Anniversary Links
On this day in 2011 I started blogging, and come Wednesday I will have posted every day for three years. In recognition of this big day, I recommend you click here to browse a random post from the many that I have accumulated. Some will be not great, but some of them should be interesting to see either for the first time, or once again if you have been around here for a while. If you like this random post thing, then there is a link at the bottom of each post for going to another one – so no need to stop with just one, you could keep on going for half of your Sunday. And if you don’t care to do that, then look below the jump for a few shots from my first two weeks blogging.
During the course of this blog I learned how to use my DSLR and then rediscovered film which I have been learning how to shoot properly. The DSLR was a fantastic learning environment for film. I have experimented with long exposures, night photography, time-lapse, video, high magnification macro, animated gifs and other techniques. I have adapted vintage lenses to work on the camera, learned about filters, mucked around in the guts of a couple of old cameras – once or twice making them work properly as a result. I have learned a great deal about post-processing having worked my way through several software packages to where I am now. After all this time, I feel like I am becoming a photographer in the sense that I am able to frame a shot successfully more often than not, and control the camera in response to different circumstances of light and motion with fairly predictable results.
Also during the course of this blog I have become a grandfather, left a job of 20 years to create new work for myself, become an empty-nester, entered my 30th year of marriage and my 60th year of life, attended weddings and funerals and crossed other personal thresholds. It has been an eventful 3 years.
All in all, it has been an interesting and very satisfying journey. Some of you have accompanied me for several years on this ride, and many more are quite recent followers. I am very grateful for all of you. In particular I have made a few “internet friends” and even met a couple of you in person. This is a surprising and unpredicted outcome of blogging.
So to all of you regular and occasional readers, thanks so much for being part of a creative and supportive community, for your own terrific posts that inspire my work.
Things have changed a lot around here since those initial baby steps. There are now 1117 posts stored here; I have 998 999 1000 1001 1002 1003 1004 WordPress and email followers (probably on recent trends I will pass 1000 today). I have posted 4,579 (!) images and received more than 159,000 views with about 6,500 comments from my wonderful followers. Somehow I have kept posting every day, though at times my enthusiasm waned and the quality of my photographs have dropped, I have recovered my interest each time and kept going. That it is a daily blog has prevented me from drifting away.
Today’s shot is another from the Olympus XA2. Since this is a stats day, there are 714 openings in this bit of chain link fence. Another 8 vertical rows of links would be needed for there to be one for each of my followers. There would need to be 223 copies of this image to represent each view I have received in the past 3 years. If I wanted to make a mosaic of all posted images in the size of these diamonds (kind of a cool idea, actually), then I would need 6.4 copies of the photo to hold them all.
Below are a selection of images from my first two weeks of blogging – these were the days when I had not a clue what I was doing; taking pictures with, little thought and a lot of good luck. If you click on any image below, it will take you to the related post. Even so, there are several persistent themes in this blog which first showed in those first two weeks. I guess they reflect fundamental interests of mine, or how my eye works, or that I have not actually grown as much as I think I have. Whatever flavour of interpretation, I find it very interesting to see these themes emerging so early.
My first ever post (this version reworked on my first anniversary):
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Top Image: Olympus XA2, f3.5/35mm lens, Fuji Superia X-Tra 400 film, scanned with Epson V700
burnt embers 
Congratulations! Interesting and inspiring times. I love your art!
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Thank you Sheila! It has been so nice having you here for years, and to see your work as well over that time.
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Congratulations on your milestone! I also made it to three years so I know how you feel! These shots are fabulous and with little thought? I find that hard to believe, especially the one of the bee. Truly amazing photos!
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Thank you Lauren! With little thought = no conscious composition or thinking about anything other than technical aspects of trying to make my new camera work. Especially true of the bee trying to make my decades old macro lens (unused for a decade or so as well) work on the DSLR. I did think about the technique quite a bit, and still do.
