I'm not usually one to be a new years resultion kind of person, but I've definitly made some plans for the year. I have some fitness goals, some goals to have a more positive mindset, and of course some photography goals.
One of those is to make a serious effort learn how to photograph the mily way. I am always blown away at the images of it that some photographers can capture. From some quick research there is an app called PhotoPills that is a huge help in planning your shot. Using google earth, you can enter the exact loaction you want to shot your photo, and it will tell you the best window of time to caputre your image, as well as use augmented realitly to show you how it should turn out. From the videos I have watched about the app, it appears to make it very easy. You just have to get out into the field, find a dark enough sky, face south, and shoot.
Over the holidays, I took some time re-purpose my wife's old gaming laptop to a new-to-me photo editing setup. With that I started reorganizing all my photos. This is three laptops worth of lightroom libraries that have been merged into one library. With that, I've been going through it all, trimming some fat and cutting back some digital hoarding (we don't need to keep every blurry image we took), and finally starting to attempt to put together a portfolio of some kind to organize and show off my best work in various categories. The little project serves a few purposes:
- To reflect on my past work and what I thought was good compared to what I currently think. I now have all these photos in one place so I can easily see what I am happy with and what I need to improve on
- One of my goals this year is to attempt to sell some art prints of my work. I can get now get these works organized into what I think will sell and what I want to show off.
- I would like to finally chase down some paying photography gigs this year. In addition to selling some prints, I would like to do some event photography, maybe headshots, or even a wedding (a chill of anxiety runs up my spine just thinking about it). I'm not looking for a career change or anything, but I would like to finally take a stab at making this a part time gig.
When I was young I went to university and got an arts degree in film studies and thought I would be the next Don McKellar (a great Canadian director seem so much more attainable rather than being Scorcese or Speilberg). That didn't turn into any kind of career other than a few very small gigs on a tv sets, transcribing footage, and probably helped me get a job at a camera store for a few years. A combination of our local film industry drying up, as well as what was in retrospect some pretty big mental health issues didn't exactly help anything either. This always felt like my great missed oppourtunity, and thinking about it too much would really bring me down. So if that isn't going to happen for me, what will? What are my passions? Well, there's my toy and pop culture collecibles collection, but before all of that there was always photography.
So I have decided to look at those two things and take action on them. With the toy collection, I have opened and eBay store and started actively started buying and selling vintage toys as a side hustle. It's fun, it's a subject I am fairly knowledgeable, and it takes advantage of my photography skills a little because I like to set up a small studio space to take nice product photos. Right now it's an eBay store, but perhaps if things I can aquire enough stock, and a space becomes available, maybe it will eventually become a booth or table at a local market.
