O...M...G...

I actually missed blogging!

I actually missed blogging?!

Yes, this is the same person who posted a blog love/hate/love post about how much time blogging took up when she wanted to be out shooting photographs. I don't think I was abducted by aliens during the night, and I haven't had any strange phone calls or appearances from Mulder and Scully. I haven't been blogging as much because I've been scheduling vendor meetings and designing marketing materials and doing other things to keep me and the business. But it was as I was reading someone else's blog that I felt a little bit of a twinge.

"Hmm," I thought. "I haven't written anything on the blog for a while."

I'm trying to compose a longer blog about the importance of family photos and why they are not a luxury, so that's been rattling around in my brain (and believe me, I'm sure that idea's bumping into a lot of other things). So I said I wouldn't post until I'd formulated what I wanted to say.

But I gotta admit. I missed you guys!

(You are out there, right? Or is my blog Wilson to my female version of Tom Hanks in that castaway movie?)

I think this might be a breakthrough moment on how I stopped worrying, and learned to love the blog.

Bienvenidos a Miami

I've just returned from my photo shoot in Florida. (Nifty how I schedule a business trip there during the cold part of the year, huh? I'm feeling quite smug with myself.) I flew into and out of Miami International Airport, which was about as much fun as dropping something  heavy on my foot. Before I left, I think I said on my blog post that I'd report on how the airport/airplane travel went. I'd have to go back through my blog to verify that, but in any case, here we go.

In some respects, this airplane trip was better than the last in terms of getting my equipment on the plane with me and to my destination. As I've said, I can't take the risk of having luggage handlers playing Catch-N-Oops with my delicate camera gear (and by extension my career), so I cannot check it. This, however, means that I can only take one camera body, one prime lens, and one telephoto lens. I also need to have my netbook to download my shots and to do preliminary culling of images, my external hard drive to serve as immediate back-up storage, by Hoodman (a small device that fits over the viewing screen on my DSLR so I can view shots while in bright sunlight), my SB-600 flash, batteries for my Nikon D90, its charger, batteries for the flash, and two SD card cases with SDHC cards. Add to that the cords and cables I need and a sun it, and it all fits quite neatly into my Lowepro CompuDaypack. This is the lightest and most compact I can pack, but what if I need my wide angle lens? What if I want to bring an extra camera body? And schlepping a backpack is bad for my back, which means I have to look for a luggage cart, which means paying extra money at four bucks a pop if I can't score an abandoned one. I actually had an airline ticket attendant fight me over a stray one the moment a passenger dumped hers. I didn't know they were in such short supply at MIA.

I thought I'd solved these problems by getting a rolling backpack that meets airline carry-on specs (in fact that was the main selling point that made me pay as much as I did for it), but every time I've traveled with it, unless I'm seated in the back and can get on early, more often than not I have problems trying to stow it. It does get stowed with me inside the cabin, but not without a lot of drama. I've also noticed that I'm not the only traveler that has problems with rolling carry-on luggage that should be small enough to fit on planes in the overhead compartments or under the seat. It's getting so that the only way you're going to be able to have luggage with you on your trip is to ship it ahead to your destination - and I've heard of people who've actually done that.

I think a large part of the problem is that air carriers are booking (and overbooking) flights to the fullest capacity they can. It used to be less of a pain to fly and more of a pleasure, and now it's the other way round.

Landscapes

If you had the chance to read my old blog or to read the original tag line, the focus of my blog is taking on widowhood and photography a click at a time. To rehash a bit, I began shooting pictures because I couldn't look at the world, and visualize what I saw. I could see to do things like drive, cook when I was able, and to get around, but I'd completely lost all sense of vision. I don't expect this to make sense to all of you reading this blog, but I suspect there will be those among you who walk the stretch of road that I do who will, unfortunately, completely understand. For some reason, I was driven to pick up a camera nineteen months after I lost my husband, and I relied very heavily on it to verify what I saw in the world. If I took a picture of, let's say, an apple, when I uploaded the image and looked it, I had tangible proof of what I saw in terms of the object, it's color, the light around it, and its place in the world.

