Catching up
It's been a long time without posting an update. My New Year's resolution was to keep the blog updated and add three new posts a week; given that it is now March 1 and this is my first post, you can imagine the state of the rest of this year's resolutions.
My most recent posts (last August) were about our Arctic trip which was very special, one of the better trips we have taken and one that I think will be used as a yardstick against which we will measure future trips. I hope to complete the unfinished posts and images for the rest of that trip when I can make some time and get them up on the site. I've had a number of emails enquiring if the ship sank with the loss of all hands since the posts stopped abruptly off the coast of Greenland; I simply got overwhelmed with activities and finding the time to keep the diary going was difficult. The intention was always there however.
On our return fall was very busy, starting with the Cabbagetown Arts Festival where I was displaying some new works, including a number from the Arctic trip. I have been finishing my prints in a new format, face-mounted on acrylic which really makes images pop and for some subjects gives a bright luminous feeling to the image. I tried these out for the first time at Cabbagetown and sold a number of pieces so am very pleased with the results. If you have not seen my photos, including the new acrylic versions, they are on display at www.gfitzgeraldphotography.com or click the link My Photographs in the top menu bar of this page.
In the 12 months prior to last fall we had been traveling pretty steadily, Northern Argentina for a couple of weeks just before last Christmas, Ethiopia and Kenya for a month in March, Switzerland for a conference in June and Spain for a conference in July and then Norway and the Arctic in August. So it was really pleasant to unpack and just settle in for a couple of months but there was a backlog of things that had fallen in arrears and lots of new things to take their place; the To Do list never seemed to get any shorter.
Leaving 2014 behind there were, as usual, ambitious plans for 2015 but reality has long since set in. I will be pleased if I can finally get the blog in some sort of scheduled order and there are a number of photo projects that I have been working on that I'd like to advance but they move slowly. I continue to try and convince myself that procrastination and delay are critical components of the creative process but my protestant training fails to be convinced so low-level guilt is the steady background noise that accompanies my day.
However, we are working on our 2015 travel plans and I leave for a photo expedition to Skye, Lewis, Harris and northern Scotland in three weeks and will be gone for a couple of weeks. I will be posting notes and the days shots as I go. Immediately on my return V and I leave for a couple of weeks in the Oaxaca region of Mexico which I'm really looking forward to. We have not been in that area for about 10 years and we really enjoy the old colonial cities in the centre of the country much more than beaches and the much more touristy coastal cities. Weather in the mountains will be warm in the day and cool at night and photo ops should be very good.
Summer will be busy getting ready for a couple of art shows and in the fall we are planning a month in Namibia and southern Africa. So a busy year in store and the blog will be active.
