So, deviantArt is nine years old now. I know I have said a few times that I don’t like dA as much as I used to. I guess it must have been around nine years ago, maybe a little less, that I found the site. I must have been in late middle school. I remember at the time, I would come browse and look at a lot of fantasy art. Now I know a lot of fantasy art is terribly cheap, but even then it was hard for me to find something nice.

It’s possible and I dare say probable, that in those years there are just more and more people using dA leading to an inevitable loss of overall quality. It’s just harder to find something nice among all that is on this site now. It’s also much more possible that it’s just that my tastes have changed, and I am more stringent.

Or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. I know there is good stuff here.

Whatever, I joined dA for the community, hoping to find some inspiration and to learn a few things.

It's also worth noting that I hate that you have to be a subscriber to gain access to such simple features.

I feel myself returning to creative things. I have always liked to create, and probably always will. It’s in my blood. I even wanted to be an inventor at one time as a child. It comes and goes, however. I guess I can call myself an artist. Everyone does anyway. But no, really. I think I’m real. I’m just not starving or going mad if I don’t do something. Makes it sound less fun I suppose.

My CF card is nearly full, so I will have to unload it soon. I think I will go back to my old photos and retouch those that need it now that I have more experience. I’m not a heavy editor; noise reduction (mostly chromatic noise), exposure adjustment, and maybe a white balance change are generally all I do, if I do anything. I may go back to shooting “neutral” and adjusting saturation, sharpness, etc. in post-processing. I Have been using the Picture Styles to cut down on post-processing. I have yet to find the perfect workflow for me.

Then I’ll do it all again when I get something to calibrate my monitor.

I need to add watermarks anyway. Someone said that they used one of my images of a wall for a book report without asking. I have the RAWs if there is ever a problem.

I would love to use film. Really. To develop it, to feel it with my hands. Plus all of the things involved in the darkroom… It seems so intimate. It’s too bad that film is made with gelatin and I’m a vegetarian. So, until they make gelatin-free film… I am interested by the old photography processes, most notably Daguerreotypes. What is there not to love about making a non-reproducible photograph on a mirror? I will definitely so that one day.

I have this thing with light. I’ve always been fascinated by how it moves and how it’s distorted when it passes though certain mediums. I think this is why I like photography so much. “Light” was even my first word, supposedly.

I have felt like drawing lately too. I have always loved drawing, but I never had the motivation to continue it. I never really found my style, or what it is exactly that I like to draw. I always enjoy just drawing and shading geometric shapes…

I would like to paint sometime, but the only time I really felt like I would have painted something was a long time ago. A couple of years ago now.

I've thought about glass blowing. I've always been interested by it. And you know, I absolutely hate that seam in molded glass. It just destroys it usually. I was able to see a glass blower here in France at a medieval fair in a little medieval town called Perouges. It was an old couple. They were touching. I cried upon leaving. Apparently on the radio they said there were only around fourteen glass blowers left in France. I find that sad.

I even have some scrap metal that I have been gathering because I thought about making a sort of sculpture. It started with just some colored scraps of sheet metal used for engraving plates, that my mother brought home from her job to recycle. I had an idea for those, but then I just picked up any bits of metal from the ground that I found interesting and now have no idea what to do with them.

I feel a general lean towards abstract lately. Some of my newer photos are abstract, and I really like them. Macro is great for abstract. There are so many things everywhere that you just never see with your eyes alone.

I also have a thirst for knowledge. I always like to learn things, but sometimes I just feel a need for it. I was ahead of most of the other students in school when I was younger. I guess it was because of my own desire to learn. That wasn’t the case later though, as I didn’t want to learn what they wanted to teach me. I’m not a student. I’d call myself more of a scholar. Or I’d like to. Ideally, I’d just travel around learning things and arting-it-up wherever I go. Unfortunately, scholars, thinkers, and philosophers have little importance in our society.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about just traveling around with my camera and taking photos as I go, getting to my next destination/meal however I can. I think it would be an experience, to say the least.

I even have a slight interest in holography.