A 21st century nomad

A fall day in the woods

2007-11-02T14:32:57Z

They came, as I knew they would. The doubts. What kind of idiot sells his house to go roaming in the middle of his earning years? This kind, I guess. I know where the fear comes from. It's okay. I choose to proceed. I can walk with me if it likes.

My head was muddled the other day so I grabbed my camera and a tripod and went wandering on our land. I'm going to miss it. We have a lot of history here, so much that we have done here. Attachment. It will be good practice letting go.

There was that sort of bittersweet smell of fall leaves. The wind was cool but the sun was warm. A couple crows were arguing (or romancing? Not like I could tell the difference) somewhere nearby, and farther off I could hear a lone steller's jay. Those birds that leave for the winter are mostly gone now.

It was good to spend time in the woods. It always nourishes me to do that.

I spent some time up at the stone circle, and came back with this. I like this shot. At some point I'll put a few hours into subtle tweaks.

Nikon D3 ordered

2007-10-28T14:45:23Z

Well, I got my ducks in a row to order a D3. No telling when it may arrive. I'm hearing that it may be April before Canadian stores are able to keep stock on the shelves, but of course that includes sales to many people who have not yet placed an order. Hopefully mine will arrive before then .. I'll be eager to hit road with this amazing piece of engineering.

This is the first time I've ordered a camera prior to diligently performed reviews being available. I don't think I would have this time either if I were concerned about the timing vs. Nicole and I hitting the road. But simple logic tells me that whether or not the camera is as miraculous as it currently seems (for example ISO 6400 shots with very acceptable noise characteristics), it will be a good improvement over my trusty 2X.

When friends speak to me about updating their cameras, I always ask them "What will the new one enable you to do that you cannot do now?" It is all too easy to want a newer model just because it is "Better", without really thinking through whether you will benefit in proportion to the cost.

For me, the value of the D3 is very clear. Of all the things I wanted improved in my next camera, high sensitivity low noise performance was at the top of the list.

One characteristic of my style is that I like very sharp images with a lot of detail. I just love making a large print and being able to look deeply into it to examine those details, and I use very careful technique to capture them. But all the technique in the world will not make sharp photographs of moving elements (blown by the wind for example) shot at low speeds made necessary by small apertures. The D3 will enable me to use much higher shutter speeds, yielding sharper images in difficult situations.

Fourteen bit raw files are another very exciting development for me, putting the D3 on par with certain medium format backs in this regard. I often spend hours post-processing my keepers, doing the digital equivalent of dodging and burning, etc. Ansel Adams said that 50% of photography happens in the darkroom. I'm very much on the same page there, and an extra couple bits of color depth will give me more latitude in this regard.

For many people the big news is that the D3 is "full frame", by which they mean it has a 35mm sensor. For me this is a mixed blessing. The larger viewfinder image is very welcome for manual focusing, but to be honest, even though a great deal of my work is manually focused, I tend to make heavy use of the focus indicators in my 2X, especially, for example, when adjusting the tilt on my tiltable lenses. I can still do that on the D3, but the focus sensors are not as close to the edges of the frame, making them less useful for this purpose. Too, I enjoy the reach that the DX format sensor gives me. For that reason, I will continue to keep a DX format camera in the bag as well, though it may well be that a D300 replaces my 2X.

And then there is dynamic range. This is often challenging to manage, and the larger photosites of the D3 in theory make possible a greater dynamic range. Only time and testing will reveal whether Nikon has achieved this potential in the D3. I'm fairly sure it will not be an extraordinary improvement, but every bit will help.

I expect the D3 to make possible many shots that I just cannot create right now. I am so looking forward to that. :)

The agile life

2007-10-23T15:28:55Z

I've been thinking today about the parallels between software development issues and lifestyle issues.

Large software development projects present an interesting challenge. If one does not plan them carefully, all manner of problems will represent themselves, including pieces developed in parallel that do not work well together, and later work that is made harder than necessary by choices made in earlier work, or earlier work that must be thrown out and redone for similar reasons. Traditional software development methodologies tend be all about making sure that both the problem and the solution are well understood so that these kinds of problems can be minimized or avoided.

