Peacock Parade during the Solstice Parade © Jay Goodrich

Falling into complacency. Have you ever done it? Or are you doing it right now? As an artist you work extremely hard to better your career, better your offerings. In that focus do you ever forget the who, what, where, and why you decided to pursue this passion in the first place? Is it a steady income stream that brings it upon you? Or the love for the very thing you are pursuing? There are times that I, as a business owner, not only have to make decisions on a financial basis, but at times when I need to make decisions on a creative basis too. It is not an easy task, for the most part, the two do not go hand-in-hand. One can compliment the other and they can intertwine at times. Creativity may add more financial strain to the business than truly necessary, but I have found that if the idea does contain the slightest amount of potential over what is currently being offered by the “competition” the risk could be worth the price of admission.

Let’s say that you are a nature photographer. Have you ever considered photographing a wedding? Or ever tried? Did you like it or hate it? Was the decision made out of financial necessity or out of something else? How about if you are a portrait photographer? Ever ventured out of your comfort zone? Maybe taken some images for an architect? If you have, you have realized that the way the other half lives isn’t as easy as some may think. If you have never ventured from your comfort zone you may be held in place by fear or possibly by saying you are completely happy with where you are right now-which I may even argue is a form of fear as well. Today, I am not going to tell you any of these options are wrong by any stretch of the imagination. “We can never see past the choices we don’t understand.”-The Oracle in the Matrix Revolutions.

What if you put all your apprehensions aside? Discarded fear. Discarded disbelief. And decided to give it a whirl. Change. Give change a try. Would you head down a completely different, unusual, exciting road or would life remain status quo? I am willing to bet, and I am taking this directly from experience, that life would become exiting. More exciting, in fact, than ever before. You would find new avenues to travel and these avenues would lead you to different places. And it is those different places that would give you even more opportunity. How do I know? Because I spent the last year doing just that. Changing Directions.

Today we are announcing a brand new website, one that follows some of the subjects and disciplines I have focused on in the past, but now there are many more. A change in direction, a change in subject matter, a change in style. And for me, a new look into the future. Take a few minutes to have a look around. Let us know what you think. And you can see it all very large. Maximize your browser window and get a little taste of the new Jay Goodrich. Big, bold, in the same light and in new light. And if fear of changing the size of your browser window gets in the way, don’t worry the site will scale to meet your needs. The adventure is beginning, all over again.

Canon 1DX Digital Camera Body © Jay Goodrich

I know everyone out there is waiting in anticipation to see the noise levels on the image files for this camera, but I need to set some ground rules so you understand where this test comes from. I am not a testing lab like DxO Mark. Nor am I going to shoot images of trinkets and do-dads on a gridded platform in a controlled environment. All of those tests as far as I am concerned, are useless. Why? How many photographers out there shoot that way? I shoot adventure and architecture imagery – my studio is indoors at times, but for the most part it is not. The environments in which I work are where I need to test a piece of equipment; I don’t need to test them taking pictures of my kids’ toys. So a lab test will probably confirm something different than I would.

Also, I do not shoot Nikon. I know that Nikon is heralded for their noise capabilities, but again, how does that help me if I shoot Canon and have thousands of dollars tied up in Canon equipment? On a side note, you can read about my struggle with the decision to switch from Canon on my blog from last year, and why ultimately I decided to stay. This is related to what you are about to read. In a nut-shell, I stayed with Canon for two primary reasons: my relationship with my rep, and the availability and diversity of Canon’s selection of lenses.

Ok, with that said, there a few more things you must know. I am not sponsored by Canon in any way. I have nothing to gain by posting this review except the knowledge that I obtained in creating it. I am not biased, but I am opinionated. And testing pre-production cameras is not a cool or glamorous job in any aspect. It’s more like a drug deal gone south. You get a phone call late in the afternoon. Caller ID is blocked. The caller says, “You can pick it up at 4pm.” And hangs up. You then head to the designated pick-up location and are handed a nondescript black bag with no outer markings on it. Inside is a camera body, battery, and charger. No manual, no white paper; you are essentially on your own. The camera has a label on the viewfinder marked “Sample”. Nothing gets you hooked like a sneak peak, does it? You quickly realize that you are not in Kansas anymore. I did manage to download a 50 page document on the auto focus, and if I didn’t hadn’t, this whole thing would have sucked big time. One last note- I was asked not to post any images that went beyond ISO 6400 because the camera I had was a pre-production model and nothing was finalized on it, especially the firmware.

