Mike Munhall

I generally don’t photograph weddings.  It takes a special type of person to be able to shoot weddings well and enjoy doing it.  I’m not that type of person.  I made an exception for Ken and Angie’s wedding since the event was small and informal and the bride and groom were genuinely cool people.  When it was all over, I shot nearly 600 photos in four hours, had one of the best meals ever (at the Flagstaff House), and made enough money to buy a new lens that I’ve had my eye on for a while.  And, to be honest, it was actually pretty fun.

The big day has finally arrived. Last Sunday I finally got my photos hung at the Delectable Egg in Lodo.  I framed and hung 25 pieces, ranging in price from $50 to $190, on one wall of the restaurant. Another artist, named Paul, hung his artwork on the opposite wall. The restaurant was completely transformed with the removal of the prior month’s artwork and the arrival ours, and I think it looks awesome. [See snapshots of the restaurant here.]

The exposure I’m getting with this show is tremendous. I really don’t have any idea how many, if any, pieces I will sell. I invested a lot of money on frames and materials — not to mention time — getting ready for this show, so I’d really like to see a few pieces sold just to cover the cost. But, even if I don’t sell anything, hopefully the exposure will generate interest or make my name slightly more known around the photography community.

The hanging itself did not go very smoothly. I was scheduled to hang my photos after the restaurant closed on Saturday afternoon. I had my car loaded up with all the artwork and tools I was going to need and arrived at my scheduled time. A managerial change, however, caused a problem with the scheduling so I had to come back the next day (Sunday) to hang the artwork. This was a minor annoyance, but it resulted in a bigger problem. I left the artwork and tools in my car overnight and parked the car in the garage. When I arrived at the restaurant on Sunday, there was a thin film on the inside of the glass on the frames. After a mild anxiety attack, I decided I was just going to have to dismantle and clean the glass on each piece before hanging it. Luckily, my friend Andrew came with me to help and he took on that task. (I’m very thankful for Andrew’s help, by the way. I could not have hung all these pieces without help.)

I don’t know for sure what that murky film was on the inside of the glass. It looked like the prints degassed while in the garage overnight. That would be strange considering each print degassed in my studio for over a week - seven times the recommended length of time to properly degas an inkjet print. Perhaps the conditions in my car and the garage caused the additional degassing. It still bothers me that it happened and I want to know precisely why it happened, but I’m going to have to live without that knowledge for now.

In the end, every piece was cleaned and hung. The 100-year-old brick that I hung the photos made it impossible to get each piece aligned just right, but I was happy enough with the results. If you happen to visit the Delectable Egg and see my prints, be sure to let me know what you think. Better yet, buy one. Or two.

Hi, friends. I need your help. I recently submitted a photo to JPG Magazine for publication. It requires visitors to vote. With enough votes, the photo will be printed in the next edition of the magazine. If you have a spare moment, click on over to JPG Magazine and vote for my photo. Everything you need to is in the banner on the left.

I’ve been toting the camera around this week since the weather is nice and it’s easy to be out for a long lunch hour without getting wet or frozen. Andrew and I made it down to the Platte river to shoot a few random frames. The sun was directly overhead, creating awful lighting conditions and everything was still washed-out brown, so there wasn’t much to shoot. I decided, therefore, to pick a theme and shoot no matter what the conditions were like. I chose to shoot the trash laying around the river. The Platte river near downtown has never been the most beautiful location. The amount of muck, grime and litter emphasized this fact very well.

Among the many gifts I received for my birthday from the best wife a guy could ask for was a new camera that I asked for.  No, Dorrie didn’t buy me a D300 or anything expensive - just a brand spanking new Holga FN.  If you are one of the three readers of this blog (that’s a 50% increase since a year ago, by the way), you probably don’t have a clue what a Holga is.

A Holga is a $15, plastic, piece of crap film camera.  It takes medium format film rather than 35mm.  The Holga is the least sophisticated camera ever made.  There are two aperture settings (f8, f11) and one shutter speed (1/100 second).  There’s no light meter, so it’s up to the photographer to have a good sense of the lighting required to properly expose the film.  There’s a focus ring on the lens, but without any way to preview what your shots are going to look like, the best one can do is guess how to focus the lens before firing off a frame.  Holgas are known to have significant light leaks which are rectified by taping the seams of the camera body, and even when all the leaks are sealed the images vignette in the corners.

Why would any sane person use a Holga then, with all these problems?  Because it’s fun.  You never know what your images are going to look like; most likely your images will be slightly out of focus, the composition will be weird, and you’ll be lucky if it’s perfectly exposed.  But there’s a really cool artistic quality in these types of photographs.

My new Holga has reintroduced me to film processing.  I processed the film with the images in the above Flickr badge in my bathroom.  I had the film scanned by the local photo mart.  Once I get used to the workflow and the ins-and-outs of the camera, I plan on having some black and white prints made and hand-coloring the them.  Should be fun.

