Category: Environment

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Go To A Forest

Winding path through forest

I realized recently that, by intuition, I have long practiced what is now called “forest bathing”. I hate the name but I believe strongly in the benefits. Go to a forest frequently. It is one of the best places I know to hangout. Decades of research has shown this practice to have significant benefits of health and well being.

Shinrin-yoku

In Japan it is called “shinrin-yoku”. “Shinrin” means forest and “yoku” means bathing. It is defined as a short, leisurely visit to a forest. Researchers say it is a type of natural aroma therapy. The idea developed in Japan and has been practiced there since the 1980’s, Perhaps it is a little easier and more accessible there since forests occupy 67% of the country. But the benefits seem to transfer anywhere.

Somewhat more descriptively shinrin-yoku means bathing in the forest atmosphere, or taking in the forest through our senses. I like this better. Maybe I’m too literal, but “bathing” is really only used in a metaphorical sense. I relate better to the idea of taking in the forest through our senses.

One of the main researchers in Japan, Dr. Qing Li, says “This is not exercise, or hiking, or jogging. It is simply being in nature, connecting with it through our senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.”

Health benefits

According to the Wall Street Journal the US Environmental Protection Agency reports that the average American spends 93% of his time indoors. Nielsen Research says that in 2019 the average adult spent 11 1/2 hours a day consuming media. And half of 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed by the Pew Research Center said they were online “almost constantly”.

This unbalanced lifestyle can lead to serious consequences, from overweight and poor posture to depression and anxiety. During the Covid lock downs it has probably gotten even more extreme.

The good news is that 2 hours or less of wandering is a forest a couple of times a week is shown to increase the number of “natural killer” cells in a person. These are a powerful defense against cancer and other toxins. It is thought that the natural oils released by the trees creates a natural aromatherapy that triggers this.

Emotional benefits

There are some very positive physical reactions to being in the forest, but there are also many important emotional and psychological benefits. One scientific study reported “The forest bathing significantly increased the score for vigor and decreased the scores for depression, anxiety, fatigue, and confusion.”

I am not trying to present scientific research here. Go investigate that yourself. I just want to encourage you to give it a try and see if there is benefit to you. It is to me.

I will quote Dr. Qing Li again, because I would not state it like this: “The key to unlocking the power of the forest is in the five senses. Let nature enter through your ears, eyes, nose, mouth, hands and feet. Listen to the birds singing and the breeze rustling in the leaves of the trees. Look at the different greens of the trees and the sunlight filtering through the branches. Smell the fragrance of the forest and breathe in the natural aromatherapy of phytoncides. Taste the freshness of the air as you take deep breaths. Place your hands on the trunk of a tree. Dip your fingers or toes in a stream. Lie on the ground. Drink in the flavor of the forest and release your sense of joy and calm. This is your sixth sense, a state of mind. Now you have connected with nature. You have crossed the bridge to happiness.”

That’s kind of over-the-top new age for me, but it is proven by decades of research and practice and by my own independent experience. This has been my practice for a long time and I always look forward to it and get benefit from it.

No running

Do you have to do anything special? Not really. As a matter of fact less is better. The purpose is not exercise. No running, that increases stress instead of reducing it. A leisurely stroll will do. No goals or plans are required. Just being out in nature does it. Let your body tell you. Follow your nose. One very important requirement, though – UNPLUG. No phones, no music, no email, no interruptions.

This will be hard for you Type A’s. It’s not a competition. Don’t chart your progress or try to better your performance each time. No destination is required. Just wander and enjoy nature. You don’t even have to be fit.

About 2 hours of forest wandering will give you time to unwind, relax, de-stress.

City bathing

I coined that term as far as I know. I mention this because the research shows that being in a forest (the denser the better) and on natural surfaces has by far the most benefit.

But over 60% of us live in cities. There are no forests close by, only the occasional park. Is this the same? No. Being out in real nature is best and gives the best and fastest results.

So should you not go out wandering until you get a chance to journey to the forest? I say no. go out anyway. Don’t give up good just because you can’t have best.

My own anecdotal results are that there are benefits to wandering in a city if you do it right. Again, your mindset makes much of the difference. Unplug. Go out looking around, seeing everything in a new light, like for the first time. Make it a time for refreshing, not just exercise. Destination is not important. What you see is not important as long as you let yourself really look around and see. Be delighted by little discoveries.

