Not that I have a lot of faithful followers anxiously awaiting each blog entry, but I’ve been neglecting the blog (and my photography) lately. I’ve recently had another older interest of mine rejuvenated- music. I finally, and rather impulsively, purchased my first decent guitar. I started playing when I was about 12 years old. But it’s been an on and off hobby, mostly off, over the many years since then, and was never fueled by gigging or any interaction with other musicians. So I just didn’t have the inspirational and educational influences nor the drive (nor the talent, and some would say) to make anything out of it, and it just became a stagnant guitar-sits-in-the-closet-collecting-dust-for-years kinda thing.

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I haven’t been able to free myself much lately from the busy family life to go out and take photos without my kids in tow. I’ve missed the peak of autumn colours, which is a great time for one last kick at the landscape cat before the dull winter sets in. Now the trees are pretty bare, the grass has turned a bland shade of yellow, and it gets harder to capture lively scenes of nature- if you like vibrant colours as I do. I tried yesterday on a walk with my kids, to snap a couple shots from a nearby riverbank, but the results were disappointing. I miss the greens, and other colours of the various blooms and wildflowers- heck even a dandelion or two would inject some life into my landscapes.

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Every once in a while I get to rescue an an image that has no legs to stand on it’s own. Something I see in the subpar capture just triggers an idea, and then I play around with different effects and such in post. And occasionally I end up with something that doesn’t make my eyes bleed… maybe even something I like. I do not have the most creative vision as a photographer- far from it. But I do believe I have a knack for looking at a captured image and seeing what treatment, if any, would be appropriate in post-processing. My wanting photoshop skills are not always able to enact that vision fully.

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I’ve often said things like “these days everyone and their dog’s a photographer.” It’s a great hobby, so why not? And the digital age has accelerated everyone’s learning curve and inspiration (via the resulting wave of online photo sharing and critique sites and forums) while offering ever increasing feature to cost ratio and expanding variety of affordable photography equipment. I listen to a lot of photography podcasts, and a common theme in some series addresses the effect of this amateur explosion on existing professional photographers’ livelihood and longevity. Well, one thing you can always count on, where money is at stake, is the survival of good ol’ free enterprise ingenuity.

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