Film
I have had a number of questions and comments from readers lately asking about my film work and wondering why I am not making desktops from it. Its something I have talked about in the past but its been a while since I have brought up the subject so I thought I would make some sort of statement about it. I don?t mind at all when people ask for anything, in fact, I encourage it really. Any time any of you readers have any questions or requests or something you feel like talking about just ask. Im just me, there is a person behind fifty foot shadows and I certainly don?t bite.
So about my film work. When I first started to shoot film again I was getting some shots that I thought would make for great desktops but the scanner I had was just no where near good enough for me and I simply was not satisfied with its ability to scan things at a high enough resolution to make desktops out of. Then as time went on something started to change about the way I looked at my film work and I came to feel something for a lot of the photos I was taking and I started to feel more and more guarded about the photos.
I started to shoot film because I started in photography learning in a darkroom and eventually I found that I really missed shooting this way. After buying my Canonet rangefinder I found I was in love with film all over again. It helps me focus more while I am taking photos and I feel like I am re-discovering the world around me. The photos I am getting with film are wonderful and they feel so alive to me. I have finally found that soul within the photos I am taking that I have been searching so long for.
While some of my film images would lend themselves to make great desktops I find that I am not quite as willing to give them all away at higher resolutions. I have started to see a collection building in my mind and maybe, finally, a chance to bring ideas together to build something from the images I am taking. In order to keep the value of these I feel I need to reserve the way they are distributed for printed methods. As a collection I would be able to present the images not simply as a random assortment of nice looking photos but as more of a work as a whole.
All that said, I still love my readers and so I will pick a few of my film shots commonly requested as desktops and see what I can do. I will do that as soon as I have time to re-scan them with a nicer scanner that I have around now. Sorry if this seems long winded, I would love to talk more about my personal connection to film and my plans for photography in the future but its still forming in my head. So check back soon and again, thanks for the interest and support.
Tech Note
I just changed the structure of the links on the site so some previous links and things may be messed up. Im sorry for that sudden change, I didnt think about it before I switched it over but this way links are much more direct and easy to remember, write, and follow and I would rather just switch now than wait until the site gets more and more visitors and develops further…
Thanks everyone for bearing with the change and I’m sorry if it broke any previously existing links! I hope I didnt loose to many of you from that change!
Heres to a tidier future…
So it begins…
Here we are. A new year with new opportunities, new chances, new risks, and new inspirations. Everything around me is changing. Work, friends, the planet, love, life, everything. The past year was a transition into this one. 2008, I feel, will be a year to remember somehow. The year when everything changed. I feel that I have been climbing and climbing and I have reached the peak of whatever this mountain is called. The view is wonderful from here and I can see that the path ahead looks beautiful. Don’t mean to sound to melodramatic here… 
Anyway, with all of this freshness I found that it would be a perfect time to dive right into something new with my online presence. My old site, twistedsun.net served me well for years and years and years but there was always something in that project that never felt quite right. I tried countless things to be happy with it but I never felt fully satisfied by it so I have decided to leave it behind. Let it sit as a memorial to the time that was spent on it and the thousands of people who wandered through its halls.
Why the change? Why take something that had grown that much and throw it out? Simply put, its time for a change. I have been talking about it forever it seems. I would hint and grand new projects all the time on the pages of twistedsun.net but life always somehow got in the way of me taking the plunge. Something always held me back somehow. Sometimes time, sometimes motivation, but here I am. A new beginning.
So, John, whats going to change? Surely you wont stop putting out desktops right?… right!? Nope, desktops will still be a key feature within my online presence. I love to share images with people in this way and I will continue to do so both my own images and hopefully still the occasional guest image. The only difference really will be that the desktops will all be incorporated into the main blog. I have decided to let the categories be well defined and therefore easy to use as quick jumps to the type of content you want to see here on the site.
I will be getting things started right with desktops using images from my recent trip to Europe which just so happens to have been the catalyst for all of this change in my mind. I think I will release images in packs of desktops and some will most likely already be up and available by the time I announce this site to the world officialy.
So all of this out of the way I hope everyone enjoys the new look and the new name. The look of the site has been through a lot of tweaking and trial and error but it has finally settled in my mind. The idea is to make the content king of the site. I wanted photos to be bold and obvious and the navigation to be unobtrusive and out of the way. I can’t thank my friend Dave Jansen from foreverlost.net enough for all the help he has given me with the theme here. He was the one who got the great java menus just the way I wanted and helped tame a picky footer and just kind of cleaned up after the mess I made!
Ok, surely this is not the end of the introductory chatter but I just wanted to clue everyone in on my thoughts as all of this change around here is happening.
So here is to a new beginning, and to change, and to happiness and everything else good in this world.
Heres to the future.
-john