Since my last post, every hour of every day has been spent working, looking after the kids, or… working some more. Not a single minute goes by without me thinking about photography or something related to it. Some days, it’s almost painful. The urge to produce another crispy print that pings (a term only a few will understand), or the agony of not posting an image—it absolutely kills me. Honestly, these thoughts have completely hijacked my mind since I started this blogging journey.

The excitement I get from producing a picture I love is deeply personal, but it’s also about sharing my art. I use the term “art” loosely—clearly, not everything I see or photograph qualifies—but I enjoy the process regardless.

The studio vinyl floor went in last night. It looks good, works well, and I’m excited to start shooting on it. However, I’ve noticed a drop in energy at the core of the business. While it isn’t strictly my job to spur the team on, I feel like that responsibility has firmly landed on my shoulders. At least in my own head, I now have a duty to make this work.

I’m always preaching about the importance of printing and reminding people that no storage medium lasts forever. Well, my good friend Dave at Chromasia recently learned a hard lesson about not relying on RAID storage 100%. The ReadyNAS NV+ boxes we both use come in a couple of different iterations, one of which has a notoriously temperamental power supply. This nearly led to a catastrophic data loss for Chromasia. Luckily, his contingency plan worked; replacing the power supply recovered the entire dataset.

Still, it caused a few days of intense panic. Dave is already moderately follicly challenged, but I’m pretty sure the fear of losing his entire library of RAW files caused a few more hairs to fall out—or at least turn gray—overnight. Which brings me right back to printing. If we all had our masterpieces printed and safely stored away, we could almost say, “Panic over!” 😉 …Well, almost.

(Oh, and the Kirby vacuum cleaner on the whiteout background? It was just the only thing I had on hand for a quick test shot.)

Come on, Pete and Jane—I need you back onside.

Cousin Kevin, thank you for your divine intervention (I’m assuming that was you). Rest in peace.

And Mary, you are in my thoughts. As a family, we wish you well as you navigate this incredibly difficult time in your life.

— csj

• taken|26/06/2008 22:31
• camera|Canon EOS 5D
• lens|17 – 40mm L
• focal length|17mm
• aperture|f/11
• shutter speed|1/125 sec
• shooting mode|Manual
• exposure bias|0
• metering mode|pattern
• iso|100
• flash fired|Broncolor Impact41’s x 3
• image quality|RAW
• raw converter|Photoshop CS2 + Lightroom
• cropped|1×1