I'm Back

I haven’t been posting on here in a while and I have to say that I do not have a good excuse. The main thing is because I have been in a funk and have not wanted to be talking about how much I hate it here and how I want to be somewhere else.
I have had to come to terms with some things that have happened over here that changes my world a lot. I have said before that all I want to be is a photographer and they aren’t really letting me doing that. I have to make busy work for myself but that is ok because I am starting to just stay out of the office so I can find stuff to do.
I did get a chance to shoot an artillery exercise here last week. Here are a few images form that

Now the next images are from my second camera that i set up on a tripod and had it firing 7 images every 2 seconds. I made one screw-up that makes these image virtual usless but good shots none the less.

OK here is the Shot of the Day - still with the same set up. I am the guy on the lower left hand side of the frame

Light painting

Well I have taken a few days off from my blog and it was nice to not try to have to think about what to say even if the day was bad or I did nothing. I have had a few slow days here and I have been trying to say busy. My Lt. is back so I no longer have to worry about PAO stuff and now I have cut what little I have had to keep me busy in about half. I don’t know what I am going to do if they don’t send me out on patrols.
Last night I had a great opportunity to go out and take some long exposure/light painting photos. We had a couple of blackhawks that were here and I had access to them and used it. I haven’t really ever done this type of photography before, so I ran into some issues. I know that I will use these images as a steppingstone to what I see in my head. I have a lot of ideas that I want to try while I am here but I don’t know how to create a lot of what I want and last night I took a few large steps towards what I need to know. Here a few of the images.

This is one of the first shots of the night.

This was an experiment with a differant flashlight and technique and it looked a lot better black and white then in color

And these two images are where some things started to fall in place and i could start to get what i was looking for. Most of these images had a exposure time of 3 to 4 minutes and even though you cant see me i am walking around in the image. I hope you enjoy.

The End.

Well it is the last day of the month long journey and I have to say that you have to be crazy to do something like this. I just makes you think way too much. So if you want to rethink your life then I tell you to do think but it did help me. I think that today I will be just put some images that from the mission this week. I hope you enjoy.

This is my favorite photo from the mission. It is this single tree that is there and no other trees around. It has a feel of a meeting place or a tree of life.

I was thinking yesterday about the one of the most remembered covers in National Geographic history would have to be the Afghan woman June issue of 1985.

It is something that I think that a lot of photographers strive to reach for. To have a image that is as compelling as those eyes were in that image. I have been searching for that spark over here and I haven’t been able to capture it. I have a rare opportunity over here to be able to create portraits of people that millions of photographers will never have access to and I have to take advantage of that.
There is one issue whit photographing people here, you can’t really shoot the women, the kids don’t want their picture to be taken, well not at first and when they do you have crowd of kids and it is hard to get what I am searching for.
I have been stuck inside the wire for quite a bit of time and it has limited what I can do. I hope that I will be out more often next month. I will definitely be looking at seeing if I can capture what I have been seeking. I can’t wait for it to green up around here.

The truth about blogging

Well I have 3 days to left in my once a day for a month and I can tell you that it has been one of the hardest things that I have done in a while. It is something that forces me to think about the day and what I feel about what happens. I have had to come to terms with things that have been in my life. I have had to think about things that will be major changes in my life. I have had to start to like me and that has been the hardest thing.
Another thing that I had to do was try to figure out what type of photographer I am. Outside of the photography community it looks as a photographer is a photographer, well it isn’t so true. Good photographers have a nack or a niche that they work in. Whether it is wedding, fashion, kids, commercial, or photojournalism each has people that shoot only (well for pay) that area. I have never figured out what I want to shoot or rather love to shoot. I love to shoot and it doesn’t matter what. I have always said “I will not be a wedding photographer” it is not what I want to do…. Deal with the mother of the bride. That is just not for me, doesn’t mean that I won’t shoot a wedding; I just don’t want to do it as a living.
After much thought I have realized that what I love is the same thing that takes me away from home. I love war. As weird as that may sound it is true, there is so many things that it stands for that aren’t apparent at first look. I am a strong believer of global population control, and I don’t like to see the loss but I understand it. It makes it easier in this environment to do have that. The one thing that comes with the loss of life is a bond by those that are alive and being able to capture that and telling that story draws me here.
I don’t think that I will ever become a James Nachtaway but I do what to have that one image at an event that makes the front over of all the magazines and changes lives. That is my goal as weird as that is.
I have a good post on hand for tomorrow’s blog; I am bringing it back to here.

The Truth

I Have just days left with a post a day for the month and i am relizing that you do eventuly run out of things to say. I have been down and i don't know how to describ what i am going though. I am going rough period but i know that is temperary. I will be better and i will get back to myself. I am strong.

Day 23

I posted....Not that anyone is reading

Dreamweaver....