Here’s my new business card. What do you think?

Mark your calendars!

I will be showing (and hopefully selling) 20 to 30 of my framed fine art photographs at the Delectable Egg in downtown Denver (LoDo) from May 17 to June 14.  They are generously giving me an entire wall of the restaurant to display any photos I wish to show.  I plan on showing much of the macro, architecture and nature photography I’ve done in the past year.  If for no other reason, you should plan a visit just to experience their eggs Benedict.

May 17 - June 14, 2008
Delectable Egg - Downtown Denver/LoDo
1642 Market St, Denver, CO 80202

A big, huge thanks is in order to Rena for pushing me to get my photography somewhere to be purchased. Last weekend I opened a store on Etsy. I have only a few pieces up right now, but plan on putting up much, much more in the coming weeks. I’m curious to know what you think of the store. Leave a comment in this post or email me if you have an opinion on how to make it better.

Now, go buy a print. Chop, chop.

2008 is a leap year. Does that mean CameraPhone365 is now CameraPhone366? Nah… I think I’ll keep it CameraPhone365 and make February 29 a free day with bonus points if you post anyway. I’ll update the CameraPhone365 post with this information.

Are you ready for CameraPhone365? I am. I’ve been tinkering with a new photoblog (http://www.mikemunhall.com/cameraphone365/) that integrates very well with flickr. This new photoblog will be dedicated solely to my CameraPhone365 project. I still have some tweaking to do and I have to clean up the test photos, but I think it will serve me well. My CameraPhone365 project will begin January 1.

What is CameraPhone365?
Every day, for one full year, take a picture with your cameraphone and post it to your blog.

Where did this idea come from?
The idea for CameraPhone365 came from two places. I had just finished a blogging project, NaBloPoMo (National blog Posting Month), where you write a post on your blog (not necessarily a photoblog, just a regular blog) every day for the month of November. There was no way that I could actually write every single day, but I knew I couldn’t fail if I could just post a photo from my cameraphone on the days that I didn’t have anything to say. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? There was simply no way I was going to miss a post if all I had to do was simply snap a picture and email it to my blog. As far as NaBloPoMo is concerned, it was sort of cheating, but it turned out to be a fun way to blog.

The other source for the idea of CameraPhone365 is Project 365, another project where you post a photo to a blog every day for 365 days. The difference between CameraPhone365 and Project 365 is that in this project, you snap photos with your cameraphone.

Can I do my own CameraPhone365 project?
Heck, yeah. And I hope you do.

What do I need for my own CameraPhone365 project?
You need a mobile telephone that will take pictures and a blog. You will also need some way to get the pictures from your cameraphone to your blog. How you do that is up to you. I am emailing my photos to my flickr account, and using the flogr photoblog software on my website to display the photos. flogr does all the fetching of images for me so the only thing I need to do is email the photos from my phone to my flickr account. This, to me is the simplest way to do it.

Another option for getting your photos from your camera to your blog using flickr is to set up a special flickr email address that will post images to your Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad or other blog. You can get information on how to do that here. I used this method on my regular blog (here’s an example ) and I found that it worked very well.

You don’t have to have a flickr account to do your project. There are other online photo services that can be used, and there’s nothing wrong with skipping the online photo-sharing sites altogether and using the brute force method of downloading the pictures from your phone to your own harddrive, then manually posting the pictures to your blog. Use whatever method works for you. If you need help, send me an email or ask your question in the comments of this post and I’ll do what I can to help.

Do I have to post every single day?
Yes and no. At the end of your project, you should have 365 posts, each containing a photo from your cameraphone. A different picture should be posted to your blog every single day. I think it would be unreasonable, though, to expect everyone to be able to do the actual posting every single day for a year. The one requirement, therefore, is simply to have a different picture posted every day. If you have the time to download your photos and manually post them to your blog every single day, more power to you. If it is easier for you to create multiple posts in a single sitting, then do that. Just remember to have one post for each day of the year by the end of your project.

What about leap years?
On leap years, February 29 is a free day with bonus points if you post anyway.

Can I post more than one picture per day?
Sure.

Do I have to use a cameraphone?
Yes. Otherwise, this would just be another Project 365. The point of CameraPhone365 is to make it a little easier for non-photographers to start and finish the project. Being a photographer myself, I don’t think I’d be able to actually complete a Project 365 unless I could use a camera that I carry with me every minute of every day - that is, my cameraphone.

Why should I do a CameraPhone365 project?

• It gives you a healthy, clear complexion.
• People will like you.
• It’s fun.
• It’s a great way to document your life.

What else do I need to know?
Nothing, really. But, I would like to know about you. If you plan on doing your own Project 365, tell me by emailing me at (cameraphone365 _at_ mikemunhall.com). I want to know if you think this is a good idea and I’d like to see the progress on your blog. I’m toying with idea of creating a website for this project and letting people (like you) register and see the other participants. It could be its own huge mega CameraPhone365 industry one day.