The Fires of Friday

At last, the workweek is over and it’s time to unwind and put together some plans for the weekend!  Great time to catch up on a whole bunch of things:

• Get some playtime with the blog and catch up reading a bunch of cool blogs
• Install my new iMac
• Work on some Rolling Stones songs on guitar
• Further cleaning and organization of the basement
• Finish putting together my pedal board

Blog playtime will result in the final tweaks and some beautification, as suggest by Josh, our Happiness Engineer, who teaches the Blogging101 course I’m taking.  I like the basics of my blog, but want to see, if I can take it up to the next level.

Reading some of the awesome blogs that I follow, such as Project Relish, which not only has lots of great articles about food and travel, but also features great photography and a layout that is simply fantastic!  Expect to see some posts about some of the blogs over the weekend.

My 7-year old iMac still works, but due to its thermal sensors dying a month or so back, the fans now run at top speed.  Not a bad thing for most uses, but not ideal when you’re working with music 🙂  So I waited for a sale on the iMac I want and scored one today.  I’ll kick the process off overnight and should have everything set by the morning.

As some of you know, I’m learning to play the guitar (2 years of playing this week).  A couple of months ago, I joined a Meetup group that gets together once a month to have an acoustic jam.  The first Saturday in February, we’re getting together to play Rolling Stones songs; during this week’s guitar lesson, my teacher and I worked on 4 different songs, so I’ve got some work to do.

Ah, the basement!  We have a mouse issue, which we discovered when my daughter, Teegan, stopped by over the holidays and went through some of the boxes she has stored in our basement to take things back to her apartment.  In the boxes we found cat food that had been stolen by mice out of the cat’s food dish.  The cat got a stern talking-to, but is clearly not a mouser!  Traps (humane ones) are now addressing the rodent issue (12 caught and counting).  To store things better, shelves and better, plastic containers will be the solution.

Guitar pedal board should be a breeze, but has a challenge or two.  One of the pedals doesn’t like the connectors from my new 8 outlet power supply.  Might take a bit of customization!

Other than that…did I mention the New England Patriots are playing?  That will be multi-tasking time 🙂  And I might try to catch a Premier League match, as Liverpool v. Manchester United has potential.  Additional guitar time will be cool too, and possibly some photo editing.

Free time is great!  That’s the time to do what fuels our passion, such as the fires in today’s image, ‘Pyroplasm 3x’.  A couple of notes on this image; the image was captured as shown in camera; the streaking effect was not added in post-production.  Photoshop work on this was a matter of a bit of sharpening, lifting the color a smudge and a crop.

Wishing you a great weekend!!

Author: jansenphoto

A Fresh Perspective Photography is more than just a vehicle for capturing the world around me; it provides me with a palette and a set of brushes, with which I paint not only what I see, but also look to express the emotions that are evoked by the scene in front of me in that moment. Growing up in the Netherlands exposed me to a wide cross-section of visual arts that laid the foundation of my photographic view of all that surrounds me. Early influences were the Dutch Masters of the 17th century, to whom I was introduced by my grandfather during museum explorations; favorites among them are the scenes of quotidian life depicted by Jan Steen and Frans Hals and the vivid landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael. My classical high school education was supplemented by the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum, where I spent many a lunch hour exploring its great collection. Here I was introduced to surrealism with a particular love for the approach taken by Salvador Dali; Dali also rekindled my appreciation for the work of Hieronymus Bosch, who often showed the folly of us mortals. Universal Connections My approach to any photographic subject is to look for understanding first; in this I look to establish either a connection between the viewer and the subject or capture the connection of the subject with its surroundings. The captured image then aims to portray this connection from a perspective that is part of my personal interpretation. This interpretation is often a form of externalized introspection, which may alternately display the connection of isolated beings and items with their environment or highlight the whimsy of the profound world, in which we find ourselves. The universe is full of connections, many of which are waiting to be discovered; part of my journey as a photographer is to document these connections. Any assignment, be it an event, a product shoot or a portrait session is always approached through communication with the client; this is where the first connection is established. Ideas are exchanged and a collaborative plan of action forms, ultimately resulting in a set of images that aim to exceed the expectations of each client. And, lest we forget, it is important to have fun while practicing the serious business of photography! View all posts by jansenphoto