Pano-rific

Okay sports fans, I guess here's where I'm supposed to put up my "Best of 2013" post, but if you've been reading along, you know why that ain't happening. So here's some new stuff for you to enjoy.

2013 marked a change in how I approach shooting: improvements in processing software mean that I don't need to rely on HDR as much in order to get the effects that I want and I also began to experiment with different compositions and crops. I don't think I've discussed this yet (and probably should at some point) but I strongly prefer a 2:3 aspect ratio for my photos (though for my first few years, I always cropped to 4:5, I've pretty much stopped doing that). However, a 2:3 doesn't always get the job done, so I began to play around with panoramas.

Here's what I came up with:

'Till next year.

2013: Annus Horribilis

Okay, so 2013 was actually a pretty good year for me personally...but photographically...

It all started back in January when I moved. What was supposed to be only a month or so without computers turned into nine months without computers. So while I could continue to shoot (and I did), I didn't have any way to edit so the memory cards just kept stacking up.

But things eventually got better: I got my computers - and more importantly, my back up hard drives - back in September and I promptly started uploading photos and going through the roughly 4000 frames I had shot.

And by better, I mean worse - just as soon as I had downloaded everything and started editing, I had my Drobo (basically a 2 TB hard drive for those who don't know) crash on me. Now, I'm not an idiot - I had backups. But what I HADN'T backed up yet were those 4000 frames I'd just uploaded. Not all was lost - the hard drives within the Drobo were fine so all I needed to do was track down an old Drobo enclosure (which isn't made anymore) and get it shipped to West Africa. Easy.

So yeah, not the best year when it comes to trying to make a go of this photography thing. And I expect further disruptions in the new year as I'll soon have to take my desktop down to rebuild it (though, to be fair, this is a long time coming - my last rebuild was around five years ago).

In the end though, it was only a massive disruption and I didn't lose a scrap of data. The whole thing has really given me the impetus to rework my data backup and workflow plans which will be reflected in the new system - and give me a few blogs posts as well. And there are plently of photos from the backlog to post, so you've got that going for you.

Till the new year, sports fans.