At the start of this week I told myself that I would start doing two things for the next couple months. I got started on one, which was to post a video every Monday on my YouTube channel (which is thus far nameless). The other item on my to do list was to post something to my blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That one...I've kind of neglected until now.
This isn't to say that I'll only put up one video per week, or that I'll only write three blog posts every week. I may do more. But that's the minimum, and I'm hoping that the schedule will help me not get sidetracked.
As to what else I want this post to be about...I don't know. I guess this is just a "FYI I want to do this, and I'm sharing my plan so that I'll actually stick to it" post.
Funny thing is, it isn't that I haven't had anything to talk about...but I've been having trouble with depression (I talked a bit about it here) and on top of that, I had to put down my pet rat Kora. She was old, had lived a long time, and she was so weak that it was obviously time. It was still tough, though.
And now, just for the heck of it, a photo I took recently.
I don't know how young I was when I got my first camera, but I was young enough to enjoy photographing butts. The response to my obsession with photographing butts ranged from intense irritation to shrugging it off as just something kids do. Fortunately, my camera was never confiscated.
Along the way I've photographed many different things. Nature. My barbies. Trees. My family. Dead trees. Our pets. Landscapes. And just anything that caught my attention...which I think even from early on was largely nature related.
I've hardly had any formal training. Early on I was taught a bit about composition by my dad, who used to be am amateur photographer and even participated in competitions. I think he even had a dark room in his house before I was born. (It would have been awesome if he'd still had one when I was growing up.) Then when I got to Portland Community College I took a class in digital photography.
And that, my friends, is the extent of any actual education I have in photography.
Virtually all I've learned is from trial and error, and saying "Hey, will that work?" Sometimes shots that I think will be awesome just don't turn out as imagined. And sometimes photos that I think will be terrible result in my best photography. Sometimes I stick to the rules, sometimes I throw them out the window, and in both cases I've gotten great photos. So basically, trial and error while being willing to ignore the rules, but also being able to follow the rules. I even stick to the rules most of the time, since they do exist for a reason.
Moral of the story: just play with a camera, and with the rules. Remember that the rules are more like guidelines. Don't try to make every shot perfect. There's really no point in that. It's an impossible goal, so just accept that you'll take more bad photos than good ones. Realizing that allows me to experiment and figure out what works.
And just for the heck of it, here's a video where I explored the contents of my old camera bag. I hadn't touched it in years, and it had a pleasant surprise that rendered me temporarily speechless.
Coming soon...what I love about photography, and projects that I'm kind of working on. I'll probably also share what's on those disposable cameras once I finally get them developed.
The court date went really smoothly, and to my surprise I never even saw the judge. A group of us who wanted a name change were seated in a courtroom, and a few clerks (were they clerks?) called us up to go over paperwork.
Each of us were called forward twice. The first time we handed over the paperwork, and the the clerks took it off to the judge who was in some other room. Then they brought some of the signed paperwork back, and said that the name change had been granted.
Not what I'd been expecting since I'd read something about being expected to give a reason for our name change. But I'm not complaining.
I did notice one case where it was a bit more complicated, where someone wanted to change the name of his young kid and had to scramble to find the mother's written consent. But I'm going to guess that that was out of the ordinary.
I had to wait for the proof of my name change to be mailed to me, and now I'll get to embark on the process of getting new ID and whatnot. While I'm not looking forward to visiting the DMV, it'll be nice to finally get.
