Here’s this morning’s soundtrack for getting things done at work! 🎧
Rain rain rain
Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！Happy Thursday!
We’re getting a lot of rain here in central Texas, which is great because we always suffer dry summers it seems. So hopefully the rain is filling up the lakes.
Today was a strange day at work. I worked pretty much non-stop from 7:45am until 4:25pm (working through lunch) but the weird thing was, I didn’t even have time to open Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator. I spent the entire time either in meetings, or emailing people and coordinating projects. And it was EXHAUSTING. I don’t think I’ve ever had a day like that before… I didn’t realize it before, but all that planning and crafting emails takes a lot of brainpower. At the end of the day I was in a daze! But it was great to know that all of that planning was necessary and important and will be a huge benefit in the near future.
As I was observing how fatiguing that kind of work was today, I remembered something that was said in the asadora Amachan. One of the experienced sea-urchin divers told the newbie diver to not think while underwater. Huh? It turns out that all that brain activity uses up a lot more oxygen, and therefore you cannot stay underwater as long. Maybe today’s type of work, which I am not used to, was using up all my energy.
Today’s photo was taken at the drive-thru of our local In-n-Out. When I got home from work, the family requested this specifically, and I was happy to oblige! I love the burgers there. My oldest son loves to order a double-double animal style, and his brother likes his double-double with no onion, tomato, or spread. I got a cheeseburger animal style, and my wife got a regular cheeseburger plus pickles. It was delicious as usual! 🍔
Well, the weekend is almost here! I hope you have a great Friday.
おやすみなさい！
-B 
Culling photos and RAW vs JPEG
“Olympus XA” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！How’s it going? Over here, it’s raining… make sure to keep dry and stay healthy!
Today’s photo is of one of my favorite cameras, the mighty Olympus XA. It is such a great design, and takes wonderful photos because of the lovely Zuiko lens. I love it, although I don’t shoot with it too often.
Tonight I replied to a post on Flickr that was concerning running out of hard drive space because of shooting many RAW files. In writing my response, I thought about how my philosophy on making photos has changed over the years to where I am now, which is a happy place. Not surprisingly, it has to do with decluttering. Below is the response I posted:
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Just my personal experience…
Short answer: It helps if you cull your photos early on, and be “ruthless” about it. :)
Long-winded answer:
I think many of us have gone through or are going through a similar situation, myself included. There was a time when I was shooting so much, in RAW, kept everything, was running out of space, and “got behind” in processing those files. Photography started being less fun for me.
Then, I started shooting some corporate events and my view on culling the photos started to take shape. Each time I clicked the shutter, I would think “This photo is going to take me X amount of minutes to process.” This left a feeling of dread – I didn’t want to stay up all night processing so many! So I decided I needed to cull more aggressively. Now, if I shoot one event presenter, I might take 40 shots, but immediately (in camera) cull that down to 15, deleting obvious ones like closed eyes, weird mid-talk expressions, etc. Then later in Lightroom, I’d spend one minute to cut that to 3 maximum (more for a keynote), and post-process those.
I then started applying that to my personal work. I found that choosing the best ones in-camera soon after I took them made photography a lot more enjoyable. The sooner I deleted the rejected photos, the less I would think about them and consequently eliminate any regret I might have had in not keeping them. (I didn’t have time to get attached to those photos) And my memory card felt nice and tidy, free of clutter.
Another change that really helped me enjoy photography more is that I now shoot exclusively (for my personal photos) in JPEG. I have found that committing to the image immediately gives me a sense of closure and peace-of-mind. This may sound weird, but to me, a RAW file is the middle step in the photographic process, with the end of the process being a print or JPEG. It’s like the RAW file represents an unfinished project (with endless possibilities) and when I had 1,000 RAW files sitting on my hard drive, it was like having 1,000 unfinished projects just gnawing away at me. (I guess I have some issues!)
