Ok, I know in my last Blog, I seemed just about ready to roll my actual website out. Well. Sometimes life gets in the way of living, and other times, living gets in the way of “deadlines.” This week seemed to be a little bit of both those things…

The good news is, other than a few poems I have to find and add, I have most of what I want on here up and ready to go. Although, linking is still a bit of a problem. I mean, you can get to each poem from a sub-directory, but you can’t easily navigate from one poem to the next, like I would prefer. I might get that far, I might not. That bit is tedious work. I think I have upwards of 100 pieces up, which is approximately half of my current body of work. I’m actually kind of surprised I managed to whittle it down to only that many! I know some just plain suck, but all of them are my babies and each has a special place in my soul for its own reason. Ah well. More power to those of you who make it through more than a dozen. If I could bake, I’d make you a cookie!!

As far as the photography goes….I have quite a few more portfolios up. I worked a 12 hour overnight shift yesterday, and I spent most of it sifting through every dang folder on my external hard drive, where I keep all of my photography. At least, everything from about 2010…which is about when I started getting more serious about the hobby purchased my first “real” camera. Or at least, my first non point-and-click camera. It wasn’t a DSLR, but it had one hell of a zoom. I still had it until a few months ago, when I bequeathed it to my friend’s son. Thanks to FB buy-sell-trade groups, I was able to upgrade to a DSLR. In true HB fashion, I did just about no research- just saw a deal I couldn’t refuse- and ended up with a (as far as I could tell) basically brand new Canon Rebel. T3, I think? And about a year ago, I lucked on to another sweet deal on a Rebel T6! Both cameras came with a bunch of accessories, so I have several lenses, extra batteries, a decent tripod (as well as a less-decent one, lol), flashes, lens filters, camera bags, and even a remote shutter! And I paid less than what a stand-alone body would’ve cost in both cases. heheh. I think I get my bargain hunting from my mum!  But sometimes people ask me why I chose Canon over, say, Nikon. I didn’t. It chose me? Or Luck had everything to do with it and Choice nothing at all….

Granted, in the realm of photography and technology, my equipment is somewhat equivalent to a mortar and pestle, maybe? Definitely functional and useful if it’s all you have, but there are far shinier, new-age devices out there that may produce even better results. Maybe. I’m on the fence about that. Some people argue that you have to have a good camera to take a good picture. I definitely disagree with that line of thought. I think a good “eye” is more important than a good camera. A steady hand also helps a great deal.

What was my point? Did I even have one? Not sure. Sorry. Portfolios. External hard drive….I have probably 95% of what I want to eventually be on the site already hanging out in the wings. About 75% of it is already in a portfolio project, although the individual files need to be renamed and captioned still.

As far as the WG situation goes…I am going to head over there tomorrow to pay the fee for them to jury my work. I don’t know if they’ve been waiting for me to pay before they actually look at it, or if they’ve looked at it and are still deciding or what…I tried to pay online, but there’s no option for that, and I almost never head in that town’s direction. But. I am tomorrow, for a few Journal meetings taking place. So, I figured I’d go a few extra miles and pay my fee and see if that helps get the ball rolling, if it hasn’t been set in motion already.

In terms of TWJ, I’ve finally sat down and figured out which pieces I already submitted to journals before, so I can now move on to the more daunting task of picking something to submit to this edition of TWJ! I’d like to write something new, but I have a pseudo-assignment to write a few poems about a particularly difficult subject, so of course I can’t write anything until those are written, which means nothing is getting written at all.

Except for this blog, apparently. I had no intentions of going in the directions that I went with it tonight (do I ever…) My goal was to just provide a bit of updatage as to what’s going on with things. It was a sunny week, and my BFF was in town with her family and friends, so I spent a few days in the forest and on the river/local lakes, so not much technology happened. But, I should have a lot of down time tomorrow, and I hope to find a nice little cafe with free wi-fi, so I can churn out another little chunk of progress on things.

For now, the pups are calling. Time for some much needed snuggling.

Be well.

P.S. Apparently FB is making it not possible for WP to automatically share when I update my blog or other things on the site. So….here’s hoping I remember to share it manually!