dustontoddblog

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my beautiful daughter and her fury best friend, lulu.

side note: lulu is pregnant! if you want a pup, hit us up!
duston(at)boxonfire(dot)com

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…it really doesn’t get much cuter.

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just doing some test shots and grabbed the kids from the ‘hood.

from top to bottom:
ava, 4 yrs old
alanna, 8 yrs old
paige, 4 yrs old
emma, 7 yrs old
colton, 7 yrs old
(yes, the first portrait is of my daughter. yes, she totally rocked the pose herself. yes, she does have another hand. and yes, i do love this image.)

last night i dreamt of petting a giant blue octopus (my favorite creature). i was in complete awe and thrilled and calm at the experience, so much so that i let him gently gnaw on my finger with his beak.
i am one who believes dreams can speak to us. this is what i have learned about mine:
[when dreaming of an octopus] Busy-ness, multitasking, going in many directions at once, approaching a problem from many different angles. You have a brilliant intelligence, many ideas simultaneously, a rich imagination, a hunger for life, and the capacity to take in and synthesize huge amounts of information.

i am in the depths of studying and educating myself, of focusing my motivations and inspirations and energies and seeing them brought to life through hard work…this dream and definition couldn’t be more fitting and encouraging.

join me on just one of these tentacles and reap the benefits. hope to see you at the OWN NOW workshop in May.

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join me as i begin the Own Now Romance for 2012!
see the passion!
hear the mechanical sparks!
make your heart go pitter-pat!

QUICK FACTS:
when? Sunday May 20th and Monday May 21st.
where? downtown SLC and Bonneville Salt Flats
investment? $1100.
who? limited to 12 attendees. quality not quantity.
(it’s important to know that this workshop has returned due to popular demand…space will be limited and it will fill up.)
what? lunch, dinner, breakfast, and lunch. “own now” coffee table book. “own now” workbook. shooting on location at salt flats. shooting on location off the beaten path. models provided. a personal portfolio review. and membership to an exclusive own now forum. (and other throw-ins as sponsors are provided.)

SCHEDULE:
sunday May 20th
lunch and meet & greet at the own now venue (a working artist’s studio).
lecture, “the soup” (all the good stuff we get to absorb, consume, inhale, be inspired by, mind opening, third eye growing (you get it). topics include: ‘own now’= know thyself, desire, disconnect, ordinary people, inspiration, and questions.)
board the OWN NOW RV (yes you read that right) and relocate ourselves to the incredibly unique Utah Bonneville Salt Flats!
dinner, and spread your wings on site.
shoot! crack out your cameras to shoot some funkdafied models as the sun lowers.

monday May 21st
breakfast and recap
lecture, “the sweat” (the work, the blood the sweat the tears, the dark hour, the love of it. etc.
topics include: action, work, craft, less is more, and q&a.)
lunch
shoot! relocate for final shoot on location…a down-to-earth natural setting with a model couples.

the last own now was a great success. i received nothing but high remarks from the past attendees, and if there was any negative feedback (as i was asking them to be brutally honest) the only mark that came was to extend the shooting time…and thats what i have done.
this time around you can plan for more increased shooting time and more added breathable material to the lectures, with more time for one-on-one and group instructions at the shoots on location! BOOM!!!

if you are interested in attending, email me at duston(at)dustontodd(dot)com and i will send you more information on how to secure your spot.

i send a sincere thank you. this workshop is about and for YOU and would be nothing without it. find who you are, and own it now.

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all you photo heads…mark your calendars!!!

the date is set, i have all my materials in hand, grey matter is primed, and my heart is out there…now i just need to chomp through some really cool ideas and logistics…i will keep you informed as my concepts become solidified.
*originally this workshop was designed as a one day workshop, per requests i am planning to evolve it into a 2 day workshop. (so just plan the other day to be on the 20th or 22nd.)

learn more about the past own now workshop details/materials/mission here.

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today i came across an amazing video where a man has chosen to photograph an image of himself everyday for the last 13 years. at first thought i couldn’t help but think, “how incredibly narcissistic”, but after i began watching i pushed all judgments aside and was humbled by the beauty of an individual’s life and how the camera can be an amazing tool to tell our stories.
here is the link to the video, i’d encourage you to watch it:
Jeff Harris Self-Portraits: Photographer Takes An Image A Day For 13 Years And Counting

and after watching the video i was reminded of this…

(please click on the image a couple of times to see it larger)