So now I cull like crazy, and I’m happy with (or at least committed to) the images I keep, and forget about all the others… it’s a lot less clutter on the hard drive and less clutter in my mind.
Sorry for the long-winded (and somewhat off-topic) message, and thanks for reading.
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I hope you have a nice rest of the evening, and let’s do our best tomorrow!
おやすみなさい！
-B
Eat more fish
Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！ Hello, everyone! How was your Tuesday?
Mine was pretty good. On the work front, I am finally catching up with all my tasks and can now start working on projects that have kept getting pushed back. This feels good! ☺️
Today’s photo is of my dinner this evening. It’s spicy salmon bowl, with avocado… and it was delicious! For lunch I had a tuna sandwich which was also yummy, so today was an all-fish day. And a few days this past week, I didn’t have any meat whatsoever. I think this is a good thing too. (although on Sunday we did have a full rack of baby-back ribs at home) I kind of want to eat more fresh vegetables and fruits, and for breakfast I’ve been having a healthy mix of dried fruit and nuts. Plus lots of water! I guess what I am trying to say (badly, apparently) is that I am starting to eat healthier!
I’m pretty tired right now, though, since I woke up pretty early today. So I’ll say goodnight and get some rest! おやすみなさい！
-B
Upstairs/Downstairs
Cedar Park, 2016
おはようございます！It’s early in the morning, but I woke up and felt like writing… so I thought I would write a bit about our pet situation.
When our cat Miki 🐱 was still with us, she stayed upstairs and Lani 🐶 stayed downstairs. This arrangement came about because Miki didn’t really like the strange new dog that moved into her house, and also because in the rare times Lani would sneak upstairs, she would make a mess (we found her poo up there a couple times) so we taught the dog not to go upstairs and even put a pet barrier on the stairs. We moved Miki’s litter box and food station upstairs into the bathroom and she became an upstairs cat.
Now that we only have Lani, Koa and Mariko have wanted her to be able to come upstairs and sleep with us in our beds. I’m not a huge fan of this idea. In fact, I’m opposed to allowing her upstairs. I guess I like that upstairs has stayed relatively clean, not only because we don’t eat up there, but there isn’t a lot of pet hair to clean up and the carpets don’t have stains on them. I’d like to keep it that way. Plus, dogs are kind of dirty. Besides the dog smell, they run around outside and are covered with who knows what kind of germs and allergens and I really don’t want her bringing all that onto my bed. And I don’t like cleaning up pee stains from the carpet! I mean, you cannot get it 100% clean, right?
Anyways, last night Koa and Mariko tried to get Lani to sleep in Koa’s room by bringing up her crate (where she usually sleeps). Lani reluctantly hung out in Koa’s room for a while, but left the room at the first chance and spent the night downstairs on the sofa. She’s now almost four years old so I don’t know if she’ll ever really be comfortable upstairs. Maybe I am just being stubborn but I want to keep that separation between upstairs and downstairs space. Still, I’m only one out of four votes in the family so who knows how it’ll play out (For the record, I think Bay is indifferent to having Lani upstairs, although she has pooed in his room before).
In other pet news, Mariko wants another cat and has been going to shelters to look at some. I have to admit that although I loved Miki and miss her, life is a bit simpler now. I don’t have to clean the litter box (which we had to keep upstairs in my bathroom), I don’t have to clean up the messes that cats tend to make on the carpet, there’s no more pet hair all over the bed and carpet, I can keep my closet door open, the air in our bedroom is fresher, and we don’t have to make arrangements for a pet sitter when we go on vacation. This cuts out a lot of clutter from my mind. I guess it’s really my own personal issue… but just this simplifying of my life (albeit under sad circumstances) has improved my stress-level a lot. I’ve found a good balance right now, but I’m worried that adding another pet will tip the balance again to the over-stressed side. 😔
Well, that’s just a bit of what’s on my mind this morning. I hope you have a great Tuesday!
-B