Even in the city it is possible to go out wandering and come back more refreshed and de-stressed.

Let yourself go

Try to get to a forest regularly. That’s the best. When you can’t, wander urban “forests”. Let all your senses come into play. Explore. Take a break from your electronic masters.

And even when you’re not out wandering, turn off the TV, unplug from media. Start to use your mind on your own. Read. Practice music or art. Learn something new. Talk to family and friends. Move your body.

I believe there are excellent health benefits from forest bathing. I highly encourage you to research it and give it a try. Or several tries. But many of us could improve our lives just by cutting down on media consumption, using our bodies and senses more, and becoming more independent and self-directed.

This is highly unusual in this blog series. Up to now I have not used the words “photography” or “camera” or “art” (well once) in this article. Art is about much more than technique or media. Our mental and physical well-being determines a lot of what we accomplish. We live in an unhealthy world. Please take care of yourself. Forest bathing is one good way to start.

Post Script

As I write this it’s a beautiful day in Colorado. We had about 5 inches of fluffy last night. It’s lovely – much better than driving in it late last night. The temperature is a balmy 25 F, which sure beats the sub zero spell of a few days ago.

I just got back from a walk in a local natural area near my studio. Not what the forest bathers would like since it is only sparse trees here, mostly deciduous. But at least I have lakes and a river. It was great to be out in it. One point where I depart from the forest bathers is that I always bring my camera. Not to make it a serious photo outing, but I believe it encourages me to look closer and see more.

My point is, just do it. I try to nearly every day. Yes, I was out walking when it was -10 F. I don’t necessarily recommend that, but if you dress properly it’s not bad. For me, the benefits are great. Even if you are stuck in a city most of the time do something. Go find a tree and introduce yourself to it. Thank it. But unplug and get out.

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What’s Right

Food to be given to needy

Dewitt Jones often makes the point that the mantra of the National Geographic is “celebrate what’s right in the world”. He even has a TED talk about it. At this point in history focusing on what’s right seems like a great idea.

National Geographic

Ah, National Geographic. What a great institution with an excellent brand image. How many of us suspect our parent’s houses are held up mainly by the stacks of yellow magazines in the basement? If you are old enough you remember eagerly claiming your time to read each issue cover to cover when it arrived. The photography was amazing and the photographers were idols to us aspiring artists.

I suspect Mr. Jones is right that one reason for it’s success is that it was positive, uplifting, showing the good side of places and issues. That seems so foreign in today’s world. It is expected now to show how bad everything is. To show the dark and depressing and gloomy side of every issue. Where are you when we need you, National Geographic?

Some things are depressing

It is absolutely true that there is disease, poverty, instability, pollution, economic uncertainty and political division all around. But does that need to be what we’re focused on? Is it really healthy and helpful? If we just moan about it without doing anything doesn’t that just make us more depressed?

Dr. Martin Luther King said “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” I believe this to be a very true statement.

When we focus all our attention on how bad things are then everything seems bad. The attitude pervades our life, polluting all we see. That is a choice.

Art, too?

Doesn’t it seem that art, too, suffers from darkness and hate these days? There is a lot of dark, empty art. Like many artists seem caught up in depression and can only create brooding, depressing work. Does it have to be ugly now days to be art? Why?

And we are told that everything has to support a social cause, otherwise it is not worthwhile. Who says? There are a lot of great causes, and a lot of bad ones. What you choose to support is your decision. But art should transcend the cause. Art should be art independent of the social or cultural context. If you are trying to produce art mainly in service to a cause, it might be propaganda. I am passionate about some causes, but they only indirectly influence my art.

Can anything be done?

Is the world too far gone to change? Does an individual have any power to effect things?

I can’t change the world. I can only change me. The world is made up of individuals and each of us can make our own decisions about our values and behavior. Are you restricted to doing certain things or believing certain ways because your Facebook crowd says so? Break free. Are you going to hate everyone who doesn’t believe in your cause because a powerful influence leader says to? Run away.

Be yourself. Make your own decisions.

The sources of information we follow have a huge influence on our life. I won’t get into an argument about “fake news”, but a safe starting point is to believe that most everything you hear is wrong, or at least biased. So listen to many viewpoints and make your own decision. Be a grownup. That builds personal integrity.

