As many of you know, I have been involved with Lightroom for some time now. Probably longer than most people know that Lightroom exists. It is a very convenient way to categorise, catalogue a large number of pictures. My current catalogue is about 80,000 pictures, all taken over the past 20 years.
Lightroom started in 2007 and once I got my hands on a copy of it, I was sold to the technology. For a long time already I had had pictures and no way to know anything about them. Including the place where I had put them. Real shoeboxes, then real albums, then digital shoeboxes, you name it.
Photography comes with its unwritten rules. Break them and you’re in the doghouse forever. Or you become a famous artist. The decision will be made by the multitudes on Social Media. Unless you have a very effective marketing team at your service, then you can do whatever you want and everybody only admires your millions in sales.
One of those rules is about the “S'” curve in your picture. Apparently it cannot be a good picture if there is no curve in it. So the lead picture here can never be good.
Long exposure. For a very long time, this was a realm I could never venture into. Film was what it was, and the skills required for successful shots would have taken way too much of it. Back in the day, I was happy to catch a passing firetruck with its lights blinking. That was my first shot with light trails. It was also the last shot for another 25 years of photography.
The long exposure bug came back when I got a digital camera. A small Point and Shoot from Nikon. The “night modes” mostly tried to cancel the light trails in order to get decent pictures, but I found a way around that.
When people see me with my big camera, sometimes they ask me: “Do you always carry around that big camera? Is that not heavy?”. To be honest, I have made a choice to have a camera with me most of the time. At least as much as I can. But the collection of lenses is getting bigger and the camera bag is getting heavier and heavier.
So, lately I made a choice. I would have my cellphone with me all the time (easy) and my DSLR when I would go out to take specific shots. So far it has worked out pretty well.
Decay is everywhere, not only in Manitoba. In Europe, decay and ruins are all over the place, except where the land is expensive. The Netherlands have very few ruins and even less abandoned barns or buildings. They get torn down pretty fast, so that the land can be reused differently. In Manitoba, however, this is a different story.
Landowners often like to keep the historical buildings on their land in the state they are in, usable or not. Whether that is out of a spirit of conservation or procrastination, I can’t tell.