A Little Something

I always like to give away things this time of year as way of giving back to everyone that has shown their love and support for the site, even if in a small way. I couldn’t quite raise the extra money needed to get what I wanted to have made this year so I decided to pack up three five envelopes full of the latest five images included in the 50ft Print Club series and send them off to three of you at random.

I figure the fair way to do it is have you leave a little comment below on this post, anything at all, your favorite emoji would work just fine. Then sometime around Christmas day I will pick three randomly and ask for your address to mail them off to you! Simple enough right? Don’t forget to leave your email in the comment field, it’s not listed publicly and of course I never use emails from comments otherwise. Thanks so much, good luck!  🙇

50ft Memberships

After nearly 10 years of operation fiftyfootshadows has seen the landscape of photography online morph and change in all kinds of ways. Communities have come and gone, trends have caught fire and flickered out. As often as things seem to change I have been right here, in my own little world on 50ft, jogging along side the shifting landscape. I love this work and I am eternally grateful for the encouragement and kindness everyone has shown through the years. Let’s start by looking back for a moment and where we have been, then move onto the new.

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Because Stickers

Hey there everyone, just popping in to say merry happy happy and I hope you guys have been doing well. I have five of these cool 50ft logo decals to give away just for fun. A little something to give back for hanging around through this busy year here at camp fiftyfootshadows. I have been putting the last few touches on bringing back regular posts around here and kicking off a new phase of the site. can you believe its been, what is it… nine years since launching this project!? Madness. Still plenty of life left in these humble pages and I look forward to the future!

If your interested in a decal take note that they are four inches in diameter, so not particularly small, seen pictured above on a 12″ MacBook for reference, so I ask that you only ask to be entered to “win” one if you want to put it to good use. I will pick five people at random to mail them off too, free as free can be, let’s say, on the first day of the new year. All I ask is that perhaps you share a photo of where it will live out its sticky life for prosperity. Leave a comment below if your interested, make sure to leave a valid email (they are not published). No tricks, no spam, just a bit of fun.

Thanks to everyone, I hope you have a beautiful day and I hope to see you again here in the new year!

Fifty Foot Lifestyle

Update: I have mailed out messages to the winners of the tags at this point, thanks so much for your kind words and for the interest and support of Fifty Foot Shadows!

Time to reflect and then give something away! I know its been quiet around here this year. My creative side has been on hiatus as I switched tracks for a while to contemplate a life more dictated by priorities. As with the end of any year, I have been looking back as well wondering what the next year will bring. Life will only get bigger as more important decisions are put on the table. My hope is that I can find a happy medium between obligation and creativity because inspiration has been flat as of late but I am looking to renew trust in my abilities behind a camera and start shooting more again.

In the new year (or sooner if I get the pieces together) I plan on announcing a long considered and way overdue subscription service here on 50ft to bring a couple of new ideas to life and shake things up around here. There will be a couple of levels to the service that I will detail when I make the announcement. Among other things, this has been something I have been making notes on and hoping to get off the ground for over four years now. I really can’t wait to get it off the ground after so much needless planning and second guessing. It will provide a perfect launch point for a renewed focus and drive.

For now though I wanted to do something fun for the holidays and give something away to a few of you. I came across these cool custom made brass tags online and knew straightaway that I wanted to have some pressed to share. I love this sort of humble accessory and so I had five of them made to give away for the holidays (six total so I could have one too). I don’t plan on making any more of these in the future so they are a highly limited edition keepsake from the land of fifty foot shadows. They work as a handy keychain accessory, zipper pull, or anything at all you may want to hook them too. The letters are hand stamped into the brass tags so it should last for years as long as it’s not lost.

I think the best way to give these away is to simply use the comment section again, leave a note below and in a couple of weeks I will randomly grab a few names and contact you via email to let you know that you won! Simple enough right? I will mail them anywhere in the world so there are no limit to who can enter. I know it’s a modest gift but I wanted to show you guys that I appreciate you, even if in a small way. As always, thanks so much for your support and generosity. The future is bright!

Alive And Well

Hello! Long time no see! I am currently in Kyoto where YoungDoo and I are feverishly exploring every corner we come across on our long days of walking around. We will be here until the end of the week. I wanted to drop a line here and let you guys know I have not forgotten about 50ft, I have simply decided to spend time exploring and working on keeping up with my thoughts rather than dedicate the short time I have while traveling to posting here. Makes sense, right?

Trust me, I have been shooting plenty of photos and as soon as I am in more of a state of mind to start telling stories and cropping wallpapers I will jump right in and get things started. Perhaps when I am back in Seoul and things slow down a little bit! In the mean time you can follow along on my ‘Yesterday Was Only‘ photo journal which I am posting too as often as I can manage, as well as my VSCO page where I am adding a handful of iPhone shot photos each night as well as a few thoughts on the cool new journal page they have available. That said, I will see you guys again soon. In the mean time, enjoy the few photos I manage to get up each night before passing out asleep! See you again soon.

Seoul+Kyoto

The time has finally come and once again I will board a plane with and head off across the Pacific for a month and a half of travel. My creative spirit has been worn thin and exhausted recently and I am thankful for the chance to explore, relax, and hopefully reconnect with my creative side. I can almost guarantee that you will see more activity here as I travel,  I hope to use this as an excuse to get back to a more regular posting schedule as well as to get a few long standing goals set up for the coming year. If you live in Seoul or Kyoto and want to get together for a coffee or meet up while YoungDoo and I are there drop me an email! So, if I don’t see you again before I depart, I will see you on the other side.

