When I joined deviantArt over 7 years ago, I was a very different person and a very different artist. Since joining that day, I've continued to hone my photography with the help of lots of practice, lots of shooting, lots of image-viewing, and some schooling. I'm starting to build a business now and am finding less and less time to dedicate to my online presence, especially with the number of sites I currently participate (or try to participate) in.

This site helped me grow and opened me to so many different types of art, including many types and styles of photography. This was a great place to learn and grow, but now I am in the process of consolidating my social media and social marketing and sadly, I am going to have to say a fond "goodbye" to deviantArt.

I will leave my account open so as to not lose all of the wonderful comments and critiques that have accumulated here over the past 7 years.

If you'd like to keep up with my photography, I would love it if you visited my website:  www.schmauserphoto.com

My website is also the best place to find my most up-to-date contact information.


Thank you, and I hope your time on deviantArt helps you as much as it helped me.

Justin Schmauser

I joined DeviantArt on July 11, 2005, and quickly became a fan of not only the quality of the site, but the quality of the art within the site. It wasn't long before I was uploading my own pictures, going on the forums for feedback, and generally trying to get opinions on my work. My early DA days were filled with me commenting on dozens upon dozens of pictures every day, and receiving little in return, all in the hope that one day I would be "popular" and get lots and lots of comments and +favs and that whole deal. I submitted pictures every day for months, and constantly had a backlog of pictures to upload.

Flash forward 6 years (!) and my pace on DA has slowed dramatically. I upload a picture once every week, or a couple pictures a few days in a row followed by a week or more of nothing. My watch list is full of thousands of pieces of art from artists I admire, but I just don't find the time to go through them. The early groundwork I did for my account, as well as many kind people who have featured me or promoted my work in some way/shape/form, means that I get a comment or two every day, as well as 5-10 faves, which I appreciate greatly--it seems like not long ago I had to work *hard* to get people to notice and especially comment on my work. But on the whole, my account is slowly accumulating dust.

So what happened? Photography is a much bigger part of my life now that it ever was in the past; I just bought $7500 worth of equipment in preparation for attending school in September, I'm taking pictures at least a couple times a week, and I look through my database of photos at least once a day. However, something changed over the past couple years in terms of what pictures I deem "worthy" of putting online, and I've recently come to the realization that this is putting a damper on my creativity. There are hundreds and hundreds of pictures sitting in unprocessed folders on my hard drive (and various backups), pictures that I thought were good but I didn't think strangers online would think were anything special and thus would not care about, which in turn made me not care as much about them. I look at amazing pictures every day on all my various internet-connected devices, and I see pictures that blow my mind and make me think less of my own work. I post pictures on DeviantArt, Tumblr, 500px, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and my own website, and while these all have helped me get even more feedback on my work, these outlets only helped to push the bar higher in my own mind of what work I decide to post online.

Well, I'm here to say that I'm done with all that thinking, all that super-selectivity that causes me to work on a picture for 15 minutes only to think of another person who's done the same type of picture "better", think of someone nit-picking the picture to death, or simply think "nobody will want to see this" without a valid reason, thus causing me to scrap the whole thing. A few days ago I found 4 or 5 shots that I really liked from a recent shoot and I spent a good 10-15 minutes on each of them, just experimenting with different looks and feels, b&w versus color, etc. You know how many I ended up thinking were "good enough" and finished working on? None. And not because I didn't like them or didn't like how I had post-processed them, but because I didn't think that *you* would like them.

Don't get me wrong, I do value all opinions of my work and I especially value criticism, but unless I loosen and lighten up on this idea that every piece of art I make available to the world has to be a masterpiece, I'm never going to get better as an artist, and I'll miss out on even more valuable feedback.

So starting today, you are going to see a lot more shots from me, some of which you may think are of a lesser caliber than my previous work, some of which may be very different from past work of mine, and some of which may be just plain bad. I need to hear that though: I need to see what works and what doesn't on a public level. More than that, however, I need to punch some holes in the ever-constricting box that I've built around myself to filter out the "bad" shots from the "good", because if I don't, soon the box is just going to be big enough for me.

