So Much Good Stuff!

White-tailed deer at sunrise at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. Photographed 3/27/19. Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS USM, 1/640s, f/9, ISO 800, handheld from car.

I just got back from nine days in Colorado where I got to test my new 5D Mark IV camera. Having a new camera and getting away from everyday life was so inspiring, and I’m really excited about some of the images I took on my trip AND all of the awesome potential of this new camera. Up until a few weeks ago, I was shooting with a 5D Mark II (released September 2008) and a 1D Mark IV (released October 2009), so having a body that isn’t 10+ years old is awesome. The dynamic range, high ISO capabilities, autofocus, and other features (such as WiFi and in-camera HDR) blow away my older bodies, and I can see myself getting out and doing even more shooting once I get better used to how the new camera handles and functions.

I took more than 1000 photos on my trip so it will probably take me a few weeks to get through all of them. Keep an eye on my Instagram for new images from the trip and check back on the blog and photo journal on my website for more about my experience with this new camera and a full trip report in the future.

Facebook for Real People (Who Happen to be Photographers)

Within the past three days, I’ve deleted roughly a quarter of my “friends” from Facebook. Over the years I’ve accumulated a number of them – people I went to high school, college, and grad school with, people I worked with or collaborated with on projects, people I met briefly on my various travels, and people I honestly didn’t know at all.

Facebook has evolved a lot since its first incarnation. I know, because I’ve grown up with it. Facebook was released the year I became a freshman in college, and at the time, it connected you to a small network of your classmates. Now, thirteen years later, it can connect you with the world, providing followers with an intimate glimpse into your thoughts and private life.

Despite accumulating more than 1500 “friends” on Facebook, the actual list of people who are fundamentally important to me is pretty small. In my real life, I don’t talk to a single person I went to high school or college with. When I go visit my hometown, I usually tell only my mom and two of my childhood friends. Aside from them, the people I keep in touch with by phone are almost exclusively people I worked with or went to grad school with, and I can count them on my fingers. Many of my closest friends aren’t even on Facebook anymore, and those that are tend to share very little.

I ended up with 1500 “friends” the way anyone who is social and nomadic can. I grew up in a decent sized town and went to a decent sized college, and have worked a lot of different jobs in different places. I traveled a lot, moved a few times, and went to many different conferences and workshops where I met a lot of people. When I worked for NatureScapes and was heavily involved with NANPA, photographers would connect with me that I did not know and had never met before, but as a brand ambassador, I accepted their friend requests, compromising my personal privacy to help build the brand and connect with potential clients and collaborators.

I’ve wanted to cull my friend list for a while. Facebook doesn’t make it easy – there is no easy way to go through your list of friends in a stagnant order (such as alphabetically) – but devising some trickery I was eventually able to search my whole list and begin the process. I unfriended the people who used fake profile names when I could no longer remember what their real one was. I unfriended people I plainly didn’t recognize and had no idea who they were or why I had connected with them in the first place. If I couldn’t recall how I met someone, or if I met a person only once years ago at a conference or workshop and never communicated with them since, I unfriended them. If they were someone who I knew but never really talked to – people who lived on my floor in college freshman year, friends of friends who I only saw with those other friends – they got axed. The same with significant others of friends and friend’s exes who weren’t really friends of mine. I unfriended people who had died, the parents and siblings of friends whom I knew but didn’t have any relationship with, and most accounts that had been deactivated. I unfriended just about anyone I had never met face to face in real life – the few who I kept were those I would recognize in person and want to grab dinner with based on mutual respect and common interests. A few of those I unfriended were talented photographers, so if possible, after unfriending them I followed them or their photography pages instead. I deleted high school and college classmates whom I had little interaction and no shared memories with. When people had duplicate profiles, I figured out which one had the most recent activity and deleted the other.

I unfriended anyone who had ever made me feel threatened, like the older male photographers who offered to take me on photo trips with them and the people I hardly knew who used Facebook as a platform to stalk, offend, attack, and demoralize others or whose actions repeatedly made me feel uncomfortable, upset, or angry. I unfriended annoying people when social niceties didn’t prevent me from doing so – the people who only interacted with me when trying to sell me a product from their multi-level marketing scheme or encourage me to vote for them in some stupid contest. If I felt unfriending them would result in unnecessary drama because we lived in the same town, worked in the same place, or had mutual friends, I just unfollowed them instead.