You know they say that you can never know too much… Well I think that you can, well you can know things but once you tell people that you know things that is when you have issues. I have learned that in the worst way sometimes. You are talking to someone and you mention some phrase or word and next thing you know you are saying yes to a project that you didn’t have time to help with let alone lead.
I do try to everything myself to save money and I enjoy working on things. I often times over task myself just because I don’t want to have someone else do something that I can do or learn to do. Like now, let’s see if I can learn Adobe Dreamweaver. It is only a highly complicated website design software. Why do I do this to myself? I haven’t had a good night sleep in weeks and yet I want to sit in the office and watch YouTube videos on the program. (Shaking head slowly left/right/left)
I want to be able to do everything myself (with Nicki) but I am now understand why people have “people for that”. I am not going to give up the idea of learning it but I am not going to do it tonight. I am going to go home and drug myself to sleep.
Good Night Sweet World-

Crowd Funded fun

I sat down having no clue on what I was going to write. I haven’t really had anything major happen lately and I have talked about most of the things that have been on my mind. I just didn’t know what I was going write about. So I looked for some inspiration, I got on the internet and was listening to a podcast on photography and it lead me to this site.
The site is set up so you can put a project on there and you can have it crowd funded. I know that it seem kind of like a weird way of doing it but I see the real genius in it. It is kind of like buying stock in someone’s idea. If I have a great idea why can’t I use someone who has the money to fund it to get my project off the ground or pay for it fully?
I started thinking about what I would want to do for a project. I have always known that I want to give back with my photography but I just haven’t had a real clear way for that. I have had one idea that I came up with after watching an episode of “Extreme home makeover”. I want to go into a children’s hospital with about 2 or 3 other photographers, hair and makeup teams, retouchers, and a slew of equipment.
The premise of this project is that unfortunately there are some of the children that are in there that will never get the chance to leave. I want to be able to give those families something to keep forever; I want to give them a professional family portrait. But I don’t want to give them just a family portrait but give them the “Glamour Shot” treatment and give them the experience of being a star for a little while.
I know that I have had this idea for a while but I am not the first. There is a worldwide movement called Help-Portrait. It is a little bit different but it is giving back with photography. My goal now it to see if I can merge my idea into theirs and use their marketing capability to springboard this into motion. If they will have none of it then I might see if I can crowd fund my project.
We will see how well this goes in the next few weeks as I send out some emails. Wish me luck!

Potential

Potential- Webster’s defines it as: capable of development into actuality. I don’t usually think of that word when it comes to me. I don’t think that I have an ability to become this higher attribute. I have always seen myself as “as is model” and I think that is why the conversation yesterday take me by such storm.
I was talking with a friend here and we were talking about I needing a job after here and he was telling that he is going to talk to some friends of his that were in the industry and he was saying that I would be looking at a six-figure income to start off. My head about exploded. I told him that Nicki and I were used to living on about a quarter of that. He looked at me in disbelief and said that he could make more on unemployment than that. That it was basically at the poverty line.
I thought about that for a minute and it was true. There were many years that we were one paycheck or car breakdown from going under. There is only one reason that we didn’t go under and that was due to our great families.
I look at our bank account these days and I haven’t seen it with this amount of money in it ever and we have really no bills left, but at what cost. I am in a warzone, is this really worth it? If you asked me a month ago I would have said yes. I imagine going back to the states to a job like the one I left and make a few dollars an hour and busting my ass to do it. Working to many hours to have energy to go out and photograph or look for a better job. I have never seen myself more than that. I don’t know if I want to be as a big a photographer as Jarvis or McNally but I do want to be in the league where I know them and can be friends with them.
I still haven’t narrowed down what type of photography I want to do but I know that I want to shoot. I am lucky enough to be well trained in photojournalism and that I guess pays well if you work for the right people. I hope that I can work in that and then I can figure out what I want to do and do it.

Expectations

I took a leap of faith yesterday by sending out my portfolio to some big name photographers and I have received one response back. It was from Mr. Chase Jarvis himself. It isn’t what I was hoping for when it comes to my dream response but it was honest. I will post it here.
“Hi Kyle. Thanks for sending in your work. I took a peek and it looks like you're off to a great start as a photographer. The reality is that I get so many requests to review work - sometimes 40 or more in a day - that I can't spend the time to give any detailed feedback...but just know that you're heading in the right direction. Keep it up! In the meantime...”
It is what I expect from many of the emails that I sent out. I expect to get one or two responses like this and to receive nothing back from many other ones. It is not that I think that I don’t deserve a response it is the fact that I don’t know when to start small and work my way up. I have chosen some of the best photographers in the nation. I guess that I need to back off, well no way. I hope that my prestiance will pay off. I am going to attach a video that I found on a blog and I have to say that it is amazing. I know that I have like 3 people that read this on a regular basis and most of them won’t understand the HDR process but this is really cool and really out there. It is the first time that I have seen it done. Enjoy!!!

TheChapel. A short film. (HDR timelapse) from Patryk Kizny on Vimeo.

Leap of Faith

I said yesterday that today would be something inspirational; well I don’t know if this will be but it meant something for me.

Today I put some faith in Karma. I sent my portfolio to some big name photogs and asked them to review it and tell me what they thought. I don’t what will come of this but I took that step and put myself out there. I am having to start looking for employment when I get back and getting my portfolio done is one HUGE piece of that puzzle. There is nothing like saying that you are a photographer and then someone asking to see your portfolio and you being like “ummm, ummm…. Here is the start of it…” that just sucks and makes you look as if you were just a hobbyist. I am not a hobbyist I am a full blown professional photographer. I pay my bill and live because I shoot for a living. Now I am not making money on what I shoot but I am still shooting.
The other thing that I realized is that is that I don’t have a lot of friends over here but I have a group of friends that are really close friends. I have friends that I can talk to about whatever I need to. They don’t care what it is, they won’t judge me or look at me weird. Those are true friends and I am glad to have them. Well I hope that it was halfway inspiring. Well it is Friday night and I have nowhere to go but my room, and that is where I am going.