CONTEST IS OVER, but you can still play because I'd still love to hear feedback about this idea!
I'll be trying it again in the next few weeks, and this time I will make it a News post instead of a journal (hopefully for more participants!)

---

Hello everyone! I'm trying out a concept that recently popped into my head while thinking of ways to interact with my watchers. See below


AUGMENTED PHOTOGRAPHY - BALLARD
An experimental series exploring a new way to "interact" with street photography.

The idea is simple:
1. Take abstract shots along a street
2. Upload the best ones
3. Include a link to the street via Bing Streetside
4. Ask viewers to find the location of each picture

For now, it's an experiment to see what people think of this idea. Does it help give more context to these abstract shots? Is playing "scavenger hunt" a fun experience? Let me know what you think!

If it's popular, I will continue it with more streets, harder "finds", and prizes for people who can pinpoint each picture!


HOW TO PLAY:

1. Using Bing Streetside, look between 22nd & 24th Ave NW on this street located in the Ballard area of Seattle, WA. I'd suggest opening the link in a new tab/window.

2. Find the location of each of these pictures:


3. Leave a comment under each picture with the location of that picture. Be descriptive! Example: "Above the orange motorcycle, next to the telephone pole, beneath the big letter A."


PRIZES:
If you find the location of all 5 pictures correctly, you'll be featured in a journal I'm writing Monday evening! (June 20th, 2011)

EDIT: Since there was only one participant (shame on you, everyone else!) she received a 3-month Premium Membership!


WINNERS
storyofmylife054


Leave answer-comments UNDER EACH PICTURE, NOT IN THIS JOURNAL!
However, I'd love to have some feedback on this idea in this journal

I finally took some initiative with my website and "fixed" it...by moving it to Zenfolio! After trying out the service for a few days and discovering not only how easy it was to use, but also how easy it was to customize, I finally made the switch domain-wise last night. You can use my referral code to get 10% off if you like the site and want to sign up:  DK9-7S5-9PZ



If you could take 30 seconds to quickly look at the site and let me know how it looks in general, I would greatly appreciate it
_{Disclaimer: it uses flash, so any slideshow features will be broken for you Apple mobile users; only the homepage uses it as a standard}


On a separate note, I promise to start my weekly-ish Deviant Feature journals again in the next week or two, so don't be too surprised if you get a note from me in your inbox!

In the spirit of me trying to be better about giving thanks to the DA community, I am happy to announce another one of my Deviant features!

The people I am featuring all helped me in some way (insightful comments, features, etc), so now I am repaying them in kind with a feature of their own


Seventh up: poetcrystaldawn

:thumb187326046:
Autumn/Fall happened quite awhile ago, but this almost makes me yearn for it. Gorgeous, warm colors and a great angle, leaving just enough road in for some perspective while keeping the focus squarely on the trees. Very nice exposure, well-balanced contrast with the darker trees in the left-foreground leading to the yellow trees in the middle-background.


Great depth of field and fantastic, blurred background. The different shades of pink in this picture are great, and the bee makes a great focal point. The angle is perfect, allowing the line of the limb to lead the viewer from the front to the back of the shot.


Very nice solitary subject shot, almost minimalistic in its simplicity. The off-centering of the egret and the marker in the background (with what I believe is another bird on top of it) is what drew me to this shot; the colors in the sky and water and the nice overall contrast kept me looking.


I love that this flower is called a "Candy Cane Rose" and has the colors to match. Very nice, soft focus, with just enough of the rose and dragonfly in focus to keep the viewer's gaze around the in-focus section of the shot. Nice, just-saturated-enough colors and a bit of empty space finish off a nice macro.


These leaves with "hair" on them have always intrigued me, and this does a good job showing off the leaves, the dewdrops, and the moth itself. There's a false sense of motion because of the blur of the bottom leaf, but the moth (a Skipper, apparently) is in perfect focus so this out-of-focus area does a good job of adding interest to an area that would otherwise be overlooked.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my work poetcrystaldawn, and I hope this feature does justice to your own work.