The rest of the blog features some really interesting photos showing his experiments and practices in general.  Most recently is a teaser photo that is one of my favorites to date.  And on top of the pictures are his commentaries – brief and enjoyable – that embellish the photos.  See what I mean in his post The Better Way.  He is story-telling along with the photo.

There are more photos to be seen on his website as a professional photographer.  He fully illustrates the promised objective:

After Years of interest and Curiousity in photography, I’ve recently decided to realize the passion that was once stuck inside a hobby.  I’ve been able to combine an eagerness to learn with the ability to see light and composition in order to present you with a new and unique perspective.  My goal is to create art that all can enjoy.

His work, as well as his blog writing, is simple and pleasing.  Hopefully you will explore his galleries and posts, and enjoy them like I have.

30 Degrees East is a blog I admire for the authors as much as the photos.  From what I gather in the About page, they are two photographers who studied together and now live worlds apart:

We lived on the same floor of East Hall our first year of college and have been close friends since then. As we approach our 30th birthdays, we realize that our lives have had many similarities despite the obvious glaring differences. We are both foreigners in countries that are 30 degrees east of the Prime Meridian, though one is north (Israel) and one is south (Zimbabwe) of the equator. This blog is an attempt to learn to use photography to capture and share the beauty of the countries we now live in. We will be posting new photos every Tuesday and Friday. We hope you enjoy going on this journey with us.

This blog is a wonderfully creative and innovative way for two friends to stay connected.  What’s more, is that it is a lovely venue for spectators like me and you to see the world.

Perhaps I’m beginning to sound redundant with my endearment to travel photography, but you have to admit that these photos are interesting.  The range of their subjects and talents make for a really intriguing portfolio: some are reminiscent of National Geographic, like this rhino in Zimbabwe 13; some plain, like this wall in Israel 5; and some are simply friendly and lovely, like one of my favorites, Zimbabwe 40.  Whichever the style, you’ve heard me say before how important it is for an interest in knowing and understanding a culture to reflect in a photo.

A blog like this makes me wonder at the lengths people go to to keep connected with each other.  Correspondence can be a hard thing to maintain.  Having said that, it’s time for me to investigate this Skype business so that I can have an actual conversation with my Korea-inclined college roommate.  Tell me…

How do you keep in touch?

This brings me to the second installment in my Photo Follow series.  This week I bring you Pat J Rice.  New to WordPress (like me) he is still building the archive of his blog.  It’s a very simple layout, focusing on the incredible composition of his photos.  Each post is a single photo and brief caption, and his impressive images caught my eye immediately.  Some of them are shots of places I’ve been and already love.  Others are well known places I’ve always known I want to see.  And a few have warranted a new place on my dream-travel list (Alaska – who knew?).

Many of Pat’s photos are artfully created, like “Reflecting on Paris” done with multiple subjects and a fisheye lens – they’re wonderful and interesting, and make me wonder how he made it.  Looking through his pictures you can see his experimentation with photography, which is always amusing and rewarding to find.  He says in his About page,

I loving taking photos. Plain and simple. Photography has provided an outlet in my life for creative energy that I didn’t even realize I possessed. I’m thoroughly addicted and will forever be a student of the art.

“Exterior Decorating” is one of my favorites.  It’s bare and honest and simple.  I can picture him walking down the street and snapping this photo casually.  That moment of spontaneous creation, of serendipitous beauty, is part of why I love travel so much.

Explore his site and sent him a note or comment, because I can tell you how nice it is to receive feedback on a young blog like his.  Enjoy!

What to do when you’re uninspired?  Seek out those who are.  Where to look when seeking the inspired?  To start: PHOTOGRAPHERS.

As a rule, photographers have to be passionate and inspired if they aspire to any kind of success.  They channel their creativity into this fantastically accessible medium, and the translation (in most cases) is instantaneous – see the photo, know the purpose.  My sister is a photographer, very creative and easily inspired.  Thanks to her, I have Solution 2:  a new series I call Photo Follow.  Thanks to the nifty feature Tag Surfer here on WordPress, I search for “photography” and dozens of blogs unfold before me.  Every Sunday I will feature one.  I choose them based on who inspires me, who makes me think or feel instead of just look, and who I find deserving of your attention.  Today being the first installment, I wanted someone really impressive…

Meet Steve McCurry.  His blog features serious photography from Afghanistan.  You can see from his photos how important it is to him to understand the country and the people.  What I enjoy almost as much as the photos are his insights, the thoughts that are either evoked from his work or the inspiration for it.  The December 31, 2009 post, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions,” is hard to see.  It’s gruesome honesty, which is something I think most people avoid.  But this kind of reality to too important to ignore.

Scroll down and explore his other posts.  December 22, 2009, “Don’t Wait for the Phone to Ring,” is some fantastic advice aimed for photographers, but applicable to any person honing creativity.  He says,

I am often asked by photographers just starting out what advice I can offer.  Here are some tips which might be a good start.

Insatiable Curiosity
Being curious about life and things around you is an essential part of being a good photographer.

Hard work
Any endeavor, any profession requires a serious commitment and effort and hard work. Unless you are willing to commit to that, it’s best not to begin the journey.

Leave home
Leave home or leave your comfort zone. Being a good photographer doesn’t necessarily mean you travel to distant places, but you do need to get out of your comfort zone and explore,  wander and observe.

