My Kids’ New Blog

My three children have a new blog.  It’s called MileStones, and is all about the things they love: art, writing, photography, even dance…and anything else that pops into their goofy little heads! We’re going to try to update it a couple times a week, with things they’ve done or made in school, and plenty of photos…especially the ones my son takes as he learns photography!

Check it out, and come back often to see what they’re up to!

Food For Thought

I’ve read quite a few things lately that have stuck with me, that have me thinking…

Paul Butzi recently wrote about Contemplation , getting ‘in the zone’, so to speak, while photographing. I love that feeling…the Flow–when everything feels right, the light is perfect, suddenly being able to SEE everything, as if for the first time. Just lovely. Don’t limit yourself to just that essay though, read everything he’s written this past week…all really good stuff.

Mark Hobson wrote about The Landscapist being a place to discuss the act of ‘thinking about photography’, the process, the art of it, instead of simply gear. A beautiful notion. Aside from just figuring out how to use the equipment I have, I couldn’t care less about any discussion involving gear, the pros, cons, what’s better. Some of the best pictures I ever took were with an old, manual SLR that my Dad bought for me used for less than $100 about 20 years ago.

Christian Patterson has a post called Different vs. The Same, which is interesting in itself, but what struck me most was a comment made by Dave Greenwood, who called photography an ‘intelligent pursuit’. Hardly a new thought, but intriguing nonetheless. It seems we photographers spend an awful lot of time discussing many things photo-related: process, contemplation, method, craft, even equipment. There’s the scientific side of photography which one can spend a lifetime studying, then there’s the artistic side, which one can spend a lifetime chasing.

Hmmm….interesting indeed.

April Snow

I took these two pictures this morning:

8:45am-

9:20am-

Monday and Tuesday it was sunny and warm. The kids were outside playing, my son mowed the lawn, they played with the water hose. Then Tuesday night we had to turn the heat on, and now settle in for the next 5 days of cold.

I actually love cold weather, but Spring was here already! The flowers were blooming, the grass already green. C’mon, weather Gods…This is kind of ridiculous!

I’m Always Late…

I try to be punctual in Life…try.  I’m usually successful too…sometimes even early.  But why am I always so late catching on to cool new things??  And they’re usually tech-related…I’m so out of it.  I was late getting on to the DVD bandwagon.  I was the last person I know to even get a cell phone.  I only just now got into digital photography and photoshop.  So it’s no surprise that I’m only now catching on to Flickr.

I actually signed up for my Flickr account last year.  I uploaded a few pictures, then forgot all about it.  The I started using it to store (as private) the images I would receive from the photographers I interviewed for my Photobloggers Exposed series.  But I just never got into the whole idea of group pools and uploading images that I was probably going to post to my photoblog anyway.  I didn’t see the point.  I still don’t, really.  It’s just another community-based thing that I have no time for.

But this weekend I got sucked in.  Two other projects I am involved in both are using Flickr to gather photos from the group.  So naturally, I started to check them out, clicked here, looked there…next thing I knew, it was 2 hours later and I had uploaded 20+ photos…and then I subscribed for the pro account.

Yeah…I’m addicted.

I still don’t totally ‘get’ the whole idea of Flickr…especially if you already have a photoblog, but it’s fun and I guess that’s the point.  And now I have one more thing to get sucked into when I’m procrastinating the real work I should be doing.

See my Flickr thing here.