So I have this camera in hand, now what? With only 48 hours, I am definitely not making a movie. I will leave that up to Vincent Laforet. I already knew that I wanted to test three aspects of the 1DX. 1. Its ability to render noise at higher ISOs. 2. Its autofocus capability. 3. Its new feature set. Let’s start from the bottom and work our way to the top.

There is a reason this camera has the “X” in its model number. Like Apple and many other companies out there, the X version correlates to many things. The tenth, the top, the eXtreme. In other words, it has typically represented a company’s highest offering at the given point of release. Everything from there builds to higher levels from the X position.

Once you put this camera in your hand you quickly come to the conclusion that something has changed. This camera is bigger than the current 1D Mark IV. It also weighs more. In a side by side comparison, with strap and battery installed, the 1DX weighed 3 pounds 8 ounces. My 1D Mark IV in the same configuration weighed in at 3 pounds 2.4 ounces. That’s a pretty significant change in weight. I am sure it comes from the fact that there is a third processor in there now, a different battery, and god knows what else. This camera feels bombproof though, and it sounds rock solid when you drop the shutter release. The shutter is noticeably quieter and very firm in its actuation.
The menus are similar to the 1D Mark IV, yet completely different. Canon has definitely thought through the layout of this machine. The menu system is way more intuitive-more so than ever before. You are going to need a PhD to understand the autofocus and its options. Thank you for the 50 page PDF on Canon’s website.

The other amazing feature is that almost every button on the body is customizable. Smaller hands? No problem- move the function to a different location. Coming from Nikon? No problem- match the locations of the similar features, including shutter and aperture adjustment locations and adjustment directions. There are many new button controls on this camera as well, and all of the operation ones are available in horizontal and vertical format. This includes the depth-of-field preview button.

Coming from a 1D Mark IV, I immediately fell in love with the full-frame sensor and the ability to use my 15mm Fisheye the way it was intended. Which leads me to overall image quality. This camera has a little feature in where the camera will pull chromatic aberration out of the image for the given lens attached. This works exceptionally well. Almost to the point of turning it off in Lightroom, but still not quite. And finally, Canon users now have in-camera multiple exposures as well as exposure merging. Since I didn’t have a manual this feature was a little harder to understand, but I did manage an artistic multiple exposure that I really liked.

Multiple Exposure Feature Canon 1DX © Jay Goodrich

Out I went to shoot what I shoot a lot of…mountain biking. Here is my auto focus test. A cool thing that Canon has added to the menu system is info availability on the more complex functions of this camera. If you are in a menu item such as one of the six preset auto focus functions and forget your manual at home, you can just touch the info button to get a definition of that function while you have it highlighted. This worked extremely well for me when in the field shooting guys that don’t do well with waiting around. I read the auto focus PDF before heading out, but as you learn how to use the auto focus in this camera it is imperative to have the “more info” available to you. It definitely takes time to get you used to this camera. It is EXTREMELY fast. To the point of going PLAID as they did in the movie Spaceballs. I found it hard to keep up. My first hour was spent missing shot after shot, scratching my head. Then it came together, and whoa! This ain’t like anything else that’s been done before. Like I said earlier, you will need to work this camera a ton prior to taking it out on a commercial flight.

Mountain Biking Canon 1DX Autofocus Test © Jay Goodrich

This camera has 61 focus points, and 41 of them are usable with most lens combinations and apertures – a major upgrade from the 1D Mark IV. The options here are limitless, and cover just about every conceivable aspect of autofocus shooting. Once I figured out enough to get the camera to work for me instead of continuously working for it, I was able to link together series after series of in-focus images. A fourteen image count was the longest. This camera’s shutter operates at 12 frames per second, meaning that keeping your subject in frame while shooting will only slow the thing down to about 10 frames per second. That is so unbelievably fast over my 1D that it was mind blowing for me to witness. Head over to our stock site to see that series of 14 images.

One other really cool option with this camera is in the view finder. You can turn every icon off to view just the subject you are about to shoot, or option it up one icon at a time to see everything. It is a true Heads Up Display (HUD) and can really help when trying to get used to the speed you are about to witness.