After all of this, I still have 1130 of the 1500+ friends I accumulated in the past dozen years but I suspect many more will go in the days, weeks, and months to come. Facebook has become an easy outlet for sharing photos and life’s moments, but I really don’t care if someone I met at a conference knows what color I painted my living room. More important things like relationship updates or additions to the family are things I’d prefer to keep more private, and Facebook’s ever changing features and privacy policies make it difficult to continually regulate who can and can’t see specific things you post.

I no longer accept friend requests from people whose names I don’t recognize and have never met face to face. I operate a Kari Post Photography Facebook page and post my work there instead of on my personal private page, yet I still regularly get friend requests from photographers. I deny every single one. This has been my routine for several years now, and it’s clear to me that posts on my personal profile get more views and likes thanks to Facebook’s algorithms that hide posts from pages to discourage engagement. I don’t care. If the cost of getting my work seen by more people is sharing personal moments of my private home life with strangers, I’m not interested.

To see my photography on Facebook, feel free to check out and like the Kari Post Photography page. When you “like” and “follow” the page, you can opt to see posts in your news feed first (you can adjust your notifications by hovering over the “Follow/Following” button) which will ensure you don’t miss anything, as the default setting allows posts to fall off your news feed quickly. The more you visit and engage with my page, the more relevant posts from it will show up on your newsfeed. If you actually want to connect with me for professional reasons – to collaborate on a project, get together and shoot, etc – you can send me a message through my Facebook page or if you prefer, find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the platform I prefer to use for networking and professional connections, and if you send me a message, I’m happy to connect with non-friend photographers there.

Update 11/7/18: Kari Post Photography is no longer on Facebook as of December 2018. I have moved my photography feed over to Instagram. If you are an Instagram user, please follow my public photography handle @karipostphoto. I have also made my personal Instagram feed private as well (and knocked that followers list down to under 500 people)!

TEN YEARS!

Those of you who have been following along know I’m a pretty erratic blogger. I go through spurts where I shoot and write somewhat consistently, but the long gaps in between these moments are far more common. Case in point – my last blog post was at the end of 2015, and it’s already August.

Over the years, I’ve let photography’s role in my life change pretty dramatically. At one point it was a constant presence. I shot regularly, spent time marketing my work, traveled, entered contests, taught workshops, and developed a somewhat recognizable brand for a few years. Now, I probably take a thousand snaps on my iPhone between breaking out my DSLRs for a spin. My name is no longer relevant in photography circles, my gear is several generations of equipment old, and my laptop hit the four year mark sometime early last year (I’ve found that four years is about how long I’ve typically been able to manage between computer upgrades) and struggles to keep up with RAW files and the most recent software.

Ten years ago, my first photography website under the domain karipost.com came to life. That’s a whole decade! In those ten years, I’ve revamped my website several times and tried various ways of marketing my brand and connecting with potential buyers, clients, and students. Clearly none of those stuck, otherwise I’d still most likely be doing them. Still, the nostalgia of being in this business for so long makes me want to resurrect my stagnant website and start shooting, writing, and sharing my work again.

The Power of Place, Coming Soon!

After nearly two years of filming and post production, I’m excited to reveal that The Power of Place, the documentary about the Northern Pass that I had been helping Jerry Monkman create, is nearing completion and will be released to the public within the next couple of months. Jerry and I spent countless hours in the field gathering material for this film during the summer of 2013 and had hoped to release it much sooner, but Jerry was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer right around the time we wrapped up shooting so post production has taken much longer than we initially anticipated. Added to that Jerry and I live about two hours apart and once I started working full time last spring I wasn’t much help to him during the process, as it was challenging for me to find time to drive to the seacoast to work on the film. Jerry is now cancer free and the film is just about finished, and he is working on wrapping up the details of a contract for the film’s premiere sometime in the very near future.

Check out the documentary’s trailer here:

The Power of Place – Trailer from Jerry Monkman on Vimeo.

So stay tuned, especially if you happen to be one of the fortunate folks who live in the great state of New Hampshire. We will be announcing details of the film’s release and premiere very soon, and hope you will be able to join us for the big day if you can. Until then, expect to see a ton of TPOP related posts and pictures from me.

