Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness: Lots of thinking happening

Sunday, November 6, 2022

Lots of thinking happening

I've been musing about photos for a while. Thinking about getting some printed. Thinking about the kinds of photos I have taken, and would like to take. There's a school of thought that says to get better at taking photographs, you need to concentrate on what you're best at. Anything else dilutes your time and effort.

I'm not so sure I believe that. Capturing good photos is a matter of seeing it in the world around us, and knowing how to capture it. The better you get at seeing potential photographs of any genre, the better you'll be at your chosen genre. No matter how passionate you are about a subject, capturing other kinds of photos will give you a break, refresh you.

I've been having fun posting photos on VERO. This is one way of looking back at my previous work, in particular, the ones I've marked with 5 stars. To recap, normally 3 stars mean I edited a photo, 4 stars mean it's much better than the rest of my work, and 5 stars make me go wow. I've been looking back at the 5 star photos, and some of them don't hold up as well as I'd like.

Something I just figured out on VERO. You don't need the app to see what I've posted there. You can follow the link here. I'll put a perma link in the sidebar. It isn't just previous work there, sometimes it's something from the recent trip to Yukon, but mostly it's been the best (or what I think is the best) of my older photos. The VERO community isn't as big as the Instagram one, but it's actual real people, no bots, no algorithm. I've followed a bunch of people, and I find the photos I'm seeing in my feed are worth the time to scroll.

I am chugging through The Tome, as I think of it. I had it out several weeks ago and got about half way through at best, but had to take it back because someone had a hold on it. I got it back again. I will do a proper review of it.

The local community craft sale was a fun photo event this morning (ask I write). Chatted with a bunch of people I know, collected many photos, and put 130 up on the community page on my other blog.

The winter projects are beginning to call my name, but first I need to excavate the workspace. Things have been gradually piling up on, under, and around it since last winter. I don't even know what all is there anymore. Some of it belongs, but some of it I really need to deal with. Like the old Cube computer and Cinema display monitor. Back in the day, like early 2000's, the Cube and that monitor were pretty amazing. Now of course, they are thoroughly obsolete. I tried putting lots of photos on a USB stick, and have the computer shuffle between them. That didn't go so well. Maybe it was too many photos. Maybe I should have another go, with fewer photos. But where to put it so it's not in the way? Decisions decisions.

In any case, I feel sort of nostalgic for it, and don't want to take it to the e-recycling place. Neither do I want to put it in a box and kick the decision down the road. The last time I seriously thought about it, I was house sitting for some friends on vacation in Hawaii. He has a Cube and I'm pretty sure I saw part of the display stashed away on basement shelving. I actually thought about sneaking mine in there and not telling him. He might not figure it out for a decade or more, and wonder how he came to have two of them. Or three of them, I would not be astonished to discover he already had two. Anyone want to buy a Cube and Display? It worked the last time I tried it, and has the most recent OS that it will run.

You can't really see them, but much of the table space is taken up by glass paperweights. I'd done some macro photos of them, using the box you can see at the bottom of the photo. I cut a hole in it and directed the light up through the bottom of the paperweight. I was going to do more with that idea, but then got distracted. Now I have to recreate that idea.