Siliconchef by Brian Richardson
Yes, I’ve been out of touch lately. Work is only part of the reason. Hobbies have also contributed. But a lot of it is just needing time to decompress and think about what I want to be writing.
Akihabara at Night (flickr)
May was supposed my month to get caught up at home. The last-minute trip to Japan didn’t help my goal. Japan is one of those places I love to visit and haven’t been to in over six years. However, buying tickets on a Thursday for a flight on Sunday doesn’t get me in the right mindset. I got some descent photos, saw one old friend and had some pretty good business meetings … but it didn’t feel like anything extraordinary. Part of it is because I feel so comfortable there, having visited the country about a dozen times since 1998. I feel back into “the routine” of planes, trains and taxicabs.
The routine I did break is my daily photo posting. I got all the way into May before I had to put that project aside. I still take a lot of photos, but not one per day that I think is just that great to share with the world. There are days where I don’t have the time or the vision … I’d rather take 100 shots to get two perfect photos, so the daily photo posting didn’t fit that mindset.
Speaking of broken, I’m down one good lens. I had a gravity-induced mishap while shooting with Carly Gibson. I actually didn’t get mad when camera and 50mm f1.4 hit the pavement at an alarming velocity. The lens cap kept the glass intact, but did nothing to keep the gears in sync. A few weeks without my favorite lens and $108 in repairs will teach me to put the camera down before adjusting the strap.
After seeing the shots I’m definitely not mad …
Carly Gibson (flickr)
Dragon*ConTV is … well, it’s helping get me right again when it comes to creativity. Stick that many creative people in a basement studio and it’s just too damn fun (even with no air conditioning). It kicks the right parts of the brain. I spend a lot of time “creating” at work (training, presenting, blogging and so forth) so that part of the brain just wants to rest when I get home. Projects like DCTV and WhatTheCast keep me engaged in that mindset, but when we get rolling on a shoot it’s a much different energy.
So then there’s Brazil …
This time tomorrow I’ll be having lunch in Sao Paulo, attending a customer training in Brazil’s largest metropolis. I’ve never been to Brazil … heck, I’ve never been south of the equator. The constant warnings about street crime are keeping me from taking my good camera rig, but if this trip goes well I’m sure to be back in country by the end of the year. It’s another one of those trips where I haven’t been planning to visit the country because I have to focus on visiting the customer (again, not a vacation, gotta keep my corporate masters happy).
But Tuesday afternoon is Brazil’s first World Cup group match, playing North Korea in the opener. All customer visits and training events stop at lunch and we get to watch one of the most soccer-crazed countries in any hemisphere get their fandom on. That experience should transcend any photo I can take of the proceedings.
Given all of this craziness, all this potential for creativity … I’d just as soon have lunch with a friend or hang out at the house with my wife. I also have other things I want to write about, taking another aspect of my compartmentalized life and getting it out of my brain …
But that’s another blog post for another day. Right now I have to do some shores, pack some clothes and wonder where my wife will take me for dinner before putting me on the plane. Just another Sunday, I guess.