Big Dipper : Prints Available

This photograph of the Big Dipper in the night sky was captured while filming for The Power of Place, a documentary about the Northern Pass, in Coos County, New Hampshire.

What a Busy Month!

Wow have things been busy. I know I know, my life is ALWAYS busy, but it’s true and I like it that way!

Earlier this month, I led a photo workshop for my alma mater, Antioch University New England, where I completed my Master’s of Science in Environmental Studies back in 2012. The workshop was a great success, and I had a group of eager and enthusiastic students from Antioch and the local community. Feedback from the workshop has been very positive and I had a great time, so hopefully I’ll be offering some more local workshops in the future. Here is what a couple of the participants had to say:

“Workshop was great! Very informative. I liked the variety of exercises in class as well as the presentation style of the teacher.”

“[It] as great to spend time with such an accomplished photographer and nature lover. [Kari] was very engaging, friendly and helpful, and knew her subject thoroughly.”

This October, I plan to offer a fall foliage workshop in the White Mountains through the Appalachian Mountain Club. If you have any interest in attending and would like more information, feel free to send me an email so I can keep you in the loop and you can be one of the first to sign up.

Teaching photography is not the only thing that has kept me busy this month – there have also been some BIG personal changes taking shape as well. As you may know, I have plans to move from my lovely shared apartment to a new home and some new developments on that front that have kept me very busy. I’m not ready to divulge what they are yet, but I am very excited about them and will reveal what they are when the time is appropriate.

In the meantime, I’m still trying to declutter and clean house before my move. My goal is to “Simplify! Simplify!” as Thoreau put it, and get rid of all of my access things and belongings that I have no need or desire to take with me. While I LOVE my photographs, I’d much prefer to sell off my remaining stock, move only things I absolutely want and need to my new home, and then restock prints once I’ve settled in.

Here’s what is left:

iris, abstract

Iris Abstract


“Iris Abstract” – 8×12 print signed and matted to 12×16 inches, regular price $40 unmatted, $50 matted. SALE price $35 matted!

spring, RB Rickett's Falls, Rickett's Glen, Rickett's Glen State Park, Pennsylvania

RB Rickett's Falls in Springtime


“RB Ricketts Falls in Springtime” – 16×24 print. Regular price $150, SALE price $125!

northern gannet, gannet, morus bassanus, Delaware Bay

Northern Gannet in Flight


“Northern Gannet in Flight” – 8×12 print signed and matted to 12×16 inches, regular price $40 unmatted, $50 matted. SALE price $35 matted!

snowy egret, egret, portrait, st. augustine alligator farm, alligator farm, florida

Snowy Portrait


“Snowy Egret Portrait” – 8×12 print signed and matted to 12×16 inches, regular price $40 unmatted, $50 matted. SALE price $35 matted!

Mount Adams, Presidential Range, White Mountains, White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire, alpine

A Farewell to Summer


“A Farewell to Summer” – 16×24 printed on aluminum with a glossy finish and ready to hang. Regularly $250, sale price $200!

Mount Madison, Mount Adams, White Mountain National Forest, White Mountains, New Hampshire, Presidential Range

Madison at Sunset


“Madison at Sunset” – 8×12 print signed and matted to 12×16 inches, regular price $40 unmatted, $50 matted. SALE price $35 matted!

tree branches, hawaii, Waimea Valley aububon Center, Oahu, Hawaii

Twisted


“Twisted” – 8×12 print signed and matted to 12×16 inches, regular price $40 unmatted, $50 matted. SALE price $35 matted!

Snowy Owl, sunset, Salisbury Beach Preserve, Massachusetts, snow, Nyctea scandiaca

Snowy at Sunset


“Snowy at Sunset” – 12×18 printed on aluminum with a satin finish and ready to hang. Regular price $175, sale price $125.

Waves Washing Over Rocks


“Waves Washing Over Rocks” – 8×12 print signed and matted to 12×16 inches, regular price $40 unmatted, $50 matted. SALE price $35 matted!

Pratt's Falls


“Pratt’s Falls” – 8×12 print signed and matted to 12×16 inches, regular price $40 unmatted, $50 matted. SALE price $35 matted! 2 available!

