Category: ARTICLES

Photo by Ray Potes

I am throwing around the idea of making a “How to Make a Zine” book. It would have detailed instructions but it would also have some of these philosophies and random thoughts on photography and self publishing that I have written here on this blog. I started digging around and realized there’s not much to work with. So, I have to write more. So, I have to blog. And, you have to read it since you’re here anyways.

The first reason to make this book is obvs, people are asking me how to make a zine. There are 1 million ways to make one but this will be about the way(s) I like to do it. The second reason is less obvs, people know how to make a zine but they are stuck. All kinds of overthinking and procrastination. This is where we can re-visit some blog posts and/or write some new ones attempting to address the sticking points.

It can be impossible to un-stuck someone. I’m thinking I have some beans to share and they may be magical, but it’s up to you to grow the beanstalk, kill the giant, save the girl, and get the golden eggs.

Photo by Ray Potes

Some thoughts about photography today. I said and wrote before that for me, it’s not so much about “good” and “bad” photos, it’s about shooting regularly. I could never articulate this properly, now I know it’s because it is just half of a thought. The second half of it is the practice of expression.

We are trying (practicing) to express and communicate our particular story in this world frame by frame. The setting, the vibe, the main characters, the plots, and the subplots. Every photo we get off is like adding to our vocabulary which we use to help tell this story. And vocabulary isn’t “good” or “bad”.

I guess I am just trying to remind myself out loud to shoot everything all the time, if not for anything then for the practice of learning new words.

Photo by Ray Potes

On the Hamburger Eyes ig acct stories mode, I have been hosting a Q + A that has been pretty fun. In fact starting tomorrow we’ll do it regularly. So if you have any questions about anything, tune in on Tuesdays.

One of the questions from the last sesh was about what to do with a photo after it’s processed and scanned. At first I thought it was maybe sarcastic, but it wasn’t. I am realizing in this modern era, the finishing of a photo means many things to many people.

This has to do with the intended destination of your photo and the workflow that is needed to get there.

When I learned photography, a photo wasn’t “done” until you had a final print spotted flattened mounted matted and turned in on time. Your contact sheets and work prints were different from your “final” prints. I purposely made smaller sized “work” prints so I could scan them for my zines.

Fast forward to today and my photos still have the same 2 main destinations, either a print or a book, or both. Not every photo I snap, maybe 1 out of 25. Sometimes 1 out of 50 or 1 out of 100.

In school it was common to get critiqued and edited by peers and teachers before final prints. Posting on social media and my blog reminds me of this, these zones are sort of a testing place for a photo before decisions are made concerning a book or a print. (For me.)

This is how I arrived at my current process/workflow. You will arrive at your own. A commercial photographer’s finishing of a photo might be a billboard or the side of a bus, while a photo journalist’s might be front page of a newspaper or website. Both will have an entire process workflow system and sometimes whole teams to make it happen. Each photographer has their own thing and at this stage of the game, you will need to figure yours out.

Photo by Ray Potes

Happy New Year! Peace to you and all your peoples.

I have this battle in my head that makes me want to barf sometimes. Where one side is about doing more on social media and the other side is about doing more on the website. What happens is a stand still and everything is frozen for months or years at a time. (I have already written about this a bunch and have deleted and re-started multiple accts on multiple apps. I’m sorry.)

Today there is peace in this particular weird war. This pandemic and subsequent quarantine(s) have forced many realizations. The problem was never ig vs website. The problem was analog Hamburger Eyes vs digital Hamburger Eyes.

The digital side was originally built to service the sales of the zines and books, the analog side. What happens is the digital side does not sleep and is always hungry. And is always talking shit. It is a multi-headed monster of store, blog, site, ig, yt, etc.

The analog side tries its best to keep up by making zines and books and clothes and photography accessories as fast as financially possible, yet the digital side is never satiated. So the roles have now reversed and this makes both sides very sensitive.

The solution is to separate them. I have tried to kill the digital side on purpose multiple times, it won’t die. The economy has tried to kill the zines and books on accident multiple times, it won’t die.

We separate them by feeding them their own specific food and at their own specific feeding times. I am not sure exactly what this will look like yet. It could be as simple as more blog posts on the site (like this one, thanks to those who miss these writings) and more ig stories. Or it can be as complicated as submissions for site/ig (photo of the day, for example) and separate submissions for zines/books.