this was years ago, and since then i can say i have photographed many emotional themes and personal projects. but this was the first and only time that i was crying as i was composing the final image, hit with the impact of the gravity of this documentation.
Belle, our cute little cuddly and feisty wiener dog. champion of house and hearts. the child of ours before our human children. she was with us only a brief period of 2 years or so, and this is the story of how she went the way of the earth…
i was in my final classes of college and was taking a color photography class. the assignment was to photograph color film in five different lighting atmospheres, to be able to see the way colors are effected by light. i was a bet frustrated with the assignment, i didn’t want to just document for technical sake, i wanted to take the assignment to a depth and have a purpose. like all of my work i wanted consistency and conclusion…not just assignment work to fill my notebook pages. i was trying to get a model to help me photograph them in different lighting, and come to think of it, i was thinking of doing the death portraits for this assignment way back then. the less help i received the more depressed and frustrated i was at the coming due assignment. my wife came home to find me sitting with a light meter in hand, fully clothed, and wearing a bathrobe around me (explain that to your spouse). needless to say i was in a frustrated funk. and without any help of any models i grabbed my dumb wiener dog as a last resort model and set to begin the assignment.
the first image you see is the first image i took. the setting is at dusk, Belle is sniffing the ground and is partially blurry due to the long exposure and her movement.
that evening, as always, my wife and i and our cute little wiener dog found ourselves asleep in bed. for whatever reason in the middle of the night, i needed to shift the position of our slumbering loaf-of-hot-bread-dog and so i slid her down the mattress, pushing her more to my feet so she wasn’t against my back any longer. it was at that moment that she yelped. odd. i didn’t push aggressively or anything. i thought nothing of it until the next day when i saw she wasn’t moving much. she could barely walk. something was wrong. she was barely able to climb the stairs to go potty but did so with much hesitation. we knew something was seriously wrong but we wanted to wait to see if there were any changes before we took her to a Vet. so with the weekend ahead of me, and a solid day to shoot for the assignment, i delicately picked up my dog and drove off to do a morning light shoot. (second photo, not moving dog.) a couple of hours later it was noon day and so again i photographed her…not moving (third photo) and then towards the close of the day it became heavily overcast and i decided to photograph her once again (fourth photograph).
by this time my heart was panged at how sad and pathetic the site and model was. i felt selfish for taking her out in this condition (look at her ears, that says enough) and yet i felt it was also important to document. i had no idea what was wrong with her. one day she is walking and another she is not. to a point where we were squeezing her bladder to express her urine. not good.
so late at night, we decided to run her to the vet. we learned there that it was a condition of the spine fusing together in a couple of places, a condition quite common with the breed due to their long spine. she would be forever paralyzed. she could run around life with one of those silly doggy wheels contraptions, but we would always have to help go to the bathroom (manually) and we knew it wasn’t any quality of life for us to force her to cling to. sadly, and with much tears over a silly dumb and cute wiener dog, we decided to put her down. those that have witnessed the spirit leave an animal know how heavy of a moment it is when the needle pulls the last breath from your loving pet and beloved friend. we drove home with tear streaked faces, completely shocked at the sudden turn of events. it was late at night, and we had her remains with us wrapped in a blanket. i lifted down the tail gate to our truck in the garage and set her on there for a cold night while we returned to our warm bed.
the next morning i awoke to a snow/rain. i also awoke to the remembrance that i needed to bury our dog. with head and heart heavy, i began getting things ready for the task at hand. it occurred to me that the photo assignment i had just been involved in the days previous was left incomplete. my working model’s life had seriously been interrupted. the assignment was to photograph five different natural light scenes…and i had photographed four of them, all of them using my dog as the consistent element in them. and here i was now with a dead dog. it was in these morning and mourning shuffles that i realized this was the closing natural light (weather) and to completing my assignment as well as documenting the last days of my dog’s life.
i set the shovel aside, grabbed the light meter and camera, and picked up my cold stiff dog that was wrapped in a blanket. i laid her on the dirt road by my house, seeing the scene as a perfect closing piece. a scene of a road, a homeward journey, a life of progression and eternity, and all was washed with the cleansing tears of love and gratitude for her brief but beautiful time with us.
it was the only time i have cried while looking through the lens.

the assignment was to photograph color as it is effected by natural light. and it became a documentation of the last days of our beloved Belle.

“i saw death today. a life that was once vibrant with color has all but faded to brown. and when she left, tears had soaked the earth and washed away the pain.”

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yes! it’s true! back by popular demand! (enter shiny loud sticker)

the time has come for another own now workshop!!!

in response to many of you expressing interest in the own now workshop, i am excited to announce that we are in the throws of planning another one!
when and where?
that depends on you. when would be more beneficial to you? would a workshop around the time of WPPI and Vegas work best economically (since you’ll already be there)? or would you like to wait until it warms up and see something that UTAH has to offer (desert, great salt lake, etc.)?
at this point i am making a call out, to gather a head count, and then i will make a decision based on the popular vote. perhaps we can do both…speak up! drop me a line and let me know: duston(at)dustontodd(dot)com.
what?
this workshop was born out of the frustation of too much imitation. so many people have jumped on the ever-accessible-photography-train and are spraying photos without real personal content. do you want to separate yourself from the masses? do you want people to immediately be able to identify/recognize your work? are you in the searches of knowing who you are and what makes you photograph what you do? own now is a workshop that focuses on these questions, and more importantly it will give you the answers you need to propel the combination of your artwork and life forward. i have many goals with the material from the workshop, but one of them is that this workshop creates artists for lifetime, that art and life become intwined and inseparable, and not just a current trend that is sold on the camera shelves.
to learn more of the outlined content and material to the workshop please visit here.
who?
(you of course.)
another goal with the own now workshop is to create a family of like-minded photographers and artists, all sharing the same own now vision: to own who we are and own it now. the stronger each individual becomes, the greater our photographer community becomes.
and perhaps most importantly, the how and why?
it all starts with desire. desire is the “why”. if you have the desire to push yourself further, to reach inside and find your creative guts and let them take wings. if you desire to make your work more personal and therefore meaningful…then the own now workshop will show you the “how”.
own who you are now.

visit the own now site for more information.

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oh, i heart.

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this earth found me yesterday.
it knows me.
it comforts me.
in my solitude it whispers it’s peace.

…and then something good floated this way.

looking for inspiration?
are you challenged by that blurred line of following and seeking inspiration in others work and yet finding your own voice in the same process?
here’s an interview that digs into my approach, my technique, my process, my inspiration turned to action and seeing it through, and my heart written on a photograph.

Many thanks to Wendy of Let the Kids Dress Themselves for providing the feature and interview today.

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dead duck. noun. a person or thing that is beyond help, redemption, or hope.

colors are flying. characters are painted. and ships are sailing.
i am thankful that i have been true to my heart and true to my soul, true to myself, and that i will continue to be and do so.
to live in a colorless world, sucked of vibrance and warmth, where sincerity and originality and authenticity are removed, would be a sad, hollow, dead duck.