Monadnock Bog
“Bog on Mount Monadnock” – 8×12 print signed and matted to 12×16 inches, regular price $40 unmatted, $50 matted. SALE price $35 matted!

abstract, Black Skimmer, Rynchops niger, Jones Beach State Park, Nickerson Beach, New York, Long Island

Slow Motion Daydream


Also available is an “Artist Sample” 11×18 stretched canvas of Slow Motion Daydream, sale price $100. Normal price for a non-sample is $250! The Artist Sample means that the image has a copyright on the outside border (along the wrapped part of the canvas, not the front, and would not be at all visible if framed), and has been used for displays so it may be a little less “mint” than a brand new piece. Save 60% by taking advantage of this discount!!!

Please send me an email if you are interested in any of these prints or display pieces. Shipping within the continental USA on all prints and matted prints is included in the cost, but shipping costs extra for mounted pieces. Keep in mind that this sale won’t go on forever and once a print has sold, it is gone and any purchases made after will be at the full retail cost. Also, your purchases help me with my moving cost, so buying prints gets you great art at a great price and me a little less stress about my move. It’s a win win for everyone!

Then and Now

I’m leading a photo workshop this weekend for my grad school alma mater, Antioch University New England. It will be my first in nearly a year, since I took a break from workshops and photography after leaving NatureScapes.Net to pursue other passions. This will be my first spring spent in New Hampshire; for the past five years I have traveled to Florida every April to attend the Florida’s Birding & Photo Fest. While I will miss seeing all of my friends in St. Augustine, I really am enjoying feeling settled here in New England and looking forward to spending spring in the northeast at home with my friends and family.

This photograph was taken on April 13th of last year, on the last day of an osprey workshop on Lake Blue Cypress near Vero, Florida. April 13th of this year I’ll be wrapping up my workshop with Antioch students in humble little Keene, New Hampshire. What a difference a year makes.

KP130413-1831480

AMC White Mountains Workshop Updates

Unfortunately, we have had to cancel my Appalachian Mountain Club Winter Photography Workshop due to low enrollment. This winter has been a tough one for the outdoor industry in New England because it has been so bitter cold. Apparently, people would rather stay indoors when the mercury falls well below zero. However, I am happy to announce that this autumn I will be offering another workshop through the AMC in the White Mountains. Join me for a fall foliage in the Whites October 3-5th. There are a ton of photo opportunities in the area that are just bursting with color during peak foliage season – the photo below was taken just down the road from the Highland Center, where the workshop will be based. I’m already excited!

Silver Cascade, autumn, maple, Crawford Notch State Park, Crawford Notch, New Hampshire

Silver Cascade in Autumn : Prints Available

Autumn maples in fall color line the banks of Silver Cascade in red, orange, and yellow.

AMC White Mountains Workshop Announced

I am excited to announce that I will be leading a winter photography workshop with the Appalachian Mountain Club in the White Mountains this winter! This three day workshop based out of the AMC’s Highland Center will explore the beauty of New Hampshire’s White Mountains in all their winter glory. Lodging is included and the dates are Feb 28-March 2. For more information and to register, please visit the AMC’s website.

Winter Embrace : Prints Available

On a December day in New Hampshire, unseasonably warm temperatures and rain cause winter snow to melt and turn to fog, shrouding bare trees in a damp white mist.

The Clock Always Wins

eastern redbud, redbud, blossom, bud, spring, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

I haven’t posted much lately, because as usual, I’m crazy busy. Between traveling, school, work, and trying to stay healthy (which includes things like getting the proper amount of sleep, eating right, daily exercise, and maintaining my sanity with healthy doses of nature), there seems to be little no time for anything else. But a lot has been going on, so I thought I’d take one half hour out of my busy as heck life to tell you about it. Here’s the news (in less than eloquent terms, because I don’t really have enough time to be critical of how I am writing at the moment):

1. I was featured this month on NatureScapes.Net. Sure I work for NatureScapes, but we’ve been showcasing our moderators in monthly features, and the crew decided it was my turn. So, that means I’ve got the monthly cover, an interview, and a few other features in April’s newsletter. I’m also going to be featured later this month on photographer Andrew Marsten’s blog The Unframed World and Antioch University New England’s website. I’ll be sure to post links to those profiles when they go up.