If the information you follow is talking about how terrible events or people are but not offering practical and positive solutions to improve things, they are just spreading fear and division. We have enough of that. Stand up for yourself. Go your own way. It doesn’t matter how famous or respected they are.

And art?

This blog is supposed to be about art. Being an artist exposes our beliefs and outlooks to the world. What has yours been looking like lately? What do you respond to? Writing about his WW2 years in Nazi Paris, Picasso said the artist “is a political being, constantly aware of the heart-breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image.”

I suggest we practice being positive and encouraging. Both in our art and our lives. Not just responding to what happens but consciously shaping our response. Being positive is not a Pollyanna, head-in-the-sand avoidance of the pain that is around. It is an effort to make what we touch better. To make people around us better and more able to cope with life. And to make ourself better.

What do you love? What do you consider good and beautiful? Show it in your art. Help people see something uplifting. Bring joy, not sorrow.

Maybe National Geographic had the right idea. Maybe focusing on what is right with the world would do a lot more good than harm.

Be an individual. Be an artist. Don’t be afraid to follow your own values and beliefs. Try to be a positive influence on everyone who sees your work.

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Controlled Abandon

Beauty in age

Practice controlled abandon. – John Paul Caponigro

Different people have different styles of working. I don’t think there is a one size fits all approach. Some people seem to need a very detailed, planned shoot. That is not best for me. I find out more and more that throwing out most structure is what works. Mr Caponigro calls it “controlled abandon”. Not a bad description.

When I get into it, it is instinctual, reactive, “shooting from the hip”. My subconscious recognizes scenes I would like and guides me to frame them best. I trust the process because my mind knows what I like and I have trained it to recognize interesting opportunities.

In a workshop one time Bob Rozinski, who was, among other things, winner of International Nature’s Best photography contest, told me “you think too much”. Well, I think I have solved that problem. Maybe it’s time for someone to tell me I should slow down and think more. 🙂

Surprises

I like to be surprised by scenes I find. If things turn out to be exactly what I anticipated, it is usually fairly boring. I don’t like to be bored by my art.

It is far preferable to me to find something that gives me a shiver of excitement. That awakes a sense of wonder. If that is my reaction maybe I can convey it to my viewers. When I’m editing a set of images I can definitely tell the ones I was bored with. They may be perfectly exposed and well composed, but there is no thrill there.

Surprises often become the start of something new. A surprise may being a new insight on how to see something. It may open up some possibilities I had not recognized. I view a surprise as being a potential growth opportunity. Being stopped by a surprise makes you ask questions of yourself. That is always good.

Time

Time, or at least its perception, is a variable. It seems to flow at different rates for different activities. Remember those classes you could swear lasted for hours, even if the clock said they were only 45 minutes long? On the other hand, think of times you’ve been out with good friends and you discover you have occupied 3 hours, and you were surprised because you thought it had only been about an hour.

We can have the same distorted sense of time when making images, or editing. If you’re lucky you will learn how to get into a “flow” state. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who popularized the term describes it as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Have you experienced it? I have, many times. I got practiced at it in my Engineering career. When caught up in an interesting problem there were times I realized it was 6pm and I forgot to have lunch and hadn’t even been to the bathroom for hours. It was wonderfully satisfying, and productive, addictive, even.

The same can happen in a creative, immersive activity like art. Approaching it with controlled abandon helps. In another quote Mr. Caponigro says: “Time did not seem to move as it ordinarily did. The world grew quiet. I was absorbed by beauty. I had no idea what I was going to do with the images. I simply made exposures as a sign of recognition, recognition of beauty. “

Critical thinking

Is there a place for critical thinking? Of course. The mind is marvelously complex and multi-layered. We are always processing from several perspectives. If you are a responsible adult you are aware of many factors, even in a “flow” state: don’t step off that cliff beside you, don’t put your hand there without checking for rattlesnakes, get off the road there’s a car I hear coming behind me.

Many of us, though, let the critical thinking control too much of our creative life. It is easy to come up with good reasons to not take a picture. Sometimes to our detriment. Or to analyze a scene too long and miss the moment. Over thinking can be worse than under thinking.

French photographer Alain Briot, who lives and works in the Southwest US deserts, described an ideal shoot as “shooting fast and leaving critical thinking aside were critical to get the shot. It was all about getting immersed in the subject, shooting away and not seeking perfection.“

Don’t see, FEEL

This brings me to what I believe is critically important to good creative expression, at least for me. Trust your feelings before your head. Your head, the critical thinking aspect, will try to talk you into safe, logical, not very creative choices. Your feelings may pull you to discover something different.

