Cleaning House

Perhaps there's something in the air, or maybe it's the zeitgeist, but whatever it is, there is no denying that the start of a new year prompts me to do a little house cleaning, both literal and metaphorical, perhaps even metaphysical.  I've been wading through the clutter in my abode -- and yes, I could be featured on any show about Collectors and I'm a borderline hoarder, albeit I like to think with good taste -- and have actually assigned things to storage and the Salvation Army, and even the dust bin.  I cleaned out a kitchen cupboard and the hole under my bathroom sink.  I reordered the piles and the layers in my office.  Other house keeping chores are more centred on my "self".


I started another marathon clinic and my ass and guads are stilling complaining after the first three runs.  I'm flirting with 190 pounds on the scale and this bodes well for my speed work in the future..  It's funny, but when you look in the mirror every morning, you don't really notice any change.  But when I bump into people I haven't seen since before my trip to Asia, I guess it's quite a difference.


All the running I've been doing, and going to the gym, made me rethink the fact that I haven't had a hair cut in two years.  Long hair can be a real pain in the ass. So yesterday, more out of frustration than anything else, I cut all my hair off just to make it easier and quicker to get on with my day after exercising and running.  The result has been many more double-takes when I bump into people.  


In four days I'll be back at Langara for another semester in the Commercial Photography Certificate Program. I downloaded my Adobe Photoshop upgrade to CS5, so that I'll be able to take full advantage of the Digital Workflow class I'm taking and maybe in 2011 I'll actually "manage" my digital workflow.  I still have weeks of potential wading to get through with the 100,000 frames I shot last year.  In the past two weeks I went through dozens and dozens of shoots and brutally edited my images and assigned over twenty thousand to the trash bin in an attempt to clear up the clutter and free some space on my hard drive


The other courses I'm taking, Composition and Design, the Photographic Concept and the Photographic Portrait, have inspired me to dig out some old reference material such as Susan Sontag's, On Photography, Jeremy Webb's, Design Principles and Terry Barrett's, Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images.  I must confess to a weakness for asking, "What's the purpose behind the photograph?", and, "What was the attraction?"  So, perhaps I'm re-organizing my thoughts about taking pictures as well...