Shutterbug: me

I want to try something new. (I think might I say this a lot?)

I've been processing/tagging going through my photos lately, and I've come across some interesting facts and conclusions.

• I took 2,259 photos this summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day
• It's possible that I've forgotten some.
• I've been experimenting more than I realized with macro images.
• I really just need to cough up the money and buy my own DSLR.
• I want to make the shoulder/body strap that one of the guys at ResNet had on his camera.
• I suck at processing my albums.
• There's a good chance that no one will ever enjoy the majority of the pictures I take other than me (I'm not sure how I feel about that)
  

The last one could be largely influenced by the fact that I have no formal training in photography, and have really just approached it in my normal haphazard "let's try this" method. And also by the fact that I went on a work-cation this summer for about 10 days and took about half of the said 2k+ photos during that time. 10 days, 1000ish photos? That's a lot of picture taking. No wonder my aunt thought I was crazy.

I've also developed a deeper appreciation for what my friend and previous roommate Michelle does. Michelle's a photographer, and works in a photo lab. And I have no idea how she has the patience to process everything she does, much less choose what she thinks will sell the best and try to make a profit from the whole thing. And she shoots in film, so processing isn't sitting down with Lightroom or Aperture; there's actual chemicals involved. I mean, DAMN GIRL. (PS she's way better than me and has some awesome stuff and I wish she had a website so that I could point y'all to it and you could OOH and AHH over the amazingness).

(Michelle is also an incredibly nice person who's donated things to my choir's silent auction. And people loved that photo, too. "Oh wow, look how it GLOWS..." was pretty much the general statement of the evening.)

I thought, that since I'm all shutterbuggy, I would take a photo class this fall at the Creative Arts Workshop. 'Cause that would be nice. But ALAS! All of the photo classes I'm interested are either at weird times or are during choir. I somehow don't see my boss signing off on me taking a 10am-1pm class and I have ONE recurring event a week, and everyone wants to schedule something during the 8-10pm block. So, instead, I'm taking a ceramics class on Tuesday nights, which will be great, 'cause I haven't seriously touched clay for something like 6 years ("seriously touched" meaning I've done so with intent and purpose, as opposed to a valley girl's vacuous inflections).

BUT ANYWAYS - my spastic post-lunch endorphins and sugar levels make for interested blog posting, I'm sure...

Here is what I want to start doing: one photo a day. I'll post, you'll critique, comment, generally tell me that you love it/hate it/think I'm weird for taking pictures of it, etc. Some of them might be repeats from Facebook stuff.

This is Travis and Marilynn Uphaus. I knew her first as Mars Anater, though. We met through our jobs at SMC, and had many adventures. Including one in a canoe... Mars and Travis got married Memorial Day Weekend, and we all had a fantastic time.

That's one of my favorites. They're so happy! Just a little dodging and burning, to pop them out of the background, and some basic skin smoothing on Mars so that she didn't look so mottled.

OK, now it's time to go review the students' work schedule for next week, because I'm positive that there are a few people who are working too many hours and not playing nice...