OFP Facebook

Today I did it. I got my FB page up and running, It isn’t complete but it is up and on the web for everyone to see. Now I only have two major things to do to get my own photography business up and running. First I need to get my own website; I don’t know a photographer that doesn’t operate without one. The other thing that I need to get is my own photography equipment like a camera. It is kinda hard to be a photographer without a camera. There is not much to report from here. It has remained sunny and the mud is trying up. Tomorrow I will have a deep inside thought for a blog. LOL

Great Night

Today actually was a pretty good day. I got out and got some sun, I also got a lot on my class, I will see how this all works out. I am a little scared that I am going to really forget something and screw the pooch. Everything was good until about 10 mins before dinner. That is when I started not to feel the best. So I had dinner but didn’t feel any better. So tonight it isn’t going as wanted. I am going to just upload some photos that i have found that i had shot and forgot about. Enjoy

Ok so i have an increadbly slow upload speed and i am not going to wait any longer. Please feel free to leave comments, I dont know whos reading if they dont have anything to say.
to be much of a blog. I am done with my portfolio (for now) so I am going to put up a few images that I found that I had forgot that I took or didn’t see their potential at the time.

Schooling myself

Today was a better day, Nothing major happened or nothing rally good happened but I did get some of of my class done. I have been working on the PowerPoint presentation and it has made me think about how I want lay out this class. I haven't thought about how do I go to be getting from point A to B and not have to go though C-S to get there. I am realizing that we normally learn in a linear format. We learn math by learning to add and subtract and then move on to multiplication and division. With photography you have to learn a lot of things to learn each of them separately.

One of the things that I have also come across is that I have do some of the research on the history of photography. I know a generalization of the history but I don’t know a lot. I am only going to skim in the class but I really do need to get a in-depth knowledge of the subject if I want to really into photography as a career, because I love to teach photography.

I feel like I am rambling on and it might be that I am trying to type this form a different laptop and the keys are just a little off or something because I have hit the backspace more times in one paragraph than most night all together. I am going to keep it short for tonight so I don’t kill this computer. I have been thinking about my sign off for my blog and I have nothing as of yet.

And one quick note, I am about 95% done with my portfolio. I have spent probably 25 hours in the past few weeks going though about 40,000 images going back 6 years to get my best work. As I look at some of the stuff that I was shooting back in 2004/05 I had great work, it is just that I had no clue what I was doing with the camera and the images quality sucks just because of that aspect. So I will be launching the On-Fire Photography – Facebook page later this week. I will put a link on the blog and I will send a invite to all my Facebook friends. Well that is all tonight. Hope every had a good V-day. Night!

V-Day

So today made my job a little bit harder. It seems like every time I do anything with photography it gets slapped in my face. I have be losing all will to do what I do best. I still love to shoot but getting it out to the world is getting damn near impossible. Anyways it is sunny and it that is a good start.
I did start something that I have wanted to do for a while. I started my Photography 101 class. Well at least I started the PowerPoint portion and I have my first class on Sunday.
I guess that I have to talk about the fact that today I Valentine’s Day, It is that I don’t want to talk about it, it is just easier to forget it and make it thought the day without being sad all day. I really did miss Nicki today and I did get to talk to her for a while but that doesn’t make up for not being there. I can’t wait to be able to hold her in my arms and wake up in the morning a see her next to me. It won’t be too long but any day away from her is too long. I hope that tomorrow I will start to feel a little better about being over here. Maybe I should go hang out outside and get some sun and Vitamin –B. I am going off to bed. Half way done with the one a day and I have to finish strong.

Our lovly family- I miss you

Backlog 3

The last of the back log.
At Home
Well today was a wet, cold and dreary day. I have been in the office for the most part of today. I don’t really know what to talk about. I mean I can talk about the mud or the rain/snow but that seems petty. I sit back and think about the fact that I am coming up on my seven month point of being away. I have been though a lot and I have grown a lot as a person as well as an Airman. I don’t know what I am going to do or how to implement those changes into what I have at home but I know that it won’t be easy. I think that one of the hardest things about a deployment is that you become very self sufficient and you are doing what you want to do or go where you want without a thought. I’m sure that I will have a hard time coming back to the real world and have to worry about drive times and traffic and things of that sort. I also am afraid that I will do things without talking to my better half.
So I have some time to figure these things out, but it is going to be the putting them into use that is the biggest issue. The person that I have the worry about the most is the person is the person that is closest to me. I know that I will do my best and I hope that I don’t screw up anything. Well off to bed.

Sunshine
As I sit down to write today and I don’t what to talk about….. I don’t know what happened today to talk about expect for the sun started to shine. I hope that is a sign of things to come. I know that this month has been gray and dreary. Not liking it one bit. Well I hope that I have more inspiration tomorrow to write.

Backlog 2

Ok so i had some issues last night with the internet here so here is the rest of the backlog and i will put up yesterday and today's a little later.