Like I said, this may not make sense to you at all, but this is the only explanation I've got. Or it may make perfect sense. I'll have to leave that up to you, Gentle Reader.

I shoot landscapes for two reasons. The first is my husband. My husband was an environmental economist who dedicated his life and career to environmental causes, and did so while fighting kidney disease his whole life. I feel closest to him while I'm chasing the light in a beautiful location; I feel him with me. And I imagine he gets a kick out of seeing his wife slogging through the muck, brush, snow and mud - a wife who's idea of nature involved shopping at an outdoor  mall rather than one indoors. (OK, I'm really not that shallow, but when I told a friend of mine that I'd bought a pair of hiking boots, I had to look for smelling salts.)

The second reason has to do with widowhood. It's easier to say to well meaning friends, "oh, I drove seven hours to X for a photo shoot" than, "I drove through the mountains at three am because I couldn't sleep and had a flight or flight response."

Again, I know there are those of you reading who unfortunately know exactly what I mean.

Blog Love/Hate/Love....

There are times with my blog that I think it's the best thing since a PB&J sandwich on sliced bread. Then there are other times when I feel like Cinderella did just after her evil stepsisters got ahold of the dress she made to go to the ball, especially when I look at other people's blogs. (We all know she got a better dress via fairytale intervention, but I don't know if that's going to happen here.)

What makes a good blog? I'm still trying to answer that question for myself, especially since (I am told) I need it to direct traffic to my website and thus increase my business. Business has changed so much in the wake of new technologies and with the change of not only a new decade and century, but a new millennium. Back in the day, it was important to have a business card that grabbed your client's attention; now, not only do you have to have a business card, you need a website, a blog, a Twitter page and a Facebook page. As I've whined about on here before (yes, I went there!), it seems like I spend so much time on the computer that I have to remember when the hell I put the camera.

So hmmm.... How do I become the Bodisadvat of blogging? (Now we're up to two questions I have to answer!) I think, in an effort to answer those things for myself, I have to get to a place where blogging ceomes second nature to me. Like it is with any type of writing, you have to force yourself to do it every day. I have to look for things that not only interest me, but things that just may be an interest to others and the people who stumble upon my blog. It's like that with my photography. I need to do it as much as I can, and always ask the question, "what makes this photo interesting?"  Plus there are the automated, technical functions that I can do to make my blogging tasks a little easier like writing as much as I can in advance, schedule my blogs and the time for writing them so that they appear when I'm out on a shoot or with a potential client.

So I'm working on it, and like everything in my life over the last thirty months, it's a constant change and a constant effort. My blog, like my life, is a work in progress. Hopefully both will be something that I can point to with some sense of pride and accomplishment someday.

Busywork

Yet another retro post, mainly because I'm blogging my little fingers to the bone! :-)

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UGH!

Today is chore day. Not only do I have house cleaning to do, I have things I need to do connected to the business. I try to keep up with things and do a bit here and there in both, but I find you really need to have a day where everything gets done. If you don't you're looking at one hot mess later on.

When I began the business, I spent a lot of time trying to lay down a good foundation. Of course, I had to decide whether  to be a Sole Proprietor, LLC (Limited Liability Corporation), or a corporation in general. I had to set up my website, Twitter, and Facebook. I had to begin a blog. And, oh yeah - there's the shopping for office supplies like accordion files for receipts, a calculator that figures out tax, file folders, etc. (Yes, I was the kid who loved shopping for school supplies. A nice, pink eraser and a box of a dozen number 2 Ticonderoga pencils just waiting to be sharpened made my nerdy little heart skip a beat at the start of each and every school year.)

I remember grumbling that the reason why I started my photography business was ta take photographs, and not to spend my day chained to the desk. UGH!  Thankfully that looks like that's changing.

Except for today, when I need to itemize receipts and clean the house to keep the furbabies happy.