The garden has me outdoors more often, and because of it, I’m taking more photographs with my mobile device. Here are some from April and early May.
Spring is about the outdoors.
I’m spending more time at my workbench.
I spent time Sunday working on how to use my time. The two parts were structuring days into time blocks and working to better define tasks listed for accomplishment. This post details some of what I did.
The natural breaks in my days at home are by time.
These time periods follow a natural rhythm developed since the coronavirus pandemic. While I need to watch the clock sometimes, there is a flow from one activity to the next that sometimes runs over. Almost always, I follow the seam toward completion if I can.
I need to learn to be more outcome oriented than task oriented. For example, clear one garden plot of debris from last season and till represents an outcome. It provides more structure than simply writing on the planner to spend time in the garden. Deliverables matter.
A main question is how will I structure more complex projects that span multiple days, weeks, and months? The good thing about the pomodoros structure is they force breaking complex tasks into do-able work units. This will be another learning process.
I was already using this structure unawares. We all need to maintain productivity and keep our daily routines fresh. When it seems like work, the system requires corrective action.
Most of my cameras have been inexpensive. A half-dozen shoe boxes full of photographs sit in storage around the house. Until I began a photo-archiving project, they were seldom opened.
There is a Minolta SRT-101 single lens reflex camera tucked away in the suitcase I inherited from Grandmother along with other old photographic technology. When I used it at university, I developed a few prints myself, yet relied on commercial film processors, typically a drug store, because it was easy and inexpensive. I went digital in 2005 with my first mobile telephone — a flip phone — with a built-in camera. Now, most snapshots are taken with my smartphone, for which I bought a camera upgrade. Cheap snapshots would make do when professional photographers were for newspapers, politicians, artists and special occasions.
I’ve seen photographic technology come and go. What I thought were very cool cameras in the 1960s are now relics that belong in a museum or more likely the recycling bin. For the most part, we no longer use film. Instead, my smartphone takes digital photos and uploads them to the cloud without me doing anything after making initial settings. The days of new shoe boxes are over as I easily import images to my computer, and store, use, and backup files constantly.
When taking my first photographs in the 1960s, everything was printed. The rise of home computing during the mid-1990s changed how we take and store photos. The question soon arose about the long-term survival of digital photographs. Would the software used to create and store them remain available? Would formats such as bitmaps or *.pict files become obsolete? And what would happen to the images stored in them? Will family memories become inaccessible, unlike the way some daguerreotypes persist from the 19th Century? It’s one more thing to think about in 21st Century life.
I don’t print many photographs today, and when I do, I use a local outlet of national retailers like Walgreens. Now that I understand their process, I will be using them more to print some images that are important to telling my story. Most digital images will live online.
Old habits related to photo processing die hard, and in this case, resolve an open question about emerging technology over time. A printed photograph is something we can touch and feel—a small certainty in a world where so much of life exists only on screens.
Some days we feel spent. Our wood burned while leaving embers to warm us only for a while.
There is so much going on with writing this week it has taken most of my energy. Partly, the resolution is knowing when to set it aside and let the stories breathe within us.
On the plus side, celeriac is up. It’s tray partner celery is not. There will be arugula in a few weeks. The ground is frozen, yet the garden springs indoors.
A couple of photos for today.
It snowed enough Friday morning to shovel the driveway. That 40 minutes of exercise substituted for trail walking yet I got this photo the day before. Ambient temperatures the next couple of days are forecast to be in the teens, so geese swimming in open water may have to find something else to do. I have plenty to do indoors.
I’m working on a new project with tentative title, “Food Algorithms.” The idea is to describe steps in the process of creating food from seed to table. My first step is creating a series of six or so posts that experiment with the language of this. If that goes well, a book-length text will be next in queue after I finish my autobiography. Stay tuned.
When I published my first book, I was in a big yank to finish and print it. It was imperfect, and I expected that. This time, I learned a lot about writing prose, and it shows in the text I shared with key readers. As a result of this learning I know what I want the text to look like, which things to cut, and which to enhance. I guess I am becoming more of a writer. Nine more chapters to re-work on this pass.
