Reorganising and Rationalising
Posted: Fri 23 October, 2009 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Photography, Web Development, Writing Leave a comment »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.
Writing Tasks
Posted: Sun 11 October, 2009 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), The '09 Writing Project, Writing Leave a comment »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.
Night Photography
Posted: Sat 8 August, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Photography, Weather Leave a comment »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.
NCFE Photography – The Result
Posted: Wed 1 July, 2009 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), NCFE Course, Photography, Resolutions Leave a comment »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.
NCFE Completion
Posted: Sat 13 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, NCFE Course, Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »As regular readers know, over the last year (well, nine months or so) I’ve been doing an NCFE Level 2 course in Digital Photography + Photoshop. It’s been OK – I’ve learnt a few things, although nowhere near as much as I hoped to – but it has meant I’ve been getting out and taking more photos, which really was the prime reason for taking the course.
There’s a larger piece being written about me, motivation and other issues, so I won’t go into them too much here, but suffice to say that my motivation has been distinctly lacking over the last year or so, so I’ve been working along the way to do things that get me doing more. And the NCFE course was one of those things.
Anyway, it’s coming to a close, and the main thrust for this term has been the assemblage of a final portfolio, which needs to be done by the 23rd June. We’ve all known about needing to do this portfolio, and in truth I’m actually on the third iteration of it – the first two project ideas fell through due to a lack of available opportunities and/or time (in fact the idea for the first one still wouldn’t have been available for me to do ’til next week, which is cutting it just a little bit fine…) so I’ve ended up with one that I’m happy with, but that’s completely in my comfort-zone, which isn’t the ideal for this course. But there we go, them’s the breaks.
But it’s now completely done, with everything being printed and assembled by Photobox. In some ways it’s a relief to have it all done and out the way, but in others it’s more a case of “OK, so what’s next?”