And finally noise. I know, I know, does this camera beat Nikon? I do not know, nor do I care anymore (see last year’s discussion). This camera does whole heartedly kick the crap out of my 1D Mark IV, probably by about 3 stops. I feel that ISO 3200 images need little to no post processing noise reduction, and even though I can’t show you ISO 12,800, 25,600, or 51,200, they will be usable too. Surprisingly, the ISO 51,200 images show more detail than the ISO 25,600 ones, although Luminance Noise is higher. Here’s the kicker, up to ISO 51,200 there is almost no Color Noise. Crazy! In comparing them with my current 1D, I can say that there is no competition. The high ISOs for this camera produce very few artifacts in the 5 digit ISOs, so as far as I am concerned Canon has succeeded ten-fold from their past equipment updates. I was told that the production camera will be even better.

Car Image Taken with Canon 1DX (click to enlarge) © Jay Goodrich

The included images were shot as RAW files and converted to JPEG for the web. I used Adobe’s Lightroom 4 to make that conversion, and I did not add any other adjustments to the file prior to export. I opened those TIFFs in Adobe Photoshop CS5 to zoom into 100% and then pulled a 2000 pixel crop out of that. Click on the image to see it enlarged to those dimensions. I am starting with ISO 400 and above because honestly, the image files below all look the same. I didn’t verify that I could post full res JPEGs for you to download, so I am not taking any chances in doing so. Notice how much detail the images possess even though Luminance Noise gets higher at ISO 6400. FYI-you can easily pull this noise out utilizing just Lightroom 4.

Car Image Taken with Canon 1DX at ISO 400 (click to enlarge) © Jay Goodrich

Car Image Taken with Canon 1DX at ISO 800 (click to enlarge) © Jay Goodrich

Car Image Taken with Canon 1DX at ISO 1600 (click to enlarge) © Jay Goodrich

Car Image Taken with Canon 1DX at ISO 3200 (click to enlarge) © Jay Goodrich

Car Image Taken with Canon 1DX at ISO 6400 (click to enlarge) © Jay Goodrich

So where do we go from here? I have to honestly say that this camera isn’t for everyone. And Canon obviously knows that with the recent release of the 5D Mark III. The same auto focus with slower frame rates for half the price. It does lack the weather sealing and other features, but for most it will do more than a better job for even the most seasoned veteran. So why buy the 1DX? For me it is because of the speed. The frame rates, followed up with an auto focus system that can clearly track those subjects at that speed is what I need. I also need that high ISO availability in the darkness of the forest when shooting those fast paced mountain biking subjects. If you are photographing wildlife or landscape, you could easily own the new 5D and never have any problems. But if your shooting style and subject matter require the speed, this camera delivers on another level.

With all this good is there anything bad? As far as I am concerned there are three drawbacks. Although they are not game changers for me, they might be for you. One is the price. Granted, the option set delivers, but competitors are still charging a lot less. The second drawback is weight. Almost a half pound heavier than my current 1D is still almost a half pound heavier than my current 1D. And third is the feature set. This is both the blessing and the curse. If you are not techno savvy, you will struggle with this camera for a bit longer. It is a complex piece of engineering, and you need to have a pretty firm grasp on technology to get along with it. Remember, you can always teach an old dog new tricks, but there is a definitely a learning curve to doing so. And make no mistake, 48 hours did not really have me past that learning curve, because I didn’t even touch the video side of this camera. There are many upgrades there as well, including the video file format, sound quality and level adjustments, and again the list goes on.

Canon has definitely produced a piece of equipment that deserves the “X” designation. This camera is going to be their top performing professional still camera that the market sees. It also has strong video capability at a better price point than the newly announced 1DC. If you focus on stills rather than video, but still want great video options, and you photograph a lot of action, look no further. I am on board; 48 hours was enough time to get me addicted. I used up every minute of my “Sample” time for sure. In addition, we will be posting a gallery of mastered images from this past weekend on our main site with the original RAWs inset so you can see how far these images can go in the processing department. Our new website is scalable, so you will be able to see everything as large as 1800 pixels on the long side. It’s game changing time. Again. Consider this my “Sample” to you.