Water
Today was a great day for two ways, 1) I didn’t get wet and 2) we went into an area and it was the closest thing that we have done to an actual mission. I will explain it later. So let me start at the beginning.
Being at the FOB you feel like it is kind of a big camping trip. Until some of the few time that “war” makes an appearance. We have big guns on the FOB and when they fire you know it. It is one of things that make you remember what you are doing here. We just call it outgoing and we go on our business and you don’t really think about it. Well today I actually saw where they were hitting and it is one of those feelings where you are really glad to be on this side of the gun. I don’t know what they were shooting at but I know that whatever it was, wasn’t a good guy. It was a day that you could just feel the tension in the air. I don’t know how that you can explain the feeling but it was almost as if you could feel everyone cringing at the same time when something was loud. But we still had a mission to complete and we were going to go and do it. We were heading down to the village that was across the wadi form where we were two days ago.
So we headed down to the area and we just been to two days ago and walked down to the wadi. This is where point 1 comes in. We went across the wadi and we did it by stepping on rocks and walking across a foot bridge made of branches and then some more rocks and I didn’t fall in, good on me. We had seen the village the other day and there were a good number of people out but when we got there it was a ghost town. But we walked though the village and we were able to find a few people to talk about. It has been the thing that feels most like an actual mission. We walked a few clicks into a village that we hadn’t been to before and we came out without anything major happening. It was a good day.

Rain
Today was one of those days that you don’t really want to talk about. We had our mission and nothing big came from it and we headed back up to MF. What really made it a bad day was that it started to rain again. When we got back to MF it was just a mud pit again. I am just kinda in a bad mood so I am going to leave it at that.

Backlog

Well it happened; I was out for a few days where I was not able to get online to my blog. I am a little bit behind when it comes to blogs. My plan is to include a blog that has 2 days worth of blogs for a few days and then I should be caught up. So here is from 8th and 9th.

South We Go-
Well today I moved down to a FOB in the southern part of Kapisa, I have wanted to get there for sometime because it is a more “happening base”. This area is more of what you would see on TV on the nightly news. It is been an area that hasn’t been worked on like the northern area of Kapisa. A lot of this has to do with the natural division of Afghans due to tribal linage. It is hard to describe without being here.
Today I got go the southernmost I have gotten to go by a few click s and I have to say that it was a nice change of scenery. I got to see into an area that I wasn’t sure that I would get to see. We were looking at some possible construction projects and in that area. It was really nice to get out and see what people that have been living without the modern convince for their whole lives do when they have something as simple go across the river. The just cross it, they find a shallow spot and drive or walk across. I saw them drive everything tractor, Toyota corolla, or a motorcycle. It was just how they dealt with basic need. Well got to run. Tomorrow is another busy day.

Reality-
So today was a good day and a bad day. Today we went out with the French army as they did a ribbon cutting on an ANA base’s new Mosque. It was a good day with this because I got to work with my French counterpart. I have been able with them once before and it was good. I got to hang out with them last night and I am trying to work on my French and I am not doing to well at it. The ribbon cutting went well and we all went back to base. It was about 2 hours later when reality set in. I was with 2 other members of the PRT and we got a call saying that some brothers in arms got hit by an IED and they were on their way to where we were with injuries. We all headed down to the first aid station, which is French. We were not medical but we were there to help anyway we can. Two of the guys and I headed down to the gate to direct them to where the needed to go. We all were preparing for the worst. We they got pulled in and we opened up the truck it turned out they only had a guy that had a banged up ankle. It was a really lucky day for them. I help him get up the hill to the Aid Station.
This was a wakeup call of sorts. I know that we are in a warzone but there is a lot of time that it doesn’t feel like it. I am glad that we had this happen and there not be any serious injuries. The trucks that we ride in are designed for this. The truck took all the damage and the crew came out “shaken not stirred”, but they were walking and doing good….
Well another day down and tomorrow is going to be a long day so got to get to bed.

Sunshine

Well today it finally cleared up and the sun shone over the FOB. It was a gorgeous day and the air was clear. I had to work inside today and I have to say I am glad. For as nice of a day it was it was cold, there was a wind that wasn’t to strong but cut right though you. I did get to spend a few minutes during “golden hour” to get some great shots of the sunset and the mountains. So today’s post are going to be some images of the mountains. I did these just for fun and I couldn’t really feel my hand at the end but it was worth it. As good as my camera is it still doesn’t capture what your eyes do.

Well we will see what the next few days have in hold. It should be a fun filled week.

Choices

I sit here tonight and think about what the last 24 hours have been like and I have to say that it is amazing how your life can change dramatically in such a sort section of time. Now let me but this out there first, nothing life changing happened in my life. Things did happen in my life that does change things and how I look at the world but it isn’t what I am talking about. What I am talking about how one or two choices that you make in the blink of an eye, can take a great road in life and send it strait off a cliff. It is those choices that you will never see the same as when you made them. But there are those choices that are just as life changing but you take years to make.
I have been making a lot of choices while I am here and I have been thinking what I need to put effort into and what I don’t need to worry about. I have been trying to figure out how to set my life up here so that when I get home I have laid all the ground work here. I have been lucky to have the internet so I can follow photographer’s blogs and news in the industry. And I am starting to think that I might actually be able to do this. I might be able to follow my dream and work for myself and have my own studio. I know that I have a lot to learn but I can do it. I am lucky though, I am really lucky to have soul mate that is there to back me up, smack me over the head, and support me fully. I know with my full heart that I would never be able to pull this off if I didn’t have Nicki at my side.
It has been tough over these past 7 months with being apart but I know that in the end we will be in a better place than we started. I don’t know what the rest of the deployment will bring but I am looking forward it. There will be times that just plain suck while I am going though it but in the end there will be something that will out of it and that will shape me to what future me is….
I am changing my sign off. I hope to find something that suits me and not someone else.

