A busy time of year

I am heading into what will most likely be the craziest part of my year. My day job is consuming more than its usual 55 hours per week, and it seems that everything that can go wrong is going wrong. I am heading the major project delivery organization for a $1B business segment. It certainly keeps me hopping. In this job you are never quite good, fast or cheap enough... and that is just the start of the stresses you come across in the course of an average day.

Add to this mix the fact that I am going to be doing some things over the next month to take my hobby to the next level. First amongst those will be spending four days with Moose Peterson, Joe McNally and the rest of the Digital Landscape Workshop Series gang. This is my first photo workshop in about 4 years - And I took a long time pulling the trigger on this one. I am looking forward as much to the training in Photoshop processing techniques as I am in the shoots themselves. When I saw that this workshop was going to be held in Santa Fe, I just couldn't resist. Santa Fe is about my favorite town outside of Texas!!! The light there is magical on its own...I can only imagine what it is going to look like once McNally gets done with it.

In preparation for the workshop, I decided it was time to upgrade some of my tools. I started by replacing my older Sony Vaio Z Series laptop with a new Sony Vaio F Series configured for power and speed. It has a quad core i7 processor that maxes out at a shade above 3GHz processing speed. It has a 256 GB solid state drive and 8 GB of RAM, all running a Windows 7 Professional operating system. I knew this combination would be faster than my previous laptop, but I had no idea how smokin' fast it would be!!! I may have to take up gaming.

I also added a couple of software packages that augment my Photoshop tools...Nik Software's Complete Collection and Capture NX2 from Nikon. The DLWS folks will be giving some guidance in using these tools at the workshop, so it made sense to upgrade now. With this toolbox in my backpack I know that I can focus on the photography and the finishing tools will be at my disposal.

On the social front, Ms. C and I will be hosting a wine dinner and then two days later Ms. C is going to be hosting a big soiree to fete her favorite guy as a celebration of reaching a half century in age on the big blue marble. I am sure that we will laugh about that experience if we live through it!

Add to all of this excitement the fact that real photographic opportunities begin to line up around here as H-town moves into springtime. We have, in rapid succession:

• Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
• Spring Break with Ms. E
• Wildflower season in Washington county
• Easter
• Fiesta in San Antonio
• Houston Art Car Parade
• Keels and Wheels (Think Concours d'Elegance on the Bayou!)
• and much more...

The learning opportunities abound, and I couldn't be looking forward to it any more. Keep the faith.

Ain't nothin' but good times ahead..