Goodbye to 2022

Happy New Year!

As we started this year, 364 days ago now, we knew that it couldn’t be as bad as the year(s) we lost to COVID; we held out hope and a conviction that things were looking up!

Guess what? 2022 turned out pretty good, and I, for one, am even more optimistic about 2023, as we turn over the next leaf…

B&W Leaf under Red Light

Like this leaf, life started looking a lot better over the past year, as we started traveling again (Iceland and river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel for personal travel). Inspiration started coming back with a more positive outlook, which turned to creating more images. Work, albeit insanely busy, allowed me to take an entirely new look on how to organize a modern software development organization (looking forward to the rollout of this in 2023).

I feel that the momentum is there once again, and I plan to keep moving things forward!

Oh yes, the image… I photographed this leaf during the Night Lights event at the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill; the lighting on this leaf was red, which led me to take the black&white direction.

Happy New Year to one and all and I look forward to sharing our future explorations!

Tuesday Photo Challenge – Round Up 37

In with the New!

Happy New Year to all of you!  May 2017 be wonderful for you; I hope that you have your goals set for this year and that you will be successful in attaining them.  In this New Year, we’re kicking it off with the 37th collection Tuesday Photo Challenge entries for this week’s theme of New Year.

The contributions for this week’s theme were nothing short of amazing, as all of you are clearly looking forward to 2017 and all the new that lies ahead.  With all this great participation, you can be sure that there will be plenty more Tuesday Photo Challenges ahead for this year.

Here’s another bit of reflection on the New Year from me, as the year starts brightly akin to the day depicted in this image.

p29-20130906-img_2035
A Brand New Day

The following were this week’s participants in the challenge with links to their posts:

  • Charles was first to contributed with his post in CharlesEWaugh that looked at the old year we were closing out with a magnificent sunset; Charles also posted a second entry in CharlesEWaugh with a lovely sunrise to ring in the New Year!
  • Candy’s post in her blog, Netdancer’s Musings and Photography, provides a beautiful image that asks us to consider whether or not we’re starting with a clean slate.
  • Emily shares her wishes for the New Year in her blog, Zombie Flamingoes; I will tell you that bacon is part of them, but you’ll have to go look for the rest of them.
  • Judith lets us in on the things she values most about the New Year in her post in Nature Knows Best; new stationery is one of them.
  • Bikurgurl shares hew New Year’s Eve plans with us, which appear to include the force, but probably not in a way you expect!
  • Leaking Ink presents us a view of renewal that is a key part of the New Year, as we’re looking to explore the new.
  • Debbie’s post in Forgiving Connects talks of her dreams for the New Year and the wonder that they might bring.
  • …and Marie of The New 3Rs: Retire, Recharge, Reconnect is telling us to keep the eye on the ball in 2017 with a rather cool photo.
  • …also, Miriam’s post in her wonderful blog The Showers of Blessing rings in the New Year in style!

Clearly, all of you have a positive direction for this year, and I wish all of you and yours a happy, healthy and prosperous year filled with wonder!

Starting Anew – 2017 Kicks Off!

At the beginning of 2016, I made the decision to revive my anemic blog and make a serious effort to not only start anew, but also stay the course during the entire year.  During the year, I read other blogs, commented on them, made new friends and posted plenty of entries, so that now I have a pretty well established blog with a loyal following of fantastic people from all over the world.

As a result, I feel pretty good about what I managed to pull together during the past year.  So what to do next?  I plan to retain my focus, continue to sharpen the quality of my blog and generate some (hopefully) interesting content throughout all of 2017.

Old Rust, New Growth

This is where we’re at right now… we have some rust, but there’s new growth that will lead us into the future!

Like many, I have some plans for this year:

  • Restart my workout schedule with a goal of getting to an aerobic level that I feel good about (and lose 30 pounds).
  • Continue my guitar learning journey with focused practice that gets me ready for a more significant public performance.
  • Learn basic Italian conversation, so that I’ll be able to chat with people during our vacation in Italy.
  • Focus on enjoyment in my photography by having a completely new eye on the world around me.

With all this, there will be dedication to my work at Red Hat to continue to expand the positive impact that I have on the organization and the community that we support.  There will also be some fun things to do with the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, which is my favorite charity to support, as there’s so much positive energy in this group.

Expect to see some updates from time to time, some old features, such as the Tuesday Photography Challenge, as well as some new content.  We’ll have lots of fun together throughout this year!

What are your plans for the year?

Tuesday Photo Challenge – New Year

What’s your outlook?

Welcome to Week 37 of the Tuesday Photo Challenge.  The final TPC of 2016.  After last week’s wonderful response for the theme of Lights, I figured that there might be a very opportune challenge theme to follow the brightness of Lights…

Yes, I could have gone to the dark side, which would not exactly make me a Rogue One (bad pun, but hard to resist 🙂 ), but with the short days and long nights in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s enough darkness already.  Therefore, this week’s challenge of New Year, which I would encourage you to take into any direction that you might like.

Your direction can be a representation of what you hope and expect to see in the New Year, or how you plan to celebrate the New Year, what you’d like to eat on New Year’s Eve…  You get the idea, be creative and don’t hold back.  As bit of inspiration, I’m taking a darker direction, as it crossed my view, as I was looking for some images (I promise that the round-up image will be happier!):

the-corporate-death-dealer
The Corporate Deathdealer

This creation by Dave Webb, whose works are very imaginative, is from his Corporate series.  I photographed it several years ago to show off the cool characteristics of this sculpture.  Plus it was a great exercise in studio lighting to get the deep black backdrop.  And yes, it does make me think of 2017…

The full rules of this challenge are in TPC Guidelines, but here’s the tl;dr:

  • Write a post with an image for this week’s topic
  • Please tag your post with fpj-photo-challenge (if you’re not sure about how tags work, please check out this WordPress article about tagging posts)
  • Create a pingback link to this post, so that I can create a post showing all of the submissions over the week (note: pingbacks may not appear immediately, as my site is set up to require approval for linking to it; helps against previous bad experiences with spamming)
  • Have fun creating something new (or sharing something old)!!

Have fun going out there (or staying indoors) and finding the light!  I’m looking forward to the great images that you’ll come up with!

Technical Details

This image was captured with a Canon EOS 5D MkIII using an EF 24-105mm f/4L lens.  Exposure settings were at f/8 and 1/100 second with 100 ISO.  Studio lights were used to get the amount of light just right.

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