When I used to work in management at Giant Food, I occasionally got the dreaded “turnaround shift”—closing the store and leaving around midnight, then being scheduled to open the store the next morning which meant arriving around 6am. It was never a pleasant experience, but at least most stores tried to keep it from happening. (The exception was my six week stint in Leesburg, where the assistant manager instantly took a hatred to me and did everything he could to give me turnaround shifts, knowing I lived an hour away from the store. It ended because I got a job offer elsewhere and quite happily turned in my notice. The assistant manager was eventually fired for sexually harassing another employee and being stupid enough to do so in front of the security cameras. A happy ending for everyone, really.)

I mention this because I feel like I’m on a slight turnaround shift right now; after going away on a Saturday-through-Monday vacation with Charlie, tomorrow morning I leave on a Tuesday-through-Thursday business trip. So far all I’ve accomplished upon returning home this afternoon was unpacking my bag and starting up the laundry. Shortly I’ll repack the bag with clothes for the next couple of days.

It was a nice mini-vacation, though. We’d gone back to the Guest House at Lost River, which was as relaxing as always. When we went last time it was a Friday-through-Sunday stay, which most people seem to favor. So we met some nice people and hung out with others, and that sort of thing. But this trip was in part because we needed some one-on-one time, and Saturday-through-Monday fit our schedules better. And I’m glad we did it; it meant that almost everyone else left Sunday morning. So while we went hiking in Lost River State Park, the Guest House just about entirely cleared out. That meant once we got back, it was wonderfully quiet. So we read some books and magazines, took naps, and just enjoyed being around each other with no one else in sight.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some nice people there on Saturday (one couple we met on Saturday night and then talked to some on Sunday morning at breakfast seemed particularly nice and had a great story about how they’d gotten together), and if we hadn’t been looking for some quiet time I think we’d have really enjoyed hanging out with each other. But instead it was great to just relax. I think we both needed it.

(Oh, and after taking 198 photos, I’ve already deleted 108 of them off the hard drive. And I think only eight of those which remain are actual keepers. Argh. Oh well, at least that’s a higher number than zero, right? Still learning, here.)

I’m happy to say the new camera’s test drive was a rousing success. Hurrah!

Two quick items of note!

First off, I now have an official “these are some of my better photos” website put together. I think it’s a pretty nifty site, and I’ll be adding to it as I finally get my new camera up and running and it takes pictures worthy of going there. Consider it a “best of the best” selection, and it’s at http://photos.gregmce.com. Very exciting! (Well, for me.) It’s the closest I have to a portfolio online.

And second, for those in the DC area, Artomatic opens today! It’s running through June 15th, has free admission, and is one block from the New York Avenue metro station. (There’s also some street parking, and I think also some pay garaged parking available.) It’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but the rest of the week has some pretty reasonable viewing hours. (Wed/Thurs: 5-10pm; Fri/Sat: noon-2am; Sun: noon-10pm.)

So if you’re interested, try and head on up to the 9th floor and check my stuff out! And then check everything else out while you’re there; there’s a lot of really interested and neat art being exhibited this year, and I’ve only seen a small fraction. This year was a big learning experience for me and hopefully the next time the show comes around my stuff will be even better. But I had fun getting things ready.

End of self-promoting plugs! (Next time I’ll talk about something riveting like high fructose corn syrup. Mmmmmmm.)

I’m sure there must be a “You can tell you’re an East Coaster when…” list out there that includes the item, “You get excited over a 1.8 magnitude earthquake.”

It certainly wasn’t as strong as the one a few years ago (that was around, what, a 3 or a 4?) which was piddly in its own right, so this one was even less so. With the previous one I at least got up out of my chair and stuck my head into the hallway to see if others felt it. With this one, the best I could muster was an instant message to Karon saying, “I swear I just felt our building shake.”