Crimson Sunset in the Cascades-Home and Sanity © Jay Goodrich

112,691 total images. I have looked through one hundred thousand images this past week. There is a small amount of drool hanging down from my mouth right now and I tend to knock my head up against the walls as I slowly use them as a balancing device. The drool streaks in the paint to some extent. I was in complete darkness. There was no light at any tunnel because I couldn’t see shit. Finally, after that week, there is a pin prick off brightness off in the distance. Why? Why would I search through the entire catalog blowing a week of my time. Putting everything on the back burner. Blowing off all of the friends. It’s okay, the fantasy snow year has decided to go away so skiing can wait right now. The sun has been out and it has been almost seventy degrees. I am stuck in darkness. This sucks.

Come next week this insanity will all probably be over and there will be a new prized jewel to show for it. A completely upgraded and updated website. All of the images will be organized for optimum SEO compatibility and all of them have for the most part never been seen before. It is a brand new portfolio. One that departs from who I have been, yet puts me exactly where I want to be.

All those images have been looked out, argued over, fretted about, discussed, thrown away, reinstated, moved, archived, keyworded, captioned, adjusted, mastered, and creatively thought through all in Adobe Lightroom 4 on a brand new Mac. It has been a struggle for sure, but now I am glad to cast the stone out there that something is about to be released. I cannot believe that I have over a hundred thousand photographs?! Those are the keepers. During this whole process we adjusted all of the metadata so we can make our first submission to our new stock agency and we have set a series of standards to go by for the future edits. None of this would be possible if we didn’t have Lightroom to help us manage the whole enchilada. I want a beer and a shot now damn it.

As I move forward from this project into the next, I will be able to pick up speed. Images now have more data attached to them and they will be even easier to find. Our video clips will have all of that same metadata and we can chop some of the clips to get them ready for imports into Premier Pro. I never thought that my business would hinge so heavily on one single software for its organization. I never thought I would be looking at such a large collection of images either. Finding simplicity is no easy task these days, but Lightroom has managed to help by pointing the way to that brightness somewhere off in the distance. I remember a construction client of mine many years ago asked me if I knew what the KISS principle was? I looked at him like a puppy about to pee on the carpet. “You mean like kissin’ ur sister?” No dummy, Keep It Simple Stupid. I try to live by those words every day. Mostly, the principle challenges my wits to its fullest extent, but moments of clarity do prevail. Always with the help of some friends. More soon.

The Painted Hills at Sunrise Mastered in Lightroom 4 on iMac © Jay Goodrich

Last year I wrote about storage issues that my office was facing. At the time, making decisions on how to approach the problem wasn’t a simple task. Recently, a new issue arose. A much graver one. The complete demise of our main workhorse computer – a five year old Mac Pro. At the time it was purchased it was a beast, the best we could get. It screamed…Like a Lambo on the TV show Top Gear. In the last few weeks though, it just decided its time was up. The slow down. High Speed Racer to needing a walker to bed ridden in mere days. What was happening and could we survive this next issue? More importantly could our bank account?

At first, I thought it was the Drobo. We had some wireless mouse issues early on that forced us connect it via eSATA instead of USB 3.0, so I thought this device was now producing another issue. It probably had a little bit to do with it, but not everything. The next thing was the addition of Lightroom 4. Again, at first nothing really seemed amiss here either. It was after about a week of running it as our main editing software that we saw the main slow down. Was it to blame? Again, yes, but not entirely. We headed back further and made the connection with the new operating system. Lion. Nothing went wrong when we installed it contrary to everything that we had read. It went much smoother than anticipated. Here is where it all comes together though. The sum of all its parts. All the upgrades combined, all created for faster machines, newer machines, the top of the line machines even, and our trusty Mac Pro go its chest caved in. One collapsed lung, followed by another, then heart failure. It didn’t help that I was adding thousands of new images at time, boosting the collection to close to 120,000 images now.

Here is where our next major dilemma entered the room. Apple hasn’t upgraded the Mac Pro since 2010. Almost a full two years to the date at this point. Could we hold out? They say that you upgrade when you need it. If something new comes along and you aren’t in need at that point, wait until you are. We humans are so technologically dependent and crazed at this point that we tend to just upgrade at the release of the latest and greatest when in fact if we wait, we truly will save some much needed dinero. My office was not only in the need scenario, but the crisis one as well. When you utilize a main computer day in and day out for running a business need becomes a serious reality, and upgrading to essentially two-year-old technology didn’t make the most sense.

