It has been a pleasant Spring in the desert and as the temperatures are now reaching the mid-to-high-90’s, I am close to the big seasonal move back to Park City Utah for a second brief Spring and the long high-elevation Summer and early Autumn.
It has been a productive Spring as well. Personal projects completed include the editing and posting of several sets of scanned slides from western Montana, northern and southern Utah, Hawaii, Arizona, Alaska and California. A lot of the scans didn’t come back from the company that did the scanning as I would have liked, because of color gamut issues, and required a fair bit of work putting them into better shape. They are all now located in my photography galleries. Some are located toward the end of existing galleries: northern Utah, California, Hawaii, Alaska and Arizona, and others are located in entirely new galleries: southern Utah and western Montana.
It really has been fun to edit so many old photos, more than three-thousand, that signify various times in my life and old trips to odd places, some of which had been forgotten, and some of which will always be remembered. Having all of them online and viewable by whoever may want to view them, rather than gathering dust in a box in the back of a closet is also pretty wonderful. An additional gallery of images around Southern Nevada is also new. Most of these were taken on daily walks this Spring but some date back to a found camera card and last Summer.
I’ve also been continuing work on my Premiere Pro, Abelton, and After Effects skills, using large numbers of old clips to make new video. One is of various places around Costa Rica and another is of San Antonio Texas. I’ve turned to artlist and their flat annual fee for music as a way to avoid the hassles of only a few years ago, of finding and confirming the legality for use of music. It is still difficult to find the right music, but the process of establishing permission which used to be a nightmare is now no longer necessary. The Costa Rica and Texas videos can be found in my video galleries, which, at least for now, is a Youtube channel.
And then, in addition to editing, there is my over-riding pandemic project of really learning video production, lots of reading and more importantly working with lighting, mainly interior, and that has gone well. But, alas, I have no coherent work to show for it. Just yet.
I’m also in the process of studying for the FAA part 107 license which, it seems to me, is the only sensible path to shooting from drones going forward. All and all it is pretty interesting. Weather and atmosphere are subjects that have evaded my interest until now but are in many ways right up my alley as a natural scientist. Although a lot of the material is rules for airports which is a tad mysterious because drones aren’t allowed to fly around airports and I can’t imagine wanting to fly a drone around an airport. I am looking forward to a clean set of regulations, as my greatest hesitancy in doing much with drones has been the wild-west legal structure for drone photography since its inception.
With two vaccine shots under my belt, actually in my arm, I am ready and hopeful for this world-wide horror show to come to a close and get back to what I really most enjoy doing. My personal site thatbigredsun.com is almost complete. I just need to add a section on my nomadic workstyle and maybe a gallery of design and illustration, also a few tweaks here and there, and to continue to add photography, video and blog posts as they develop. My next big push with regard to putting old photography online will be the scanning and posting of a few hundred 4×5’s from the Escalante River canyons in southern Utah and Glacier Watertown International Peace Park in western Montana and southern Alberta.
I’ve upped my game with video substantially, done a fair of bit of work with d3 and gsap, and am starting the process of drone pilot licensure. My next postings of rebuilt old video are likely to be also of Glacier and of coastal Oregon. And then, of course, there will be new photography, new code, new design, and new video. Because it honestly does appear that the light at the end of this long infernal tunnel is becoming visible.