January 2014

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I'm playing fast and loose with the format for my photo updates. 

Also, I don't really intend for this blog to be a photoblog, regardless of the evidence of the past year. I do have a few ideas for non-photography related posts, but photography has dominated my thoughts and free time for quite a while. That's going to change this year, due both to impending life changes (and consequently, schedule changes) as well as a stubborn desire to work out my thoughts on current events and culture in this public space (it's my blog, after all).

But as I mentioned before, I do intend to continue making semi-regular posts absent a formal "Project 52" structure this year, and the format will likely be via monthly posts displaying the photos I think best show what I saw or what I wanted to see or what I want t the viewer to see. 
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Dinosaurs Overhead

I've always loved dinosaurs. (Well, that's not entirely true. I didn't really love Jurassic Park as a kid. I was interested in dinosaurs as fossils and pictures and facts on a page; I wasn't really so much into the Discovery Channel on crack-infused steroids.) And AMNH is a must-see whether you're visiting NYC or if you actually live here.

Land of the Free

 I'll admit, there's a lot going on in this photo; probably too much. I camped out in front of this video American flag and caught this guy looking over his shoulder as he went by, just past the security cameras.

Winter Jam 1

Winter Jam 2

Winter Jam returned to Central Park (link to the 2013 Winter Jam "52 Project" Post). I came this year with the intent of measuring my improvement at tracking and focusing and capturing snowboarders. But the new camera body rendered that exercise moot, since I was mostly unfamiliar with my gear, still.

I got to focusing on this one little kid (in "2"), who was clearly a beginner. He didn't get a ton of air, and seemed to be still learning somewhat to snowboard, let alone pull off any tricks. You could see him get frustrated and pout every now and then; but he would always get back up the hill, either trudging or hustling. No one magically becomes Shaun White; there's a lot of hustle and trudge in the interim. Giving me a smile and a metaphor would probably have meant nothing to him; but I hope he gets it right, and rocks on, soon.

Time for a break

I'm going to be out of range for about two weeks starting tomorrow night. We're fortunate to be able to have a nice long vacation to Barcelona, Madeira, Malaga, and the Canary Islands. I'm excited, and I'm particularly gratified that Sharon gets to have a vacation entirely out of the reach of the hospital, her first since last June. 

I intend to read a ton, shoot a lot of photos (and keep up with my Project 52, of course), write some more (perhaps I'll have a bunch of posts ready when we return?), and try not to act overly like the glutton I am at heart.

Curation

Last week, Engadget founder Ryan Block published an op-ed in the New York Times entitled "Why I'm Quitting Instagram," wherein he explained that the recent flap over the social media giant's Terms of Service inspired him to jump ship. When news broke of the Terms of Service, Nilay Patel, a founding editor of The Verge and former patent attorney, posted this piece explaining that the updated Terms of Service was on its face no worse than any similar terms for many other social media or Web multimedia sites and that the real lesson over the uproar over Instagram's action was just that people ultimately don't trust Facebook¹.

I count myself among their ranks.

This time, with feeling

Blogging for me is a bit like a New Year's Resolution- the task for some reason takes on some Sisyphean proportions, inflicted upon oneself until adjusting ones expectations (namely, quitting), adjusting ones resolve (namely, watering it down - but mostly failing and quitting)... or succeeding. xkcd captures the feeling pretty well:

And so here we are. Another new year brings its attendant resolutions and yet another go 'round on Ye Olde Weblogge. Hopefully this will carry on with more success than the previous attempt. Or the one before that.

I had a brief but enthusiastic spurt some eight to eleven months ago where I threw out a flurry of posts on a variety of topics - sports photography! religion and politics! memes! Rosencopter! - all great topics that reflected my interests closely and my shortsightedness even more so. There are a great many websites I love to read and peruse that cover a wide range of interests, events, and opinions, and I think I wanted to produce something similar in this space. But those sites are staffed with people (plural) whose job descriptions compel them to aggregate content for those sites - my job description (and lifestyle description, were it to exist) lists no such responsibility and certainly none for this site. You're reading a guy who can hardly hoard the hours in a normal day well enough to function let alone run his own curated aggregation blog.

And yet -

Let's start over and try again. I do resolve this year to do more writing (more on my resolutions to come. I think/hope). This blog will be one of the primary vehicles through which I exercise my writing. It will also serve as a gallery for my photography. I will maintain it without allowing it to collect so much dust as to reach through the Internet right into my nasal cavity to trigger a cyber asthma attack. And were I to fail, this post would then stand as a monument to my fruitlessness... at least until the next iteration begins.

'Bout that time, eh, chaps?

I think it's time to get this blog going again.

Perfectionism

You know what my problem is? Or one of them?

Sharon has gotten me a journal (actually, a handful of them) for me to keep a record of my thoughts. I think it's a fantastic idea. We've talked so much and work through so many ideas, struggles, issues - and I think about so many things throughout the day that a notebook for journal-ing would be a great way to really work through some things by myself.

All of the journals are still blank.

And here's why- I keep wanting to start them off with a bang. And I just can't think of anything worthy of the, uh, grandeur of the very first ink to hit the page. In a journal. A private journal. I keep wanting to make a big production out of it, but this would all work a lot better if I would just freaking write.

Which also explains the lack of activity in this space here.