New Site, New Vision
As I've moved forward (or at least have always tried to) in my creative exploration, I am still trying to grow and push myself. This might be the most significant push in a while. I feel like I've made a fundamental change to how I think about seeing, photography, editing, and sharing. Every photo is its own story, every location is a new opportunity, and there is always something to be seen.
In the past when I would go on a photo adventure or something similar, I would be so concerned with taking as many pictures as I could and trying to machinegun everything hoping not to miss a great photo. I would then come home with hundreds of photographs and would edit dozens of them. And by editing, I can run every image through the same action I built in photoshop. I would then proceed to upload 10-20 images to my site in a collection of that trip, thus bloating my portfolio with thousands of pictures that didn't deserve to be there. This also was incredibly distracting for someone to visit my old site as it was all custom built to accommodate the mess.
So what I've done is try to simplify everything. Every time I go out, I'm looking for at least one excellent photo, but sometimes I might not find one, and that's ok. Or sometime I might get fortunate and find two. I now organize and edit everything in Lightroom, I don't know why I waited so long. The way that program is set up as simplified my workflow immensely. I now also edit each photo independently, as I should, not every picture is the same. I do however have some baseline presets that I've built that gives my photo processing my unique touch, I hope. I now no longer try and develop and maintain my site, I've moved everything over to Squarespace, and I love it. This has simplified how I get images onto my site and how quickly I can update it. It has also drastically simplified the way people can view my work.
What's left is me focusing on shooting more and learning how to see.
Looking to see & finding moments.