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It\u2019s a great day. It\u2019s a great day to be manic. I\u2019m not here to attempt a self diagnosis. I just feel more upbeat, focused and energetic than most days. It\u2019s another Sunday, the one day I can pretty reliably set aside several hours to work on things I want to work on, and I am. I have tended to write something the last several Sundays, or tried to at least. I may not have always posted whatever I wrote, which is probably for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That leads me to my next order of business. I\u2019ve been giving it some thought. It being how I have been running this blog. Up to now, I\u2019ve posted just about any old crazy rambling thoughts I wrote. Sometimes it may have been relevant or interesting. Begging the question relevant to what or interesting to whom? Which opens another possible topic to explore sometime other than now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve decided to try to keep this blog less of a personal journal\/diary, which it has been moving toward recently. I\u2019m pretty new to blogging and journaling and writing in general. Most of my life I didn\u2019t have much use for it, so I didn\u2019t have much discipline or real direction. Realistically, I still don\u2019t, but I\u2019m working on trying to improve. So in the future I expect I will continue to write journal\/diary entries. I find them therapeutic, which is so antithetical to my younger self\u2019s opinion it\u2019s almost an unbelievable thing for me to say now. I will continue to post the journal entries because I wrote it and want to do something with it. however, I am going to make those journal\/diary entries private. Only I and possibly a shrink will likely ever see them,or maybe a board hacker with too much time on their hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hope your not too disappointed to find out I\u2019ll be a little more careful putting my raw insanity on display. Don \u2019t worry I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll still say insane things, as I am constantly thinking insane things. I like insane things. Am I insane? You can decide for yourself. It\u2019s probably pretty insane to think that anyone has or ever will read this, or any of the other stuff I\u2019ve posted. I\u2019m not too worried about being dragged off for evaluation or straight up incarceration for corrupting the masses. Being insane very publicly, but in obscurity, is kinda fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
True, most of the things I think are insane but are probably nothing that hasn\u2019t been thought or said many times over. As the cliche goes, there is nothing new under the sun. Interesting. I find out that is biblical. I probably knew that at one time, but it\u2019s like the sand it has slipped though the screen of my mind. It comes from Ecclesiastes 1:9 if your curious. There is so much good stuff in the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My insanity is probably pretty mild compared to many. I try to be fairly moderate in my thinking. It\u2019s kinda funny to say that I\u2019m moderate in my thinking when my thinking about politics in the US of A during the 2026 era I\u2019m probably considered a radical-left wing-communist-terrorist-insurrectionist-hippy, and lets add baby killer to the list for good measure. Currently both sides of the political theater are accusing the other side of raping and torturing and killing babies. Sadly, they are both probably right. See Epstein files. Disclaimer, I never have and never will kill a baby, at least not willfully, God willing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This blog post is my first in the new era of separating blog from journal. I\u2019m not above posting minutia, so\u2026 I haven\u2019t yet figured out how to technically separate journal from blog on WordPress. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s not terribly difficult though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m thinking that for this and most of my blog posts I will likely type the body one day then edit it a little bit the next day or two. I have no doubt I\u2019ve left some pretty serious typos in the posts up to this point. Honestly, I expect, even with self-editing there will still be typos. I\u2019m not trying to make money off this thing. Im overly concerned about grammatical, syntactical, or orthographic perfection. I am trying to do it right, and I\u2019m not under any kind of pressure to get content out quickly. But I doubt anyone has ever given my blog more than a glance anyway. Funny, now that I\u2019m not bering graded I care about this stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing I\u2019m still figuring out how to handle is working with the photo elements you know I love. The photos are the heart of my blog as far as I\u2019m concerned. This site and blog started as a way to show the photos I\u2019ve taken. Showing both the photos I am happy with, and work that may just be meh, but still something I want to remember personally. I spent some time doing even the bad studd and feel some recognition is deserved. I envision myself sitting around old and alone looking back at the glory day\u2019s. Hurrah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The thing about adding photos is it\u2019s actually like work. Work I enjoy, but work nevertheless. Not to get too deep into it, but there are many stages to photography. There is planning, execution, ingestion, culling, editing, then finally distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Planning could be something spontaneous like a field trip