I love the part of the previous quote by Mr. Caponigro where he says “I had no idea what I was going to do with the images. I simply made exposures as a sign of recognition, recognition of beauty..” Seeking beauty for it’s own sake as opposed to only shooting for a definite commercial interest. We don’t all have the freedom to do this, but I strongly recommend you do it some. It’s good for the soul.

It is best to go out empty, the great Jay Maisel says. By avoiding preconceived notions of what we intend to find we are more open to seeing and reacting to what is really there. It is the learning to see that is difficult for many. By “see” I don’t mean just having the visual acuity to be able to resolve the details of a scene before you. I mean we actually consider each element and what it looks like and how it could be photographed. How do the things around us cause us to react? Do you feel something for that old rusty car hidden in the bushes that nobody else pays any attention to as they go by? Maybe, at just the right moment, in the right light, from the right angle it is beautiful.

Channel your creativity

So to me, I interpret “controlled abandon” as a type of channeled creativity. The channeling is the control. We focus our consciousness on being open to perceive our environment. The abandon is to put aside preconceived notions and logical processes and get down to our feelings and instinct. We allow ourselves to just react to what we find.

Instinct is a fuzzy term I use, because I don’t know a better description without writing a book. I believe our creative instinct is a combination of inherent vision and years of training to refine that vision to a set of decisions that happen below the conscious level.

Get out and let yourself go. React. Follow the beauty. Controlled abandon. You might discover a new side to you that you didn’t realize was there.

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Afflicted with Curiosity

Huge blue bear peering in window

I admit, I have the disease. I am consumed with curiosity. It drives a lot of what I do. It pulls me in different directions. I am afflicted with curiosity.

And I’m glad.

In one of his books, Jonathan Kellerman has a character say “Most people aren’t overly afflicted with curiosity. It separates the creative and the tormented from the rest of the pack.” I think he has captured the idea very well.

Curiosity

What is curiosity, really? Is it a learned skill or a inherent personality trait? Is it good or bad?

Dictionary.com says it is “the desire to learn or know about anything; inquisitiveness”. That is a good start. Like any fairly large concept, there is a lot more to it.

I like that it is presented as a “desire”. There is a longing. Something burns inside you causing you to pursue things. A variety of things. You never know where it will lead you.

Inquisitiveness is a great work, too. It implies exploration, searching, investigating. Curiosity is the basis of learning. I mean real learning, not what passes for it in our education system. Learning comes from wanting to know about something and working to figure it out.

I am no authority, but my thought is that some people have a greater tendency to curiosity than others, but it is a skill that most people could develop. If they really want to.

What ifs

Curiosity starts with a question: what if, how, why? The desire to answer such questions and what we do about it can change us. Sometimes these questions are about something no one else has done. At least, we do not know if they have. The questions can arise because of something we have seen someone do and we wonder how it was done.

Regardless of what sparked the question, something compels us to dig or investigate or try things until we satisfy the need, scratch that itch. A simple question may be satisfied by a few articles found on the internet. Some lead us into years of investigation and experimentation and end up changing our lives. This is the danger and excitement of curiosity – we do not know where it will lead.

A drive or a diversion?

I am presenting curiosity as mostly good, because I believe it is, but is that always true? Have you ever been in a situation with a boss/teacher/parent where the answer is a cold “because I said so”? Have you worked in an environment that had written procedures to handle every situation and you could not deviate from them? Asking too many why or how or why not questions can get you in trouble in these places. There are places that intentionally stifle curiosity.

My reaction is that I have to get out of those situations. I get very frustrated if I can’t ask why and try something new, That is just me. I am driven by curiosity and am generally suspicious of rules.

In some cases curiosity can be a diversion from the path you need. Many skills require repetition and long practice. For example, martial arts or music or golf need an instructor to guide you and you have to put in the hours to master it. Too much curiosity while you are building your base knowledge can delay or interfere with your training.

This brings up the idea that there may be a proper time for curiosity. There is a tension and a natural balance between the right time and the wrong time. Sometimes you are not ready to ask certain questions. More preparation may be necessary.

A base for curiosity

This may be controversial, but I believe to be really effective, curiosity needs a good base of knowledge and maturity. It is something that builds over time and with great effort. The more you know, the more separate concepts you have, the easier it is to build on them and connect the dots.

