DanOCan

Give the National Hockey League credit:  in an era where most things are marketed to the key 18-35 demographic, they have taken a page from their history books with their latest advertising campaign for the upcoming 2010 playoffs.

The first two commercials have been airing in pretty heavy rotation already and if they are any indication of what is to come we can expect a great trip down memory lane. 

The first commercial uses what is arguably the most famous goal ever scored — Bobby Orr vs. Glenn Hall to win the 1970 Stanley Cup.

The second video features Mario Lemieux leaving both Shawn Chambers and Jon Casey looking for their jock straps in the 1991 Finals against Minnesota.  For you youngsters out there, that was the Minnesota North Stars, not the Wild back in that era.  As a Penguins fan, I can tell you that this was the moment when we knew there was nothing that was going to stop us from winning the Cup that year.

Considering that many of today’s young fans won’t remember Mario’s goal and even those of us pushing middle age won’t remember Bobby Orr’s goal, you have to think this is a campaign aimed at those of us who are already hockey fans.  For a league that has spent the better part of two decades pushing the sport into non-traditional markets, this is a refreshing change.  As a lifelong fan I can honestly say I get chills when these two commercials come on.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what other great moments they will choose to add to this campaign.  Yes, history will be made and (at least until Pittsburgh gets eliminated) I will be there to see it.

Learn from the past, strive to shape the future, but live in the present.

Simple words, simple advice, but a complex balance to maintain.  It’s all too easy to get caught living in the past and spend your time looking back at how great things used to be.  Everyone has great memories of people we used to know or places we have been.  It can provide a great amount of fun to look back at the way things were, to see how we used to be and where we have come from. 

There are a great many lessons that we all learn along the way that can provide valuable information for us in our current lives.  But, looking back is not without its perils.  Much like a driver who takes too long to complete a shoulder check when changing lanes, if you don’t look at where you currently are and where you are going you are likely to end up crashing to the car in front of you.  Glance back, get the information you need and then focus on the highway of life ahead of you.  After all, the past is done and cannot be changed so you don’t gain by spending a lot of energy going there.

It’s also just as easy to spend your time looking to the future when you expect things to be better than what you have now.  Perhaps it is a vacation that you are planning on taking next year, or you’re looking forward to retirement so you’ll have time to do the things you want.  Maybe you’re searching for a change of careers or searching to find that special someone.  Imagining the future is often even more fun than reliving past memories because you can bend and shape your future into whatever you want it to be.

Around The Next Bend?

Ah, but here lies the catch.  Life is a single pathway we follow from birth to death.  The path isn’t straight, it bends and curves in all sorts of directions.  The destination is never visible to us, it remains obscured behind the landscaping and the topography.  None of us is ever allowed to see what lies around the next bend in the path.  Many times the bend in the pathway takes us to places we never imagined we could be — sometimes good, sometimes bad.  No matter what comes we are forced to deal with it and carry on.

And, while we can only choose a single path to travel, there are intersections — we come across hundreds of them every day.  Sometimes the path to follow is clearly marked, other times we don’t even see all of the different paths available to us.  And, like the bends in the path, we’re not allowed to know what lies down each path.  We must navigate blindly and make those decisions based on the best information we have at the present time.

Ah, the present time.  That is sort of the whole point of this posting, isn’t it?  With the lessons learned from the past and an idea of what we want our future to look like, we must choose our path and follow wherever it leads.

The present is all any of us are ever promised.  No one is guaranteed a tomorrow.

The present is the only thing we have any sort of control over.  It is the only moment in time where we get to have any choice in matters.  Every moment is an opportunity to live life to its fullest potential, to make something special happen, to choose the type of person we want to be.  And, in essense, it is our only chance to create our future past.  Tomorrow this day — right now — will be the past.  We will have had a chance to do something really great with it and make this one of those moments we look back on and enjoy.  Use this time you have been given to create your past right now.

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?