All Things Cyclical

February 3, 2011 Cork, Dublin, iphone, Landscape, People

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I can’t remember exactly the exact time it happened or any specific reason but apparently all of a sudden an iphone and two cheap applications have seen my 5D and modest yet highly functioning lens collection abandoned to a darkened corner of the spare room. I’ve never been a kind to practice street photography to any great degree so I don’t imagine that it’s out of convenience. It’s certainly not because the phone is a better camera than a now 3 year old full frame body and L lenses. If anything, the applications I’ve been using dull down the quality of the camera significantly. I guess I’ve been happy with what I’m getting from the combination so far, given that the ‘proper’ camera hasn’t seen the light of day for about two months now. Even during the most acute periods of photoloathing I’ve managed to shoot a few bits & pieces once a month.

Last night I opened both Lightoom and Photoshop for the first time since November. I still have a good number of 2009 photos in my main Lightroom catalog. That’ll tell you how much processing I do normally and more so, how quickly non-paid work gets done. When I started the ‘one-a-day’ practice of processing, it quickly became routine. Processing a whole set of photos in one sitting was pure madness, something I would have last done back when I was using Picasa on my somehow still living Windows PC.

For those of you old enough to remember how I rolled over on rymus.net, it started out as full sets of the days shooting being processed, uploaded to flickr and blogged. The full set being blogged in one post. Mad, radical stuff; Just mad.

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Maybe it prompted me to shoot more or rather shoot small stuff more often. Then I hit upon the thought that maybe I’d be better just doing one photo a day, like all the other photo blogs seem to do. That’s got to be the way forward. Fast forward through a few years of laziness and I’m pretty much back where I started.

Wouldn’t it be great to go out shooting, come home and feel motivated enough to process a full set in one go? Then, as if that wasn’t enough, post all the photos in one shot instead of drip-feeding them over the course of weeks. This is all well and good for planned days out with the camera but it doesn’t really apply for the odd phone photo. Unless there are people out there that purposefully go out with their phones to shoot a days worth of photos. I can only assume these people exist.

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In the spirit of all things cyclical, I’m back on WordPress. I made the decision to move back so I can post a few photos at a time, waffle a bit and hmm, maybe even put up a video or two. At least I’m telling myself that’s whats going to happen, remains to be seen if it will pan out that way. Armed with my iphone and a generous data plan, it’s also my aim to do some posting ‘from the road’. The road being whichever one I find myself riding on my latest two wheeled purchase. Mid-life crisis is a bitch.

So would a camera phone replace a DSLR? Without waffling on too much, the answer is no. Definitely not. Not yet anyway. When I travel I think I’ll always have my 5D and/or my A1 with me. I will however test that theory in April when I get on the ferry.

Bear with me over the following weeks and months. It’s been quite a while since my last venture into WordPress photo blogging. The random waffling, going off on tangents and general shite talking aren’t a new thing. Anyone that ever read a post over on rymus.net will know that. If you can’t handle that, try to imagine you’re looking at playboy. Just look at the photos and try not to read the articles.

I’ll be back at some stage with either my 5D or my phone.

One Reply to “All Things Cyclical”

  1. aafke says:

    sorry i tried to read the article ;)) but looked at the pics also

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