001: Introductions
What is Practice Process, and who is Sam?
I’m late to substack and newsletters in general, but I’ve been reading more over the last few months and find it’s a nice way to get updates from people I’m interested in. I thought I’d do the same. With Twitter slowly falling apart, I want another avenue that’s easy for people to see what I’m up to, what I’m thinking about, and any behind the scenes stuff I can share.
Who is Sam?
If you know nothing about me, my name is Sam King. I’m 30, my pronouns are he/him, and I live in Brighton in the UK.
I’ve worn many hats over the years, and I’m still not really sure how to describe what I do. If I’m honest, I’m hoping this newsletter will help me understand myself a little better. Right now I say I’m a Photographer, Designer, and Engineer.
I started out my journey with photography in 2007, mostly shooting the action sports scene in the UK—lots of BMX and a little bit of skating. When the magazines started going online, I moved into a career of design and coding, but kept shooting photos for myself. My photographic interests have since moved away from the action and towards the stillness of landscapes and environments.
I worked in London as a designer for a little over 10 years before completely burning out last year. I took a break from that career and tried to rest up. I wrote a few posts about it on my blog if you’re interested in what that recovery process looked like. I'm now getting back to making photo work more full-time, but still doing some design and coding work to pay the bills. My goal for 2023 is to make the majority of my income not from client services, but from art and photography instead which sounds so dreamy to me.
Practice Process
The title of this newsletter may change, but my hope is writing this will be a kick up the ass to share more, and be held more accountable. I have a few websites, but I don’t imagine people are checking in, or are even aware when I post updates. I sort of hide away in my own little corner of the internet. My main sites are:
samking.studio for all my professional design and coding work
samking.photo for all my photography work, and a photo journal of sorts
samking.design as an archive of my design career
samking.blog for writing
I didn’t really want another website for sharing work in progress and my journey towards becoming a full time artist. I think my blog is fine for the more sporadic life updates and tech related stuff, but photography is where I really want to spend most of my time again. A lot of the work I share here will likely end up in the work section on my photo site, or in the photo journal, however I also want to share more about the process of making that work or additional context to the journal entries.
My plan at the moment is to try and stick to a post a week, but if I can get two newsletters out a month, I’d be happy! I have a habit of starting things and getting excited about something else, and it’s sometimes months before I circle back. I’m hoping the time pressure will get me outside more, and keep me on track to rekindling my photography practice.
Highlights
Roots
My first photography NFT project, Roots, sold out! I launched it back in January of 2022, and the last peice was picked up in December. I honestly didn’t think it would even happen, and I’m so grateful to all those who collected my work and supported me. There’s also prints available on the Roots website if you own a piece. There’s been some delays over the holiday period but things are getting back to normal now and I’m shipping orders out next week.
Roots Editions
I was thinking about extending the Roots collection some time in the summer of 2022, but wasn’t quite sure how. I since launched ICE64, and I saw how cool editions were and I think a lot of people had fun collecting them (there’s still quite a lot left if you’re keen). I wanted to do something similar with Roots, but I didn’t want to affect the original collection by minting more work, or remixing the originals.
I decided I would do limited editions of some additional pieces I’d held back, however I wanted to release them slowly throughout the year. Every month, a new photograph will be released as a compliment to the original collection. Each photograph will be available as a numbered edition of 20. One numbered edition will be released every day. Like the originals, there are also prints available of the editions.
The photo for January 2023 launched on the 1st, and there’s currently a few editions available to collect immediately.
Check out editions on the Roots website.
New camera
Since I started to WFH more, my original Sony A7 got relegated to a fancy webcam. The EVF is completely burnt in, the sensor has a couple of dead pixels. It’s beat up. I really wanted to treat myself to a new digital camera, as I’ve mostly been shooting medium format film the last few years. I wanted to see what all the digital medium format fuss was about.
I picked up a Fuji GFX 50SII and the Fuji 32-64mm f/4 lens. It’s massive in comparisson to the old A7, but I figured I’m mostly going to be shooting environment stuff, and don’t mind the extra heft. So far I love it, even if it’s kinda weird getting used to a digital camera again and seeing the photos as you take them.
I haven’t shot any work work on it yet, but there’s a few images on my photo journal from mooching around Brighton. I moved here at the end of 2021, so it’s nice to appreciate my new home in a new way. I’m already thinking about how I can print some of the photos to put up in my office. Being by the sea this year has honestly done wonders for me. I’d highly recommend!
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That’s it for this week. I’m not really sure how I should close this thing out, but thank you for reading, it means a lot.
Sam
Supporting
I have no plans to monetise this newsletter, but if you found it useful in any way, then sharing with your friends would be amazing.
If you’d like to support me on my journey to becoming a full-time artist more directly, then the best way to do that is by sharing or purchasing some of my work. It really does mean the world to me, and I’m eternally grateful to any of you who already have!