Earlier this year I traded in the fully-loaded 17 inch Mac Book Pro for a fully loaded Mac Book Air and have never looked back. I am still completely in love with the Air. Super light and super fast, even if the bench tests don’t prove it, this computer feels way faster. It runs Lightroom and Photoshop without any problem. I think again, because of newer technology. And my external portable Thunderbolt drive is shockingly fast. Here is where the decision making heads to an even weirder decision. One that anyone who knows me never would have thought. iMac. Technology that is less than a year old and again lighter, portable, and more self-contained. But would it be fast enough?

Answer. We are back! The key here is again a sum of parts. The iMac is a less upgradable solution than the Mac Pro. And for that you receive a major bank account savings. So the key is to purchase it loaded with all its upgradability included. So we are now running a 27 inch iMac with 32GB of RAM, a 2TB internal hard drive, iCore 7 3.4GHz processor, and…a brand new Lacie 6TB Thunderbolt Big Disk as our operating storage. It screams and I now try to keep my thought processes up to speed with it instead of waiting while the machine struggles along to make it work.

The beauty of this whole system is that it takes up much less room. Life is simple the way Apple wants it to be. The same way I want it to be. One cable plugged into the back for the hard drive and we are done! Of course there are always draw backs. Many critics hate the glossy screen for reflectivity. I concur. I however do not have this machine in a room that is lit by a ton of daylight. The resolution and clarity of images on the display are mind-blowing in comparison to my old 30 inch Cinema Display. Working off of an external Thunderbolt hard drive is so fast I can’t tell that it is connected to my computer via a cable. Video streams without any hesitation. I am sure the RAM and processor have something to do with this as well, but a benefit is a benefit.

Any other downfalls? Well, when this machine slows down, it is done. There really isn’t anything to add. Unless they start producing SSD drives in the 1TB range that are affordable. And when the 6TB external drive is full, there currently isn’t a larger replacement via Lacie. I have heard way too many bad reports about the Pegasus drives to even consider that route. These are all things that will change in time I am sure, but for now I am working in peaceful harmony with my technology once again. Oh, and the Drobo? Well it has become the backup of everything. All computers in the office send their entire hard drives to it. The world is covered in the corporate headquarters of Jay Goodrich Inc. For now? Okay, on to the new website, stay tuned.

Owen Dudley Skiing Out of Darkness Mount Baker Washington © Jay Goodrich

I stood there looking at myself in the mirror. The scene unfolding was reminiscent of a Hunter S. Thompson novel. Gritty face. Bloodshot eyes. A general foggy demeanor spiraling around my hungover head. The girl that was to become my wife was lying naked in the bed behind me. It was my first commercial photo shoot, there is absolutely no reason that I should be feeling this way. I grabbed for the Advil, Alka-seltzer, and water, need water. My tongue felt like I was a cat preparing to cough up a hairball. It is safe to say there were sweaters covering my teeth. I heard the music of last night’s party still ringing in my ears. I vaguely remember some nakedness to the point of mild porn in the gondola last night with hand-held flash going off as random as a dance strobe in a techno bar, but the fog was doing its best to hide any and all of those embarrassments. Did I really take it this far? I mean, I got paid to do this to myself. This was only a wedding for god’s sake. Was this going to be the rest of my life and career?

Almost two decades later, I was in the same place. A mirror, in a bathroom, with sweaters on my teeth. In Vancouver this time, not Vail. Yes, I was shooting an assignment. This time about the Olympics and ski dirtbags. It’s good to see that many things have changed and many things have not. I am married with two kids now. My wife told me to go and have fun. This wasn’t feeling much like fun. The dirtbags woke me up off of my couch at about 2am as the whole party went nuclear. Much like the light porn I still vaguely remember from the wedding in Vail so long ago, it began with a concept, a contract, and unlimited handshaking, touring, and of course skiing. I only remember my friends prying my eyes open and asking if I was awake. The smell of spilled red wine, tequila, and beer permeated the condo. We were supposed to ski today and the snow was falling out of the sky like never before on this journey. Very similar to the brain cells that were littering the floor before me.