When you start on the path to learn something new, you are a novice. You don’t really know much about the subject you are studying. It is great to have curiosity, let that motivate your study, but do not believe you understand it yet. Be humble enough to know that you don’t even know how to ask good questions yet. Be patient.

I subscribe to the model that your knowledge is a network of concepts. Learning something new builds on these concepts and ties them together in new ways. The wider your base of concepts the better you can see relations between new things. The more fertile your imagination becomes, allowing you to imagine possibilities that are not obvious to others.

It is a never ending process. I hope to be learning new things and seeing new possibilities until the day I die. The better the mix of knowledge to build on, the richer the environment.

Everyone has a different mix. In my case, I have a strange brew of things from photography theory and practice to artificial intelligence, software architecture, software development, user interface design, graphic design, sculpture, business, and general technology. Temper that with Christianity, raising kids, being married for a LONG time, and the lessons learned from making my way in the world over decades. I am happy to have this network of knowledge. I believe it helps my creativity and feeds my curiosity. It makes me the unique person I am.

Do you have to be curious to be a good artist?

This is a tough question to answer in a politically correct way. The simple answer is that I’m not qualified to answer it. I’m not sure anyone is.

A more realistic answer is that I don’t know, but I can’t think of a great artist who was not curious. Think of Leonardo daVinci. He was a scientist, engineer, architect, he studied color and texture and anatomy and the perception of the human eye. Few artists are so extremely wide ranging, but the ones I know of share an extreme curiosity.

In taking classes from artists as diverse as Peter Eastway or Karen Hutton, a theme that comes through strongly is that you have to explore and be driven by your curiosity. They assume that you will bring your own point of view and not imitate anyone else. And why would you want anything else? Your curiosity will draw you in a unique direction with a style that is all your own.

This is not a proof that curiosity is necessary. But it is hard to disprove it.

Give in to your curiosity

I strongly encourage each of you to give in to your curiosity. Allow it to lead you to new places. Be an explorer.

Personal projects are a good vehicle for trying new things. Pick a project that challenges you and stretches you in a new direction. Maybe a subject you seldom do. Maybe a new type of processing you never use. Set a time limit for yourself if that is the way you work. At the end, evaluate it and decide if you have learned anything valuable that you want to carry forward in your work. It does not matter if you end up with “portfolio pieces” from the project. It is the exploration that is the benefit.

Explore, reinvent yourself, follow your creativity, stay fresh. Don’t do things a certain way because you’ve always done it or because a respected teacher taught it that way. This is your art. Go your own way. Follow your curiosity.

I’m definitely tormented. I think I am creative in my own limited ways. It is curiosity that makes it happen. I hope I do not recover.

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Indoor Time

Very distorted window

Most of us are having to adjust to rather extreme temporary measures in our daily lives. Our focus has become on indoor time.I won’t say it is a “new normal” because I hate that phrase and it is tossed around too easily.

This has caused most of us to spend way more time indoors than we are used to and are comfortable with. As photographers, we are accustomed to being out shooting a lot. So what are you doing with your new indoor time? I’ll give you a brief rundown of some of what I am doing.

Filing

I hate to admit it, but I was thousands of images behind in sorting and tagging and grading. I have spent MANY hours in Lightroom recently trying to get caught up. I’m not there yet, but I have dealt with thousands of images. That is tiring.

But it also can be rewarding. I have run across a lot of images I had mostly forgotten about. It makes me feel good to find these pockets of images I really like. It encourages me that maybe I have a history of making decent images. Plus, they remind me of good times and great experiences I have had.

Do I really need to do all this detailed filing? Probably not. But it is critically important (to me) to go through the sorting and filtering process to narrow them down to the set of images I am proud to show to anyone. For me, this takes several rounds of serious evaluation and making hard choices. It is very difficult for me to “let go” of images I really like that don’t make the cut.

Post-processing

Along with filing comes post-processing. This seems like a never-ending struggle. Trying to catch up on thousands of images that have not been processed yet brings with it the opportunity to edit many of them.

I am constantly learning new techniques for processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. So this is a great opportunity for me not only to catch up, but to practice some new methods and get more efficient. And my values and vision seems to evolve all the time.

