Life has been busy.

Time slips away and suddenly you realize its been too long. Well, enough, a few thoughts as we go into the new year.

1) Read an interesting post in Strobist (an excellent site on photography lighting and photography in general). The post is to the effect Forget the Critics - Enjoy what you do. (Not quite in those delicate terms.) And they are correct; one judge may love it and the next hate it. I have had several prints that my wife loves but the "judges" didn't. Who is to say my wife (or anybody is wrong). The bottom line is somebody likes it, enjoy it. Its great to receive constructive criticism and to have things to reflect on and consider if they are valid and could possibly make a better photograph but in the end, if the client or recipient of your work likes it, its good.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/12d711e26982ba69

2) I found out about a project called "Project 365". Basically you take a photo everyday,maybe more than one but at least one a day. At the end of the year you have a journal of your life and you have had a year to grow as a photographer. I will post the photos periodically.
http://content.photojojo.com/tutorials/project-365-take-a-photo-a-day/

3) My laptop of 7+ years died suddenly on Jan 2nd  (The logic board that failed). As I struggled with no computer and all my prints trapped on external hard drives (luckily I kept good backups) that were formatted in Apple format and my old Windows machine couldn't read, I had time to reflect on how computers have impacted my life, not always positively. I realized the amount of time I spent on computer instead of being outside or doing something. I saw how much stress they introduces as I tracked tons of email a day. Suddenly I couldn't read then and I saw how unimportant they were.

I now have my son's old iMac running for most work and the old Windows laptop for Photoshop CS5. But I will not be spending as much time on computers. (Yeah, right)
(BTW, Apple computers can read Windows format but Windows cannot read Apple format.)

KEEP GOOD BACKUPS. I lost everything after Nov 12th 2010 until Jan 3rd (except my photos on external hard drives.) I may be able to recover the hard drive info from the Apple laptop.