"Too Air Force"

Well today is Saturday and I have to say I can’t wait to get back to the states. Where I am not walking through mud and slop everywhere. But the thought did occur to me while I was doing cleaning on my weapons, of all things while watching a war movie and I think about what I have. It is 40 degrees and rainy and I could be stuck out on a mountainside or in a valley without a hot meal or a roof over my head. It sucks walking in mud but I have dry boots. I give kudos to my brethren out there sleeping in a foxhole or DFP. I wonder how I would handle living in those conditions, I wonder if I am “too Air Force” to be able to handle the infantry lifestyle. I want to try to see what I would do for the same reason I want to go though BUDS just to see how far I could make it. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be able to handle anything and I am getting to the point in my life where I am wondering if I need to prove myself to myself. Will I spend more time going though stuff and miss out on life. Hmmmm. Something to ponder in the coming weeks. Well it will be a short post tonight. Thanks
More to come…

Mud

One thing that you realize while you are in a country like this is that it is always dusty! I have to say that it will be nice to be back in the states where it is clean. But what happens when you add 3 days of rain…. Well it becomes a mud pit here. I think that I spent more time looking where I was walking today than walking itself. The mud goes everywhere with you it goes into the office, into the hall and into your bed. Try as you might it seems to follow you everywhere. I hate it. But we are getting into the rainy season here.
Well I am learning one thing about blogging that I am guessing that many bloggers find out soon after they start. It is labor intensive. I also realized something last night, I stated that I would have a longer blog today and now I am like why did I have to condemn myself like that. I now feel obligated to write a long post. Well I am not going to do a long post because I don’t have very much to talk about. I would be rambling but that would not be good. So I am going to say good morning, day, or night.
Thanks
More To Come….


Ok! an update, I just gotten done talking to Nicki and she got me to think of a couple of images that I wanted to post from a mission this week. A local school leader got us lunch.

Our lunch came in a red plastic bag rapped in news paper

Lunch was some sort of meat in a pita. You tear the pita and eat a peace of meat and it was wonderful. It was one of the best meals I have had here. Hope you enjoyed.

Take the Time

I wanted today to be a little greedy on this post. I have been doing a lot of thinking when it comes to photography. I have been thinking if I write about it I have maybe I will get off my butt and do something about. I have been thinking that I need to get back to basics while shooting. On most professional cameras have 4 modes to shoot on. There is M- manual, A-aperture priority, S-shutter speed, and P-program mode this is also known as “professional mode” because it has the camera do all the thinking for you. I shoot on P for most of the time when I am out on missions because I have don’t have the time to be messing with all the settings. But that has taken a lot of the focus off the art of what I am shooting just shoot it.
There have been some missions lately that I have has some extra time and have taking some shots that I truly compose. Most of these have been kids posing for the camera. But what I want is to take the time around here and really look at what I am photographing and set the camera to what it needs not because it tells me to but because I know what I need to do to get the shot that. Well I am going to keep this one short. I will have a longer one tomorrow.

This image is one of the images that I that I took time to shoot. I saw this lady waking in the distance. I loved the contrast of her dress to the flat color of the country. I took series of shots of her walking but i finally got this when she turned to the person behind her. Bam that was the image. I could go into the nitty gritty but I think that it talks for its self. Please tell me what you think.

Thanks
More To Come....

Ramblings

Well it is a cold dreary day out over here and I have started to think that it might snow overnight. I have to say it will be nice to wake up and see nice clean snow. I know that the US is being hit by a huge snow storm but over here it is just brown and dead. I can’t wait until this spring and when the mountains melt, the rivers fill and the leaves pop. It is something that I hope I will be able to capture. I have to say that I wish I could safely travel this country and shoot it. I mean it is just beautiful. I wonder if in 5 to 10 years I will be back here shooting the landscape? Time will tell
I spend part of the evening going through images that I had taken during my training at DINFOS. I took a lot of good images that I had completely forgot that I had shot. I am having a lot more images for my portfolio than I had previously though. I do wish that I had taken a little bit better care of my old images. It is weird to say that about digital images but I do have a lot of images that I have saved too many times and now they are just too small to use for anything other than digital file for the web. I have been seeing what I shot and going “oh why did I do that…” or “what was I thinking” and it is hard to know made me do some of the things that I did but I know now that if what I am producing here is this many times greater than when I went though training 3 years ago then what will my work look like in another 3 years.
I spent a lot of the day looking a computer and I have to say that I don’t want to work in corporate America spending my days looking at emails and spreadsheets. I could not do it. I wonder who people can spend 8 hours a day in a gray cubical on the 8th story of a place that measures how successful you are by what floor you work on.
I guess today was more of just a rambling that anything else. I think that tomarrow I am going to go a little bit into Photography. I want to have get a little down and dritty with something that I love. I love photography and I want to start teaching things about it. I am going to go home tonight and work on a slide show. I am going to start a photography class here! I will do slide shows and teach people that want to learn. I have the equipment and the knowege, I have the time, I have the passion, Why not. I will see if there is a way that I can post my lessons on here for you guys as well.
Well day 2 down and 26 more to go.
Thanks
More To Come…

The challenge

So it has been one of those days that I have been a little down with what I am doing over here. I did a shoot a little while ago and I was thinking all was good and someone who is having a power trip is getting uppity about the images. All I can say is that I am in the right and my Capt won’t even fight for me, he says that it isn’t worth his time. That kind of got me off on the wrong foot. It is just one of those things that really gets you discouraged.