I’ve been feeling a little bleah for most of today, so it’s good to get excited about something. I skipped my run this morning (one of my legs was feeling stiff and tight this morning and even after several stretches today it’s still a bit that way) and I haven’t decided if I’ll attempt one this afternoon after work or not. (I am unfortunately leaning towards no.) I certainly didn’t sleep well last night, which didn’t help matters, too.

But on the bright side, my labels for Artomatic are printed and sitting on my desk, so I just need to pop by this evening and then I am completely done. People keep asking if I’m excited and the answer has been, “Not yet.” Maybe it’s because it was all so new and a learning process for me this year; I’ve already made a lot of decisions for potential future exhibiting on ways I would do it different. Hopefully once it’s all taken care of I will be a little more jazzed about it.

On the other hand, I have decided that if I sell some of the photos (which would be awfully cool) that I get to reward myself. So items I’m looking at include:

• Mario Kart Wii
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens
• Brother HL-2170w Laser Printer

Mario Kart Wii just looks amazingly fun, plus there’s the online play aspect. I would sure like to experiment with a “prime” lens. And I haven’t had a printer for over a decade, since the infamous moment where Kate sent me a cursed manuscript and my printing it out literally destroyed the printer. (It started printing jibberish about 2/3rds of the way through—and no, it was not the manuscript’s actual text—and never recovered.) So for those, I am excited.

(Not that I’m actually expecting to sell any photos, of course. But the thought is pretty fun to think about.)

Overall, though, things are good. I have some friends moving into the neighborhood next month, some beautiful orchids blooming in my office, we had salsa lessons in the office yesterday for Cinco de Mayo (which was fun), and an older gentleman at the gym yesterday asked if that was indeed me at the opera last week—and that he and his wife also left before the end because they couldn’t stand it. Hee hee hee.

All sorts of exciting things are going on as of late in the world of Greg Photography!

The first and foremost thing is that my brand-new camera arrived today. It’s a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (known in other countries as the EOS 400D), and it’s my very first SLR camera. I am, needless to say, super-thrilled! I am also vowing to stop by the library today or tomorrow to get a book on SLRs because I’ve never actually used one. It’s a whole new world of lenses and f-stops and all sorts of other exciting terms that a decade ago made my eyes glaze over.

Almost all of my photos for Artomatic are now printed as well; I’m going to re-print one or two of them that need a slight tweak but generally speaking I’m really happy with them. When I picked them up, I opened up the package to make sure they were all there and the woman working the counter actually gasped out loud. Which was a nice ego boost, needless to say. She and another employee asked what camera I was using and were flabbergasted that it was a point-and-shoot. Frames are ordered and en route, as are my business cards. So now I just need to figure out exactly how I’m going to decorate my space. I worked a volunteer shift at Artomatic on Saturday night (it was gorgeous out, so the place was dead as a doornail—good thing I brought a book!) and it gave me some ideas to mull over. Artomatic doesn’t open until May 9th so I still have a little breathing room to get ready.

I’ve also put together a special sub-website spotlighting some of my favorite photography, and put about half of the photos into it. That’s the URL that I put on my business cards, and as soon as it’s done I’ll post a link here. But I’m happy with it, too; as great as Flickr is, I like the idea of having a very specific subset of photos to send people to instead of a photostream that also has, for instance, lots of pictures of my friends shoving french-fries into their nostrils. (Well, not quite that. But you get the idea.)

Between the new camera and seeing everyone else’s stuff at Artomatic, I’m thinking/hoping this will get me firmly back on the photography road again. It was nice having some time off after the 365pictures project, but at the same time I’m eager to start adding new photos to the collection.

All sorts of things going on in Gregland as of late. Most of them? Pretty good. Let’s see.

I hit the big 35 yesterday, which went rather pleasantly. Work was super-busy and my 3-miler in the morning was less than thrilling, but hey, no big deal. Julie made cannoli pies and brought them in, and trust me when I say that they were as delicious as they sound.

