Back to some photography

I haven't really left photography but I did loose some of my passion for a while.  In March of 2011 I went out and bought a nice new tripod and head (Vanguard Alta Pro 284CT Carbon Fiber Tripod and the Vanguard GH-100 Pistol Grip Head) .  Soon after that I lost my drive to want to go out and photograph things.  I had a lot going on in my life and sadly photography wasn't a priority.  I think in part I was a little burnt out after doing the 52 photowalks of 2010 and the 50/50/50 for 2011.  Then over the summer I was eagerly awaiting the World Wide Photowalk.  I got out and shot some but not as much as I did the year before.  Finally the WWPW came around and I had a ball getting out and shooting, editing, and talking to other like-minded individuals.  I got my groove back if you will. See my WWPW 2011 images here.  I entered this shot   and ended up winning the local Wilmington, DE walk by default.  I couldn't believe no other shots were entered, but I wasn't going to complain too much.  My image moved on to the finals, it didn't get picked in Scott Kelby's top 10 list and didn't do awesome in the viewer choice awards but it was something. I'm not in photography to get prizes or win awards and that is not why I do the WWPW.  I go to the WWPW because it's a chance to explore an area and meet new people.  I always have a lot of fun doing the walk, and maybe next year I will lead a walk.  I just got my copy of Kelby's book, Light It Shoot It Retouch It in the mail yesterday.  Although I use gimp and not photoshop this book has a lot of info on the whole process and so far is a good read.


I've been heavy into google+ lately, there are a lot of great photographers on there.  One of my favorites is Trey Ratcliff, but there are so many inspiring images and nice people on there.  You can check me out on google+.  I will try to post there more than I blog here.  


Recently I shot a senior portrait and had a ton of fun doing it.  I generally don't enjoy shooting portraits too much.  I think I'm very picky about it and I don't have a lot of experience doing it.  I will post some shots and a write up from it as soon as I get a chance to go through and edit them.  


I'm still running linux, ubuntu, for the time being.  I'm not sure I'm happy with where ubuntu is heading with unity but for now I still use 10.04 LTS.  With that I am running gimp, qtpfsgui (Luminance), hugin, rawtherapee, playing with darktable since it was just released.  I'm also considering buying bibble pro, if anyone has any comments on that please let me know.  I'm going to throw together a little raided server soon to make sure my pictures have a nice safe home in addition to backing up to DVD for short term storage.


I just got my book printed from my 2010 52 Photowalks.  You can view it here, please note the book quality is far superior to the preview on the screen.   I will write up a review for the book from AdoramaPix soon.


Hopefully I will be posting a little more regularly again.  I'm considering doing another 52 photowalks or something similar in 2012.  I like a nice steady project to keep my motivated and keep me trying new techniques and finding new places.  I've been geocaching and bike riding some lately and that has led me to some new areas that I would like to explore photographically.


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