One of my friends recently told me that they were trying to figure out if I was actually in the place that I had posted a photo from or not. I get that question quite often. In fact, often enough that I thought I would explain my process. First and foremost, I travel a lot in retirement, but some people think I am on the road continuously. That is not the case. On average, I may get out on photo trips four times a year.
I think the fact that I post photos from so many different places gives others the impression that I travel more than that for photos. When I go on these trips, I shoot lots (thousands) of photos. I almost never edit a photo on a trip as I want to edit them on a large screen. When you see me post an iPhone photo or a video, it means that I am probably at the location or have just left it. When I get home, I usually edit about ten photos right away and post them over a couple of weeks. I have others that I have set aside to be edited, but I choose to put them away for some future date. Why don't I edit all of the keepers right away? Several reasons. First, I have found that the more I edit, they all begin to look similar because I have processed them in a certain frame of mind (I believe that photographers' editing tends to reflect how they are feeling). Second, my processing skills are always evolving, which will allow me to produce hopefully better results down the road. Third, the editing software that I use is constantly improving, so I might be able to get more out of a photo that I can today. Fourth and most important is that I have been posting on my blog for over six years. If I keep posting the same trip until I run out of keepers, I believe my followers as well as myself would get bored.
Hopefully for those who wonder where I am, this has answered that question. So why did I post this photo today? Well, I just got back from Oregon and have posted a lot of Oregon photos since I have been back. I typically look at my keepers collection in Lightroom and just scroll them and pick one of a place that I haven't posted in a while and just seems to fit my mood at the time I am looking.