:neo-luddite:

Not much time for creativity this past week, because, in case you're not from the New England area, we got bombarded with an excessive amount of snow. Twice. So a fair amount of time was spent shoveling this crap, and there are rumors of more on the way, even though there's no place to put it. Didn't even really take many pictures of it, as I'm sick of looking at it already. I'm sure something will catch my eye as it always does, but right now, I'm thinking spring.

Another reason for no production is that I'm feeling more and more frustrated with the technology that I often use for it. It's great when it works. An entire evening or more can be lost when it doesn't. Or more specifically, the attempt to keep up with upgrades and updates, or in my case, falling behind when I don't. In detail: I'm currently running OS X 10.6 on my Mac. They're up to 10.10 now. I have not chosen to upgrade because I didn't like what I've seen or read about the new OSes, especially the newest, it sounds like a disaster, and half the programs I use now probably wouldn't work with it. Like Adobe, I have the CS3 versions, they're now doing a "cloud" only version, and charging a monthly fee for it. Not another monthly bill for me, thanks.

But 10.6 is no longer supported by Apple, and a lot of newer programs require 10.7 at the least. So I'm thinking that I may have to at least upgrade to that somehow, grudgingly. I am more annoyed at this forced obsolescence that is par for course in technology, Apple becoming the worst example of it now. Do you really need a new version of an iPhone every year? Which is another issue, that thing is clearly their main focus now, their origins, namely the computer, are falling behind and they seem to be more interested in getting iPhone owners to buy them (and redesigning them as such), and "fixing" what ain't broke. Something died there after Steve Jobs did.

It got me so frustrated one night that I just felt like going back to pencils and paint. Those don't break down or "need" upgrades. I feel like I should go back to that media anyway. But I've liked using the combination of it with digital media. If it would just keep working properly for me.

In any case, I've started planning my trip to NYC to photograph the Chinese New Year there. I will probably break my black & white streak just for that at least. I've also been looking into more gallery shows, but have been stymied by high entry fees in the last few that I looked at. What do those entry fees go towards anyway? Of course part of it was me not feeling confident enough in my photography to think that it would get accepted, so I was thinking I'd just be throwing that money away. Money. Get me some more of that, and this won't be a concern anymore.