But another problem then presents itself, which is that very often the problem is not static, and by the time one has finished thorough analysis and design, it may be that the solution is for a somewhat different problem than what now exists. Agile software development methodologies are all about incremental development that allows course corrections as the project progresses. Throwing away some of the early code is accepted as an inevitable part of the process.

In the end I think it comes down to physics ... energy equals mass times change in speed and direction. In other words, the heavier your infrastructure is, the more it will cost to move it in a new direction, and all your methodology can do to help is to reduce inefficiencies in doing so.

But back to life...

I've long wanted to live more lightly. I don't at the moment, neither literally or figuratively. I live on a farm, in a fairly large house, with a barn, and workshop full of expensive tools and machines. We have aquariums and birds, and cats and turtles and dozens of house plants, and not so long ago alpacas and honeybees, all of which require(d) some care. All of this infrastructure provides us with some sort of value, but it all takes maintenance as well. I forget who it was who said that when you own something, it also own you...

And so now we have embarked a the non-trivial exercise to pack our "Stuff" into a trailer and a mini-storage locker. I feel lighter already, and we've hardly begun. Nothing to paint, nothing to pay taxes on, no worried about forest fires coming through our rural area (as has happened once or twice), no hydro bill...

And even more, we will live where we choose to, and can be on the road an hour after we choose to live somewhere else. We'll have a general plan for our trip before we go, probably, but it will be adjusted continuously. Having very few possessions, the cost of changing them as we better understand our needs, or as our needs change, will be very low.

Here's to the the agile life!

Looking at RVs

2007-10-23T12:56:08Z

We've been looking at RVs, getting an idea of what is available and what it all costs. At first I was encouraged by some of the prices I found, which were less than I expected. Then I came to understand that there really are cheaply built units and more expensively built ones, and the cheaper ones are not going to stand up well to full-time use.

I was hoping for a not terribly large unit, to keep fuel consumption down among other reasons. But with few exceptions, there is really not much storage available until you get up to 30 ft. or so in length. That's perhaps not an issue when you go away for the weekend, or a couple weeks, but when you live in one full time ...

So we are looking at ever larger units, which worries me. But then I'm also thinking that with the kind of work I do, location is often not an issue. Could I work from the road? It's an exciting thought.

Becoming Nomadic

2007-10-21T15:40:34Z

Life is about to take a significant turn for us. Really significant. We've been planning for a while to sell the farm and move into town, to downsize and simplify our lives. Now we have more radical plans.

It's now our intention to sell the farm, and a lot of our belongings, but instead of a new house we are going to buy a trailer, and trade in our pathfinder for something with a little more towing capacity. That done, we will spend a year (or more?) travelling through Canada and the US. I'll be making photographs, and Nicole will be painting, and we'll find out where all of that takes us when we get there.

Many factors entered into this decision. Certainly one is that with me currently not working and the farm about to be sold anyhow, it is easier now than most times. And neither one of us is getting any younger ... I certainly feel my aches and pains more keenly each year, young though I am still. My parents always planned to spend their retirement years travelling for much of the year, but when the time came my mother's health was not good enough. I have concerns, based on my current aches and pains that increase each year, what my own retirement years will be like.

And then there is the desire I have had for some years to REALLY dive into my art. If a year of full time photography doesn't take me where I want to go, I don't know what would. And I know that Nicole would really, really like to take her painting farther too. She is so talented. I'd really like to see her get the chance.

And so, it looks like we will do this, though there are a mountain of details to work out/work through before we get there.

Artist's Way

2007-10-21T14:27:07Z

Nicole and I attended the first meeting of the Artist's Way group we joined yesterday. I had slept poorly the night before and didn't have much to say as a result, but it looked like a good group of people and I'm hoping we can all offer good support to each other for staying with the process.

I did my first morning pages this morning. I think these will be good for me.

Fresh start

2007-10-20T19:28:13Z

It has been a tough year for Nicole and I both. My photography has particularly affected ... as keen as I was before, I just couldn't find the right headspace for it after Nicole hit the wall. It was the better part of a year before I picked up my camera again. I watched each season, thought about what I might like to shoot, and then watched it go again without having shot anything at all.

But it is coming back now, as I knew it eventually would, and I welcome it.

Today we were part of a group of folks meeting for the first time to provide mutual support for the artistic growth process described in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. Both Nicole and I are keen to realize the benefits, and we will encourage each other to stick to it.