No Time to Blog!

I'll be back tomorrow, I promise. Word of honor.

Hard Light

Not usually my favorite kind of light to photograph in, you can see why it's not very flattering on most people. Bright highlights, dark shadows. But I think it makes the cat look a bit demonic and kind of cool.

Mouseover Monday 3 - No More Weekend Posts?

Sorry for the lack of posts over the weekend; I was very busy with all sorts of photography stuff. I'm considering taking the weekends off of blogging, anyhow. Posting seven days a week tends to eat into the time I could be using to do other things. Still, I love blogging, and I really credit this blog and having to post an image every day with the progress I see in my photography. Plus, I tend to imagine that the world stops when I fail to post on a given day, which is really not the case.

Tough call. I think I'll try it out for a few weeks and see how it goes.

Anyway, about the processing: this is the beauty of Silver Efex Pro. I just love the flexibility of their black and white conversions. Maybe next week I'll post a Lightroom B&W and compare it to an SEP conversion, just so you can see the difference. It's staggering.

50mm, f/1.6, 1/80s, ISO 250 Mouse over to see the original.

Have you shot any good black and whites lately? I'd love to see them in the comments!

Thiebaud Cake

Had this super cool cake at the Blue Bottle Cafe at MoMA yesterday. It's inspired by artist Wayne Thiebaud.  When I googled him, I found this super cool fractions lesson using his paintings. Check it out!

May Goals

So, how did I do on my April Goals?

Photography:

-Start one new photo project and see it through to the point where I have a few good images for it  Hmmm, maybe I did this one with the Lensbaby Sweet 35? I'm not sure. 

-Marketing marketing marketing: direct mail? Perhaps. SOMETHING. Marketing may be my Achilles heel at this point. <-- Still need to get on this one.

-FINISH TAXES. Oh yes. And soon. Must be done in April, absolutely, no excuses. The IRS is a good motivator. Done!

-Get all those photos I've been promising to friends to those actual friends and off my hard drives. This is a worthy goal. I did pretty well on this. 

-Refresh the content on my website, tweak it a bit, maybe add something more. I have a few ideas for this percolating. <-- Now this is a May goal.

-Create a really sustainable, easy backup solution that doesn't cost a million dollars. <-- Still working on this one.

-Read Enchantment. I'm halfway through. Part of what took me so long is that I dithered for two weeks about whether to buy the hard copy or just read it on my phone. I had long internal conversations about which was greener - electronic or paper? In the end I chose electronic.

Life:

-Spend at least half an hour every day outside. Honestly, if I get this one done, I'll be sitting pretty. And I mean quality time, one half hour all together, not five minutes here and there. Yeah! I did a pretty good job on this.

-Organize. Get my ducks in a row. <-- Hard to say, really. I'd say I didn't quite. 

-Go to bed earlier. <-- Actually I probably went to bed later.

-Streamline. Do fewer unnecessary tasks. It's a process, but I feel like I'm making progress on this one. 

-Buy nothing except groceries. I've got all the photo gear I need, and my place is full. So no more little impulse buys. At least for April. <-- Total failure! Oh well, there's always May.

And now for my May Goals:

- Shoot 10 portraits of strangers. I'm feeling more confident and like I might be able to do this one.
- Do some marketing 3 times a week.
- Declutter. Get rid of at least 3 full bags of stuff I don't need or use.
- Stay on top of communication, be it email or phone.
- Finish reading Enchantment.
- Update my website.

I feel like I created too many goals in April, and so I had a harder time keeping up with them all. So I've scaled back a bit for May, and focused on what's really important. What about you? Are you making any goals for the month? If so, good luck!

Building Abstract