Island in the Net by Khürt Williams
Technology and Photography Musings. Established circa 2000.
I started this series in 2017, posting a photograph of the same location around the same time every year. Except for 2020 and 2021.
I started this series in 2017, posting a photograph of the same location around the same time every year except for 2020 and 2021.
This week was a busy week. Work was so busy that the IT security lead cancelled all our meetings on Friday and told us to get "caught up". This week I celebrated my fifty-fifth birthday. I rented the upstairs space from Flounder Brewing, Bhavna and I picked up food from Annie's Hot on D Spot Roti Shop, and I invited family and friends to celebrate with me. It was fun but the preparations left little time for photography and the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #174: Shapes and Designs.
The best I could do was photograph dead leaves in the early morning frost.
According to Greg Morris, the solution to shitty yellow journalism on the internet is more journalism.
Anyone with access to the internet and publication skills now has an unnatural reach around the globe. Shifting power to everyday people by giving them access to unlimited information, but very few filters on the actual information available.
CyberSN, a job and career resource website on information security, claims many professionals are quitting their jobs even as demand for our talent increases. In this post, Combating the Great Resignation with Great Retention, they explain what's happening.
What is the Great Resignation?
For 20 years, from 2000 to 2020, the US resignation rate never surpassed 2.4% of the total workforce. During the height of the pandemic in April 2020, the quit rate plummeted to just 1.6%, with employees plunged into lockdown and either unable to job hunt or laid off by employers. As the pandemic continued into 2021, the number of resignations has been steadily climbing, reaching 2.9% in August 2021, the highest on record. Tech is one of the hardest hit industries, with resignations increasing by 4.5%.
Why are professionals growing restless?
Many are attributing this employee exodus to the pandemic shifting priorities in both our lives and careers, with professionals delaying transitioning out of their roles until the pandemic eased, requiring more flexibility or better work-life balance. Half of the professionals surveyed in ISACA’s State of Cybersecurity Report felt that cyber employees are leaving their current jobs due to lack of promotion opportunities and poor financial incentives, with 40% also blaming high-stress levels at work. Stress amongst cybersecurity teams is common, with 91% of CISOs stating that they suffer from moderate or high stress and 57% of employees currently in a burnout state.
We are running on fumes.
Should I try to make an exceptional photograph of a commonplace scene or an ordinary picture of a memorable scene? What is normal and commonplace? Normal for me or normal for others?
UPDATE: My Fujinon MCEX-16 arrived on Saturday morning, but I didn’t open the package until later. I used the lens today, but it was too late to process and include photographs for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge.
This past week's Lens-Artists Photo Challenge was indeed a challenge. I. J. Khanewala1 has asked us to lift "...the commonplace into the most extraordinary thing that you have seen". But what does it mean?
Should I make an exceptional photograph of a commonplace scene or an ordinary picture of a memorable scene? What is normal and commonplace? Normal for me or normal for others? Does it matter?
At first, I thought about I.J. Khanewala's onion photograph and her approach. I might play with light and shadow from the early morning sunlight coming through the kitchen window. I'm a weekend photographer, and it's October in New Jersey. The light comes up later and goes down sooner, leaving very little time for playing with sunlight in the morning. The skies have been cloudy all week; flat light. But I tried. I'm not too fond of the result. I looked around my home and realised I didn't want to photograph any of it.
As a primarily outdoor photographer, my real challenge is seeing beyond the "every day feels the same" struggle of self-enforced "mental survival" routines I created during the pandemic lockdown. Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO, Hulu, and Disney+ became my escape from the constant reminder that I could not do the things I wanted to do. But, these routines continue despite the "opening". Monday to Friday, I usually don't leave the house Monday to Friday, and some weekends, I don't leave the couch.
It's October in New Jersey, and some leaves on the trees have begun to turn yellow, but not enough of them. I finally gave up on the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge and went for an early morning walk in the Billie Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve in Princeton. The preserve is about ten minutes (6.3 km) from home.
I've hiked the Billie Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve many times over the last several years. It's a quiet place to sit, think, and get some low-effort exercise. The loop around the lake often has stunning fall foliage. I've photographed spectacular displays in early October, mid-October, and late October. But not today. It's too early in New Jersey. The fall foliage forecast in Central New Jersey has defied prediction. Perhaps next weekend?
I focused on photographing what was commonplace at this time.
While exploring Billie Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve, Pettoranello Gardens, and Community Park North, I saw some people cross a narrow wooden bridge I had not noticed before. I had promised Bhavna we would go hiking this weekend, so later that day, we returned to Billie Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve and explored one of the loop trails.
Bhavana asked what photography challenge I was working on. I explained what I thought the challenge was about and why I struggled with it. I stopped to photograph some flowers, wishing I had a macro lens. The XF60mmF has been on my "wish list" since I both my Fuji (2018). But it's an expensive lens, and I have not convinced myself I would use it enough to justify the expense.
I recently re-discovered Fuji X Weekly's Nostalgic Negative Film Simulation. Ritchie Roesch created this recipe to mimic the Nostalgic Negative Film Simulation, which can only be found on the high-end and expensive Fujifilm GFX100S medium format digital camera.
Ritchie wrote:
Fujifilm stated that the Nostalgic Negative film simulation is based on "American New Color" photography of the 1970s. They studied photographs by William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld and Richard Misrach in order to create them. Eggleston and Sternfeld largely shot on Kodachrome—II and X in the early 1970s, 25 and 64 in the late' 70's—while Shore shot mostly Kodacolor, and Misrach shot a lot of Vericolor. All of those are Kodak 35mm films but with different aesthetics.
The Nostalgic Negative Film Simulation recipe may not be an accurate facsimile of the true Nostalgic Negative, but I am an instant fan. All of the images in this blog post are straight-out-of-the-camera (SOOC) JEPGs captured using Ritchie's Nostalgic Negative Film Simulation with some cropping to suit my needs.
