Liver and Onions and Ending 2013 and Beginning 2014

Seems I found a way to attract comments--photograph liver and onions.

The comments on my liver and onions meal for Christmas drew more personal emails than any (okay, not any--ALL combined) of my photographs for the past several months, maybe the entire year. It is good to know that the culinary tastes of so many includes liver and onions--with WHITE gravy. 

I suppose it should tell me something important when lowly liver and onions creates more excitement than my photographs? You would think! But it is probably not a lesson I am willing to learn. It is just good to know that I finally achieved a limited degree of blogging success but still a discouraging note on the year.

2014 is going to be a different year; not necessarily better, but different. I will attend the first NWHPC meeting in January because I have a few photographs that collected ribbons and the first meeting is the judging of all the 2013 ribboned entries for photo of the year. Don't see a chance that I will claim any prizes but I should at least put them in to give the judges something to do. I only entered two competitions during the year.
 
In March I entered six prints--the rules say you can only enter four. I was well aware of the rules. It was simply a senior moment. I did not even snap to the fact that I had violated the rules until after I got home that evening--no one called it to my attention even when someone asked how many prints I had entered and I correctly said six. I tried to get one of my first place ribbons withdrawn and move everyone else up a ribbon but that was never done. So I got hacked with myself for making such a stupid error and for the club for not making an effort to correct it, to adhere to their own rules by penalizing me for the incorrect number of entries. Therefore I did not enter any of the competitions again until November. If the error wasn't going to be corrected by the club then I would not take a chance on getting future ribbons. Seemed fair to me. That combined with not having the photographs I turned in considered for the show at the Fincher Museum has soured my enthusiasm for the club. Yes, I know that all my problems with the club are petty. I should be the bigger person and ignore them,  but I'm not. So, after ten or eleven years I am dropping out of the camera club. Not exactly sure what direction I will take. Got a new lens coming at a considerable investment so I don't think I am giving up photography--just hopefully going about it in a different way.

The photographs from Ren Fest and Dickens on the Strand were so much fun to do that might be a direction I want to go. Of course I will not give up randomness, dead creatures, cemeteries, religious artifacts, abstracts or extreme manipulations--those are all a part of me. I have recently developed an interest in ICM, intentional camera movement. I am sure I will pursue that. I may try to find a rental studio and try a very different approach if I can find something that I can afford. Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing what 2014 will bring. As usual I will roll with the flow and probably continue making a few waves of discord in the amateur world of photography. That's part of me too.