It has been a while since my last (Music to Inspire) post, so I thought I would feature one of my favorite bands The Civil Wars. I’m not exactly sure how I came across this duo, but I’m sure happy I did.
The Civil Wars are the combined talent of Joy Williams and John Paul White. Apart, they are both amazing artists with some of the best vocal cords I have heard in a long time, together they are absolutely f-in amazing. One of my go to songs is The Girl with the Red Balloon off of their album Live at Eddie’s Attic. This song is kind of a contradiction for me. If you listen to the lyrics it is a rather sad story of a girl that has lost the love of her life (or something along those lines), but the guitar and vocals just lift my spirits out of even the darkest of moods. I find that when I get depressed or if I’m in an irritated state of mind it really hurts my work, so all I have to do is boot up iTune, throw on this song and I’m up and running again in the perfect frame of mind to create.
I really think you’re gonna dig this song. If I’m right, you will want to head on over to their MySpace page where you can watch some videos, listen to more of their work and download the above mentioned album Live at Eddie’s Attic. Also, don’t forget to follow them on Twitter(@joywilliams@johnpaulwhite and @thecivilwars) and hit up their Facebook page.
I guess I’ll just shut my yap and let you listen to The Civil Wars with their song The Girl with the Red Balloon
Ok, so you may be asking yourself “Why the hell is this guy posting a video trailer for a horror novel on a photography blog?”. That’s easy, it’s a perfect example of a community coming together to help out one of their own.
Lately I have been looking at my efforts in wedding photography and have noticed that I really need to do things differently. I have always taken my photography very seriously, but when it came to the business side I figured that all I had to do was follow the road map left by others that had made it. The biggest problem with this idea is that the map left behind by those successful photographers may have worked for them, but it isn’t going to work for me. I’m nothing like them, I have different strengths, a different personality, different work. I have fought to make my own way with my photography, to develop my own style, so why would I not do the same in the building of my business.
In my research of marketing, branding (more on my adventures in branding in a later post) and general business, I have been looking at other artistic industries. One field I have been very interested in lately, one that is actually fairly new, is serialized audio books.
Maybe I should give a little back story here. A few years ago I found this great place, Podiobook.com a site that offers free serialized audio books. What is a serialized audio book? Well quite simply, it’s audio book read most commonly by the author and released for free serially once a week/bi-weekly/monthly over the net.
As I was listening to all these great authors, I started to notice something kind of surprising, the authors of these audio books have created a very tight and supportive community. The different authors appear as voice characters on each others audio books and they have even teamed up to write, produce and perform audio books. In general they were promoting and helping each other out, a lot! If you listened to say James Melzer, there is a very good chance you had heard of or listened to the works of Mark Jeffrey, Mur Lafferty, Philippa Ballantine, Seth Harwood, Matthew Wayne Selznick, Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff or Phil Rossi. The community they have build together, all of them working together towards the same goal and supporting each other along the way has produced some amazing results
So what exactly have they done? Well look at Scott Sigler, late last year his book Contagious made it onto the New York Times hardcover bestsellers list. J.C.Hutchinson, the author who’s book is featured in that video at the beginning has had his last series, 7th Son, options by Hollywood and with everyone rallying behind his new book Personal Effect: Dark Art, I expect it to have a very good showing on Amazon. Not back for a couple of guys giving away their work for free eh?
I have talked about community before, I have talked about Twitter, Photography Forms, Facebook and the such, but what these guys and gals have done is truly amazing. It has made me realize that although I have participated in the photographic community to some extent, I need to step up my efforts to play a larger roll in the photographic community, not just locally, but internationally. Thank God for the internet!
Talking about helping out and promoting fellow artists, I wouldn’t want to leave you without mentioning James Melzer’s new audio book, The Invasion coming June 17th. The Invasion is the second book in The Zombie Chronicles. I listened to the first installment, The Escape and it was amazing! Zombies, aliens, clones, how could you go wrong?
I was introduced to No, Really by the Creative Commons music website Jamendo, if you are ever looking for music to inspire, I highly recommend stopping by and check it out.
What can I say about No, Really…Well to start Hannah Clemens, Ms. No, Really herself, has the voice of an angel. It says in her bio on Jamendo that her goal is to get people to stop what they are doing and listen, well she does just that. The first time I came across her music, I had to listen to her album Rust from start to finish while doing nothing. Even now I will be editing and one of her songs will come across iTunes and I have to stop.
I have gotten tons of inspiration from No, Really and I hope you do to. One of my favorite songs from the album Rust is a mellow number called Go. So sit back, close your eyes, press play and enjoy.
When I started this blog last year I was fully intent on using it for the sole purpose of promoting my wedding photography. But, like with everything in life, it is evolving. To be truthful, I have no idea where this blog is going, I do know it will still include my wedding related work and it’s main focus will still be to give you a look into the life responsible for producing the images you see on this blog, but I just think it won’t be keeping the strict guide lines of only featuring wedding related material. I’ve never done well with guide lines anyways, I have always had a hard time keeping the colour inside the lines, I seem to want to go off in another direction.
One of those directions I do want to go off on is inspiration, it’s a big subject in the world of photography right now. I think with the countless website talking about and showing you the technical aspect of taking pictures, the more advance photographer is looking for more. They know about lighting, composition, exposure, shutter and aperture settings. They know how to take a picture, but now they are running into the problem of what pictures to take.
I’m the furthest you can get from being an authority on the subject of photography or inspiration, that is why I am not planning on pretending to be one, but I can talk about my own personal skirmishes in the battle for inspiration. And today I think I’ll be starting with one of the bigger influences in my road to inspiration…Music.
I have heard many creatives say that they use music as inspiration, there is just something about the right music playing in your ears that gets the creative juices flowing. As it turns out some of my favorite photographers are real music junkies, taking every chance they can get to have music playing. I for one know that having the right tunes playing while I’m editing or planning a shoot can really help.
With all that in mind I have decided to start featuring music that hits home with me. When i hear a song that gets my neurons jumpin’ I’ll share it here on the blog. Hopefully I’ll be able to give you a better look into the workings of my creativity and maybe even introduce you to some new favorites.
So lets get start, today’s song “Some one turning” is by the Canadian band Arctic. You can check them out at http://www.projectarctic.com/ and follow them on Twitter. Hope you enjoy!
