Looking through some shots from Sydney to post and came across this one. Thought it would look decent in black and white. Sometimes I frame shot but never go through with the final process of making it work as I only post process those that jump out at me.

This is a rather contrasty image, and there are technical elements like the burned out highlights of the walls. Then again, you need to look at the overall picture and wonder if that works. For me, the overall shapes from the tiles and the play of light and shadow on the walls and windows made the image for me.

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Having one of those ‘Aha!’ moments where I feel like I’m learning something new in photography. I keep reminding myself that when I start to stagnate that I need to look for new ways to express myself.

Spent some time going through some old tutorial videos I purchased a couple of years ago to learn about the data management side of photography, as well as the actual shot to print process. I have taken an interest to framing photos, and will pick that up once I come back from Europe. Heh, it seems like everything that interests me requires an outlay, so hopefully the job hunting is relatively painless when I get back. Having done it more than once, and actually removing the obstacles towards applying for jobs, I feel a little more confident with finding some work.

On framing pictures, the outlay will require some of the tools for joining the frames, measuring and cutting the bevels of the matte board and mounting. This doesn’t include the ongoing cost of materials to do actual frames. Heh, this leads me to also wanting an A3 printer and testing out different types of paper rolls for creating those large landscape photos. Even as a camera geek and enthusiast, cameras and lenses are the last things on my purchase list. I want to be able to control the entire process, from the snapshot, to the editing, the final print and producing a picture frame that can adorn someone’s wall. For me, what’s the point of having thousands of photos locked away as bits in a hard disk if you can’t just take the time to stare and appreciate it?

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This is probably what unemployment does to you, having the time and opportunities to explore other avenues of life, that you can take time off your routine and review it. Maybe you need to digress a little off life to just take a view and see that what you are currently doing is indeed what you actually want to do. Our experiences through life all vary, and perhaps now is a good time to stand up and take action.

Was at Auction Rooms café when I grabbed this shot with my iPhone. Sometimes you just need the elements of the shot, and you can work magic on it later. Spruced this up on my iPad using the Snapseed app. Can’t wait for iOS 5 to hit so I don’t have to manually send photos back and forth to do tweaks (iPhone 4 has better camera and it’s always on me, but the editing software is on the iPad).

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It feels like I’m having a clearer picture of what I want to do in life, and the signals have constantly hit you, but you don’t realise it until much later. You see talented people living their dream and the rest of us seem to envy their good fortune or admire their hard work. Now I realise that people who are living their dream have made a plan, and they are working towards it. The plan may not be clear at first, but you slowly piece it together. As long as you are unafraid of failure, and as long as you look beyond the first step that you must take, and also to take that very first step, you can be on your way to achieving what you have dreamed of.

Heh, people tell me I take good photos. The praise encourages me to take more photos, but I don’t kid myself, I do feel the need to take even more pictures and scrutinise them even more closely. I am pushing myself in a way I haven’t done before. I take the shots, marvel them, and start to see the flaws of the photos that I have taken. I need to give myself the opportunity to do it again. I don’t want to just pump out mediocre work. There are times when I’m being playful with the camera, but there are also times that I have a vision of what I want before pressing the shutter button. I am also thinking more of the final image now, of how I’d like it to look. Colours set the mood and tone of an image, and while I like saturated colours, I want to start exploring those desaturated tones, shadows that play on the image. I want to try something different.

They say you should go through familiar territory and retake photos of the same places. You can get a fresh perspective on the place, and the new pictures may surprise you.

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I am a little anxious with the trip to Europe in terms of taking photos. Heh, like the Sydney trip, I want to enjoy the moment and not get too caught up with taking photos, but I also want to push myself creatively and see how I can put my own vision into the picture frame. It’s difficult to balance between both as taking photographs requires some consideration and being a tourist doesn’t really give you the time to work it out.

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Have a little less than a week now before I hop onto a plane. Just need to sort out things around the house so I don’t come back to a mess in August. Heh, looking forward to the decluttering.

Another of those HDR shots from the Sydney Tower. The views are definitely worth the $25 admission price. Pressed the camera all the way up against the window to reduce the reflections as possible. One of those tricks I learned reading photography websites.

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Just got my shipment of books from Amazon UK. Heh, they are part of the reason why the two large book companies in Australia went into administration recently as it’s cheaper to import books (free shipping! yay!) than it is to buy them locally, even after discounts.

I bought an iPad thinking I’d use it a lot for reading eBooks and PDFs related to photography. I do, but there are some drawbacks to that. The iPad is a multifunction device, and there are times when you are reading and you feel the urge to check something out. You switch to the browser app and there you lose your train of thought. With a book, it has one function, and that is to engage you in its contents. It sits there on the side on a table, and you’d instinctively pick it up to continue reading, with the iPad, you get lost in all its functions and then you forget about the book you were reading. There have been times where I got lost on which page I was on (friends flicking through your book collection, or just falling asleep and accidentally swiping to another page).

With books, the spine of the book to how it was opened is sort of like a memory of the last page you were on, so even if you lose your bookmark, you can sort of flick back to the page you were on. The thickness of the book also gives you an idea on how long it’d take to read a book, which part you are in, and whether you only have a few pages left to read before the book ends. With iPad or Kindle books, sure they have the page numbers at the bottom, but I still haven’t figured out what they mean as my experience with physical books is about 50 pages an hour so you know how long you have before you put it down. Having physical pages also allows you to scan multiple sections of the book in a glance, something I can’t do on a reading device. There is also the action of just flipping through the pages and skimming the content just to see what you’ll be looking at (for books with photos that is).

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Having written about reading, I’d just like to say I am grateful to mom for encouraging me to read from a young age. She and my aunt used to read to me the occasional bedtime story. I liked the picture books from kindergarten and was lucky to have access to the entire section of Enid Blyton’s books while in primary school. I’m sure I read almost the whole selection of the 96 books stored in the classroom’s cupboard. Mom got me a card for the local library and from reading to me, I slowly got the confidence to read through the books myself, and was pretty proud of myself when I finished my first 300+ page book on my own.

Heh, these days it’s being pragmatic vs idealistic. I’d like a wall covered with books but then I worry about all the space that would take up, the moving, the costs of shelving, the books themselves etc. Well, I guess I will continue to buy books and keep those that I really treasure.