I am also starting to see that I have that I am starting to slip back into a conferrable grove. That is something that I can’t let myself do. I have decided that I will be doing a challenge to myself and you. I am going to Blog everyday for the next month. I know that it only 28 days but it will be tough. I have to just sit down to and do it. I am going to put one stipulation. I don’t know what the next month will bring as far as missions. There be days that I cannot actually write a post. In that situation I will had write one and I will post it as soon as I have a chance to type it.

I had a thought last night and it kind of was an epiphany. I have been looking at photographers that I have never meet and most likely will never meet and I am trying to live up to what they are doing and wish that I could do what they do and live off of photography. And then I realized that I am. I am making a living off of photography, It is a little different but I am getting paid to shoot and wow I am where they are as far as recognition but I am a paid photographer and that is amazing.

I am working on getting my portfolio around. I have been saying that for a while but I have been working on it and it is starting to come together. I have a LOT of photos and not I am gathering them and tiring to compile them into different sections and find a way to display them. I hope to have them or some of them up on here in the next week or so. And once I get it up I have decided that that I will send them to some of those same photographers that I have been looking up to find out what they think of my work. Well Day one done 27 to go.

More To Come...

Who am I

I added a page to the blog today that was who am I, and i had to stop and think about it and this what i wrote. It seemed like a good blog post also. Enjoy.

You know I am sitting down here thinking about what I should think about what I should say about myself. First off I am a Husband, Son, Father to four legged kids, Civilian, Military, and a Photographer and those are just some of the titles that I have. I have been trying to figure out who I am over the past year and I know that I am not a definition. People try to place themselves in one category or narrow it down to area and I am not that, A different day and I am a different person. Some days I am a happy go lucky guy and other days I just want to say “Hug this place”.
As I mentioned before one of my attributes is Photographer and I am one on certain days. It isn’t something that I am never because I am always looking at how I can shoot something it is just there are days that I don’t shoot and there are days that I do. I have the job title Air Force that is Photographer and I am currently deployed to Afghanistan. I am now looking to see where this will lead me. I have already made some breakthroughs in what I am doing in my life and I haven’t been this at peace with myself in more years that I can count. I always am thinking that I could be doing more but I am getting to the point where I am ok with what I am doing.
So this I started this up to help keep my loving family and friends in the loop of what is going on in my life and to show them what I do.
So who am I? I am Kyle and I am ok with that.

One Crazy Week

Hello everyone,
I have been looking at writing this for about a week and I have finally gotten to sit down and write it. We had a big mission this week. We did a pruning class, for locals down in Tagab. It took place over three days and it was a great success. I have not been that sore but the farmers loved the training or maybe it was the free pruning tools that we gave out at the end of the training that was the big hit.

I did get to play PA for good bit on this mission, I not only took the pictures, I interviewed the district sub-governor (County mayor), and I wrote the story for the mission. It was a real busy week.
I will post the story here, in a day or two when it is released, but that is not what I really want to talk about. I had an interesting week with some email with a princess. Do I have you attention yet? Yes I was in contact with a princess and I am not talking about Nicki. She is a photographer whose husband I met over here. I knew that she was a wedding photographer and was shooting a wedding in Hawaii during the time that I met the hubby. He had told me to contact her and she could help me with starting up my photography business. I did searching the same day that I met him but to know avail. About two weeks ago I was listing to a podcast of Chase Jarvis and he was interviewing a world famous wedding photographer, and not it wasn’t the one I was looking for but I did check out the Facebook page of the photographer and I started looking at posts. About a week later I had looked at a bunch of the photographers on the site and I came across one that was “Photos by Princess” so I started looking at her site and after putting together a bunch of clues I decided to email her and see if she was “the Princess that I was looking for”. Her fist name is Princess so it is just fun to say it some sentences. It was and she sent me an email back that to tell you the truth was a little demeaning and I actually was a little pissed but I had never explained do her what my shooting experience was. So I wrote her back and gave her links to my work and I got back a reply that I was a more accomplished photographer than her and that I should be telling her how to shoot. But she is able to help in the area of portraiture. I don’t have much experience in that field. And we have talked some about that. I have to say that it has been a fun journey to talk to the princess. Bazanga!
Anyways I hope to post at least three times this week so keep an eye out.
More to come…

Up Up and Fire Away

It has been a few days since my last blog post and I have to say that I have wanted to write but I just haven’t. I know that I need to get on the internets and write but I haven’t done it. I have been in kind of a funk for the past few days. I have been thinking a lot (it is a bad thing) and I have been not sleeping well and I think that the combo of those things has just left me in a slump.