Fortitude and Determination
At times, there’s a lot of pick and shovel work to photography or any other profession, and you have to be ready to work your way through these tedious times.

Dig Deep
The process of learning never stops, but at a point it’s all kind of automatic in a way. If you look at the photographers whose work is widely admired you’ll see that  they’ve found a particular place or a subject, dug deep into it, and carved out something that’s become special.

Evolve, reinvent yourself, grow
You need to keep your heart and mind open. Life is  flowing in front of your eyes and you need to be open to respond and allow yourself to be touched by things which are extraordinary and let it change you.

Don’t wait for the phone to ring
Regardless of how successful you are, it’s important for you to spend your time photographing things that matter to you.  You need to understand the things that have meaning to you, and not what others think is important for you. Make things happen; don’t wait for others to offer opportunities.   Follow up.  Don’t wait for the phone to ring.  Pick up the phone and call.

My favorite from the above list is “Leave Home” because I am addicted to travel.  I am the girl who has maps with pins sticking out of them, where I’ve been and where I’ll go.  It is the wondrous passion of mine that I can almost entirely blame for the crippled status of my bank account.  I’ve been around Europe a time or two and I can’t get enough.  Spring of 2008 I spent the semester in Granada, Spain.  And that is when I did my best writing.  Steve McCurry is right: if you never push yourself beyond what you know, then you’ll never have much to share.

I leave you with that.  Hopefully you enjoy Steve McCurry’s work as much as I do.  Now go and be inspiring.

I’ve taken a job hostessing.  For the most part I like it, meet lots of intriguing people, and carry on the good name of a downtown institution.  The only bothersome part of it, really, is that I spend my day waiting for customers to open the door and send a blast of freezing cold air at me (god bless blizzards), then smile and thank them for it.  How long ’til spring?

Also, I help out at my uncle’s graphic design business – I’m the “cutting operator” meaning I trim booklets all day long.  My hands are covered in papercuts.  Apparently I am very prone to papercuts.  You think I would seek alternative employment of my time.  Nope.  I am a (cold) writer and bookworm who cuts back at the offending paper.

It makes for paychecks.  I always said that once I graduated college I would schlep through the unglamorous jobs to survive, build my bank account and wile away my free days building my portfolio.  My sister bartended after college, my dad substitute taught a bit, my best friend worked at Staples for a time.  These schlep jobs are the average youth’s rite of passage.  And so I smile and cut, semi-happily.  Sadly, though, my plan is yet one-third complete; both my bank account and my portfolio are stagnated.  Every penny earned is spoken for before the check clears the bank, which frustrates me greatly at times.  Worst of all, said frustration is a persistent and dutiful writer’s block… I’ve barely written anything since graduation.

Writer’s block is a deadly opponent, as any writer who stumbles across this blog of mine well knows.  This blog itself is Solution 1, a two-fold tactic: vent and write.  Here, I spill the malevolent frustration of mine into words.  I’ve always trusted the power of venting, ask my sister.  Pace the room, throw your arms about with abandon, ignore your grandmother’s disapproval of foul words and rant until you can take a deep breath.  It’s a great cure for a contrary disposition.  But with such a persistent frustration as broke-ness, a highly energized venting session gets old for your faithful listeners, and tiring for your arms.

So I sit down to write out my problem to you, kind computer screen.  And what do you know, I’m writing again!  Hopefully, once I’ve sussed out my own issues, I can return to those of fictional companions I have yet to write.  If that doesn’t work soon, I’ll have to come up with a Solution 2…

Wrong.  This very informative major you’ve picked knows about itself well enough, but not necessarily the world off-campus.  Not you and your experience.  Not the failing economy.  And not how employers are changing their standards to survive hard times.

I studied English.  Good, solid, round education.  Everyone needs someone who knows how to write, right?  That’s what they told me, anyway.  Well, it turns out people DO need a writer.  A super-writer.  A writer 5-to-7-years-experienced versed in InDesign, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Twitter, marketing, business, a minor in a scientific field of your choosing (preferable, not required), 18 different style manuals, and willing to work for $5 an article.  Awesome.  Maybe I exaggerate a tad on some of those last ones, but that doesn’t change the fact that people have cut corners and now expect two jobs worth (at least) out of their writers.

So I will take some classes.  Not as in grad school – I worked hard to graduate on time, and I am not eager to go back into the life of full-time student.  I will take some community college classes here at my very own Anne Arundel Community College.  Five classes, twice a week, over four months, in strategic succession: Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, Adobe Acrobat, and how to apply them all into one website.  I walk away qualified, certificate in hand, in web design.  Once I’m certified, a whole new market opens up for me – web content writer and designer.  And bam! wouldn’t ya know… One step closer to super-writer.

For seven months, I’ve been free from university life and left unemployed in this spectacular economy we have carefully crafted.  I live at home again.  Home: a large house full of parents, older sister, and labradors.  All my family is within roughly an hour and a half’s drive.  My world seems small to me sometimes.  I miss when I lived in Spain for a semester, when I travelled to any place my bank account and passport stretched.  If I had a more impressive savings, I would will myself to move to Colorado or Bangkok or Munich.  I could easily be some newspaper’s lackey, some literary agent’s assistant, or teach English to a class of half-listening youngins.  Just scrap by while not-so-quietly expanding my world.

In the meantime, I’m off to chop firewood with my father.

More to come, new blog of mine.  Baby steps.