The River Tyne

New Journal 58 – More Goals

To learn to create cityscapes like this, please visit my Art of Cityscape course.

Further to yesterday’s journal on learning to swim and setting swimming goals, I thought it would be an encouraging exercise to note down the other 6 months of goals I’ve set myself.

I write down every goal I make. It’s good practice, and especially useful for reminding me of what is important, forcing me to look at the big picture. I don’t achieve every goal, and I often revise goals. What excites me is having a direction to go in that could lead to something great.

Although I enjoy a good movie or TV series, like Game of Thrones, I’ve never enjoyed the idea of coming home after a day’s work and vegetating in front of the TV. There’s something lacking in that lifestyle, for me.

I’m also a restless person. I can’t sit still for long, unless I’m editing photos, which is strange for someone who used to practice meditation many moons ago.

– Goals for the next six months –

– Improve my understanding and technique in long-exposure photography

– Improve technique in long-exposure B&W photography – I bought Joel Tjintjelaar’s tutorials recently which I have got some useful ideas from.

– Gain 4,000 personal followers on Facebook. Current count at 2,788. On my blog it says I have 9,469. This includes subscribers to lists that I’ve been added to. This number is more or less irrelevant. Only personal subscribers regularly see your updates.

– Purchase 2 video tutorials per month on different areas of photography and digital editing to polish my general understanding of the art.

– In 12 months get 100,00 followers to my new Your Photography page, where I share other photographer’s photos and give them the exposure they deserve. Although I managed 1,500 followers in 24 hours, I imagine that this goal may be somewhat unrealistic. It all depends on how much the page followers are willing to share the page. This is ultimately down to me to create an environment in which people are happy to contribute.

– Create one of the largest set of beginner to intermediate Photoshop video tutorials in the world and give it away for free.

– Continue to create free digital blending video tutorials for my subscribers.

– Get a resting heart rate of 60 beats per minute. Previous best was 56. I’m a bit older now so I’m allowing myself 4 fewer beats 🙂

– Keep my Spanish, French & Indonesian alive by reading a little bit in each language every day.

– Travel, shoot, live life and have fun

Today’s Photo – The River Tyne

Using my new, Rapid Blend If (RBI) technique (as seen in my cityscape tutorials), I blended the two exposures in about 10 seconds. I’m quickly falling in love with this blending process.

Like most ND filters, my 10-stop BW leaves a warm tint. While I corrected some of it, I was keen to keep much of that warmth in the shot, especially since it was a particularly nice pink sky.

The city lights were blended in from a shot I took about 45 minutes later. You can learn to do this easily with my free Vibrant Cityscape Tutorial

Before/After Comparison