Planning

Against the grain

I find myself thinking more about portraiture these days. Part of that is anticipation of doing portraits of Heather and Jojo, but part of it also is due to seeing some wonderful portraits in the APUG gallery. I know that I have a technical problem with lighting - my old Vivitar 283 really isn't all that powerful, and won't do much if I want to use the big camera. I looked at some e-Bay auctions and thought about bidding on some larger monolights, but at the same time I know that I really prefer window light to harsh artificial light.

I really concentrated on IEEE stuff today. Completed the first draft of the May/June news column, and also my editorial. Also found a more reasonable caterer for the conference dinner, and also spoke to a second caterer and presented the challenge to come up with a reasonable price. Visited a print shop in Ballston Spa who promised to give me a quotation for the program brochure.

When I started out to go to Ballston Spa this morning, I was distracted by the need to clear the snow off the driveway. Then I chose to do it with a shovel rather than with the blower. Turned out to be a nice hour of outdoor exercise on a cold but beautiful winter day. The neat thing is that, had I been working, I would probably not have bothered to do anything with the driveway, or at least I would have used the blower. It really is nice to not feel like I'm constantly stressed for time.

I really don't know what I want to do for a workshop this summer. The Peters Valley schedule is out, and they have a good selection. But all of the classes that interest me are repeats. That's a real shame - don't know what I will do. But I have lots of time to consider alternatives.

This image is one of my favorites from the 1999 Ernie Rubin workshop at Peters Valley. I shot this with the Yashica TLR, and the real print shows lots of neatly detailed textures.