Day One Journaling

The great folks over at Bloom, creators of the best journaling software out there, Day One, reached out to discuss my journaling habits using their software in interview form on their company blog. I have been using it for close to two years now and have grown to really love it. I have lately been using it more and more as my go to app for most of my writing both personal and for 50ft related writing. Head on over to Day One’s blog for the full interview here.

YWO Index – Book

One year ago I decided to start up a new project called Yesterday Was Only wherein I post at least one photo every day of the year. It quickly became routine for me to carry my camera everywhere and while there were plenty of days where I had to stretch my standards to get a shot in, I am still proud of the work as a whole.

Looking back through the photos on YWO I feel humbled by my own life. These were not taken to impress, nor to gain viewers or be part of some kind of movement. It started as a way to drive myself to stay active with my camera through a busy year. When I look back through these images I notice that, although life seems to move by all too quickly at times, we accomplish a lot more than we think we do in a single year.

As short as a single day feels at times, this project has been a great reminder that I can still sneak in a little creativity during even the most busy of days. Browsing this backlog shows me that despite not having any grand adventures in other countries, I was still able to see and experience so much. There are a lot of forgotten moments hiding in these photographs.

The biggest impact I think it had on me as a photographer was on my post editing which has seen a big shift this year. For a long while I was hooked on overly warm colors and minimal editing to the point of it being almost a fault at times. While I still do as little as possible when editing, after working steadily day in and day out on so many different images I feel I have refined my post editing skill quite a bit over the past year and its really interesting to browse through a year’s worth of images in one place and see that evolution.

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YWO Index v.1 Details:

My reason in writing today is to not only mark the occasion but announce a book to commemorate the projects first year. I am calling it the Yesterday Was Only Index v.1 and it will include every single image posted to the site over the course of the past year, 1,068 images in all.

In researching the best way to do this my original plan was to create a fat, newsprint catalogue with one image on every page. However, my ambition runs deeper than my pockets are able to fund so I am taking a simpler approach. The book will be 5”x5” (127mm) and contain around 180 pages with six 2” (50.8mm) photos on each page. I have chosen a nice uncoated paper for the printing.

It will be Wire Bound with a brown chipboard cover I will stamp by hand with the title which will, in my mind, help it stay within my original concept of it being akin to an appendix for the site, a literal catalogue that is a physical reproduction of the content shared on the site. There will be no words along with the photographs, only the images themselves and a brief introduction.

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Ordering/Edition:

I am not limiting the amount of books sold but this will be the one and only run of the book. If you do not order now there will not be another opportunity to buy it in the future, once these first copies are gone, thats it. I will sign and number each copy based on the amount of them that are ordered when ordering closes.

Each book is $30USD for U.S. readers and $35USD for any orders outside the U.S. (This price includes shipping.)

All orders are Pre-Orders which will be open for three weeks. I will most likely close orders on Feb 24th. Please note, books will be shipped as soon as they arrive in my hands which should be within the first couple weeks of March. If there are not enough orders to at least break even on the cost I will issue a full refund.

On that note, please show your support and help spread the word whether you are buying a copy or not! I would love to see this book get made and I need your help to do it. If enough orders come in I may have a little bonus for you guys as well!

For U.S.residents, click here to order.

Anyone outside of the U.S. please, click here to order.

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This is just the beginning of a lot of fun things to come. I have made a conscious decision to put more time and resources into kicking things up this year. I have planned a few ideas to death but realized the only way anything will ever get done is to just jump in and give it my all. Thanks, as always, for your support!

Just Because

You guys should know by now that I love giving things away around here. I enjoy giving back to those who support me with this site and this year I found another fun thing or two to give away. This time around I decided to give away an Olympus XA I bought while out traveling this year. For those of you who aren’t familiar these are amazing, tiny little rangefinders and while they take a little getting used to because you are manually focusing on such a tiny camera’s split focus style viewfinder they will reward you with some fantastic film images. They were manufactured in the early 80s so most copies you find out there have a couple of quirks and this one is not alone.

The light seals/foam along the back door of the camera are gummy and worn out. I will clean out the gunk for you before I send it but it will be your responsibility to replace these seals if you come across any light leaks while using the camera. It is not a camera known for having problems with light leaks so you may be alright but I wanted to point this out for anyone interested in tossing their name into the hat.

Also, in order to get a good exposure you will need to set your ISO at least one stop brighter, or perhaps even two if you like a nice bright feel. This is according to my own tests of the meter that is. I know film is trickier to work with these days so please only enter to win this camera if you know you will put it to good use. I would hate to see it go to someone and have it simply sit on a shelf for the rest of its life.

So, are you interested in this slightly flawed but wonderful little camera? Simply leave a comment below mentioning you would like the camera and I will add those of you who are interested into a drawing and see who the lucky photographer will be.

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But wait, theres more! I have decided to also give away an 8.5×11 Fine Art print from my latest endeavor. Should you be interested in winning one of these limited prints simply hop down to the comment section below and let me know! I will pick one winner from all of the entries.

I will pick a winner on December 26th and be in touch if you are the lucky one!

Update: You guys are amazing, you know that right? Thanks so much for the unexpected kind words among the comments below, I have chosen the winners and they know who they are at this point. I really do love giving things away from time to time so I’m sure those of you who missed out here will have another chance somewhere down the line. Thanks again.