Thursday, November 10, 2016

Practice and More Practice

I'm trying to prevent sliding into a photographic rut again. By that, I mean that I'm trying to avoid those long periods of time (1, 2, 3 months) of not seriously photographing anything.

Last weekend I took a half-day trip out of town to photograph an old cemetery. It's not my ideal type of photography, but I did enjoy it. I went with several other photo-buddies and also enjoyed the company and our discussions.

I then spent some quality time with a camera around my home. Within minutes of wandering around the backyard I found something really interesting: a 4-inch wide polyphemus moth hanging upside-down in the loquat tree.

I didn't shoot any landscapes or the Milky Way. I didn't get to travel anywhere that would be considered scenic, like the Big Bend. But I came away with photos that I like and had an enjoyable time doing it.

I just gotta keep doing it... :-)

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Backlog

Most of my work day is spent sitting in front of a computer screen.

As I get older, I've become less tolerant of staring at a monitor for long periods of time. My head and neck hurt sometimes and I'm losing my ability to quickly focus and re-focus my eyes when looking away and then back at the screen.

I know I've said it before. The last thing I feel like doing when I get home is to spend more time sitting on my butt and basking in the electronic glow of a monitor.


The amount of photos that I've shot but not processed or edited has stacked up considerably over the past year. And this seems to get worse as time goes on, i.e. I feel less and less motivated to park myself in front of a screen do actually do something with my photos.

I've tried making things better for photo viewing and editing. I rearranged my desk to be more comfortable and easier to get things done. I bought a new (used) 2560 x 1440 monitor to have a larger screen. I kept my old monitor so that I have dual screen setup. Both are wide gamut NEC's and are color calibrated.

But it still does not help :-)

Last weekend I forced myself to sit down and work on images. I got through a couple dozen, and it felt good to make some progress.

But I still can't find the trick that makes it better. Maybe I'm just getting older and need to accept it :-)