Wow the months go by fast. Last time I posted it was the New Year, now we are a month into 2019 and it feels like it’s gone in a flash. I’m so happy I started allocating my time for each day so that I would feel like I was actually getting things done. It’s certainly helped me this month with my biggest project which was to go through over 12,000, yes that’s right 12 thousand images, from a trip I did to Morocco in 2014. To be honest I’d kept putting it off as it was just overwhelming and many shots were taken in bursts of ten as we drove along to try and capture just one image as we went by fast. Lots and lots to delete which means I have more than halved the number on a first pass. And now I’ve made February my big month to get a photobook done with the best images from these.
I’ve always worked in blocks of time before, like I’ll spend the day doing photo processing, or the morning printing images out, or watching a lesson on video and then the rest of the day playing with the ideas presented. So large blocks of time. After watching a random video on Creative Live by Lisa Congdon on workflows and rolling to-do lists I came up with my own version of a rolling to-do list that seems to be working for me. Nothing is set in concrete but I work in one hour blocks of time over the day that I write down 2-3 days ahead of time so that I wake every morning knowing what I have to get done that day. The tasks vary across the day but by staying focused, really focused when I am working I am getting a lot done and with the one hour blocks of time I can slog it out on the hard or boring or ucky tasks. If something doesn’t get done or something comes up that I need to do instead I just roll whatever is left from one day onto the next and reschedule the least important things for another day.
In the middle of the month PhotoBook Shop had a sale on all their canvas sizes and with a project in mind for the end of the year I decided to grab a few to see how they look and what depth of edging they use for this. It will be a few more weeks before I get them back but I think it was worth the time and effort to get this done as cheaply as possible to see what quality they are before sinking hundreds of dollars into just a few frames.
I’ve been down to Obi Obi Creek each week in January, as one of my projects for the year is to photograph it in all weathers and seasons, though we really don’t get seasons here. Not like snow and ice 🙂 I’ve seen the platypus twice too but without my camera 😦 I also finally found someone to make me a table to go beside my big window for still life. I’d been looking in all the shops and nothing was right, too long, too wide, too low, or just too awful to look at as a piece of furniture. This one is exactly right! So I’ll be posting some of those soon.
And finally my daughter and one granddaughter (aged 5) came up to stay for a few days before she starts school. That’s the last grandchild to start school, as the eldest is entering High School.
A busy February coming up as I start a Photography Masterclass with Len Metcalf, I think my whole year is going to be really busy 🙂 The Masterclass is a concentrated learning workshop with 2-3 days every second month in Sydney and lots of exercises and projects to go with that. Come back on the first Friday of next month to see what I did in February and how my year is shaping up.