ounce of prevention

Updates have been few and far between lately on account of me still wrestling with my library of over 36,000 photos.  I’m hoping to use “this photography thing” to help supplement my main income, or at the very least bring in enough money to pay for itself.  God knows photography is no cheap endeavor and it’d be nice if it pulled its own weight once in a while.

The foundation of a career in photography is, above almost all else, a good portfolio.  Determination, chutzpah, imagination, creativity, intelligence, diligence, and a strong work ethic are also key to a solid career in photography, but unless you can show people you know how to take a damn picture, none of those really matter.

Thing is, the first ten years or so of my photography were spent taking pictures for its own sake.  “Love of the craft,” and all.  Which is great for feeding the soul, but when time comes that you decide to feed the belly as well, you quickly realize that you have a virtual mountain of photographs to swim through.  In my case, a mountain of 36,000 photos, from which I want to pick the best twenty or thirty.

*gulp*

So for the past … well, longer than I can remember, I’ve been trudging through Lightroom, sorting and ranking and editing photos in the hopes of putting together a halfway-decent portfolio.  The sad part is, all of this could’ve been avoided if I’d been more diligent in my photo maintenance from the get-go.  I’ve been using Lightroom since 1.0, and if I’d taken the extra few seconds to rank, rate, and tag photos as I imported them it would’ve cut out all of this busywork.  Instead of saving myself a pound of cure, I’d have saved myself a metric tonne.  In any case, while it’s slow going, it’ll pay off in the end.  Today’s main photo, incidentally, is a random street shot from who-knows-how-long ago that I came across while hiking Mount Lightroom.

The other reason it’s been a week since my last update is because a friend flew in on Saturday and had been staying with me until earlier today.  I love having people in town because not only does it force me to emerge from the dark cave of my apartment, but it also gets me to explore the city more, something I do embarrassingly little of.  I’ve been in New York over nine months (!) and I spend an appalling amount of time either at work, at home, or in transit between the two.  Hosting people helps me make up for that.

I especially like when said guests bring with them comically-large sunglasses, because it allows for opportunities like these: