Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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A Photographic Slump

HDR Beach photo
Not Alone
It's February 2014 and I've hardly taken a photo. OK, that's not exactly true. Aperture tells me it has some 550 photos in it's library dating from January 1, 2014. But in looking over those 550 photos I can honestly say I don't like more than 10 of them. That's not a good ratio. In fact it was so bad I hadn't picked up my camera in 2 weeks, even to just fiddle with it. The way I know I like a gadget is how often I want to hold it and fiddle with it, not just use it. My camera, my cell phone, and my tablet were, or are, constantly in my hands. The camera lately hasn't been. This wouldn't be so bad except I happen to run a photo project on Google+ and though I'm not eligible for winning anything I had hoped to make it through the year with photos contributed to it. Last week I submitted a photo from my library. This week I didn't submit a photo at all, and that's because I didn't have a photo in my library that I felt met the themes.

So I want to get out of this funk. I've been looking at other photographers work to get inspired. The fact that I still enjoy looking at other photos at least tells me I'm not done with photography, which I was worried about, so that's good. I spent some cash on camera equipment at Amazon that includes some filters, a new camera bag, and other little things. The rest of that stuff should be arriving soon, but I got the camera bag earlier and quite like it. Though I guess I have to get out with it to truly see how I like it. It's one of those sling bags, a backpack with one strap, so I'm not sure how I'll like it while out and about. And I thought I'd revisit a favorite place to shoot. The funny thing about a slump like this is you begin to doubt yourself. And since I'm strictly a hobbyist photographer that could pretty easily finish me in terms of posting photos online; I look at a photo of mine and think it's not good enough, that they're all not good enough, shut the lid of my computer and never come back to them. In fact I've been sitting on these images for a little bit. I worked on them multiple times, and though I liked them (and they turned out more less like these versions) I didn't feel like posting them.

Sunset shot
Pewetole In Silhouette
So why did I post them? Because you have to start somewhere. And maybe that is the first step to breaking out of a slump. They might not be my best work, though I quite like them, but they get me back into doing what I enjoy doing. And keep me coming back to my blog, which has also been in a slump. Hopefully I begin to post more regularly.


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