I actually dug out a book on Lightroom last night and read through the first few pages. I have a set of wedding photographs I took eons ago that need, well, as much help as they can get. There's a long series I took at the wedding dinner using something like a 135mm f 2.0 lens where I, well, screwed the pooch. All of them are essentially out of focus. Well, “essentially”. They are all out of focus. Might as well tell the truth. One or two are interesting in the swirling way the bride and groom are looking into one another's eyes, but “essentially” I screwed the pooch.

There are some, however, taken at the ceremony that are just fine; individual portraits that look reasonably good (to my eye) and need finishing and printing and such so that I can send them to the couple before their first child has another birthday. Did I say I'm late in delivery? I wasn't the wedding photographer, they had a professional cranking the real ones out, but I suspect I wouldn't have been invited had I not been expected to bring a camera and photograph the event. Such is life. We all have one of these little dark secrets in our past, right? You don't? Truth be told? Well, still a useful way to lean more about Lightroom, cleaning up these photographs now that the energy appears to be coming back.

Later. A relatively long walk this time down and around Lakeshore to Noah's Bagels, not stopping, but continuing on back to the lake and then a bus downtown. I'd seen a sign yesterday they were giving H1N1 flu shots outside of a Walgreens and it turned out they were giving them today, although I'd been hoping they had the regular shot available as well and decided to skip it for both the line and the sign that listed the groups most at risk, mine not among them. We'll see. My guess is this one is going to slide well into spring.

I'm not sure how the eye was with the camera today. I made up little stories about why I was taking a picture of this or a picture of that, knowing the stories were just stories, but I like some of the things I got. We are not talking about photographs you write home about or enter into contests, just ones that, I don't know, aren't like ones I've shot in the past and have potential, maybe, of leading to something interesting and different.

I've never really had any interest in shooting arranged pieces - flower pots casting long shadows, figurines from interesting angles, clever modern stuff arranged in a tasteful mélange of sorts - but I got to thinking as I was taking a picture of a tree. Just a tree, mind you, and a chair out across from the Grand Lake theater thinking, well, what if they were smaller, what if I were to place a light here, move a piece there and take a photograph? It occurred to me that was some of the motivation that drove people to photograph such things and a new piece of knowledge was gained. Or invented. Hard to say at my age.

Well, you've fit in a lot of pictures, not sure the narrative ties them together though.

You walk along, amble in my case, you look here, you look there, you see the guy lying next to the lake on his backpack thinking how do I find a way to take a picture of this guy that actually works? A question in passing, mind you, no betting the rent on an answer, no running home to gather up lights, gels and clever gold reflectors to save face. More focused on available benches, actually, as they often make themselves useful on my route.

So you've managed to get all of them in?

Actually, no, but you can only take this thing so far.

Later still. A nap. Maybe I didn't get as much sleep as I thought last night, maybe that walk was longer than I thought. Either way I feel better for it. I think now a bath. So many options, so little time, so little brain remaining to stop all this nonsense before it gets out of hand.