2020.

With this practice, my goal is mainly self-awareness.
I want to learn more about who I am as a person the good and the bad and part of this journaling is my attempt at studying what I’ve done that has worked out well for me in the past.

A key thing that has worked well for me is something I call the “grain of sand theory”.

The idea is to imagine your life 5 years from now.
Where do you see yourself?

If you haven’t thought about this you probably should because for most of us 5 years is going to come a lot sooner than you think.
Take the time to write down where you see yourself in 5 years and try to be as clear as you can.

The way I think of this theory is in 2 key components.
Simplicity and consistency.

Now let your goals 5 years from now represent a beach made of sand and it’s your responsibility to find that sand to make that beach.

The task seems daunting and in most cases, it will be but your goal here is to find an activity that will allow you to collect sand daily or in our case repeat a process daily to get incrementally closer to your goals.

Adversely if you try to shovel all the sand you can in one day you will be sore tired and have to take days off.
This is what I call the intensity model which is a problem because days off compound just as much as days on do.

The goal to making your beach is consistency and with simple math, you can see why this is so important.
Imagine you shoveled sand for 20 minutes a day for a year.
Everyone has a free 20 minutes a day especially when it comes to pursuing your most important goal.
In one year you would have worked on your goal for 7,300 minutes.

Now imagine you work on your goal for one hour a week.
That’s 3,120 minutes a year that’s 4,180 minutes less than if you worked on something for 20 minutes a day.

This is why journaling for me has to be done everyday not the once a week thing I was doing in 2020 and the same goes for the rest of my goals.

If you want something focus on small efforts daily and build the intensity over time.