As part of the run-up to my birthday – and yet another of the “Five Year Plan” rundowns, as at that point I’ll be 3/5ths of the way through – I’ve been starting to think about some site organisations and rationalising a few bits of what I’m doing.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m anywhere even close to having sensible levels of life/work, but I’m trying to do something about some of it, at least. In some ways, weirdly, it means I’m going to have more to manage, but that’s OK too.

One of the projects I’d had on the cards this year was to merge my ‘creative’ sites together, so that the Photography and Writing stuff would all sit under one roof. I did it back in April/May time, and what it’s actually meant is that I’ve not added much to either site – which of course wasn’t the expected action at all. So I’m spending a bit of time separating the sites again, and going back to (almost) how they were a year ago. Retrograde steps or what?

In hindsight, while it was logical to think about putting the two ‘creative’ sides into one place, the two bits don’t actually go together all that well. Putting the two in one place led to more separation and confusion than the seperate sites did/will, and while in some aspects it’s now a wasted effort, at least I know for sure that the idea didn’t work, and (to some degree) why it didn’t.  Sure, it’s annoying. But like the man said, “It’s better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t”.

There’s other bits of rationalisation and thought in the offing, but that’s the starting point.  I’m sure I’ll write more of the other stuff over the next two weeks. For in two weeks time, I shall be 38. And that’s pretty scary in itself.

Now that I’ve got the new job sorted, I’m hoping to take the time to look at what I want to do.

I know there’s the five-year plan, and that’s still ongoing. There’s plans and ideas that still need to be put into action, and I’m working on those slowly but surely. I’ll get there – although that five-year plan might still end up as a six or seven year plan, with the other stuff that’s been going on.

At the same time the last few weeks has also made me think about other options, whether this web geekery stuff is really for me. I think in general it is, because I like doing a lot of the stuff still. But I’ve ended up working with a lot of bell-ends this year, and a number of people who really weren’t up to the standards they said they were. All of which leads to a fair dollop of disillusionment.

So while I’m doing this proper job, I’m going to aim to get a couple of writing projects started. Again, this is kind of revisitng something I said I’d do back at the start of the year, and that I haven’t got round to. The aim is still the same, to have something done by the end of the year.

I’ve still got the time to get some stuff written, and draft out a couple of ideas as well. I just need to be more organised about taking the time to do some writing, I think.

Currently, the change of plans for next week is being dealt with OK. As always, it involves sending out a spudload of CVs to available contracts, and seeing what floats back.

At the same time, the way I feel this week means I wouldn’t mind having a week at home, where I can get some outstanding stuff done. That wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.

So it’s a matter of seeing what comes up. In an ideal world, another contract will come in to take the place of the now-dead one, but it might be a week or two. We’ll see.

What this entire thing has done though is put me back in the frame of mind where actually I’m really tired of what I do. Again, I’ll see whether that feeling stays, but it could be that it’s time to look at moving on to some new field, something I actually want to do rather than “just” something I’m good at. (and that I usually enjoy doing)

Mind you, changing to something else I want to do will take time – I’ve a couple of ideas for it, it’s more about having the time (and the money to take the time) to get going on them.

I dunno – I know that while things are OK at the moment I’m also a tad depressed about the entire farce. I’m tired of it. So I’m going to take some time, think about where things want to go and/or need to go. We’ll see what happens.

In some ways the week just coming to a close has been pretty strange.

For one thing, in the space of five days I’ve managed to sort out an extension to the current contract (allbeit ‘only’ for two weeks) and sort out what I’ll be doing straight after that. I can honestly say that’s never happened to me before – there’s usually at least a week of time between contracts, but in this one I’ll be finishing the current one on Oct 2nd and starting the new one on Oct 5th.

Along the way, there’ve also been a few other decisions made, thoughts had, and stuff worked on. But there’ll be more details about that as time goes on.

But all told, it’s been a positive week – just slightly stranger and more organised than I’m used to.

For the last two and a half years, I’ve had a mental image of a photograph I wanted to try and get – basically, haybales lit by moonlight, so they’d be silver rather than gold. I know, strange but true.

Over the last two summers, events have conspired against that plan – there’s been no full moon when the bales are available, and conversely no bales when the full moon’s around. And on the occasions when there was a full moon + bales, the nights have been too cloudy to do anything with it.

Last night, I finally got the perfect circumstances – lovely full moon, clear skies (OK, a tiny bit of cloud, but nothing important) and bales in the fields.  So off I went.

And it’s been reasonably successful. I’m pleased with the results in general, except for one thing. They’re horrifically noisy as well as everything else. Now some of that’s my fault – the wrong ISO setting, for one thing – so I’m going to go out again tonight and see whether I get anything better while using a super-low ISO – 200 at most, but preferably 100. It’ll also probably mean I need to take even longer exposures, although the ones I got last night of about 2.5-3 minutes seemed to work OK.

Even at that point I think I’m still going to need to do some editing in Photoshop and/or Capture ONE in order to get the results I’m actually thinking of , as it turns out that my mental image is probably rather more “romantic” than the reality. Still, it’s fun to try.

Additionally, it also meant I finally got to use my PClix 100 properly for the first time since I bought it three years ago. It’s a nice bit of kit, but ’til now I haven’t really had the project and/or ideas that necessitated its use.  Long exposures though are one of the areas it specialises in. Without the PClix, I wouldn’t have had any real chance of getting a decent exposure at all.

So, ten months after starting the course – three terms of ten weeks each, plus breaks for half-term and between terms – I’ve now passed my NCFE Level 2 Photography certificate.

I’ve written about the course on odd occasions over the last year, and it’s been a pretty good course all told. I wouldn’t say I’ve learned masses, but that wasn’t necessarily my goal for the course  – it was more about getting more motivation for going out and taking photos, which was more what I needed – and in that way, it’s been pretty successful.

There’s a fair number of the final portfolio images in this set on my Flickr pages although I haven’t added all of them yet.

All told, I’m pleased to have successfully completed the course, and to have built up the portfolio project, and it’s another thing to add to the CV. All the people on the course have decided we’ll continue to meet up on a regular basis, and keep our motivation going in that way, creating in effect our own photography club, so we’ll see how that goes.

And for further further education? I don’t know yet – Norfolk’s Adult Education has apparently been hit hard by budget cuts, so there are nowhere near as many courses for 2009/10,  and even more annoyingly it looks like the NCFE have also stopped doing the Level 3 certificate completely. So we’ll just have to see what I decide to do on that score.

For now, I’m going to enjoy a summer off, and take some time to think about what comes next.