In fact I often put more thought into the technique than the composition/subject which is a failing of mine – it arises, I think, from an inclination that way reinforced during my previous photography life when I would often be assigned the task of taking technical shots at work. Composition was not a consideration as many of those shots were formulaic in appearance (artifacts for reports and publications, stratigraphic profiles in an excavation unit, etc), but as the documentation was really important and we did not see the results for weeks or months good technique was a necessity.
It is one of the reasons I am really enjoying shooting with the Olympus XA2 – it liberates me from technical everything and lets/makes me look at the subject and the limits of film (few shots in the camera, expense, time involved in getting the image to the screen) mean I am parsimonius in what I shoot and that too promotes more careful thought. It makes me think that maybe I should use my DSLR in programme mode and ignore the technical stuff for a while. Which sounds a bit like heresy.
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Congratulations on that milestone Ehpem. Bizarrely my three year milestone occurs next week – 23 September. One of life’s bizarre coincidences. It has been a pleasure to be an observer of your journey and to have your company on mine. And…I like every one of the images from your first few posts – you had an eye for a picture from the very beginning. I look forward to being a part of your journey in the years to come.
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Hi Andy. It has been a real pleasure having you along for this ride, and observing your blogs as you observe this one. I have learned a great deal from you (and a few others) about photography and been given some terrific ideas both at a distance and directly in this comment section. It has been a pleasant surprise to me that I had an eye that I was not using or recognising. There are quite a few artists in my family so perhaps I absorbed something along the way. As to those images – there were quite a few in those same posts that I did not choose for this one. For a reason!
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That’s awesome Ehpem! Congratulations! Looking forward to seeing and reading more 🙂
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Hi Meghan – thanks for dropping by and commenting. I hope to see you back. BTW, I keep my name out of the blog, so I edited your comment 🙂
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Congrats Dad! I know how much time you’ve put into this. I like stopping in here.
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Hi Bran – thanks so much, I always appreciate hearing from you! I hope to see your delightful blog get in gear again even with a rambunctious toddler to contend with. I can take pictures for it today at the Fall Fair if you like 🙂
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Congratulations, my friend! I am glad you haven’t “drifted away” and I look forward to more years of good photos, interesting writing, and friendship here at Burnt Embers.
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Hi Melinda! Thanks so much – it was wonderful to meet you in person this summer. The long dialogue we have sustained in the comments sections of our blogs, as well as by other means has been one of the best outcomes of blogging, and one I would never have predicted.
I did drift quite a bit the first half of this year, or longer but that drifting mostly took me away from reading or commenting on other blogs for which I apologise to everybody. That was related as much to getting adjusted to a new life after old job as anything, and I am getting back on my blog visiting and commenting feet. I hope to fully recover soon!
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I am sure I am not the only one looking forward to your full return to reading/commenting!
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Sadly that is probably true – I feel like I abandoned a few friends along the way, but I am slowly getting back up to speed on other’s blogs.
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Huge achievement, congratulations! I always look forward to your posts 🙂
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Hi Lisa – thanks a lot! It is so nice to have people like you coming by on a regular basis!
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Happy blogoversary! Every day for 3 years – hats off to that! I hadn’t seen the above pictures before, and I like them. They certainly do not look like amateur pictures to me.
Hope to see you blogging for at least another 3 years 🙂
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Hi Kiki – thanks for your kind words. There are a couple of those early shots that I still really like. Especially the glass door shot, and the boat launch one too. The non-amateur feel we can attribute in part to a fantastic camera (good metering, good lens). I had always been looking at things, even if only rarely taking shots for fun on film (expense and not really knowing quite enough about manual cameras) and that is one of the interesting things for me to look at with these early shots – for instance I am still interested in the same kind of light (I do see that in some of my photos from the 70s too, so that is a persistent thing).
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Congrats on three years of often memorable photography. I’m looking forward to seeing many more!
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Hi Val – it has been nice having you along for the ride all these years, and you many comments. I look forward to many more interactions via the blog!
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Well, I’ll hoist a glass of red wine in your honour this evening. Posting every single day for 3 years is quite an accomplishment, well done.
Now, I’ll go and browse through your past offerings.
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Thank you ytaba36, I hope you find some pleasing photos!
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