Dare I try again?

From the title of this blog, Emerging from the Cocoon, you can probably surmise that I am on a quest to discover myself at this stage of life.  The children are grown and live productive independent lives, the torch has been passed and I am now the matriarch of the family, and the hectic career days are giving way to a more relaxed and peaceful life.  All of this is good stuff … but it takes a bit of readjustment to learn my place in this "life after fifty" world.

For years I allowed the responsibility of life to dominate my days and consequently the creative pursuits  disappeared on the back burner.  For those who read this blogs on a regular basis, however, you know that I am trying to reconnect with those passions, which tend to take the form of paper crafts (such as greeting cards), writing (a true compulsion), and photography.  Unfortunately I have talked more about photography than actually practiced it, which is not in keeping with my ultimate dream of marrying pictures with writing to document travel adventures.  Practice makes perfect.  And if I want this dream to be anything more than a vapor in the wind, I need to do the work now in order to achieve the results later.

It is for this reason that I am ready to once again attempt a 365 project.  I have tried (unsuccessfully) two previous times, but I think I have learned some valuable lessons to help me triumph this go around. After all, third time's the charm, right?  Here is what I plan to do differently:

1. Be intentional.  Of course, this is good advice about life in general, but especially true of this project.  In the past I would wait to be "inspired" to take a picture and more often than not, I would find myself scrambling for a photo right before going to bed.  Since that time, however, I have found several sites that offer monthly photo challenges that should provide me with some creative suggestions when I am stumped (such sites include Katrina Kennedy and Fat Mum Slim).  I plan to use Sundays to review my calendar for possible photo opportunities, as well as scan these challenge lists in order to create a weekly line-up of possible photographs.  This should provide a good starting point - one that is not too rigid to allow for last minute changes, but one that hopefully will help me to create and then maintain the daily photo habit.
2. Make the Time.  I am a routinized person… I enjoy a schedule and am fairly disciplined to stick to it.  The problem in the past was I never included this daily activity on my to-do list.  And… as is wont to happen, I rarely bothered to remember.  We make time for the things we deem important… and the question becomes, how important is photography to me?  I need to be honest with myself here, but if it is as important as I want it to be… then I need to make time to practice the craft.  Period.
3. Don't Compare.  Oh boy… this is a BIG one for me.  I am constantly comparing myself to others and the result is always personal dissatisfaction and a desire to give up.  I need to recognize that we are all in different places on this photography journey, and we all have different goals.  I have no desire to become a professional - I only desire to improve.  I can look at others' pictures and learn from their talent, but I cannot compare my work to theirs.  I must learn to embrace their talent while at the same time accepting my own.
4. Give Yourself a Break…. but don't let yourself off the hook.  Life happens - and while the goal to take a picture a day is an admirable one, there will be days when it is just not going to happen. For a perfectionist like myself, this can easily derail me because I "failed" the task.  But the truth of the matter is… I did not fail. Tomorrow is another day.  However… I cannot confuse the inevitable conflicts with personal mood swings.  There will certainly be times where I am able to participate but I simply do not "feel" like it.  I must be willing to do it anyway; practice the craft no matter what.

 I know many participants have started a blog specifically devoted to this 365 Project.  I will not.  This photographic journey is a part of my "emerging" process and I want to incorporate it here.  My plan is to post a week's worth of pictures each Friday (Photo Friday).  Some photos may inspire commentary, others may have only a title.  Some photos may be SOOTC ("straight out of the camera") … others may have extensive Lightroom edits, as I am discovering that I enjoy creative post-processing.  In other words, I will make this project my own and enjoy every minute of it.

Thank you, Courtney and Jil for inspiring me to focus on photography once again.  I'm going to have a blast!

Photo Thursday: Lightroom Workflow

I am not writing this post as an expert on Lightroom. In fact, I am writing in the hopes that some of you may be able to give me a few pointers.

I have been using Lightroom 4 for about eighteen months.  I never got the hang of iPhoto and I have yet to advance to PhotoShop (I have an unhealthy fear of layers...), but I like the organizational system of Lightroom, and the basic editing tools are sufficient for my present photography needs.

I bought Scott Kelby's hefty tutorial text, and while I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first four chapters, I am ashamed to admit that I have not progressed any further - other than a brief scan of the index.  I thoroughly enjoy the author's conversational writing style, and the numerous images help this visual learner understand the step-by-step instructions.  I am certain to find time this winter to do a more serious study of this powerful software program.

In the meantime, however, I have managed to develop a nice workflow that suits my organizational needs, and I thought I might share that system here.  I am always open to suggestions, however, to make this even more efficient, so please feel free to share.

I try to download my pictures after each event; it allows me to review the photos while the memory is still fresh in my mind, and it prevents a major backup that will demand hours of time rather than minutes.  Within Lightroom my pictures are sorted first by year, then within each year I have a separate folder for each individual event.  All event subfolders begin the same way, that is, the numerical value for the month, followed by the year, followed by a brief descriptive title.  For example, the recent pictures of the Arboretum were uploaded to the subfolder:  09-2013 Arboretum within my 2013 folder.

Once I download the pictures into Lightroom, I do a quick review and immediately delete those that I do not want to keep.  My criteria varies depending on the event, but I tend to weed out about half (mostly due to poor composition or focus, and/or if I have several of one shot I eliminate all but two).  This takes very little time.