My life consists of writing, photographing, and family. Sometimes there is a little sleep thrown in there, but most times not. I pushed for this career, I dreamt of it, I wished for it, and there are many times that the dream of frolicking through the wild flowers without a care in the world turns into the Freddy Kruger of nightmares. Like I have always said and probably always will, lob the grenade into the room first, then head in, resurrect the broken and busted survivors to do it again on another day. Would I change my life? Sometimes there are parts that I would. Spending more time with my family so they don’t hate me so much, and trying to be a better man, I seem to be caught in the phase of always trying. I am standing on the precipice of 15 years as a professional photographer and writer and I am only truly scratching the surface of that lifestyle and occupation.

Many ask me how I do it? They want the remedy to fix their dreams, hopes, and career paths. My advice is always-Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you cannot do something. Envision it and go after full-tilt, like you were running from that brown bear and your life depended on it. The results will be shocking, almost to the point of perfection, if you stay away from the psychotic episodes. I have brought my entire personal life to my career and vice versa. I live the dream and the nightmare, every day. It is safe to say that tomorrow I will drop another monster backcountry line full of cold smoke powder and on Sunday will be shooting another hotel for Hilton. It’s all about living in balance with the world, nature, family, and concepts. Some days it’s as perfect as three feet of consolidated, bonded, trackless powder and other times that it is as rotten as a freezing trend after ten inches of rain. It is safe to say that tomorrow, I will fix the hand grenades of today and the cycle will continue. Inevitably.

Burned Koa Trees on Mauna Kea Hawaii © Jay Goodrich

There are millions of fetishes out there. Sexual. Professional. Libational. Nutritional. We humans all have our weaknesses. Hell, I even heard of woman who is obsessed with drinking gasoline. Gasoline? Every day is a learning experience I guess. My first encounter with a tree was when I was about five. We had this slanted maple in the front yard of my parents house that just begged to be climbed. It was an early spring day at age five that I climbed that sucker for the first time. I remember it so vividly, blue hooded sweatshirt, jeans, white Nikes with a red stripe. I remember the knees scraping along the bark as I squatted my way up that thing. Lime green budding leaves of spring. Blue skies with high puffy clouds. A brisk breeze in the air. Maybe my obsession started there? Are there any kids that don’t love to climb trees? I think it is a right of passage. Those trees got bigger and bigger as we got older and evolved into other trials. I went to bikes, then to skis, then to rock, and then full circle again.

Deep Snow at Mount Baker Ski Area © Jay Goodrich

For the last twenty years of my life, one of my main obsessions has been photography. I have lived it, breathed it, fretted over it, cried over it, and fought it exclusively every day. I can tell you that if you can visualize it, visualize anything, you can make it happen. Think about the placebo. P.O.S. The power of suggestion. Maybe that is where our fetishes come from, a place we cannot stop turning deep in the folds of our gray matter. A reality we just need to taste. Day in and day out. “It’s like acid in your veins.” Maybe. Those freakin’ trees of my youth have become somewhat of a fetish of my adulthood. If I have a camera anywhere near me, I am going to shoot the shit out some poor tree somewhere in the world. I spent days working trees in China, an afternoon in a backyard quiver in Hawaii, weeks of bristlecones and pinyons in Colorado, and now the firs and maples of the Pacific Northwest. I can smell those twisted and gnarled formations of Big Sur the second I exit the plane in San Fran-like a bloodhound on an escaped con.

Foggy Winter Forest Washington © Jay Goodrich

It is safe to say that trees do it for me. I am a whore for them. What is it? Their lines. Shapes. Trees are sexy. You can spend hours on just one seeking a literal composition or breaking it down to the most abstract of forms. Broken lines, smooth lines, crooked lines, disrupted lines, burnt lines, dead lines, living lines, limitless. I can’t stop nor would I ever want too. Maybe some day, somewhere I will be able to put them to rest, but for now the obsession continues. I can’t wait to see what I will find out there in the forest tomorrow, or the next day, week or month. I know they will be there sitting waiting for me to train my eye on them, not with hatchet or saw, but with a black box full of technology. My friends are now getting into it too. Whenever we are out shooting they point out what they think might make a good composition and inevitably they are fueling the fire. A bonfire now with gallons of gasoline thrown on it.

Cactus and Pinyon Single Track Mountain Biking © Jay Goodrich

In a way maybe the need for those trees is my way of exploring a little environmentalism? They do create the oxygen we need to breathe and they need our CO2. We are destroying them by ten-fold on a minute by minute basis. And in turn we will probably destroy ourselves. Plant the trees. Save the trees. If for no one else then a self-proclaimed professional photographer, writer and tree whore. Ok. I need to go have a cigarette. I hope that was as good for you as it was for me. If you need to find me, I have a date with some wood, out in the woods.