Obviously, as per usual, overthinking everything. Maybe the main point is that in these crazy isolated times, we need to connect and share more in as many ways as possible because we, you the photographers, are more important now than ever.

Photo by Zane Grant

I was going through old writings on here about making good photography. I’ve attempted to explain my thoughts about it and even set up some polls in order to come up with formulas but the data seemed inconclusive. (Referencing HERE and HERE.)(Actually this whole frigging thing is about seeking isn’t it?)

We have some ingredients but we don’t have the recipe. We can say there is a secret sauce of luck and magic when something turns out right. That’s what we are doing here is trying to define that sauce.

This speaks of universal truths in a photo that can transcend time and space. As well as transcend technical skill and experience, and emotional and mental conditioning. And most of the time the truth isn’t “good” or “bad” or is that simple to sort out. Which is why there are so many differences in taste.

If you pick any of the ingredients, let’s say “composition” for arguments sake, who’s to say how good it is? To grade it with a percentage, 51% towards good would still be an F. So objectivity vs subjectivity is really the argument. And these things change over time and space.

That infers that the viewership of an image in a particular time and particular space is what makes makes it “good” or “bad”. It seems moot, but it is correct to say that a photo cannot be “good” or “bad” until someone sees it. Including yourself (the person who shot it).

I know it’s not super useful to say that a bad photo is a bad photo because you showed it to the wrong person at the wrong time. But assuming you nailed the timing lighting composition mystery and wonder, none of that will matter if the person seeing it cannot appreciate any of those things. And that will depend on their relation to you or the subject matter as well as their state of being at the moment.

I’ve said before that a good photo is about the presentation of either the shooter’s story, the subject matter’s story, or a combo of both. Now we can say that a bad photo is one that isn’t telling those stories in a universally truthful way to the right person(s) at the right time.

What if the story is pure fiction though? Is it all fiction! Photography is not real. That’s for another writing. Photography is a recording and I’ll order mine with extra truth gravy on top, otherwise I’m not hungry.

Photo by Alex Herzog

Found it. I have been looking for an Android app to edit photos. I recently got a Chromebook ($250) so the hunt became more real for me. There are many and I think I like Snapseed the best. But that’s not what I am talking about. Photopea is the one. It’s not even an app, it is WEB BASED. This means all you need is internet and a browser and you can do all the main things Adobe Photoshop can do.

https://www.photopea.com/

And it is FREE.

I get a lot of questions about how to do stuff and am realizing there are a lot of barriers to entry into the game of publishing. I will start posting some of the tools we use or should be using. I like the Photopea because not a lot of apps have easy to use output controls. You need to output your photos at 300 dpi to have them print correctly.

This is a free Adobe Illustrator alternative. Starting to use this for making graphics.

https://vectr.com/

And this is a free Adobe Indesign alternative. I haven’t laid out a full zine with this yet and it does actually cost money to do more than 3 pages.

https://www.lucidpress.com/

I am really into the idea of web based software. Sure not as many features, but you have seen our layouts and really nothing but photos and photo credits so I don’t need a lot. I have a feeling that I can switch my entire workflow to Chromebook and cloud based computing. More on this as it happens.

Photo by Andrea Sonnenberg

I have lists of ideas for videos, podcasts, interviews, reviews, polls, etc etc. And of course everyone I know has even more ideas for Hamburger Eyes social media, contests, collabs, etc. all for the intention of getting more eyes onto the website. Attention that is.

Within that attention is embedded the dream of “more sales” and not hating on it, this is the arena we have willfully entered. But, as I have been many times before again and again, you get buried by this dream. You get overwhelmed by all this “content” that needs to be made.

Today I was thinking why haven’t I attacked anything on these lists yet. It’s because I just wanna look at cool photos and make some cool zines out of them. That’s it.

I think we forget to keep it simple. I realized that updating this blog is easy. I realized that making these zines is easy. Why make it hard? I guess what I am trying to say is that I have been spending a lot of energy brainstorming in the marketing department when really all the energy should go into creating in the production department.

I agree that we have to step out of our comfort zones to expand horizons, but I also agree that we have to build on our strengths.

The idea is to do more of what your good at. Lots more. So expect more bloggy updates and more zines. You already knew that.

(Just realizing we haven’t posted an “article” since April!)