DanOCan

Authors call it “writer’s block”.  I don’t know a good term for the photographic equivalent, but I have had it in spades the last few weeks.  I shouldn’t be surprised — after all, no matter what creative outlet you choose to pursue, there will always be times when you just aren’t making it happen the way you want.

My photography has been on a steady decline since January.  January was a month where I was really starting to push my limits as a photographer.  I was taking advantage of some warmer weather and the long evenings to get out and do a lot of long exposure work and try and get a little more creative.  The results weren’t spectacular, but they were workable.  They certainly were better than the images I was producing even a year earlier after just purchasing my dSLR.

Then something happened.  Like the hands on a clock, some things happen so slow, so subtly that you don’t even notice they are taking place until after they have already happened.  My ideas slowed.  I was no longer seeing every day objects and locations as places where I could do something creative with light.  Sure, I was still snapping away on road trips and doing lots of “snapshots”, but I wasn’t producing “photographs” — and in my mind there is a real distinction.  I was still recording the places and events of my life through the lens, but I wasn’t producing anything that I would add to my photographic legacy — those images that you just KNOW will last throughout the years.

The road trip to Alderson was OK.  The night shoot in Priddis produced at least one serviceable image, but there wasn’t that special something that was driving me any longer.  I slumped.  That slump lasted an entire month.  And, much like a professional athlete, the more I tried to force it the worse it got.  Ideas weren’t coming, the creative juices weren’t flowing, and my enjoyment level stopped.

Then, something happened — a simple throwaway shot taken with my crappy iPhone camera.  I didn’t think anything of it at first.  I came home from work, opened the garage door and discovered Shirley had piled two bags of garbage on the trunk of the car.  I sort of chuckled to myself, and pulled out my phone to snap a shot as I am prone to doing.  I still didn’t really think much of it until I posted it to my Facebook profile with a caption along the lines of “Things Wives Do That Should Be Against the Law.”

Things Wives Do Which Should Be Against the Law

Well, almost immediately something happened.  One comment came in.  Then another comment came in.  I would respond and then another would come in.  It’s been nearly 24 hours since the original posting and things are just settling down now.  I believe this has generated the most discussion of any posting I have ever put on a social networking site.

Much like my style of comedy, I can’t plan for it — I just go with the flow and react to the current situation and run with it.  When I try to be “on” it doesn’t happen.  I need to realize that perhaps my photography should be the same way.  Don’t take it seriously and remember it is supposed to be fun.  Does this mean my creative slump is over?   I don’t know about that, but I do know this:

It’s not about the image with the perfect composition and blend of colours.  It’s not about capturing things at the highest resolution with great lighting.  Like any creative outlet, it is about the reaction you generate.  That being the case, this simple throwaway snapshot might be the best photograph I have taken in a long time.

I finally replaced my old desktop machine after six years of dedicated service.  I don’t do a lot of gaming on the PC so my only motivation to upgrade was to speed up my life in the digital darkroom and get my post processing done more quickly.  This provided me with a convenient excuse to document my process, both for interest’s sake and for purposes of being more consistent.

So, without further ado, here is my process.

1. SD Card goes into the slot.  (New machine means no messing around with external card reader.)
2. RAW images are imported via Lightroom
   1. One copy into my “Stage” area on the local machine
   2. One copy into my “Backup” area on the network
3. Take an initial cut through the images, toss any which are unsalvageable.
4. Develop each image in Lightroom — tweak, crop, dodge, burn
   1. Anything that still isn’t workable gets tossed here as part of my second cut.
5. Export all images as JPEG files into another subfolder of the Stage area.
6. Exit Lightroom and launch Windows Live Photo Gallery
7. Do any image stitching / creation of panoramic photos.
   1. Delete the originals used for creating the panos if they aren’t any good on their own.
8. Add tags to all images as appropriate.
   1. Author tags
   2. Descriptive tags
   3. People tags
   4. Captions / Titles as needed
9. Launch GPicSync and geotag all photos, adding Geonames to the EXIF data
10. Launch FastStone Photo Resizer
    1. Resize and watermark for Facebook -> one subfolder under Stage
    2. Watermark for Flickr -> one subfolder under Stage
    3. Resize and watermark for Geocaching.com -> one subfolder under Stage
11. Upload to Facebook using Windows Live Photo Gallery
12. Upload to Flickr using Flickr Uploader
13. Upload to Geocaching.com using the web site
14. Delete the modified images from the subfolders under Stage
15. Move unmodified JPEG files from Stage to the “production” Photo folder
16. Put the SD card back into the camera and then format it so it is clean for next round.

