The full title of this week’s 7/52 is “(Things are) Looking Up (I hope).” Of course, given my rather melancholic disposition, I fully expect it all to come crashing down at any moment (whatever I mean by ‘Things’ and ‘all’), despite and because of the fact that things have been on a rather steady upward trend—despite numerous hiccoughs, potholes, detours, and complete changes of direction—for roughly 10 years now, and despite not yet being the person I want to be (and never expecting, really, to become that person anyway, since the description changes regularly such that if I went back and met the James from 5 or 10 or even 2 years ago, he would likely be rather pleased with the person he’s become, though the James from 5 minutes ago would chortle and say “still? Jeez, me, grow up” or somesuch: I expect many of us humans are like this…), and despite the fact that I’ve been sick all week and so only really got out to shoot 3 days—though I did whip the phone out a few times and even included one of those shots here, as a sort of bonus (guess which one without looking at the exif)—I managed to make not just 7, but 8 pictures that I’m rather happy with.
Does that make sense? I like run-on-type sentences, filled with non-sequiturs and digressions, but understand that they can be difficult to follow.
If it’s unclear, try reading it again, slowly, outloud if possible, or just take a gander at the pictures, below, and go on your merry way.
The pictures, by the way, were all take—with the exception of one, shot with the iPhone 5 built-in camera in HDR mode and processed in the phone with Filterstorm, then tweaked very slightly and cropped to match its relatives in Lightroom—the D7000 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G, at ISOs from 100-800, in Aperture Priority mode at Apertures from 1.8-4, and processed with a variety of techniques in Lightroom. The entire process of uploading, culling and processing took a grand total of 95 minutes, including two round-trips to Photoshop for some quick and simple HDRing of two images, and trips to the restroom, coffee breaks, and some playing with the cats.
By the way, I’m really enjoying this 7/52, and feel I’m learning a great deal more with this project than I did with the 365. I’m able to focus more on composition in camera, recognizing and correcting errors quickly, deleting mis-fires and trying again immediately, and the weekly theme helps concentrate my focus and eye throughout the week.
