swiftmoonphoto's avatar

swiftmoonphoto

Don't feed the reaper.
540 Watchers329 Deviations
64.8K
Pageviews

Seriously. How does an art site not know that other than square compositions exist? If a square composition was right, I would have shot it that way. If I wanted to be on Instagram, I'd be on fucking Instagram.

Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Not sure I'll last beyond the switch to Eclipse.  And not because I can't eventually make my peace with a new format.  But it's driving away the people I need to learn from.

Not that it really matters, this is more of an epitaph than anything.  Like I say, most of my friends here have moved along already.

A long time ago, this place helped me go from being a kid with a good eye to a legitimately good photographer.  My hope is to become great someday, but I don't think that can happen here anymore.  The mentors are gone, the dialogue is gone.  In its place is a click farm where you're lured to the next page instead of really interacting.

It used to be I could talk to the masters and learn from them. Now I basically just collect images with nifty light. 

Today DA is, at best, another social media ad-space for artists; and at worst, a weird bazaar where the occasional gem hides between image upon image of absurdly fat anthropomorphic "OC's" with foot fetishes.  (I assume this is something I'm too old to understand??)

Anyway, the switch to Eclipse is driving away the last of my friends and mentors ... And I have no advice on how to best draw fat rolls on a reindeer-person being tickled, so I think I may not have a place here anymore.

I hope a good photography community grows on the web somewhere else someday.  Because it really can't exist here.  I hope to see you there.

(Journal submitted in the original ugly DA green, call it my homage to 2013)
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
So I wanted to bury it.

Here's an idea.

Respond with an idea and I will reply with a photograph that represents that idea as well as I can manage.

Go nuts you psychos.

Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Woe is me.

The leaves are gone.
Sunsets are all gray.
The galactic center is on the wrong side of the globe at night.
I live too far south for Northern Lights. 
Bugs are all dead for the winter.
Flowers are all dead for the winter.
Nobody gets married in February.
I'm too poor to travel to alpine places.
That's an excuse
I'm really too fat and lazy to go climbing alpine places.

Not really "con" season.
And I don't really have a connection here who is into that sort of thing.
And I'm shy.

Deer don't like having things pointed at them this time of year.
That's fair.

Old war buddy is living in my "studio" until he finds work.
Not that that matters because:

Kids are tired of my shit.
Wife is tired of my shit.
Dog is tired of my shit.
Nobody wants to see pictures of my cat.

Paying some girl to get naked in my basement seems skeevy as fuck.
Would also make the wife super tired of my shit.

None of my friends are attractive young nudists who live in large well-lit places.
Way to drop the ball friends. 

Woe is me.

Brace yourself.
Macro tree blossoms are coming. 

Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In

Photography

4 min read

This is a photo I took almost ten years ago in Afghanistan. Hindu Kush by swiftmoonphoto  I was a bomb disposal technician in the Air Force largely working outside my training and skill-set. My team had been called to a little firebase in the back-hills of Zabul Province to dispose of some unexploded munitions, but the morning before I took this photo, a patrol was ambushed a couple miles from the base and was taking heavy casualties. There weren't really enough guys on the base to respond, so my EOD team went along to help as we could.  

Long story short, it was a pretty wild firefight. They gave us all medals and such.

But that's not really a photography thing, what is relevant to photography is this:

I always carried a crappy little point and shoot camera to help with the various reports that are required anytime you do anything over there. As I walked back onto the FOB I turned around to look at the valley where we had made our stand. Despite my understandably shell-shocked demeanor at the time, it looked pretty, so I took this picture.

A few days later, in the safety of a larger base I downloaded my photos to my laptop. When this photo came up I fell in love with photography.

Since then, photography has been a way for me to find beauty in a pretty violent life. It has kept me sane.

So my question for you in this discussion is:

What is the image that led you to photography?
And, what is the story behind it?
And, what does photography mean to you?



Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Featured

Hasn't been a Journal for a long while. by swiftmoonphoto, journal

Yeah. My Old Journal was Depressing by swiftmoonphoto, journal

Bored Photographer Problems by swiftmoonphoto, journal

Photography by swiftmoonphoto, journal

On Feminism by swiftmoonphoto, journal