Spring sports have begun for the kids –to a somewhat hesitant beginning– and our days are full and hectic as we cycle from school, to homework, to dinner, to multiple sports, to showers, to bed. I also fell into a period of gear lust (a periodic trap for me) and daydreaming. Months ago I ordered a FujiFilm X-Pro1. From the moment I hit “Pay” on Adorama’s website I began to dream of the images I would make with a new camera that was so “>light-weight and “revolutionary”. Those daydreams effected my use of my D700 that I actually did own, or, I should say, my disuse of my D700. Suddenly I found myself not taking photographs as I waited for the X-Pro to arrive.

If gear lust wasn’t enough of a distraction, I also began to plan a road trip out West to see friends in Montana and tie-in a stop at ART. My wife and I had spent 2 years living in Montana and I’ve always missed the mountains. This was my chance to relive old times. You know the kind of trip I mean: an epic American road adventure. A Kerouac/Steinbeck saga, just me, my dog, my camera, and my truck loaded with camping gear. A story at every stop, a load of memory cards to fill with images of Americana.

A delusion.

It didn’t take me long (well is a over a month long?) to realize that at current gas prices, in a truck that averages 14 mpg, the trip West would empty our bank account of around $2000 and that wasn’t taking into account the ART costs of the trip. That was a selfishly large amount of money to spend on trip only for myself at the expense of my family and a possible trip with the kids somewhere. As my road-trip dream crumbled I realized that I had found another way to ignore my photography and the pictures I could take as I plotted and imagined the pictures I would take.

Why do I sabotage myself like this? I really don’t know. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time lately trying to decipher what the role of photography is in my life. The answers and questions from which I’ll save for a future post. My trip West is still happening, but it has shrunk to include simply a trip to ART, on a plane, minus a dog. Still exciting and something I’m looking forward to, but the dregs and vapors of my fantasy are still drifting off leaving a sense of despondency and monotony in life.

I did receive the X-Pro around a month ago. The internet is flooded with reviews on the X-Pro, so I won’t take that route. I will say that I am really enjoying the camera: it’s 35mm lens is amazingly sharp for the price, the form factor is refreshing and exciting for a fella with a D700 and no experience with a rangefinder sized camera, the autofocus has not hindered me as much as I feared from other user reviews.

Here are some images from a hike the other day taken with the X-Pro.

The panorama feature –not something that would normally interest me– is fun and accurate.

The merging and mash-up of holidays is so confusing.

Some days are just dictated by their mornings.

Still playing around with my new iPad. This photo was loaded and processed solely on it. For those tech oriented and interested I’m finding myself using Nik Software’s Snapseed and Apple’s iPhoto quite a bit. Bouncing photos between the 2. If you haven’t tried them and like playing with mobile images you should look into them; especially for monochrome work.

Unfortunately, I was viewing the fog from inside most of the morning, but was eventually able to get out and catch the last pockets before they burnt away for the day.

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Yeah. This was yesterday. Spring must have arrived if it’s time to play in the water. Of course, it’s Northeast Ohio. There could be snow again tomorrow. But that would only be a temporary blow to our spring fever.

I’ve had many comments on what a fun portrait series the Wreck the Cake idea is that I shared in my previous post.

Many people wondered what becomes of the leftover cake…well, ok, no one has really asked that, but I thought I’d share.

Waste not, want not. Now go get some cake.

Yeah, my sister wasn’t very impressed either when I slipped this one into the folder of images I sent her.

“Wreck the cake” is sweeping the toddler realm.

Driving a few hours later with my daughter I passed the scene below. Put simply it struck me as a beautiful scene that I shouldn’t pass by without taking a picture. I turned around, stopped on the street, got out, stood by the hood, took a 3 photos (two of which I put together into the panorama below), got back in the truck, and drove on to Storytime class.

The picture doesn’t really contain the beauty of the moment, but I gave it a try. It’d be nice if we always had time to scout locations, compose a shot and move around to recompose, wait for the light or right moment, set up the tripod, etc., but we don’t always have time for those choices. I too discovered what Mark Krajnak recently shared: we practice our photography in the moments we experience and in the time we have.

Click for a brighter look