I then go through the remaining pictures and select those that I think are the best - the cream of the crop.    Currently I use the flag system (white for "best" and black for "delete") although I know that some people prefer the five star rating system.  While I have no set percentage that I deem as favorites, typically I find about 12-20 pictures that meet the criteria (and I typically find a few more to delete during this second pass through).

At this point I edit only those pictures that I flag as the best.  My edits are fairly basic, mostly because I am not familiar with many of the advanced options.  I crop the image, if needed.  I adjust the white balance (this one feature is worth the cost of the program!) and often tweak the exposure and contrast.  Occasionally I will play with the color adjustment options, but typically I stop here.  Quick and Easy.

A new step that I recently added is to keyword these edited images.  I must confess that I do not have the hang of keywording, and I fear I either add too many or too few.  I do, however, see the value of this feature to either perform a search for a particular picture, or to assemble a photo compilation that spans several months/years.  Unfortunately, I did not add this step to my workflow until just recently, so I am now faced with the laborious task of keywording photos of the past ten years.  *sigh*

The final action is to post these edited images to a photo sharing website like Flickr (if interested, here is my photostream).  Lightroom makes this simple and convenient because it is already linked to Flickr.  I can create a new set within Lightroom, select the images that I wish to include, copy them to that set, and click "publish"  Within a few minutes I can log into my Flickr account, rename the files to a more descriptive title (rather than IMG-0152), write a quick summary, and I am done.

Typically the entire process takes less than an hour and it suits my need for efficient organization.

Addendum:  As I continue to catch up on the backlog of key wording, I have decided that at the end of each year I want to review these favorite photos and select the "best of the best"  There are some that evoke such a positive response within me - mostly sentimental in nature - that I would like to have a way to easily access them.  Using the rating system, I will only five star those favorites that I feel are truly the best... based on purely subjective reasons.

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As I said in the beginning, however... if any of you have a modified workflow, I would love to hear your comments and suggestions.

Arboretum Reflections

In celebration of cooler temperatures and bright sunny skies, I decided to take a photo safari to our local arboretum.  Of course the nice weather encouraged others to enjoy the outdoors as well, so it was a bit more crowded than I anticipated. I only stayed for about an hour, but in that time I was able to take a few pictures and reflect on this time of year.... and life.

This week one of my students reminded me of the prologue to Tuck Everlasting - an exquisite passage of literature for me, although not necessarily a favorite of the student.  Natalie Babbitt sets the scene by describing a summertime heat spell:

The first weeks of August hang at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.

When I taught the book to seventh graders, we discussed this simile at length:  if seasons of the year are compared to a ferris wheel, it is then logical that the hottest part of the year would be at the top before it "falls" into autumn.

This also corresponds to a lesson I teach in my British Literature class.  Currently we are discussing symbolism in literature and how each season often has an archetypical meaning:  spring symbolizes rebirth; fall symbolizes old age.  We all found this a bit incredulous, however, because when we think of fall we imagine vibrant colors, delicious hot drinks, and warm comfortable clothing.  We don't think of old age and dying.

But if we look closely at nature we discover that this is indeed a seasonal affect.  And while I recognize that my age indicates I am "over the hill" ... I prefer to think that I am in the autumn of life.

I might be losing a few petals....

or be a bit withered around the edges...

But I still have purpose in life...

and I welcome special friends

Craft and Vision

Sometimes it is the little surprises in life that make for a joyful day.

Yesterday morning I opened my email and found an offer from Craft and Vision - 50% off (almost) everything!  If you are not familiar with Craft and Vision, it is an online source of stunning photography ebooks at incredibly affordable prices (typically $5.00 per PDF).  David DuChemin is the founder and author of several of the available ebooks, as well as conventional books such as Within the Frame:  The Journey of Photographic Vision and Photographically Speaking:  A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images.  I felt as though Christmas had arrived a few months early, and I immediately went online to create my wish list.

I have downloaded a couple of these ebooks in the past and find the process to be user-friendly and quite efficient.  Typically I save the PDF on my computer, as well as upload it into my Dropbox account.  This allows me to read the book on my other electronic devices using reader apps such as iBooks, Kindle, or Nook.  Each ebook is clearly written with plenty of photographs to illustrate the lesson. The image resolution on the iPad is vivid and quite helpful for a visual learner like myself.

While I have not quite adopted electronic devices as a substitute for reading novels, I think it is the perfect delivery system for reading photography books.  I like the fact that I have an entire library at my fingertips which could be read and savored slowly or which could be skimmed quickly simply by looking at the pictures.

For a twenty dollar bill I downloaded several ebooks that I plan to read in the car this weekend as we drive nine hours to Nashville.   Hopefully when I return I will be inspired to practice photography once again.

For those who might be interested, here is the list of books I chose to buy:

• Sharp Shooter:  Proven Techniques for Sharper Photographs (36 pages)
• Up Close:  A Guide to Macro and Up Close Photography (88 spreads)
• Eye Phone:  Making Stronger Photographs with your Camera Phone (45 pages)
• Forget Mugshots:  10 Steps to Better Portraits (35 spreads)
• Close to Home:  Finding Great Photographs in Your Own Backyard (37 spreads)
• Ten More:  10 More Ways to Improve Your Craft (I already owned Ten)
• Vision is Better:  Free the Mind. Free the Camera (3 ebook series -- over 300 pages)