It’s been awhile.

I’m still working with my photography, with a big of ceramics here and there. I’ve spend a lot of time going through on-line Photoshop courses and building that skill set. It’s coming.

I’ve finished some prints that I really like. I’ll drop them in here over the coming days/weeks.

Actually I stopped writing because I lost the vision. I started getting caught up in how to make money with it – going commercial. The same thing that killed it off when I was doing it before.  There’s something in my head that tells me if I can’t make money at something it isn’t worth doing. That kills the creative drive – drives me in a direction I don’t really like. So I had to let that die. I would like to make enough cash doing it to help pay for it. But on my terms.

I’m actually struggling with the whole blogging thing. Is it worth the time? I write it and no body reads it – what is the value?

Why…

• It helps me organize my thoughts, helps me internalize the process
• It gives me a record of what I did and how I got there. Good to review
• There’s the possibility that I could get some constructive input from like minded creatives, if I could make it interesting enough to give them a reason to share their time with me.

That’s good for a start.

I have to keep telling myself that this is a long term project – years, not months.

One exciting development – simple but exciting to me.

I was sitting in church a couple of weeks ago and had a vision of a portrait format I wanted to try out. But I’d need some strobes and a studio.

So I called the friend I’d sold my old stobes to a couple of years ago. I suspected at the time that she didn’t really want them that bad, but I sold them so cheap that she couldn’t pass them up. So I called her and asked if she would like to sell them back to me – and she did.  So I have my stobes back. They are old and probably needs a bit of service work, but they make light.

I learned a little bit more about my cool new Nikon D90. I was going to go buy a cable release. Luckily I actually looked at the camera first and noticed there isn’t anywhere to plug in the release cable. So I had to buy a remote release for it. Actually the price wasn’t bad, probably less than a good cable release would cost. Only thing I don’t like about it is you have to be in FRONT of the camera to use it. I can work around that.

Then I tried to sync my strobe to the camera – looked for the sync on the camera – there isn’t one. Back in my day there were just coming out with remote strobe triggers. I actually tried to make one – it kind of worked. It was light triggered. You plugged the sensor into the remote strobe and the light from the strobe on the camera set it off. It worked, but was never really usable. Now, I had to buy a radio trigger. Cool except more money. I checked out the PocketWizard and the Elinchrom Skyport. The PocketWizard sounded like the best long term choice, more powerful, more flexible and twice as much money. The Skyport is solid too. So I went with the Skyport. Going for the good product, easier entry point. If I need get more serious and need more umph I can move up to the PocketWizard. So far I really like it. Easy to use and flawless in during my first (and so far only) shoot this week end.

I pulled some neat shots. Need to put them together and I’ll share the result.