02-09-13 Stone Lion

TS Eliot was wrong. Februrary, not April, is "the cruelest month." At least for me. Yes, the days are getting longer. Yes, the temperature ocassionally soars into the high 20s. But it is often in the heart of February that what I think is SAAD (seasonal affective disorder) hits me. And I lose my will to post new photos to this blog.So I'm posting old stuff. . . But, in the event that you haven't meticulously looked at all four years of my posts, you've probably never seen some of these. So maybe they're not old.

A Stony Gaze

Many of the photos I have posted recently have been resurrected from a fairly large collection of old digital files that have been languishing in a virtual closet. They are a little like old, worn t-shirts that have great sentimental value but should really be turned into rags. My wife even tells me that if I get a new t-shirt, I need to throw an old one away. Imagine that! What if I had to throw one old picture away for every new one I took?Well, that's not in my genes - I blame my parents for being a packrat. And the good thing is that my photos are pretty well organized and that programs like Aperture, iPhoto and Adobe Bridge make it easy to view collections of old pictures.So today's photo was just waiting to see the light of day. It was taken in Venice, Italy, in 2006 and though it looks fairly simple and straight forward, I put about 30 minutes of processing into this to get it the way I wanted it.I'm sure if I had been listening to our tour guide that day, I could tell you more about this man. But I'm afraid I was caught up in my photography. . . .

A Lion In Stone

This is another photo that has sat neglected in my collection of 60,000 photos. The photo was taken in Japan in the same vicinity as the tree root photo from yesterday, which I think is near the Golden Temple. But I don't know where I am. I suppose a more disciplined photographer would keep track of things like that.