I can skip some of these steps depending on the intended target.  If they are not related to Geocaching I obviously won’t mess around with resizing and watermarking images for that purpose.  Same thing if I am not planning on putting them up on Facebook or Flickr.

The end result of this whole process is that the images are organized and backed up in a variety of places and formats.

• All of the original RAW images are stored on my network should I ever wish to process them again in a different manner or using a new technology in the future.
• The unmodified JPEG files are in the standard Photo folder which also gets backed up to the network nightly.
• The modified (resized and watermarked) images are backed up online in at least one (if not two or more) sites.

I welcome your comments and feedback/suggestions about this process.  What are your methods for handling digital images?

It is a sad world we live in when a man of more than 60 years of age thinks putting a car into Neutral could cause it to flip.  It is no wonder that car crashes are so frequent — we have become a society of drivers who don’t really know how to drive.

Driving has become like having a website on the Internet — we’ve made it so simple and removed so many barriers to entry that anyone can do it.  DanOCan.com is a perfect example:  I was able to get this site up and running within a couple of hours and I don’t need to know a lick of HTML to make it happen.  And, just as real web designers would look at this site and laugh, I too do the same with drivers like Mr. Sikes.

Driving is very simple now.  Get in, put it in Drive and go.  The tall skinny pedal makes it go, the wide pedal makes it stop.  Everything else is just optional it seems.

It seems we don’t put enough effort into learning to drive.  A runaway car is something people should learn how to deal with since it can happen to any car, not just Toyotas.  I know because it happened to me in my 1975 AMC Hornet when the throttle cable became caught on the firewall and I started to accelerate.  The first thing I did was smash the accelerator to the floor in an effort to unstick it.  When that failed, I shifted to Neutral to stop the acceleration and then turned the car off.  Now, before you jump on me about killing my power steering and brakes by turning off the engine, keep in mind this was a 1975 car — I had no power brakes to worry about.  I was able to pull over and stop without incident.

How many times do you see this situation.  Someone pulls into an intersection to make a left turn.  While waiting for oncoming to traffic to clear he/she turns the wheels of the car as if they are ready to make the turn?  What’s the big deal?  Well, if someone rear ends you, even at a low speed, and you’ve got your wheels turned into oncoming traffic guess where your car is going to go?  Yep, right into oncoming traffic.  Suddenly a simple fender bender becomes a major issue.  Keep the wheels straight and you increase your odds of not ending up in the oncoming lanes.

When you are stopped at a red light are you watching behind you to make sure the driver behind you is paying attention?  What about if there is an emergency vehicle approaching?  Do you know where your escape route is?  Did you leave enough space between you and the car in front of you so that there is room to maneuver your car out of the way?

Have you ever taken your vehicle into an empty parking lot in the winter and practiced skids or other extreme steering?  If not, how will you know how your car handles when the time comes to do it on the road?  The first time you lose control of your car should be under controlled circumstanes.

The key to survival is preparation.  Think about what you need to do long before the situation arises.  In a crisis you will instinctively revert to your training so you better hope you have some.  And, please remember that putting your car in Neutral will not cause it to flip over.

Well, I don’t know how you got here, but welcome!

I have had websites on the Internet in various forms since 1999.  In July of 2007 I finally broke down and decided to try this “Facebook” site I had been hearing so much about and from that point on I was hooked on social media.  It was an easy jump from there to Twitter, which I joined in June of 2008. 

Later that same summer I jumped on Flickr to start sharing my photos — both the good ones and the bad ones.  This year has brought me to the realms of Foursquare and Google Buzz. 

