I’m thinking of taking a photo a day for the next few months limiting myself to a 10 minute radius of home. It will be interesting, to me at least, to see what kind of images I manage to capture.
I wonder if my moods will be reflected in the photos taken?
The first image taken today seems to reflect both my mood and that of the weather.
I like winter. I like the stark beauty of bare trees again the snow, the freshness of a world blanketed in white. However, this is the fourth year in a row that winter has caused me significant problems with simply trying to breathe. But in this case the weather had a helping hand in that the boiler broke down late Xmas eve meaning no heating and no hot water. Not good when the cold is a major asthma trigger for me and with everything closed for Xmas holidays nothing could be done until the new year. No matter how often it happens it’s still scary not being able to breathe properly and having to spend all your time focusing on each breath you take. It’s also exhausting.
At the moment I’m still on oral steroids alongside my Seretide 250 inhaler. The side effects are not too bad in the scheme of things. I’m mainly extremely tired, irritable and having real difficulties in concentrating on anything for very long, but at least I can now catch my breath, and I can actually have a conversion again. I’m not sure how other people feel about that but I’m happy at least.
The current plan is to reduce the oral steroid dosage slowly and then start on a low dose of Montelukast alongside the Seretide. I’m not particularly looking forward to that as last time I tried Montelukast I had some really terrible side effects, but at the moment with everything that’s going on in the world I’ll give it another go and hope the lower dosage is more manageable. If anyone has any advice, I’d be happy to hear it.
Now I’m starting to guilt trip myself about being behind in my studies. So, the next couple of weeks is going to be spent catching up on French for the OU. There’s nothing like the pressure you put on yourself. The creative side of my work is having to take a back seat for now which is annoying, but I’ll get back to it soon enough. I just hope the rest of the year improves.
So here we are again at the start of a new year. I hope if you are reading this that this year will be a better one for you all.
This year so far – Resolutions made and broken. No surprise there as I’m still in procrastination mode and chasing my latest shiny new idea.
It never ceases to amaze me just how easily distracted I can be. I’m beginning to wonder if I was a cat in a previous life.
Anyway, my current stack of projects includes:
Learning Welsh – The move to online learning is certainly helping with my attendance at Welsh class. As someone who suffers from chronic illness, I have found attending face to face classes regularly to be problematic at best and at worst – downright impossible. So the move to online has been a positive one for me despite the problems with broadband in rural Wales.
I really do hope that learnwelsh.cymru will keep an online option for all levels of their courses once things return to some semblance of normal rather than restricting the opportunity to learn Welsh to those who can attend a physical classroom.
Art/Writing – I’m spending a lot of time sorting through my photography archive. I’m hoping that some of my older images will provide a suitable basis for my mixed media work. I’m also intending to use some of my photography/poetry in the creation of mixed media artists books.
Open University – Just finishing level 1 study this year. French this time. I have no idea why I am so obsessed with it as I was just supposed to be taking a couple of standalone courses, but what can you do.
So overall on paper 2021 looks like being a busy year on the study/ creative side if things go to plan. However I have found that very few things ever go exactly as planned. Life gets in the way and I can be extreme in guilt tripping myself when things go wrong.
So, for 2021 most of all I am hoping not to dwell on what goes wrong, especially things that are outside my control.
Photograph taken with the Nikon D7500 and the 18-140mm kit lens.
I love the eye-level pentaprism SLR viewfinder on the Nikon 7500. The camera itself is going to take a bit of getting used to after the Lumix GX8, but it’s going to be well worth the effort, and it will all come right with a bit of time and practise.
The Nikon 7500 is a camera that I can use not only with the normal photochromic light adaptive lens (transitions) that I have to wear on a daily basis, but it can also be used with my darker prescription sunglasses. The Lumix had become a complete pain to use when wearing transitions and was simply impossible to use with sunglasses. So the Lumix has gone. I traded in the camera and all its kit for the Nikon and I don’t regret it.
Of course there is more to my move back to photography than simply learning to use a new camera system. I will also have to work harder to gauge the quality and play of light given that I hid from it behind glasses all the time. I do sometimes wonder why someone so light sensitive wants to spend their time taking photographs, but then I remember just how happy my dad was when he was out and about with his camera and I suspect that deep down this is the real reason why I still enjoy photography.
And this is one of the test shots taken to check how well I could see with the sunglasses on. It just had to be of a mini Shetland pony which was part of a fun point and shoot session.
The rain has stopped in this part of Wales. The sun is out and the car has it’s winter decoration at last.
I always like seeing the images frost makes against metal and glass and this was a quick image taken with my iPhone.
EHillson - Writer and Artist 