Koa Tree Wind Hawaii Volcano © Jay Goodrich

The Original RAW Without Adjustment © Jay Goodrich

If you ask my wife, she will tell you that I am the moodiest person on the planet-ridiculously happy one minute and ready to end it all at a moment’s notice the next. Those mood changes surprisingly change my creative disposition, and not only the way I take photographs, but the way that I process them too. You can create mood in the field during different weather conditions or you can create different moods when processing your images after the fact. How do we go about this?

Shooting in the field is definitely the hardest of all the scenarios to generate mood because you are controlled exclusively by your environment. If you head out to photograph on a clear, cloudless day, the mood of your photographs will differ drastically from a day when you head out and everything is enshrouded in fog, or it’s raining, or snowing, or even clearing as the sun is setting. All these scenarios give your photographs very distinct and different moods. At the same time, you can change that mood while processing them too. Now generating a mood within your frame, can truly be limitless.

Think about the direction of processing your image. You can process an image darker to promote a more thought provoking view or lighter to cheer up your viewers emotions. The same holds true when adding color. Blues are cooler, thus driving a more inward feeling, while warm tones can promote a positive mood. You can add grain to add confusion. Add sharpness to add clarity. Blur parts of your image to change your viewers focus. And in the same thought you can combine of any of the previous mentioned techniques as well.

My photographic mission has been changing pretty rapidly lately and now Adobe’s Lightroom software is more of the mainstay image adjustment tool than Photoshop. This is happening because of two reasons. One, most of the editors that I am currently working with will not even accept a file out of Photoshop. It must be a RAW converted to a DNG. Lightroom allows me to make image adjustments and still export a DNG that looks the way I intended, but also allows my editors to see the original file for verification of its validity. Interpretation–NO MERGED IMAGES ALLOWED! And two, I don’t have a ton of time, so if I can create it in camera and then process it quickly, I then can move on to the next project.

Mastered RAW Completed in Lightroom with Dark Mood © Jay Goodrich

For those of you that aren’t in the mood to give it a try maybe the included image will get you there.

Mount Shuksan in Winter © Jay Goodrich

Join Jay as he highlights how he uses the Library Module in Lightroom 4 and multiple Nik plug-ins to simplify his creative vision tomorrow at 10am PST. Jay will cover some of his Lightroom cataloging and digital asset management techniques, as well as how he integrates Nik plug-ins, like Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2, into his current image processing workflow.

(Please note that the first 1,000 attendees to join the live webinar can attend and there are only about 100 spots left!)

Register on the Nik Webinar Website to attend the class.

In addition, you can now receive a 15% discount on any Nik Software by entering my discount code of “goodrichnik” during your checkout.

Owen Dudley going Holga in Washington © Jay Goodrich

Have you ever heard of a Holga? Or Lomography? The Holga might go down in history as the biggest piece of shit plastic camera ever produced. And it was made in and for the country who is notorious for producing cheap crap replicas of reality–China. At the same time though, they produce pure perfection like the Mac Book Air I am typing this post on. Lomography grew out of a similar trend. This time with a piece of crap Russian camera. Both of these tools had a lot of things in common, mainly their light leaks and cheap fabrication, and it was primarily these two features that surprisingly allowed them to grow a cultish following among photographers. If you knew your camera leaked light along the top horizontal edge, you could effectively compose for it and use its disadvantages to your creative advantage. Much like Guerrilla Warfare.

I can already feel my purist colleagues rolling in their proverbially graves. What no multiple exposure merging? Disregarding image perfection. It is necessary to make sure that you eliminate the shadows and find detail in every part of the landscape. Your thought process is ludicrous Jay. You have fallen off your rocker. Maybe sippin’ a little too much of the Old Lady’s moon shine again are we? Maybe. But I am changing, not into a butterfly, I am developing my mission and viewpoint as an artist. And as this occurs, my likes and dislikes are changing as well. The world is far from perfect and I am beginning to believe that photography shouldn’t be perfect either.

