- Signed: Matthew Hartman
- Filed under Internet , photography , pictures , relationships , storm chasing , work .
Hello folks,
I realize it's been FOREVER since I wrote last in this blog. I think it's a natural progression. When E-mail went big back in the mid to late-90's I was all about Eudora and Postini... Then blogging came around in the early 2000's and I was all about Blogger. Then in the social networking explosion occurred in that 2003-2005 period. I was all over MySpace and Facebook. Blogging became secondary, then.
And since, Twitter has come around. I have two separate accounts, a personal account I use to provide random messages to friends and a second I use to expand on one of my favorite hobbies... Photography.
I grew up loving the outdoors and pretty much everything about it. Meteorology was my calling, because I loved anything and everything about the atmosphere and what came from it. But, I'm learning that even though Meteorology may have been my calling, photography is something I enjoy and love; immensely. It began, I think, when I began storm chasing back in 1996. Yes, 13 years ago!
While some find photography a strict art, initially, all I thought of it back then was a way to share what I saw on a chase with the storm chase community. I posted the photos up on my web-site and allowed others to view them. It was an innocent hobby and one I didn't really take too seriously. At least, as far as the quality of my photos was concerned.
Once I upgraded to digital in January of 2005, my interest expanded greatly and I began to appreciate the art of photography on a grander scale. No longer did I pay money for rolls of film or to get them processed. I could snap off hundreds of pictures a day and not even blink an eye. I snapped twice that, in fact, in the Badlands of South Dakota in late July of 2007. That record still stands, actually - 274 pictures in a single day. It may seem meager to the professionals in the crowd, but for me that's a lot!
Twitter takes me away from Blogger quite a bit. I communicate with most of my friends with it and those friends who aren't signed up, Facebook is a great alternative.
Twitter also provides a great opportunity to network with other photographers. And that is mostly the reason it distracts me from writing in my blog. Networking and receiving insight from these guys has allowed me to really grow into this industry. I'm coming into it self-taught and I realize that's not the ideal way of doing it. But, I've learned a lot about the in's and out's, the do's and don'ts and everything in between.
These photographers provide a lot of inspiration, just looking at their work. It provides great opportunities for me to diversify my photography portfolio. The ideas I get, the compositions I picture in my head, it's almost becoming second nature already. I'm certainly not just taking pictures of clouds anymore. In fact, I'm involved in a 365 Project currently, which is taking my camera and I on a wonderful journey through an entire year of daily photo-taking. It's been a great experience so far and I'm learning so much more about my camera just carrying it with me everyday. I'm learning how to look at the environment around me and what it would look like through a viewfinder and a lens. It's kind of neat, really...
What I'm getting at with all this... is that I really have become quite distracted with it all. It pushes me away from my computer and sitting and writing on the Internet. I almost feel it's a waste of time. It's been 25 minutes now that I've spent typing this entry, itself. I could have taken 50 pictures in this amount of time. Maybe more! ;)
Anyhow, so that's where I've been over the course of the last 2 months. I'm still meat-free, if you're wondering... :) I actually celebrated my 4-month anniversary of vegetarianism yesterday. I've got someone in my life. She hasn't exactly tugged at the strings of my heart yet, but we haven't exactly met in person, either. But, I've made some new friends outside of work and I've been hanging out with them quite a bit lately. We went hiking a couple of weeks ago and they've invited me to a couple of cookouts. If I had been a little more open about this earlier this summer, we could have been at the lake every weekend. Jared and Jason both have families with lake cottages - one is at Devils Lake, the other at Maple Lake, east of Grand Forks near Mentor, MN. They've got about a 4-5 member group that tend to hang out a lot. They're mostly friends of friends. Emily, a girl I dated about a year ago and have started to hang out with again, introduced me into the "circle." ;) So, my life has been going fairly well.
Work has been a little busy and will likely become even more so, with fall starting. We've got contracts winding up for the winter and that will make things even more hectic. Should be interesting, but I'm excited at the same time.
Well, I've got a couple of left over veggie burgers to warm up and some corn on the cob to cook. Dinner-time!
Also, if by chance, you are interested in following me along on this "Project 365" journey, hop on over to my photoblog. It's being updated everyday. In fact, I just posted my photo for today about an hour ago...!
