Seattle Photo

Taking a ride around town to take pictures and videos is one way to be productive in your own free enterprise. Then, go home and process the pictures and videos. Make sure you click on Media Library and upload your photos there, rather than uploading directly from your files to your blog post or article.

I’m putting these photos up on the website to make it more attractive. I’m putting a Creative Commons License that allows you to download them for free and do whatever you want to with them. All I ask is that you acknowledge who you got them from, with a link to homeoffice.studio.

Having several cameras to work with is a good idea. Then, you’ll have to learn how to organize and process your photos and videos. I still haven’t used digiKam. I’ve installed it in the past and tried it. I have thousands of pictures, so I could use a good photo processing system.

That is another free and open source tool you will have to experiment with and learn how to use it in your workflow. Right now, I like leaving the photos with the assigned name with the meta-data in it. I usually add a _2 when I edit it in any way and keep the original and the new photo.

I like keeping them organized by date. I put a C in front of the date for photos taken with my Canon Rebel SL2 camera and a P for photos taken with my Samsung Note 9 smart-phone. So far, I’m just doing that manually, because I don’t want to dump thousands of pictures into digiKam and make a big mess.

Learning how to use Gimp to edit and polish the pictures is a whole nother skill to learn. It’s best to use the same tool all the time, so you can learn how to use it. Read the manual. Practice using it. Just use it all the time and learn new things every once in a while. Don’t try to be an expert all at once.

Start out using Raw Therapee to edit the perspective, to get those trees and buildings to stand up straight, instead of pointing towards the center of the photo, and adjust the level of the picture, so it is not leaning to the left or right. Then use Gimp to resize the pictures so you can use them in your website.

Make an article to keep your videos at the front of your website, and then, write a blog post linking to the article. That way, your videos don’t get lost in the past history of your blog. Like this story is linked to the Photography_Safari article. There is a great video there about riding into downtown Seattle on the bus and some ideas about creating a sustainable city in a global civilization.

Walking around a neighborhood is good exercise and a good opportunity to take pictures and video. I’ve noticed that my small camera doesn’t take very good pictures of far away landscapes. They look really cool in real life and then the pictures just don’t live up to the reality. A lot of it is my lack of editing skills.

Learn how to use Krita, Inkscape, Gimp and Raw Therapee to create a massive amount of art. That is your job. Be a prolific artist. When you go out on your photography journeys every week or so, make sure you talk to the people around you. Be kind, friendly and polite.

Let them know what you are up to and give them a business card and ask them to visit your website, your channel of entertaining education. Don’t be a pushy salesman. Just Let people know you are in business. Keep in mind that most people you talk to will not be at work and they may not like their time off being interrupted by someone else’s business. You make the call.

I had a hamburger at the world famous Blue Moon hamburger stand at the beach in West Seattle. If the Blue Moon is not famous, it should be. I sat on the beach, watching Puget Sound and people playing Volley Ball and enjoying an afternoon outside.

Then I get home and start processing the pictures. Make at least one article and one blog post. Refer to the article in the blog post. If you get any video, post it in the article, so it will stay near the front of your website and not get lost in your old blog posts.

Even with the massive raw photos, I get like 1200 pictures on my 32GB memory card, so you should be able to get many stories out of each photography session. Make your process routine and fun. Get really good at it. Be a good citizen out there. A good example.

Improve your process every week. Establish a productive rhythm. Work on having a good attitude. Be spiritual. The world seems kind of unhappy right now. I’m not sure if it is just me, but it seems unhappy. Be happy. Bring joy to the people around you. Be realistic and careful and happy and peaceful and helpful and harmless.