I am currently on my way from Los Angeles to Cedar Rapids, IA. I have a friend that was heading east by car and we decided to ride together. He currently lives in the same place I was born, and lived the first part of my life.
I arrived in the Pacific Northwest and was immediately taken aback by the trees. I remembered them being big and being everywhere, but I had convinced myself that I must have exaggerated it in my mind over the years. The sheer amount of trees, and bushes is amazing. The air looks and smells so clean after being in Los Angeles for the bulk of the last year. As I stand outside looking around I can feel a connection between this place and myself. The trees, air, sounds (or lack of), people, phrases used, and even the giant Washington slugs, have helped bring back so many memories that were once forgotten. The Trip:Along the way we will be making stops in Utah, Colorado, and Missouri. I'm planning to take a lot of pictures and post them to either this blog, or a separate posterous specifically for the trip. Any which way, keep tabs here or on my twitter for update links.I spent a good deal of time recently, telling myself that I need to become more active with social media outlets like Twitter. There was a time when I spent a great deal of my time making sure the world knew just what I was doing or thinking. I've met some great people, both online and in real life, and created some good relationships. I felt guilty that I wasn't involved enough with my own social presence online as of late. Thinking about needing to put more effort in to social outlets online, actually helped me to realize that I need to stop.
There was a point in life where I first uttered the words, "that would make an awesome tweet". At that moment I planned ahead, to do something, that would in result be a good tweet, blog, posterous, etc. I've had that in the back of my head ever since that moment and it's probably not a good thing. Due to this I have altered what has happened in a moment, with the idea of deploying the situation in to social media of some sort. Doing so has without question changed the way things, even if the most minute, have come to take place. This doesn't mean that I've done bad things, but rather altered the real life course of events that would not have unwinded as such if I had not been tweet-minded. Now that I live in an amazing place, full of spontaneity, and bleeding from every orrifice with what can only be explained as life, I realize that I need a break. Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, etc is not keeping me too busy. I don't need that kind of a break. I need a break from caring what others, that I barely know, think about me online so that I can enjoy real life as it unfolds. I'll be back, we all know that. Be it less, or even more, I will be around. I'll still reply to direct messages and the like, but just not actively participate. This could last months, or just a week, I really don't know. But I do know that I need to just shut it out and remove myself for a while.
Is this a twitter fail alien, or fAlien? I'm used to the Fail Whale but am yet to ever see this error.
A couple weeks ago I started WeeklyPhoto.net, a photo project where I post a new photo every week. I originally started off making my own simple XHTML and CSS layout planning to use lightbox to display the photos. I then found Pixelpost thanks to another photographer. After a while of using Pixelpost I realized it just wasn't right for me. I want it to be easier to be interactive with the photo blog, more ways to uplaod, and most importantly I want the photo to display well in any browser with the ability to enlarge with just a click. Posterous has all of these abilities built in, has customizable themes, and I can use my own domain with it.
I have praised Posterous on this blog in the past, but I must point something out.
I work at a web hosting company that is very with photographers, designers, and other artists. I get top quality hosting, on multiple platforms, for free. I still think that Posterous is the best match for WeeklyPhoto.net, and myself.
Once again I must thank Garry and Sachin for making such a great tool for everyone!
I want to dedicate this next year, and decade even, to developing my photography skills. I have wanted to do some sort of photography project for a long time but couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I thought I would do a daily photo site like @toddadamson has done with photernal.com. I realized though, that with my work schedule I would rarely, if ever, be able to get daily photos taken and posted. A better alternative for me was to create a project that showcases my best photo taken that week.