or it could be something drawn out and complicated like a wedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Execution can range from a mini-session in a studio. Or a days long event with multiple locations and complicated variables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ingestion can be done different ways. I do it by bringing my camera back to my home office and ingesting the photos from the memory card into my iMac. Ingesting hundreds of photos can take some significant time, at least enough time to get a sandwich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Culling is the real bitch. There are AI tools now that do this, but I don\u2019t think I want to go down that road, not now at least. If you do the math, 400 images given ten seconds of consideration with zero rest between each image would take over an hour to simply cycle through. I would be hard pressed to decide with that little time. Honestly, for me, culling can be boring and none too enjoyable. with that many files culling is usually done in stages, slowly whittling down the cream from the curd. That may not be the best analogy because I like curds. Come to think of it I like a lot of the unused photos too. Sometimes deciding just comes down to throwing a dart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Editing is usually reserved for those that make the cut. Granted, a curd can be elevated to cream upon a second look and a little lipstick. Most of the time edits I do are pretty minimal. I learned to follow a core principle of photography: getting it right in the camera. I allow Lightroom pick the settings as a starting point. Then I work from there, if needed, or desired. Occasionally I have an image I want or need to edit more deeply, but that\u2019s not too often, at least at this stage of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can\u2019t forget distribution. Otherwise what\u2019s the point? Once you\u2019ve got a batch of photos ready for the world, you\u2019ve got to get them to the world. For me that means posting to my blog mostly. I\u2019m also trying to get in the habit of posting to Instagram and Facebook. Someday I may explore posting to other sites and platforms. When a client is involved, the client and photographer need to agree on how the work is presented. There are an extremely large variety of options for delivery to a client. It can be a little intimidating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, there is digital delivery, which has options ranging from CD-ROM (old school), to thumb drive, to cloud services. There are undoubtably other digital delivery options which I\u2019m not even aware. God knows there are a ton of companies that cater to photographers. I won\u2019t get too into the their business models that I\u2019ve studied. I use the cloud service Drop Box at this time. It requires a little bit of tech savvy, but really isn\u2019t difficult to use once you get it set up. I like it because it is free. One day I may use it enough to get a subscription with some bells and whistles, but for now free is the ticket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are likely more digital distribution methods I have no idea about. There will probably be more in the future. Technology is always moving forward and changing. I try to keep up with the progress, but Im too old and slow and far removed from be on the bleeding edge of this stuff like I tried to be at one time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second option for distribution to a client is physical media. Traditionally this was prints only. Now you can get photos printed on damn near anything. It\u2019s common to have photos on coffee mugs, pin on buttons, signs, cards, whatever. Also, I\u2019ll put under physical distribution digital photo frames you put on your desk or night stand that cycle though a collection. This can be on a smart TV too. Again there are many thing\u2019s I\u2019ve omitted due to brevity or ignorance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rolling back around to how I want to distribute photos on my blog. Do wait until I\u2019ve done all the steps and distribute as a single massive gallery like the one I\u2019m going to post along with this monolog? Or should I do small batches as I do work on them? Do I post only photo galleries without any monolog? Do I post small batches with a little monolog? Should the monolog be limited to the content of the gallery? Should each gallery have a theme or simply be the photos I finished since the last post? It\u2019s pretty exhausting to think about it. Should I vary gallery\/monolog formats or try to keep it uniform? I will have to chew on these questions a while. Of course, since this is my blog I can do whatever I want. Still I\u2019d like to have some consistency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately I\u2019d like for the forthcoming blog posts, after switching to this blog\/journal category separation protocol, to be a more focused. The tags I\u2019m currently using are tech, random thoughts, philosophy, politics, photography. I think random thoughts and philosophy cold be interchangeable. I made a bunch of tags in the early days, but I\u2019m going to stop making so many, one for every little thing. I\u2019m going to try to be very deliberate if I create new ones. While I may photograph just a bout anything, I want the category\/tags to be broad and minimal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I need to figure out how to make journal category posts private by default. I suppose this is where I\u2019ll leave off today. It gives me a project for this afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n