(The crusts in the photos below are slightly different colors because, well, they were! One was graham cracker, one was chocolate.)

After work, despite a six-car pile-up on the GW Parkway, I made my way downtown to meet Charlie. He’d scheduled me a massage at BodyCo, which felt fantastic, and then we went to Kotobuki over in the Palisades neighborhood for a delicious dinner. Add in some lovely gifts from my family, Charlie, and Julie (some books, Patapon and Crazy Taxi for the PSP, BSG Season 3 DVDs, the new k.d. lang CD, a beautiful new shirt, some new shoes) and I must say it was a wonderful birthday indeed.

Today was apparently “Greg Registers For Things” day. I put in my application for the NYC Marathon, so we’ll see if I get in this year or not (there’s a lottery system; I tried last year but came up empty). I also put in my registration to exhibit some of my photographs at Artomatic, which is a non-juried art exhibition here in the DC area. I went last year and while some parts were more interesting than others (I challenge anyone to truthfully say they liked all of it) there were some very, very good pieces there. So on April 12th I get to select my space at the exhbition (I got a nice and early slot, hurrah) and it runs May 9th through June 15th. Expect me to be talking about this more as it gets closer.

Oh! And I got a very interesting freelance offer yesterday, which I can’t talk about other than to say that I accepted it and it’s something that is really a logical extension to an existing activity of mine. But once that goes live, I’ll talk a bit more about that.

This Saturday will be the half marathon, and while I must admit I’m actually a little nervous about it (I have a bad feeling I will not be beating last year’s time, which would make me a little sad) we shall see. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. In some ways I’m looking more forward to cheering Charlie on as he runs the full marathon. That alone will make the day worth it.

Add in having just gotten my workout schedule for essentially mid-April through the end of October in front of me (thanks to a rigorous running spreadsheet courtesy Fred) and it feels like I’ve got a lot of great stuff mapped out in front of me. And I, for one, am all for that. I’ve got an adorable little patch of wheatgrass sitting on my desk, there are some balloons floating across the office, and the world is full of life and possibilities.

Goodbye, 2007. I’ll miss you. Next stop, 2008.

DCist is having their second annual DCist Exposed photography exhibition, and like last year, I’m going to take a stab at trying to get into it. You can only submit three photographs for consideration, so this time I’m going to open it up to you to help me pick the best entries. You can look at the winners from last year here, and the earlier link talks about what they’re looking for in general.

There are some photos here that I’m leaning towards more than others, but I’ll be curious to see what other people think.

So, with all that in mind—which of these photos (if any!) jump out at you? Thoughts?

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow. So this is it, the final installment of the 365pictures project.

I won’t deny it, while sometimes it was a real pain in the rear, on the whole I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve learned a lot about photography, about paying attention to the world around me, and noticing the less obvious things in my immediate area.

A friend recently noted that as the project continued I shifted a lot more from taking pictures of big things around me to using the macro function of the camera and taking close-ups of different things. I think it was the difference between relying on finding art and creating art, and that’s a skill I hope to continue to try and develop.

Looking at the set this morning, I did end up swapping out four photos from November and December. Early on I had some photos where while I set up the basic shot, someone else took the picture itself; as time went on, I disallowed that as an option (although using the camera self-timer is still acceptable) and I finally went and chose different options from those days to be in my 365pictures project. (After a bit of going back and forth I decided not to edit those posts where I showed the earlier montages of images. So you’ll just have to take me at my word that the selections in the actual Flickr set for November 26 & 28 and December 20 & 23 are changed to ones I actually took or used the self-timer for.)

Oh, and all but one photo were taken with the same camera, my Canon PowerShot SD600. It served me really well; it’s small and easily portable, but takes wonderful pictures. (The exception was using my cameraphone on March 22, when I just felt ill and that was all I could muster for the day.)

Last but not least, as always, you can view my entire 365pictures set at this link. Thanks for hanging in there. It was a pretty fun trip.