Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The Game of Constant Catch-up

The title of this blog is pretty much how I feel about my ability to keep the blog up to date! I've had all kinds of thoughts rolling around in my head for possible posts, now I just need to sit down and write them. Which means another possible flurry of activity before I go MIA for another month.

First, the coolest project ever:
The New York Times has a photography blog called Lens. They were behind the idea of appointing a time (15:00 UTC = Universal Coordinated Time) when anyone who was interested, anywhere in the world, would take a picture of what they were doing and submit it. That way, they could build a collage of literally a single set of moments from around the world.

The date for this project was Sunday, May 2nd and here in Denver the time for photo taking was 9am. I had actually thought ahead for this project and decided that at 9am I would be hiking up at Red Rocks - what better place to capture a Sunday morning in the Rocky Mountains? See - obviously this project captured my heart, because it takes a lot to get me out of bed at 7:30a on a weekend! It was a Colorado spring day in its truest form, with a combination of sunlight and the tiniest hint of snowflakes...but I was bundled up and eventually the sun did decide to play nice.

Anyway, my success with participation was unfortunately limited because my ancient computer decided it was not going to let me access, edit or email the photo (there were a series of computer crashes, a ridiculous amount of time, and a WHOLE lot of swearing before I came to the realization that it was futile), and I had made the mistake of taking it off my camera when I put it onto the computer. But, all the same, I know I was out there with thousands of other photographers at the same time doing exactly what they were doing in that moment. And what a cool experience, just knowing that!

Everyone should take some time and check out the end result - it will require a lot of time to look at everything, but even just clicking around will give you an idea of all the different things happening at 9am MST two Sundays ago!

Here's the link: A Moment In Time (NYT: Lens)

Two important things came out of this experience: (A) I am going to buy a new computer that will run programs from this decade and (B) I would love love LOVE to really start pursuing a new camera and a photo blog. Time will tell, and obviously the new computer is the key (I can't justify a nice camera until I have the technology to support it), but I get so excited about the possibility of sharing my photos - the good, the bad, and the ugly - that it might be closing in on the point that I have to find a way to make it happen!