Nobody ever told me that writing a novel would be this hard…
Laptop Batteries

Image by Ed Yourdon
Note: this photo was published in an Aug 13, 2009 blog titled "Should You Start a Travel Blog?" It was also published in a Nov 30, 2009 blog titled "How to Rehab Your Laptop’s Battery."

Moving into 2010, it was published in a Mar 15, 2010 blog titled "Much Ado about Self-Publishing." It was also published in an Apr 5, 2010 blog titled "Nobody ever told me that writing a novel would be this hard…" And it was published in a Nov 10, 2010 blog titled "Likealittle the New Anoncon?" It was also published in an Aug 8, 2011 blog titled "Key Tips for Super Effective Writing." And it was published in a Nov 25, 2011 blog titled "6 Tips For Beating Writer’s Block."

Moving into 2012, the photo was published in a Jun 23, 2012 Stop1Time blog posting whose caption is written in a script/font that I’m unable to copy or reproduce here…

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This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

As I indicated when I started this project in 2008, I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.

I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

Thus far, I’ve generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …

The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.

Day 234: Power Cuts
Laptop Batteries

Image by zzathras777
While in Islamabad the hotel was experiencing "planned" power cuts. every time they took place (at regular intervals of around 3 hours or so) there would be a few moments of darkness until the generator kicked back in. Thankfully the laptop battery had some charge.

Strobist: SB800 set at 1/128th power with diffuser dome sitting on keyboard of laptop and facing up – optical remote mode. Manual exposure. Camera on self timer. Triggered by manual 1/128th power on camera flash. Mirror used to avoid on camera flash showing in picture.

This suffered from leaving the camera on ISO 800 – again! :-(


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