Not As Many Photos This Year 🙁
As 2019 draws to a close, I put together a small album of favorite photos. In doing so, I realized how little photography I did this year. The main reason, was that we didn’t travel much this year. There was Spring Break in St. Lucia, which was beautiful, but we spent almost the entire time by the pool. We were too tired to do any excursions, so we didn’t force ourselves to. There’s only so many photos one can take, lying by the pool. We spent all summer living through the turmoil of a major home remodel, including the kitchen, dining room, relocating the powder room, removing a wet bar, and adding a butler’s pantry. Talk about stressful! However, as you’ll see in the gallery photos of the finished remodel, DiFabion Remodeling did a phenomenal job, and it was worth every penny & every day. Of course, there were family photos, but I keep those private, so they aren’t included. I do hope you enjoy the selection though. 😀
Updating my SmugMug Website
I put significant effort into revamping CDPayetPhotography.com this year, including a complete reorganization of the album/menu structure. It’s based on a new system of Lightroom Smart Galleries, which will simplify website updates in the future. I even had to do a fair amount of re-organizing of the entire Lightroom folder structure, as it was based on years. With nearly 20 years (including photos scanned from film) of photos, the Folders list in LR was getting REALLY long & cumbersome. If I do say so myself, it’s well worth taking a look. 😀
The Death of Google+
As I wrote in my April 2019 post, Saying Good-bye to Google+, the death of that social media platform was a sad time for photographers. I met so many amazing photographers there. Some of us stayed in touch via Instagram & Facebook, while others ventured to MeWe & some other platforms, but dear god, I miss it.
Come to think of it – one reason I put so much effort into revamping my photography site, was because (as long as I keep the domain registered and SmugMug stays in business) it’s mine. It’s easy to use the SmugMug Lightroom plug (although the Envira Gallery plugin is great for WordPress, too), and no one can just decide to kill it off one day, because they screwed up. Like Google did to G+. SmugMug’s business seems pretty solid, so I’m happy.
I have considered setting up on Fine Art America, as it seems to be a much better way to get photos in front of potential buyers. It would be great to make a little money from my photos, after all. I’m fortunate to have a good career though, which lets me pay for this stuff and not worry about it.
Some of my other Photography posts:
A New Camera & New iPhone 11 Pro = New Possibilities
Hopefully 2020 will bring many more opportunities to take photos. I purchased a Sony a7r iv as a birthday present this year, and I upgraded the iPhone 8 Plus to the iPhone 11 Pro. Both cameras are significant improvements over the previous models, especially in low light. The iPhone 11 Pro is pretty amazing, to tell the truth. This photo of 3 deer in a neighbor’s yard, was taken 30 minutes AFTER SUNSET, in the shadows of tall trees. Sure, it’s grainy & blurry, but this is a cell phone camera photo, taken when it was dark enough, that I had trouble seeing them with my eyes!
This image of Molly was taken with the Sony a7R4 at ISO 12,800.
Who knows what 2020 will bring? The world is changing in lots of bad ways right now, but photography is still a way to experience the beauty of both people and places in it. If you’d like to see more of my favorite photos of the last decade, not just 2019, I tried to narrow it down a bit here: Favorite Photos of the 2010s. Enjoy!