Toodles for now...
I realize it's been FOREVER since I wrote last in this blog. I think it's a natural progression. When E-mail went big back in the mid to late-90's I was all about Eudora and Postini... Then blogging came around in the early 2000's and I was all about Blogger. Then in the social networking explosion occurred in that 2003-2005 period. I was all over MySpace and Facebook. Blogging became secondary, then.
And since, Twitter has come around. I have two separate accounts, a personal account I use to provide random messages to friends and a second I use to expand on one of my favorite hobbies... Photography.
I grew up loving the outdoors and pretty much everything about it. Meteorology was my calling, because I loved anything and everything about the atmosphere and what came from it. But, I'm learning that even though Meteorology may have been my calling, photography is something I enjoy and love; immensely. It began, I think, when I began storm chasing back in 1996. Yes, 13 years ago!
While some find photography a strict art, initially, all I thought of it back then was a way to share what I saw on a chase with the storm chase community. I posted the photos up on my web-site and allowed others to view them. It was an innocent hobby and one I didn't really take too seriously. At least, as far as the quality of my photos was concerned.
Once I upgraded to digital in January of 2005, my interest expanded greatly and I began to appreciate the art of photography on a grander scale. No longer did I pay money for rolls of film or to get them processed. I could snap off hundreds of pictures a day and not even blink an eye. I snapped twice that, in fact, in the Badlands of South Dakota in late July of 2007. That record still stands, actually - 274 pictures in a single day. It may seem meager to the professionals in the crowd, but for me that's a lot!
Twitter takes me away from Blogger quite a bit. I communicate with most of my friends with it and those friends who aren't signed up, Facebook is a great alternative.
Twitter also provides a great opportunity to network with other photographers. And that is mostly the reason it distracts me from writing in my blog. Networking and receiving insight from these guys has allowed me to really grow into this industry. I'm coming into it self-taught and I realize that's not the ideal way of doing it. But, I've learned a lot about the in's and out's, the do's and don'ts and everything in between.
These photographers provide a lot of inspiration, just looking at their work. It provides great opportunities for me to diversify my photography portfolio. The ideas I get, the compositions I picture in my head, it's almost becoming second nature already. I'm certainly not just taking pictures of clouds anymore. In fact, I'm involved in a 365 Project currently, which is taking my camera and I on a wonderful journey through an entire year of daily photo-taking. It's been a great experience so far and I'm learning so much more about my camera just carrying it with me everyday. I'm learning how to look at the environment around me and what it would look like through a viewfinder and a lens. It's kind of neat, really...
What I'm getting at with all this... is that I really have become quite distracted with it all. It pushes me away from my computer and sitting and writing on the Internet. I almost feel it's a waste of time. It's been 25 minutes now that I've spent typing this entry, itself. I could have taken 50 pictures in this amount of time. Maybe more! ;)
Anyhow, so that's where I've been over the course of the last 2 months. I'm still meat-free, if you're wondering... :) I actually celebrated my 4-month anniversary of vegetarianism yesterday. I've got someone in my life. She hasn't exactly tugged at the strings of my heart yet, but we haven't exactly met in person, either. But, I've made some new friends outside of work and I've been hanging out with them quite a bit lately. We went hiking a couple of weeks ago and they've invited me to a couple of cookouts. If I had been a little more open about this earlier this summer, we could have been at the lake every weekend. Jared and Jason both have families with lake cottages - one is at Devils Lake, the other at Maple Lake, east of Grand Forks near Mentor, MN. They've got about a 4-5 member group that tend to hang out a lot. They're mostly friends of friends. Emily, a girl I dated about a year ago and have started to hang out with again, introduced me into the "circle." ;) So, my life has been going fairly well.
Work has been a little busy and will likely become even more so, with fall starting. We've got contracts winding up for the winter and that will make things even more hectic. Should be interesting, but I'm excited at the same time.
Well, I've got a couple of left over veggie burgers to warm up and some corn on the cob to cook. Dinner-time!
Also, if by chance, you are interested in following me along on this "Project 365" journey, hop on over to my photoblog. It's being updated everyday. In fact, I just posted my photo for today about an hour ago...!
Toodles for now...
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 and is filed under Internet , photography , pictures , relationships , storm chasing , work . Monitor this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You may leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
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