As we approach the end of 2024, I thought I’d post about a few things in general that have crossed my mind lately and where my life on earth has taken me to this point.
Questions I’ve received via email. What’s happened to my articles? Answer: I’m not writing many articles for the blog these days. I have a few I’ve started, but after I start them, they seem redundant, so I just put them on a back burner until I have more motivation to yammer on about well covered photography subjects on the Internet. I read some of what’s being written around the web, but I find them boring and mostly written by people who have never really worked as a serious photographer. I am not interested in commercialism and promoting my favorite camera gear and such. I had one person tell me I need to do more lens reviews. My response: Why? Every monkey and their uncle is putting out reviews of lenses. I don’t buy lenses to test and review. I keep my lens kit down to what I need and they are good for what I do and most of them are fairly old. Not interested. It seems like mostly it’s just generating content for mass consumption. I’d rather write about my life and what I’ve been doing with my photography. Here it is, Christmas Eve and I haven’t written a single thing about buying stuff for Christmas and it is quite intentional.
As far as getting out and doing photography, that too is a bit on the thin side these days. I’m old, the body is aching most of the time and I don’t see any point to making the same photos I’ve made hundreds of times over the years. I’m pretty much in a planning stage this time of year, plotting what I’ll be doing in the upcoming year. This time of year I also tend to work in the office, cleaning up the photo catalogs, working on photos, updating the computer, getting my business records in order and such. One of the big things that has been on my plate for the past month has been to trace down where my photographs are being published. I have confirmed that I’ve had images published in over 500 different publications. That’s not bad. I am laying claim to being the most published photographer in Colorado. If anyone can prove I’m not, go for it.
I will admit though, I’ve been contemplating joining one of the local photography clubs in 2025. After spending time in several of the local clubs, and President of one, I kind of quit that scene about 12 years ago. I made some friends and had some fun, but overall, I wasn’t really enjoying it back then. It seemed to be too focused on photography competitions and I don’t really see photography as a competition. Some of those folks took it way too seriously in my opinion. Excessive egos and lack of talent seemed to be the order of the day. But, I need to get out more and maybe I can find a club that isn’t based on monthly photo competitions and has friendlier members.
Six months after leaving Facebook, I’m enjoying the fewer distractions and finding a much wider audience for my photography on Reddit. I’ve found that I’ve lost contact with many of the people I “friended” on Facebook as a result. I have a few close friends I stay in contact with, but the “Facebook” friendships are for the most part superficial. I’m not missing it. I wish them all well. If they still want to interact with me, I’m not hard to find. I have been running this website for over 20 years.
Speaking of this website, my readership has actually improved since leaving Facebook. I’d say I’m getting %1000 more web page hits than when I was on Facebook. I think it’s because I’m not shouting in a fishbowl to only 700 people. Reddit is far more interactive in that regard and has generated a lot of traffic for me, but I’ve been concentrating on my website posts and most of my new readers are coming in from Google search.
I know you’ve been wondering so I’ll tell you what my typical day is like.
Yawn.
I’m normally in bed by 9:00 each evening. I’m normally up around 4:30-5:00 am each morning. I spend the first few hours of my day drinking coffee, checking the Internet stuff and researching what-ever is on my mind at the moment. My dogs usually come into my office and lay at my feet until they get bored and go lay in bed with the wife until she gets up. Exciting stuff. I do like my quiet time though, listening to the ambient radio on the Internet, killing a couple of hours in my office surfing the web or writing what I feel needs writing about. After that, I feed the dogs, play with them in the back yard, clean up the dirty dishes, sort out and take my daily medications and enjoy the fact that I don’t have a lot of distractions to deal with for the remainder of the day. I try to stay in touch with my daughters, plan a visit or two, then maybe the wife and I will go out for dinner or enjoy a nice home-cooked meal together late in the day. It’s all pretty boring and I love it. Having spent too much of my life living in the corporate world working for the man, and then another 15 years of running a photography business, I am taking my retirement seriously and not giving the old ways much thought these days. I still have a few photography projects on the front burner so I frequently spend time researching that work and looking at dates in the future when I can continue work on them. My favorite project at the moment is ghost towns and abandoned places. There’s a never ending supply of photographs from that subject matter.
So, that’s about it for today’s post. I just made my second cup of coffee and it’s time to start looking for more of my photographs that have been published on the Internet. That will keep me busy for a while.
Like I said earlier, I’m the most published photographer in Colorado and I’m sticking to that until someone can prove otherwise. That and $5 will get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks (and maybe a blog entry.)
