fly6

This is a pretty nifty light: Fly6 Kickstarter

I am not normally one to pump stuff on kickstarter, but in this case, I make an exception. The product is simple. It is a rear facing super bright LED tail light for mounting on your seat post with a 720p hi-def camera built into it. It comes loaded with an 8 gig class 10 Sandisk microSD card (which can be replaced with a larger one) and is able to loop after the card fills up like a standard dash cam can. It is for all intents and purposes, water tight. Don't take it swimming, but a soaking that a bike would take in normal use should be fine.

Providing proof of close or dangerous passes aside, this could be fun filming shenanigans behind you on the road or trail from your riding buddies.

It will be good fun.

I backed it.

night walk about

Got to spend the evening out with my wife whilst my daughter was off doing other things. Coffee commenced, as did a short walk about with the camera. This is what came of it.

we`ll be happy when the ice worms nest again

Good ice today. Lots of crackling outside. My family won't let me go for a walk and take better pictures than what I can take from the back window though - something about branches falling down...

more winter madness

Today was a day for driving around in the snow. So off I went. Brought a friend along, a fellow photographer, someone that I have not seen in a very long time. An absolute age has passed since we last took pictures together.

an old sugar shack that I like to take pictures of - this perspective on it is different from others

We wound up on gravel roads a fair bit. Gravel roads with a good amount of snow. Since I drive a VW Golf, and since the engineers decided that the best place for the rear wheels was as far back as they could go (they are right by the way), snow tended to gather on the back of the car in quite an impressive manner.

it is only getting started here - by the time we stopped for coffee, the back end of the car had all but vanished in a wall of white - signal and brake lights, gone, indent for license plate, gone

Here is what the roads looked like, more or less.

I will grant you, we have some boring roads - this is a problem when they are carved out of the wilderness in a grid - efficient yes, boring, oh yes - very very boring

The primary purpose of this trip for me was to visit, and to take a few landscape photographs across the fields into the snow.

one landscapey shot(s)

two landscapey shot(s)

and a bonus, three landscapey shot(s)!

evening walk with the camera

creative brick wall

It has finally happened.

Truthfully, it happened sometime last summer, but it has taken me until now to acknowledge it.

I have hit a creative brick wall. Full tilt. Hard.

Time was, I would not leave the house without a camera with me. I would always find something interesting to see in the everyday. I would "see" things that others would question, would not "get". And I was ok with this (still am) but the problem is that I have, for whatever reason, stopped seeing things.

Or, to be more accurate, I have stopped caring about seeing things, or at least have stopped caring about recording what I am seeing and displaying it in a meaningful way. Make sense?

I am struggling with why I bother to take photographs. Who am I taking the pictures for? Me? My friends? My family? The public at large? I don't know.

I have tried the "social thing" on flickr and other sites and came to the conclusion that I just don't like social networking enough to make my pictures popular. Truthfully, I just don't care enough about people pleasing to bother with a lot of meaningless tripe to garner attention.

I feel as if I have taken every picture around where I live that I can take. It is funny. When I am out walking or riding about, I see something and think, "That would make a nice picture. Wait. I have that exact picture in this exact light at home on my hard drive. I took it last May. Or whenever." And then I don't take the picture.

Picture taking has been for me a social thing as well. I love taking pictures with people. However, the overwhelming majority of my friends who are interested in photography are simply, and legitimately, too busy with life to have time to use their cameras. They have disengaged from the hobby, at least to some extent. And when we do manage to get together, I often won't take any pictures worth looking at if I even take any pictures at all. I always have a great time though, so I doubt that this is the cause of my picture taking blahs. And truly, it is the people in such circumstances not the photography which matter anyway.

I am honest enough with myself to know that I am a bit (ok, more than a bit) of a gear head. My two hobbies, cycling and photography, both rotate around gear to some extent and I genuinely enjoy working with fine gear. This is not a beg for new gear since my cameras are not holding me back either technically or creatively in any way. They will only be an impediment to creativity when they stop working.

What is missing, I think, is purpose. Why bother has sunk in rather deeply.

I have to find that groove again. That track. That drive to take what I see around me and show it to the world and say, "See? This is what I saw today!" I need to get excited about the creative process and about breathing life and light into the mundane.