One of the things that has been bugging me is a comment that I contently hear. !!!!! I KNOW THAT THIS IS GOING TO SOUND VER NARSASIC!!!! I always am getting “your photos were great” or “you did a great job with those photos” and to tell you the truth is I am getting sick of it. Yes I know that I am a great photographer. First off you say it like you didn’t think that I could do a good job. We have been working together and you don’t think that I will be doing a good job, Come on. And secondly you could give me a little bit of feedback. I am getting bored here. Give me a challenge.
I know that I sound like an asshat but it is something that is on my mind lately. It is not that I am all above everyone else but I don’t feel challenged. I know what people are trying to say but it isn’t what is coming across.
I am sorry for the rant and I hope that you can understand what where I am coming from. But on to other things. We had a joint US and French helicopter exercise with combat ground controllers and 4 differ models of helicopters conducting live fire training (firing their guns and rockets) on the mountain next to the FOB. It was a great day. I got some amazing imagery, but better off, I got time with helo pilots and time with a USAF Combat controller (he is Special Forces) and it turns out that he was a aircraft mechanic and he and I were in basic and tech school together. I mean we didn’t really know each other but we had to have pass by each other. It is a small small world.
It is amazing how some of these things work out. I get to expand my knowledge base in the coming weeks and I will be pretty busy. Well I will get on to that at a later date. It is time for me to go
More to come…

thought the lens

I wrote an artical for the PRT newsletter last week. I am going to post it here. Hope you like.

THROUGH THE LENS
I look at the world in 1/250th of a second slice or a single click of the shutter. In that instant I am able to capture a moment in time and record it into history. As the photographer of Kapisa Provincial Reconstruction Team, I tell a story that encompasses multiple cultures, generations of people and a multinational force working to bring a better life to a war torn country.

Life over here is foreign to what we see in the U.S. and it makes it hard to comprehend sometimes. As I watch a child drink out of the gutter or sit in the dirt because he has nowhere else to sit, I see my role as a photographer expand. I am not just telling the PRT’s story; I am telling theirs. The PRT and the local government work together to change the quality of life for the people of Afghanistan and I have the opportunity to capture that.

Some people may think that all I do as a photographer is snap some pictures, right? Wrong. Capturing imagery is only a small aspect of what I do. The images that I collect ultimately become the face of the PRT; they are what people see and how people connect to us. Whether it is a civil engineer inspection or a key leader engagement during a shura, the world sees it though my lens and it is those images that tell the world what we, as a PRT, are doing here after 9 years.

My photos also provide a glimpse into the life of the PRT, which allows family and friends to better understand the importance of the mission we’re supporting while away from home.

Capturing that critical moment of time isn’t as easy as it seems. In order to produce the best image possible, I need to understand what someone is doing and why they are doing it. I love it when I have the time to work with an individual before I photograph them and gain that feeling. I feel that by seeing something though someone else’s eyes your photographs can convey emotion.

Emotion is a huge aspect of photography and can ultimately
turn a “good image” into a “great image.” The emotion conveyed within an image allows you to see the character and personality of person, and personality is something that the Afghans have a lot of.

While working with the Afghans I have found two groups of people that have emotion flowing in their eyes. The children who have not had the rule of the Taliban over them and the elders who lived though the soviet occupation, civil war, Taliban occupation and Operation Enduring Freedom.

The children here live in conditions that we would consider to be primitive at best and yet they have such life in their eyes. The elders have been through so much in their life and it is worn on their faces, but they still have hope for the future of their home, their children and their country. I think of the children when we are completing a school or working on a road that will connect a village with the district capital and hope that what I am doing is going to play a part in the rebuilding of this province.

My time with the PRT is short, but the images that I produce will live for the unforeseen future. My goal is to document this history with my images so hopefully in 15 or 20 years these photos will become pages of history that the children here will be able to look at and reminisce about similarly to how we look back at photo albums created by our own families. If I can change the life of even one person over here with my photography, then my time here will have been a success.

Photography Quick Tips

One of my favorite photographers, Chase Jarvis, has coined the phrase “the best camera is the one you have on you.” The key is that you just have to get out and shoot. Here are three quick tips that will help improve your imagery.

Change your point of view — Most of the world sees things from 5’4” to 6’2” off the ground. So if you take a picture from a normal standing position, it’s how everyone normally sees it, so get high or low. Step up on a chair (one that doesn’t swivel or have wheels) or a ladder to look down on those subjects. Get to the ground and shoot with the camera at knee level or lower to provide you a unique look at the world.

Fill the frame — There are times that you should have the person in the photo be really small like your family at Mount Rushmore, but there are many time that you need to cut out all the dead space in the picture. By filling the frame you make your subject prominent and you can remove clutter and unwanted stuff in the background. This can be done in a few different ways. The first is with the camera zoom, which will allow you to appear closer without actually moving. The other way it to simply move around and that leads me into my next and final tip for today.

Move Around — One of the keys to good photography is to be flexible both physically and figuratively. Standing in one position and shooting images is possible and can sometimes be the only way to shoot depending on the situation, but you really need to get to the action. Don’t be afraid to get up and close to the subject that you are photographing.

I am sitting here listening to one of my favorite photographers on an audio pod cast and it is really made think. I have been going about this all the wrong. And saying that, is wrong. I have been thinking that I need to go and do this to get to do that, and then it will lead to this and I will get to my end point. I have thought that is what I needed to do to be successful. I have been looking at it all wrong.