2. I’m heading back to St. Augustine, FL for Florida’s Birding and Photo Fest later this month. I’ll be behind the NatureScapes.Net booth in the exhibitor’s hall and also helping with some of the festival workshops. Immediately following Photo Fest, I’ll also be assisting Greg Downing with a technical workshop at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm.

3. A number of photographer friends have started Kickstarter projects within the past couple weeks. For those of you that don’t know, Kickstarter is a website for crowd-funding creative projects. My friends Neil Losin and Nathan Dappen of Day’s Edge Productions just started a campaign to create and publish a book about the Ibiza Wall Lizard, called The Symbol: Wall Lizards of the Pityusic Archipelago. The lizards were the subject of Nate’s doctoral research, and he has gotten some amazing photographs and footage of the lizards in his five years of working on the islands where they live. (Nate also just successfully defended his dissertation, way to go Dr. Dappen!) Check out their Kickstarter page to learn more about this super cool project.

Paul Marcellini is another talented photographer who just launched a Kickstarter campaign. Paul has been shooting for a project called Meet Your Neighbours which was started by Clay Bolt and Niall Benvie to raise awareness about nature in people’s own backyards. Paul is based in Florida and works heavily in the Everglades, and since joining on with Meet Your Neighbours, he produced some amazing photographs of Everglades wildlife on pure white backgrounds in the MYN style. He’s planning to launch an exhibit of his work in national parks throughout Florida and you can help by supporting his work via a simple donation through Kickstarter.

I’ve pledged to back both these projects with small contributions. The way Kickstarter works is that backers don’t pay unless the full amount of the project gets funded, so it’s important that others, like you, step in and show your support. Every little bit counts!

4. Speaking of Meet Your Neighbours, Clay Bolt, one of the founders, just stepped out with a brand new program called Backyard Naturalists, aimed directly at getting kids involved with nature. A pilot program just started in North Carolina last month, so stay tuned for updates from this cool and exciting new project.

5. Before heading to Florida later this month, I’ll be at the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, NH for a NANPA Road Show event with Jerry Monkman on April 14. Jerry is doing a one day workshop on Lightroom, and I’m helping with a few logistical things, like signing in attendees, so Jerry can really focus on running a great program. Registration closes April 9, and there are still spaces available, so photographers hoping to improve their post processing skills can still sign up.

6. Jerry has also invited me to be a contributor to his brand new website at MonkmanPhoto.com. For those of you who don’t know Jerry, let me precede my introduction of him by telling you he’s awesome. Jerry is a New Hampshire based outdoor photographer who has written a bunch of wonderful photography how to books and guide books, many specific to New England. He also offers workshops and is on the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA) board. But the best thing about Jerry is that he’s really just genuinely a good guy – he likes to share his knowledge and help people learn, and he wholeheartedly cares about conservation issues and using his photography to help environmental causes. So I’m super psyched for this opportunity to work more with Jerry. Expect to see some posts from me on MonkmanPhoto in the near future.

7. That brings us to NANPA news. You might have caught that I volunteer with NANPA as a regional ambassador for the New England area as well as a committee member for the College Scholarship Program. Well, I caught up with some other committee members  last week, and we’ve started to plan our program for the 2013 summit in Jacksonville, Florida. We’re currently looking for a conservation issue to have our student participants focus on; last year our project “Reconnecting the Rio Grande” was used by the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and US Fish and Wildlife Service to help raise awareness and garner support for a wildlife corridor project that connects areas of habitat along the Rio Grande River that borders Mexico. So, if you are familiar with the Jacksonville, Florida area and know of any good environmental stories that need telling, please let me know.

8. And last, but certainly not least, I have to tell you about this awesome new program in Environmental Visual Communications at Fleming College in Ontario. The program, started by conservation photographer Neil Ever Osborne is geared towards college graduates and provides a post-grad certificate. It is one of a kind; there is no other program like this offered anywhere, and the course and instructor line up is stacked. I just spoke with Neil a bit about it on the phone today, and he informed me that they are still accepting applications for the program, slated to start next month. Check it out and send in an application if this is anything that interests you. If I wasn’t at the tail end of my Master’s degree (which overlaps with the start of the new program), I would probably sign up myself!

And with that, the half hour I committed to spend writing this blog post turned into an hour of my day, gone and lost forever to social media and world wide web. Hopefully you found it useful and all my writing has not been in vain. Catch you later, alligator!