Photography is becoming extremely sterile. And in that pursuit, so is the creativity, so is the style, and so are the images. I am seeing so many photographs of popular places in different light (albeit amazing light) with different compositions, but these images now possess almost nothing of interest to me. Is it because my growth as a photographer is turning me into a snob? I don’t think so. Is it because I am tired of looking at the places I have seen so many times prior. Probably not. I think it is because those images are becoming so typical in their style that they are benign. Lustless. Clean. I want True Grit or at least a grit that fits the subject.

I think this quest for perfection became a most sought after ideal as the film industry began to give way to the digital era. Companies like Fuji had films like Velvia with its ridiculously fine grain structure. They worked this engineering so hard because publishing techniques and secondary separations tended to blur/muddy the final outcome at that stage of the technology game. That mission of smoothing out film continued with noise in the digital sensor. Nikon has managed to surpass their heralded D3s with their forthcoming D4 in noise suppression. Now every image will be perfect and to the entering amateur that may in fact continue the sterilization process to the point of a photography demise in my opinion. There are times I want that noiseless perfection, knowing full well that I can junk it up if I so choose. So even at a time when photography is becoming sterile, I want a camera that can produce sterile as long as I can create T-Max 3200 with light leaks in the end.

Maybe you are striving for that image perfection like many others. Perfect light shining across some vast expanse as the sun kisses the horizon in an f22 starburst with just the right amount of pink clouds in the upper third of your composition. Ah yes. The perfect checklist of capturing one-stop exposures for your ability to join everything together in a two-hour Photoshop session. I know, I have been there, and sometimes still go there, although not that often anymore. I want grain. Simplified color. Or no color at all. Strong lines and textures. What I often thought I wanted was Jackson Pollock. Now I want Jay Goodrich–a recognizable situation, with abstraction mixed in to the point that you almost fall off of my view point, but somehow manage to stay connected as you see that point get driven right through the head of my subject like a vampire stake. I am going to take your checklist, crumple it up, and light it on fire. Why? Because I can. Now all you have to do is leave the cattle behind and come join me on the razors edge. I will have a mason jar full of black cherry moonshine waiting for you when you do.

Kids Destroy Photographic Print © Jay Goodrich

I have witnessed some major changes in photography throughout my career. I remember the days when you had no choice but to get the shot in the camera. If you missed, that was it, the scene was history. You took a chance every day that you set out on an assignment or a project with the film that you chose, the lenses that you carried, and all of the miscellaneous gear that you brought to accompany your specific mission. Now you have more options than ever. You have choices. “A little bit of variety.”–Natural Born Killers. You can create black and white images after the fact. You can process images as if they were shot with a Lomo camera. Even cross process or bleach bypass an image with a click of your mouse.

And now more than ever before, photographers are discussing, to the point of arguing, over the most minute technical limitations of every new piece of equipment that is being released. They tout those creating with iPhones. Complain about autofocus. Freak out over diffraction. Complain about noise levels in digital sensors. The list could take up this whole post. Does owning a brand new Canon 1DX make you a better photographer than me? Or Ansel Adams? Art Wolfe? Frans Lanting? Or any other pro out there? Or any other photographer out there? I recently read an interesting post by Trey Ratcliff discussing why he is not even interested in the brand new Nikon D4. Did you become a photographer to spend thousands upon thousands on equipment? Or is photography a true enlightenment for you? A creative passion? Is there a voice in your head that makes you see the world and create a picture because of what you see?

I say it often, and to many people, over and over again–simplify and free you mind. I cannot tell you how many images I have created with my iPhone that I truly love. In the same thought, I tend to use a specific tool for a specific task. I don’t create an HDR image because that is what the competition or trends are doing. Nor do I shoot with the most expensive Canon equipment for the same. In fact I am currently in the process of lightening up all of my all of my gear. I just purchased a thirteen inch Mac Book Air to replace my seventeen inch Mac Book Pro. I am switching many of my f2.8 aperture lenses to lighter f4 ones. Freeing my mind so my soul will follow. And I have to tell you it is an enlightening experience.

In the end do you want to be known for blowing your kid’s college education on camera bodies and lenses? Or do you want to be known for capturing a brief, fleeting moment in time that speaks to someone else’s soul? I will choose the latter every single time. And if you take all of my cameras away. Smash all of the computers. Burn all of the paper. Destroy all of the forests. I will keep those visuals I have seen through out my life, to myself and share those experiences through the campfire with only those closest to me. My life will always be complete. Now the biggest question is–will yours?