I want to be a Photographer…. Point Blank

I am going to do this, I have a great start as being a photographer here Afghanistan for the Air Force but there is so much more and other types of work that I can do that I will excel in and I need to try them. I feel that I have been holding back because I have this preconceived notion of ME and if I am going to get out and creating imagery then I need to loss my own image, use my life to its advantages and create me and most importantly Embrace who I am. Like on thing that I have hated about myself is my voice. I have never like it. It was one of those thing that I herd on a answering machine and I would cringe. It has been something that has kept me from doing a lot of things in my life already. If I can except it and embrace it I can almost trademark it. I can tell the voices of the photographers that I follow and I have to say that most of them don’t have a deep dark sexy voice or are great looking but the are still doing videos where the put out what they love. I have to be able to do that I have to be happy with what I have and embrace and use it. I also have to go out and shoot. I have said it a lot lately but haven’t really done it and one reason is missions and second isn’t is that it got cold. And you know what those excuses are… they are excuses nothing else. In the end I don’t have an image to put out. I only have excuses. Tomorrow is a full moon and it is going to rise over a snow capped mountain at dusk…… If weather holds out on me I will shoot it. I WILL go out and create imagery and work towards my dream. Thanks for listening

I have linked a short movie to the photographer that i had been listening to them interview. It is a great video and says a lot.

More to come…

http://www.zarias.com/transform-a-short-film-for-scottkelbycom/

Snow on faces

I have been very busy lately and I have wanted to post for a day or two but I haven’t. So I am going to start with a partial post that I wrote 2 days ago.
Let it snow
I am going to start off today’s post with a weather update. IT’S SNOWING! Ok so that is all that impressive as it is more impressive when the ugly brown mountain next to us (we have like 5) appears out of the clouds a majestic snow covered mountain. It brings a new beauty to this country where I live. I have had a love for the landscape since I have been here and now it has been renewed
I have been spending the past two day writing an article. For the newsletter and I have to say, I suck at writing or at least thinking that my writing is good. I will get done writing or rewriting it and my lt. will go though and make it bloody and it is just very very frustrating. I thought that I have been clear and concise. Lucky for you, you get to read my un-edited ramblings.
I am still not sure where my life is going. I have talked to a few times this week about going to school and I have been trying to be better at seeing the “patterns” or “signs”. So I am starting to look at schools and trying to marry up a school in area that has a job and program that I want to be in. and if I want to take a coarse or two while I am here. Choices, choices…….
….. And now I will continue from that one.
Faces
I have been really busy the past two day with going on missions. I had an 11 hour mission the other day and about a three hour mission today and I have to say I am pooped. It was great though on the 11 hour mission because we went up into the mountains after the snow and it was beautiful. We got up to about 7600 feet and I could feel how thin the air was when we had to climb up a 50 foot or so hill to a site and I was done about 25 feet in or so. Overall the day was a success. I came out with some great imagery that I will be putting on my website but I have to process it so expect to see it in a day or two.
I have been thinking lately about what I want to do when I get home and where home will be. I have been thinking that I wanting to stay somewhere warm… (It has been cold here lately) but I mean I do think that I want to work somewhere I can expand my photography career. I know that I could probably get a loan and buy all my gear and get a space for a studio, but I think that if I go that route that I will be ending my career before I can kind of get it started. I am thinking that in a year of getting home I hope to be making 75% of my income off of photography and at that point I will be able to quit whatever job I have and focus on photography. I have come up with a couple names for my studio “On-Fire Photography” “Unique Image Photography” “Kyle Brasier Photography”. I would love feedback on these ideas.
Well I think that I am going to call it quits for this blog. I still have to write one for my website that is photography based. I will post it here but I will have a different feel. Thanks for listening.
More to come

It Starts

It starts-

I have been thinking about doing this for a while and I have finally done it, I have decided that I need to keep a current blog to allow the people that I don’t get to talk to all the time. I plan on letting you know what is going on over here and by doing this though three different medium……. Text, photo, and video, yes video. So here is to a new me,

Part of this comes because I am here and I need to work on myself while I am here. There are things that I have wanted to do for a while and now I am going to finally start to do them. One of the first things that I want to do is to be in better contact with friends and family. I have never been good at emails or Facebook posts and this is a thing that I have known for years and have never did anything about it and I feel that if I can get into blogging I can at least tell what I am seeing, feeling and experiencing during my time here. For the next week or two I will be posting a lot of things that I have experienced over the past six months, I will try to keep to about the past 3 months (time I have been here) and only have a few flash backs to Camp Atterbury.

Another part of what I have wanted to do for a long time is to start my photography business and with me being over I am able to focus a little more energy on it and I have set a website for it and I will have a blog on there too but that will focus mainly on photography related subjects but I will post those blogs on here for you all to read. I will post that websites address once I get it fully up and running. I have a lot of work to do on it.

The last thing that I am really hoping for in this blog is to get me back into writing…… I guess it is something that I have always loved, I hate grammar but I love to write. Back in high school (I can’t believe that I am about to say this but) I wrote many a poem and a short story or two. I have stopped writing for many years and it feels good to start again.  This is getting long enough for now.

more to come-
(i stole that from Joe McNally one of my fravoit photographers)