I started a blog a few years back to showcase my love for the California landscape through my photographs and to also catalog my relevant impressions left with me at the time of image capture. Some of these places have been explored extensively by me, others, not so much. Some I return to often, and for others, I’ll never go back. I enjoyed creating and maintaining the blog. Most of the work was older and so it became more of a repository and less of an engaging project. I took the blog down in December of last year (2025.)
So, with the start of a new year comes new energies. And with that, I have decided to relaunch the blog. However, V2.0 will be focused on emerging work and new photographic opportunities and experiences. Over the last 8 months I have lost 60lbs. Mostly, though diet and exercise. It would be an understatement to say that I’ve been doing a lot of walking. One thing decidedly absent on my walks has been my camera. This blog project will be all about having my camera along with me and making images while on my extended daily constitutional outings. I’ll be writing a little more on wider ranging subjects, as well.
With the mass proliferation of AI slop, I’ve decided to put some guardrails on image creation and my artistic vision. I will no longer be using the RAW image format. I am hard-baking JPEG images in-camera through various film recipes at the time of capture. Any post-production will be kept to a minimum. If you’re seeing an image on my blog, then you’re seeing an image that was gently edited, if edited at all. Really, I’m limiting my post-production work to just basic dodging and burning, and only the things that I would normally do in the darkroom as part of an analog workflow. Doing it this way is much more akin to that of working with a film camera and using conventional darkroom processes. I’m also primarily composing my images through the optical viewfinder and not on an LCD. The optical viewfinder on my Fujifilm X-Pro3 is much like seeing through a Leica M series rangefinder (but way better!)
As my tagline states, this blog is a vanity project. I’m not doing it to generate income. I’m not doing it to wow the public or to try to call attention to myself or my work. Mostly I’m doing it just because it’s fun and after retiring from Apple, I now have a lot more time on my hands. I tend to make things up as I go, and this newest iteration will certainly be a testament to that. I feel good about the rules that I have put in place. It’s an odd thing to treat digital like film, but I think in the long run, it will work out. So, it seems, all things old are new again. And, of course, some of these things maybe subject to revision.