Personal Explorations in Photography

One of my avocations is photography. Although I am somewhat horrible at photography, I enjoy it nonetheless.

As I get back into this hobby after some time away from it, my intent is to "carry on a conversation with myself" here in the blog. As I come across key insights and basic instructables, I'll post replies to this blog post. My learning style lends itself to ten or twenty minute bursts of information which I can then go put into practice and explore. Therefore, my intent is to keep these limited to "short burst" articles rather than entire books or publications.

I'm not working in film (aka the "real raw"). This means my explorations will be limited exclusively to digital photography.  I am also not terribly interested in Photoshop and re-touch. My focus is on the craft and art of getting the shot right "in the moment" it is taken, whenever possible.

If you find similar articles which help develop the technical and artistic competency of novice-to-intermediate photographers -- I invite you to post them as replies here, as well!

Getting to frugal

I have a confession. In my personal life, I have the "cheap" gene.

Cheap is bad. Cheap leads you to avoid issues, take shortcuts and incur unnecessary stress.

Frugal is good. Frugal ensures you get value for that which you realize is a realistic and healthy use of your funds.

I sometimes have anxiety when buying non-essentials. This can even happen when buying things that are required, but my "cheap" gene is talking me out of them. How do I personally address this?

The Two-Team Fallacy and The Sports Centerization of Politics

Although I discuss politics very little (so far) in public forums, I have long opined to my friends about US politics being incorrectly cast in the framework of “home versus away”, “red versus blue”, and even “good versus evil”.  

A Testament to the Age of No Excuses

My dear grandmother passed away earlier this month at the age of 94.

What strikes me is not how she died, but how long she simply didn’t find the time to die.

Standing Up on the Board

Why write a blog? I’m sure the answers to this are about as varied as the people who write blogs. So why have I just now started to blog after 18+ years of working with collaborative software, the Internet and then the Web?

“I am standing up on the board.”

I casually surfed the Web for years. (At least, I’ve done what most define as Web surfing). I frequently come across ideas I might expand upon, or which I felt I should try to get on top of a bit more to see what they yield.  With the best of intentions I’d copy-paste a link locally here, or save a Web page to my hard drive there. Often I would type out a couple bullets to investigate or dwell on later. Then I’d end up racing to my next fire drill of the day.

A few weeks later when I stumble across my notes, I see the words. But I can’t get inside them anymore. I didn’t integrate them into my thinking.

It is as though I initially lounged on the beach or in the shallows, made note of a nice wave further out and thought, “Gee, that would probably be an awesome wave to catch.” I fancied what it is like but I didn’t paddle out with my board and get on top of it.

Now I can’t really say what that wave was like. I didn’t experience the wave. I just glanced at it, daydreamed, and moved on to the next daydream. And the wave isn’t just the static tweet or Web page. It is the content paired with whatever ‘clicked’ about it in my stream of consciousness at that time, in that context, along that current.

The wave isn’t a photograph of the wave you can look at later. It is the wave itself.

I’ve come to believe the metaphor of surfing the Web (and now, surfing Social Media) isn’t really correct unless I try to engage the wave. Just glancing from one wave to the next as they dissipate is somehow ‘less.’

Blogging is my attempt to paddle out to interesting waves and better experience them… to actively experience them.

I don’t expect any wave to last very long. I don’t even expect to find others out in the early morning trying to catch the same waves. But when I do come across a couple others who share a wave, hopefully we’ll be able to relay the experience with more power and eloquence than those daydreaming about it from afar.

Blogging is my attempt to stand up on the board.