39° North Photography

Spring is way late in Colorado’s Front Range this year, proven by the fact that I am just NOW able to capture photos of lilacs in bloom.

Last year on April 11 (!!), I posted a photo of lilacs in this very blog, noting, “My backyard smells so good.” On May 10 in 2010, I wrote, “The lilacs are just starting to hit their stride…” And now, it is rather late in May and my lilacs have just barely begun to bloom. I was actually worried that they weren’t going to bloom at all this year due to our multiple late bursts of wintery weather. I don’t think they’ll be quite as prolific as they’ve been in previous years, but they are HERE and that is all we expect of them, really.

 More lilacs later.

As promised, here are a few of my favorite not-big-cat photos from my visit to the Denver Zoo on Friday:

Lazy hippo

Lesser Kudu

Cinerous Vulture

Lazy Rhino

I don’t know what this is but it certainly is pretty!

Yawning Squirrel Monkey

Paradise Tanager

Lazy Polar Bear

Yawning Black-Crested Gibbon

Peacock Feathers

OK, I could go on and on, but I’ll stop now. If you’d like to see more photos of my most recent trip to the Denver Zoo, click there —> Denver Zoo – January 2013

I went on a walking tour of Denver’s historic “LoDo”  district this afternoon/evening. I never knew that Denver had such a sordid history! I was all quite fascinating.

The photo below shows the workings of an old 1880s-era elevator that is located in the basement of what is now a bar called the Blake Street Vault.

Today marks the 3rd anniversary of the 39° North Photography blog… can you believe it?

And now I do believe it’s time to come up with some photography resolutions/goals for 2013. Here goes:

1. Project 365 – I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time – take (and publish) a minimum of one photo every day for a whole year. This time I’m really going to do it. Why? Because I need a challenge. Because I’ve been slacking in the photography department and I need something to get me back to making photography an every day event. Because I’ve been meaning to. Because all the cool kids are doing it. Just because. So… watch for Day 1 of my brand-spankin’-new Project 365 at some point today!
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2. Get back to blogging on a regular basis (not including the Project 365 posts, which will be separate from and in addition to any “regular” blog posts). During the first year of this blog, I think I posted just about every single day. I have been posting considerably less frequently since that first year and I plan to post MUCH more frequently this year. I’d like to do a lot more “Tips and Techniques” posts, so if any of you lovely readers out there have any particular photography topics you’d like me to cover, please feel free to make suggestions via email (39DegN@gmail.com).
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3. Continue to explore photographic avenues that are a bit out of my “comfort zone.” Last year, I shot my first wedding and my first “senior” session, as well as doing some event photography. Those are REALLY not my favorite types of photography to do, but it’s REALLY good for me to “mix it up” on occasion.
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4. Improve my post-processing skills, specifically by learning how to use the Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Elements software that I acquired last year. It’s awfully easy (and lazy) for me to just pop into Picasa to crop and do minor tweaks to photos, but I really need to step it up to the next level.
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5. Learn how to use my fancy-schmancy Speedlight (Nikon-speak for “flash”) and stop using the pretty-much-useless on-camera flash.
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6. Get organized. This includes improving my “workflow,” deleting photos from my archives that are no good and/or superfluous and are just taking up hard drive space, planning for regular back-ups, and adding keywords/tags to photos so I can find specific photos more easily.
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7. Slow down. Instead of taking multiple photos in a row of a single subject and hoping at least ONE of them will turn out great, I need to work on slowing down and taking a little extra time to set up my shots, as well as putting more thought into the shots I do take.
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8. Figure out how to use all that newfangled social media to my advantage. All the cool kids are doing it. I think I’m doing ok on the Facebook front (though there certainly is room for improvement and I would love for more people to “Like” my page!), but I need to explore if and how things such as Twitter, tumblr, Pinterest, 500px and LinkedIn can be of any use to me as a photographer. (Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated).

I think that’s enough. What are YOUR photography resolutions for 2013?