Thanksgiving Cornucopia & Cacophony


My postings have been a lighter than normal over the past month. November has been a low month on the photography ambition-o-meter for some reason. I think it’s a combination of needing a bit of a break along with lack of time due to the numerous things that have been going on during November.

But today was to be different. My plan was to take the day “off” and work on a number of photography related projects that are in process or needing attention. Hasn’t been working so far. The cacophony of fence building sounds has had me a bit distracted. After having our wooden fence fall down in multiple spots, we needed to have it replaced as the last house project of 2007. It has been amazing watching the crew rip out and replaced about 200ft of fencing in the past day and half. But the noise that goes along with that has been more than distracting. Thankfully, I think they are finishing the last few welds on the metal fence for the new dog run area right now (Sorry Napoleon…your bathroom area just got a lot smaller!).

What to do when you can’t concentrate on your photography? Sounds like a good time to dig through the stack of old images. I have been in the middle of a re-organization of my photo archive for a while now; after deploying a new organization structure that made more sense for me, I have been going back through and renaming all my images to match the new structure for consistency. This way, when someone is interested in an image, the filename is all I need to find the specific image (more on that in a future post). It’s a boring process but something that needs to be done, and what better time to do it than when you can’t concentrate on other things.

During this process, I found a few fall related images from a trip to the California coast between Santa Cruz and San Francisco a few years ago. The picture above is of a 15 foot long Cornucopia of Pumpkins that was constructed at the Costanoa resort. We were staying there for a friend’s wedding a few falls ago and I took this images as well as the image of another pumpkin sculpture that the resort had made for the fall. They were crying out to be colorized to bring out the emphasis of the pumpkins.


Funny thing was, that I had started these shortly after taking them and “found” them again today. Just a few last minute touch-ups using the Wacom tablet and they were ready. Another example of letting your emotions drain. And the good news is that I feel the photographic spark building again. All I needed to do was dust off the Wacom and force myself to work on something.

It’s amazing how at times you really need to force yourself through the motions to get yourself back into the swing of things. I have high hopes and plans to get a number of things done over this Thanksgiving weekend…starting with a day off tomorrow to eat turkey and watch the Packers trounce the Lions (I’m still a cheese head at heart)!

Wishing everyone a relaxing Thanksgiving with family or friends!

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