Just now the books are empty. I haven’t had any work this week thus far, and to be honest… this far into the week… I suspect we are looking at a complete blank.
Why is this?
I suspect that the early Easter and the perpetual winter are a good chunk of the problem. The weather started to pick up earlier in the month but has turned decidedly more wintery again, combine that with the schools finishing up for the holidays a week today and I think people are just hanging on for a bit. I don’t suspect to see much for the next 3 weeks if this is the case, perhaps it will pick up a wee bit should the weather suddenly remember that we have now changed seasons, but the main bulk of work is more liable to appear after schools go back.
So what am I doing with this free time? Today I have a poorly child so I am mostly making sure he is okay, but I am also planning some stuff. I currently have my panel to finish for the BIPP so that should probably take priority once Angus returns to school (they only do a half day Friday’s anyway so I get precious little time to really go and hunt out likely subject and good light then). Then I have my “quiet” project - this is just a little challenge I set myself to submit at least one photo each month to the Outdoor Photography “If You Only Do One Thing This Month” series. Which has been going great… except this month they want a mountain photograph and as I have mentioned before - mountains, much as I love them, are not currently on the agenda! So I need a way to achieve this goal!
Fortunately I have been putting some hours in on the indoor bike since January and my fitness is improving, even if my weight is making no progress anywhere despite dieting along side the extra burn. This would no doubt surprise the useless doctor who failed to listen to a word I said when the insurance company sent me to see him in Aberdeen last year… but it is what I have experienced in the past. I gain muscle mass very quickly, once I start training I rapidly gain strength in the areas needed, which happens faster than the fat burns off, so my weight either stays the same or increases… up to a certain point. Once I hit this point (which I have no idea of where it is) the weight just falls off - I have done it a couple of times and know this to be the case, I just hope that 15 years after the last conscious push to get in shape it works again! How this feeds in to the current mountain challenge then… well I can’t walk up hills so well due to various ongoing injuries and disabilities - but I can cycle… and one of my big loves in life is mountain biking, something I haven’t done in ages as I struggle to bring the big muscles and core into play due to the spinal injury… but those big muscle groups don’t really get challenged on an eBike as that takes a lot of the shock loading away!
Now… the roof bars are ordered to carry the bike on the car, the shed needs clearing out (which was going to be today’s job but now other things are prioritised over such things) so that bikes can be stored and charged safely so all that remains is finding some likely targets! I don’t need to get to the summits either, so I can just get into mountain country and that opens up many possibilities! I only have 4 weeks or so to accomplish this, so the game is afoot!
Which then brings me on to “Project 3” which is something that I have been mulling for quite some time and I think I want to combine it with both these other projects and perhaps other subject matter too. I am seeing a LOT of YouTube content at the moment from photographers making some pretty bold claims. They usually fall into the categories of “pro’s don’t want you to know this”, “this is how you shoot this location”, “this is the gear you need” or some other spurious claim. I get it, making people feel like you are a gatekeeper to secret knowledge sells, making people watch as you wax lyrically about the latest and greatest kit sells… but it is all absolute horse crap. So my plan is to basically run a series of videos to debunk all this, to show how using relatively affordable kit (which I shoot with commercially) you can achieve as good or better than the YouTubers. My “secrets” are very much open and I will quite happily share how I go about creating and crafting my work. There is process, there is knowledge and there is experience. This is going to involve a bit of a learning curve on my behalf as I really get to grips with video work, but it’s another marketable skill so why not!
For the rest of today then I will be pouring over maps, spotting likely subject matter - using old maps, photographs and Google Earth to narrow down my selection and then devising a strategy for the shoot!
Onwards… ever onwards we go!
