*Still going crazy after all these years w/ @BUMtheBand

 

BUM live at the High Line in Seattle

Having spent my formative years, growing up in the 90’s, I’ve always felt my generation was somewhat skipped over when it came to culturally defining moments.  Sure we witnessed many notable, global events, but when it came to a statement or generationally demarcating movement, we seemed to fall short.  We existed between the calamities of the Bush presidencies, and lived through a decade of relative peace and economic stability.  Capitalist commercialism seemed to be figuring out how to reach every corner of the alternative culture, and we struggled against that tide.

We were also a generation that had to navigate through some pretty horrendous fads, and quite possibly the shallowest pool of pop music talent that has yet existed during a decade length span.  Along came the grunge revolution which at the time for those of us too young to understand the influences, seemed cool, different perhaps, but the voices that spoke loudest to me and my group of friends weren’t coming through the radio, or television and we liked it that way.

 

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*Congratulations to Othman Kammah for winning April’s Flickr Photo Blog Contest!

Prelude

“Strings” by Othman Kammah

Thank you to everyone who has voted, and to all who’ve submitted.  With a tight vote, Othman has won our second monthly Flickr Photo Blog Challenge and will have his image submitted to the winner’s bracket.

Please visit Othman on Flickr HERE, befriend and congratulate him and enjoy his photography.  With each month, our growing network and photographic family expands.  If you’d like to be part of our community, you already are.

Othman will get to choose our next theme so please stay tuned.  Thanks as always to Heather and Mat at Mirrorlessons.com for the coordinated effort and stay tuned on Flickr in both the TRP (here) and ML (here) groups to add submissions to this month’s challenge.

We have decided to do a giveaway after 6 months where we will all vote for our overall favorite from the 6 monthly winners, so you have 4 more chances 🙂

Cheers and happy shooting everyone!

Tyson

*Vote Now for the winner of our second Monthly Flickr Photo Blog Challenge; Music!

Prelude

“Prelude/Strings” by Othman Kammah (Click HERE to visit Othman)


Little Hurricane

“Little Hurricane” by Bill Bowdish (visit bOw_phOto on Flickr HERE)


A Ukulele in Black and White

“A Ukulele in Black and White” by Gene McDaniel (see more from Gene HERE)

The poll will run until Monday, May 5th and the photo with the most votes between the poll below and the Mirrorlessons Poll HERE will get to choose our theme for May.  If you haven’t been involved in our monthly challenges, we’d love to have you join up and in the mean time, vote for your favorite on both sites!

All you need to do is find us on Flickr in the TRP Group HERE and the MIRRORLESSONS Group HERE, submit your images to the respective monthly challenge threads.  Heather, Mathieu and I choose our faves then any and all of our site readers get to vote.  We feature the three finalists and winner via posts on our respective websites as you see above with links to your flickr page and any websites you’d like us to, so get your imagery seen by the thousands of daily viewers between our sites and help by inspiring our entire community through creative and inventive themes and shots!

Vote for your favorite, and feel free to link and lobby for your choice.  The more folks we can involve in this process, the better and more diverse our family becomes.  We are also discussing possible giveaways for semi annual, or annual champions, so, FREE STUFF!

Thanks to everyone that submitted this month, and I hope we can continue to build this movement going forward.

All the best, and happy shooting!

tyson

 

*Can’t we all just get along? Music, photography and the common ground.

Tornadoonfireinspace

Let me start by saying this is an opinion piece, as much of what I write is.  I’m not looking to legally council nor reprimand, or cite the intricacies of international copyright law.  I’m no lawyer.  I am however a musician and photographer with mixed levels of success in either arena, and I have found some of the recent battles being waged by bands, managers, fans and photographers to be somewhat disheartening.

I like to read through various sites daily to keep up with the goings on and such.  Over the last few days, it seems there is a war brewing between a small pocket of the music industry and photographers.  I speak of course about the recent copyright battle between photographer Rohan Anderson and the band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (you can read through the article that I read HERE on PetaPixel for all the fun, juicy details if you’re not yet aware).  Then, seemingly in response, Shawn Hamm, the tour manager for Three Days Grace went on a twitter tirade condemning photographers and their claims to compensation for any intellectual property they may think they are entitled to by way of shooting bands (you can again read the PetaPixel article on that one HERE).  Of course, I’m paraphrasing, and will leave my opinions on these individuals and bands (and their behavior) aside to focus more on my opinions at large regarding the mingling of various artistic industries.  Come on in for my thoughts, and the ability to add your own…

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*Welcome to the ELK Collective, creative collaboration realized.

The dream of many hard working creative professionals is one born of independence, creative control, self direction, recognition and collaboration with artistic minds enabling a motivating force to push you forward in your craft.  There is something to be said about being your own boss, setting your own hours and managing your own business, but this requires you to be a tireless jack of all trades.  You must master the business side and all that goes along with it all while maintaining a creative drive, not to mention drumming up business.  It is easy to burn out, or fall into a rut, ultimately sacrificing something along the way.  What if you could gather great friends, all working in various creative fields with complimentary skill sets to collaborate on projects which benefit greatly from each individual part, making a much stronger whole?  I would like to introduce you to the ELK Collective… C’mon in.

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