A Life of Its Own

My last photo shoot was on July 18. I have not done any shoots since then. The past month has been a time for rethinking my goals in photography.

July 18 was the day Apple began its switch from .mac to me.com. The next few days I battled the changes when my iWeb site refused to update. The problems with the website forced me to try my other options. I tried uploading it to duendearts.com. That didn't work. iWeb just was not designed to work with other hosting servers. I checked out other commercial hosting sites and in the process looked at photographs that other, non-established photographers were posting. I began to doubt the wisdom of my path. These other photographers on the whole seemed to be more accomplished than I.

Accompanying Arron to John Robert Powers took me the next step. From listening to the school owner I realized I could alter the skin tones on my photographs by using white balance. The world of color correction opened.

The last two weeks I have been studying smugmug.com, how to build a site there and their recommendations for making photographic images produce good prints. Equipped with more knowledge about color levels, color curves, sRGB and color spaces, I think I am ready to move on.

Yesterday I processed images for the first time since doing Abby's shoot. I worked on the pool shots of Arron and Scott. That outdoor photo shoot with two models was another critical point for me. Shooting the guys at the pool gave me a reverse deja vu. This was what professional fashion shooting felt like. I loved it!

Today I am going to try to finish processing Arron and Scott's photos, finish one or two galleries on smugmug.com, and read the manual on the Canon D5 and Pixma 9000 Pro. My agenda has been filling up again. I want to experiment with printing photos at home, printing on CDs and DVDs, and complete my equipment purchases before the end of the month.

The future remains uncertain. I don't know if I can make money from photography and videos but I'll go it one step at a time. Find your bliss, Joe Campbell used to advise his students. Marcia Sinetar's advise was the same: find what you enjoy doing and the money will follow. I have always been cavalier about earning money. I doubt this will change. Feeling creative and growing by learning and experience have been more important to me.

Meanwhile the summer is winding down. The days have gotten cooler in the morning although the sun is intense when it rises above the trees and hits you straight on. The garden is a mess but there are late-season bloomers. The garage and my bedroom are crammed full. I have a mess of things I want to do.

I decided not to fly to Kansas tomorrow. Merma was shocked when I called her this morning but by now she knows I can change my mind like this. I've done it before. I bought the ticket at a time when I was feeling down about the whole photography enterprise.

When all is said and done, life is a cycle of ups and downs. How we feel affects out decisions in the moment but in the long run life has a life of its own. It's integrity stems from something bigger than our moment's lapses.