I limit Facebook to people who I have actually met and/or know, and I consider Twitter my public “stream of consciousness”.  So, when someone would ask me where they could find my content on the web it became a complicated answer — go here if you want my photos, here if I know you, here if I don’t.

I finally decided that I needed one place to consolidate my online presence.  At first I thought Friendfeed would fill that role, but I never really “got into” it.  I still pump my Friendfeed into my Facebook profile, but I honestly don’t think any of my friends look at it.

Now with a simple URL you can see my Twitter feed, contact me via email (if you are still into those old fashioned methods of communcation), look at a selection of my photos, and even see where I am currently located through the power of GPS.  Of course, I also provide links to a selection of my other social media accounts should you want to see if I have put anything up on YouTube. 

I’m known to have an opinion on everything so you can expect to see commentary on politics, sports, technology, social issues and everything else that catches my eye.  Hopefully I can provide enough content so you want to come back and see what I am up to.  Cheers!

All too often when driving into work I’ll hear a song on the radio and it will take me back to some point in the past.  In an instant you are transported back in time to a different point in your life — sometimes good, sometimes bad.  There will always be some songs that simply move us for reasons that no one else could possibly understand.  In essense these songs become the soundtrack of our lives.

Not every one of these songs is a classic either.  There may be some songs that our friends have never even heard of that mean a lot to us.  Sometimes there are songs we have forgotten about that, upon hearing them again years later, give us this “instant recall” of people and places long gone.

Here are some examples from my own personal soundtrack:

“I’m In a Hurry and I Don’t Know Why” by Alabama:  For me this song will always represent my second year at University.  It means late night runs to Burger King with my friend Rob, racing to south Calgary from Rundle Hall in his car.  Whenever I hear it I think of those two semesters and the fun we had with that group of friends, none of which I am in contact with anymore.

“Trust Yourself” by Blue Rodeo:  New Year’s Day 1992.  I had driven up from Vauxhall to the University to spend New Year’s Eve in residence.  There weren’t many of us around, but we had a great time.  We partied long into the night.  At one point I remember almost getting into a fight with a member of Campus Security because he had excused me and my friends of stealing a Christmas tree from one of the other floors in the building.  (We didn’t do it, either!)  My friend Deb was really drunk and passed out in my room and I remember waking up to the sound of her puking on my carpet.  I had agreed to drive her back home to Black Diamond on New Year’s Day and she was still really hungover, but I remember this song playing and me commenting how much I enjoyed it.

“Roam” by The B-52s:  This will always mean the summer of 1990.  I was working at the Wendy’s in Lethbridge that summer, getting ready to move to Calgary.  I worked the early morning shift, and we would come in at 7am to prepare for the opening at 10am.  For those first three hours we would be blasting the stereo throughout the restaurant, listening to 93 ZOO FM out of Spokane, WA.  On the weekends it was always playing Rick Dee’s Weekly Top 40 and this song was very popular at the time, and it was always so upbeat it got us working faster.  Sinead O’Conner’s “Nothing Compares to U” and Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” take me back to that same time.

“Rocket to My Heart” by Paul Janz:  It is just after my high school graduation in 1990.  I am driving down “the jail road” taking my date Carol home to get ready for the big after-grad party.  I’m working early the next morning so I won’t be going, but as we cruised down the highway in the dark AM106 out of Calgary played this song.  It’s a great cuising song and I remember I had bought the cassette single — shows how long ago it was!  It’s a bittersweet memory because, as mentioned above, I would move to Calgary later that year to attend school.  Carol and I would remain friends, meeting on more than one occassion for coffee when she was also living in Calgary.  Our last meeting was at the Heartland Cafe in Kensington.  I remember her telling me how much she hated the city and how she longed to be back in the Coaldale/Lethbridge area.  She talked of how she loved the open space of the prairies and how the city left her claustrophobic.  She distinctly told me, “Dan, this place is going to kill me.”  The sad irony is that two weeks later she died from heart issues.  Those words haunted me for a long time.

As I said, the memories triggered by the soundtrack of our lives don’t always end up being positve.  There are a lot more songs in my personal soundtrack, and perhaps I’ll share them in a future posting.  Feel free to comment and tell me the story of your own personal soundtrack.