I make it harder on myself because I am often not content to process an image and have done with it for all time. No, every time I take a new look at many of my images I have a different inspiration about what to do with a few of them.

So between trying to catch up on a backlog of lots of images and re-processing many that I see differently now, I have a lot of work. Luckily I enjoy the post-processing in the computer. I view it as one of the creative parts of photography. But it is very time consuming.

Backup

Yes, I am a computer nerd. Well, I used to be. Now the computer is just a tool. I no longer have an intimate relationship with them. But as I have written in the past, I am fanatical about backup. This has been an opportunity to review my system and make some changes.

I have levels and levels of backup. One of the last levels is rotating storage offsite (where they’re then backed up again. ☺ ). My offsite disks have been too small for a while to hold all of my main catalog. I had to restrict them to the “most important” images. That has been uncomfortable. It was a chink in the armor. So I took this opportunity to replace the offsite storage with larger disks. Now I can backup everything in my main catalog to each of them.

WD makes some great little portable disk drives. This MyPassport drive seems very reliable and pretty fast. And the physical size is amazing for 5 Terabytes of storage. I do not receive any benefit from referring this. I included an Amazon link, but, honestly, I would recommend finding another vendor.

Warning, when you attach a 5 T disk to your system don’t think you are going to just copy your files to it and be done in a few minutes. If your computer can transfer data to the backup at a rate of 100MBytes/sec, it will take a few days to do the initial copy. Subsequent updates only take minutes, because they typically only affect a few GBytes. There is 3 orders of magnitude between a GByte and a TByte.

Study and read

For an introvert like me, free time means reading or study time.

One of the benefits of the popularity of photography is that there is limitless information available, online and in books. You remember those things printed on paper, don’t you?

Ah, but that glut of information brings other problems. Who do you trust? How to separate the useful from the useless? There is a lot of bad or useless information out there. You can learn good information from a bad example, but I don’t recommend it unless that is the only alternative.

I admit to being rather jaded. I am technical and creative and very experienced. It is hard for me to find someone I trust to give me good information. I don’t want to come across as arrogant. This is something that happens with lots of experience in a field.

Two instructors I can recommend who consistently do great training are Dave Cross and Ben Willmore. They are fantastically deep in their knowledge of the tools and are good communicators. Plus, they mostly teach how to use and understand the tools, not “cookbook” methods for copying the results of someone else.

So, in the spirit of good disclosure, I have been spending a lot of time on CreativeLive, KelbyIOne, The Nature Photography Network, John Paul Camponigro’s web site, and B&H’s archive of videos.

I have also been reading books for inspiration, such as Creative Black & White, by Harold Davis, and More Than A Rock, by Guy Tal.

Study your equipment

I believe intimate knowledge of your equipment pays off. If you can’t use your tools rapidly and with little thought they will get in your way rather than help you be creative. This is an opportunity to spend time practicing with your camera.

I moved to a mirrorless body about a year ago. I confess that I have struggled with it some. It is not as convenient and user friendly as a larger and more mature DSLR. I am comfortable using it for normal day to day shooting situations, but I could not pass the blindfold test like I could with previous bodies. That is, I could not reliably set the camera up for a particular shooting situation blindfolded (or in the dark).

I love the quality of the images from the mirrorless camera, but I am having to spend extra time making it natural and intuitive to use. I am working on that as part of my down time.

Get out and shoot

I may make some people mad for saying this, but I am out shooting almost every day. Our officials here kindly allow us to be out walking, biking, etc. I take advantage of it to wander with my camera. I try to get out walking 2-4 miles a day. It is very good for me health-wise and for my sanity. Plus I like to practice shooting every day. Sometimes I even get a decent image.

I also occasionally jump in the car and drive out of town for some photos. For instance, we had an unusually large snow last week (as I am writing this). I was out all afternoon shooting. It was great and very refreshing! For the sticklers, I was never within 20 feet of another person. But then, I do not worry about Covid and I am not concerned about catching it when I am out and about. I refuse to be paralyzed by fear.

Time well spent

These are some of the things I am doing in my “confinement”. I hope I will look back on it as time well spent. A chance to regroup, catch up on some things, refresh and recharge. I hope you are able to make productive use of your time indoors, too.

Let me know how you are doing. I would love to hear from you. Sign up to receive notifications. Please visit my gallery site and let me know what you think.

I hope you are well and I’m glad you’re reading! Even if it is because you are bored. 🙂