Things are picking up!

A lot has happened since my last blog post. WAIT! It's been 3 years since my last one! First and foremost is the new chapter of Artalyst. For a while it appeared to be dead. Now its really maturing. The look and feel is very high end now. I really can't express how much I'm enjoying it. The feature list grows daily. Nice work Zee! Now we've got to drum up more interest in the site. I have a posting about Artalyst on the only other photography/art site I still participate on (Digital Image Cafe). I'm hoping some interest is generated from some of the members there.

Next is my photography. I had hoped by now that I would have progressed beyond where I was at 3 years ago. I've made some improvements, but nothing significant. I got a little burned out on it for a while. Of course time has been a factor, and mostly, I was so busy with my job that a lot of other things in life fell by the wayside. In the last few months I've had my interest rekindled. Recently I took a much needed vacation in which I got a few worthwhile shots. I'm still sorting through almost 500 shots, and working on the RAW processing of what I deem "keepers". It's been a while since shooting was fun and productive. I may create a seperate post about that vacation later.

I mentioned my job. I went through an extremely stressfull period of about 18 months or so of 55 hour weeks. That coupled with other very serious issues with the department, and poor management, well, I finally just couldn't take it anymore. I gave up 5 weeks of vacation and 25% of my pay to get out. I started the new job in Feb. Not only is the new place turning into the best place I have ever worked, I got my life back. Its pretty much 40 hours a week, and as close to stress free as I'll probably ever get.

So that leaves with me how I want to use this blog. You'd think that being a techie, I would embrace blogging. Well, no not really. In fact, along with social networking (i.e. Facebook, Twitter), I don't much care for them. For the most part, its how they're used, not how they can be used. That said, blogs can be of some value, so I'm going to try to make posts that are less about me personally, and more about my photogrpahy and industry news that I have a personal interest in. Not to say that I won't occasionally post something more personal. But hopefully what I post will be of some value to those that read it.