Archiving my life seems to be an important thing to me, from the blogs I keep to the videos and photos I take while on our adventures.
When I started my main blog, Wandering New Mexican, it was in an effort to help me keep track of the adventures I went on, get my emotional bearings about it, snap a few quick pictures and move along. Here were are now six years later and the photography aspect of it all has taken on a life of its own.
I have done some deep dives into how to make my pictures look better, and with the advancement in camera technology built into phones, my pictures are now a bazillion times better than they ever were. I still have trouble managing lighting (I understand concepts, but manipulating it, especially in a natural setting is something I’m less familiar with, and not patient enough to wait around for the perfect light.)
Composition is another area where I struggle. I understand the rule of thirds, balance, leading lines, all that good stuff. I just can’t seem to translate those theories into the actual finished products. Not to say I don’t try though!
For a while, I tinkered with videography too. In fact, I went so far as to buy a GoPro with the intention of taking video and editing raw footage into beautiful, cinematic experiences, which is the part of the process I like the most. I quickly found out, however, that for every minute of polished footage, you need at least five minutes of raw footage. The videos I take are done in fleeting moments so the finished products are better suited for short form videos, like TikTok, or YouTube Shorts, not long-form videos on regular YouTube. And again, I don’t have the patience to sit for hours trying to accumulate enough footage to wind up with a 10 minute video so that project was back-burnered for the time being.
But I still am mindful when it comes to photography. I do my best to set up my shots the best I can, tinker with exposure and balance and all that good stuff, and have gotten pretty adept at post production editing.
I would LOVE to get myself an actual camera with a changeable lens but that is an expensive rabbit hole I don’t need to launch myself down any time soon.
Anyway, Thursdays will be devoted to showcasing some of my favorite photos I’ve taken in the 6 years we have been adventuring. They might not be the best photos, in fact, some of them might be downright bad, but many of them will have a much deeper meaning behind their surface value.
I’m excited for Grimm to showcase these photos to you!
Until then, see you next Thursday! Ugh, that’s gonna be a pain to type out every week, I should use an abbreviation… how about CUN-
oh, no, wait, I’m gonna just go ahead and spell it out…