Another short post today while I get back to editing. The cooler weather suits me for now.
Some 2010 images from my photo archive project.
In 2009, I had a digital camera before smart phones and the several thousand images I took show I was learning. Getting a subject in focus with proper lighting was hit or miss. I hadn’t thought much about framing. There were a disproportionate number of misses.
However, some of the shots stood out.
I made some trips that year and took touristy photos like these:
Most of the photos were of things and places near where we live.
My garden dominated the folders.
The truth or reality behind these two images is unknowable. I believe in a Cartesian view of humanity in which the phrase “I think, therefore, I am” indicates the isolate self, reaching to others that potentially exist, through the veil of Maya. The minute I captured the photograph on my mobile device, it left the plane of reality. The artificial intelligence rendering of it in a Monet-style impressionism is merely a variation of the original. The underlying reality of that sunrise is no longer knowable. Even I have only memories that have decayed for eight hours as I type this.
These images reflect an actuality I remember, yet not reality. Shakespeare famously had Hamlet say, “to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” Perhaps Shakespeare assumed the mirror was a neutral conduit for reality. For purposes of an Elizabethan play making that assumption may have been necessary and fodder for audiences who knew otherwise to react.
Images such as these have a use in social media and blog posts. Those who followed my blog the last few months often saw sunrise photographs at the header. I post them on BlueSky, as well. They represent a shorthand of my experience on that date at a specific time. They are largely throw-away images even if some of them are quite fetching. The point I am making with this photograph and its rendering is a new day is dawning in which we can be better humans with new chances. That, too, is an interpretation, something worth hoping for.
I’m a bit infatuated with the image rendering capabilities of artificial intelligence. Of the five photographs I tried, only two were keepers, and then only for long enough to post them on one of the platforms I use. While that moment in which I captured the rising sun is no longer knowable, it was as real as anything can be. My Cartesian model notwithstanding.
This week I began tackling digital photographs. The inverse proposition is I let my paper photographs stay in boxes for now. Using artificial intelligence I developed a process that helps me save and reduce my tens of thousands of digital photographs vying for attention. It will make them more accessible for me and other family members.
The basics include backing up the original files and creating a duplicate working file from which to sort images into a more accessible location. The intent is to never draw from the saved files. After trying a couple of software solutions, I decided to install IrfanView to quickly view and sort files into a reduced number of new folders. The software is surprisingly versatile for freeware.
I began with three folders, ones to keep, maybe keep, or reject. After getting through an entire year by making this triage decision, I developed another set of folders where the images will be archived: creative shots, events, family, garden, politics, and work. There are some folders inside the six main ones for specific photo shoots, but not many. Getting here for the first year made the second year go more quickly.
After these two sorts, there are passes through them, first to delete the rejected ones (saved in the originals), decide on the maybes, and then make some passes through the keep file to find them a home. While doing that, each photo goes into the six primary folders. The process normally saves multiple images that were taken in a short burst. I make a pass through each file to pick the best one or two in those cases.
The boon to creativity is twofold. While quickly viewing thousands of photos I gained an insight I did not have previously. Each year tells a story and I get a view of it again more than a decade later. It evokes memory, the currency of a creative writer. The other boon is using the creative shots folder as a workbench for writing on the internet. The way they were selected — mostly stripped of context — enables me to reuse them with new meaning. These are just the beginning of the benefits of the archival process.
At first, the process was clear as mud, yet now the mud is settling. I can see and use the files better than previously, which was one of the points. That I developed the process myself, rather than learning it from an expert, makes me more willing to use it. With 17 more years of folders to sort, my buy-in is an important aspect of the project.
Developing an archival process was rewarding in countless ways. Importantly, when I am gone, another person will be able to understand what I did and where they can find what interests them. There is a lot of material for additional posts solely about process. Now that process is established I can focus more on the images and the memories they evoke. These will be good times.
It was four degrees Fahrenheit and snowy this morning so I’m posting some garden images from 2008 as a reminder of what spring and summer can be. These are part of my larger A Life of Photos project. I did the initial sort of my digital images from 2008 last week. Posts like this one are part of the work product of that project.
Journey Home
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