Whenever November rolls in my photography urges tend to fall to a year low, because frankly both the weather and the light tend to be dreary as hell. Also, I tend to be a bit more occupied with something that has become a tradition for me. For the past eight years I've participated in the National Novel Writing Month (yep, been there, done that, have the sweater...and the thermos mug...and the stickers) which, if anyone who knows me doesn't know too much about it already, is where you set the yourself the goal to write a pre-first draft of a novel of 50,000 words in one month. That's 1,667 words per day for 30 days in a row.*
Ninth year in a row, and moving towards the 30th November 50,000 word finish line...
It's not always the easiest thing to do; some days it's a slog to just put a word on the page/screen, and other days you just feel the words pour out of you. Still...it's a lot of fun when those moments happen, when you're in The Flow state. Those are definitely what you strive for! I can't say that I've had too many of those this year...I don't think I'll continue much work on this story after I'm done on November 30, but at least I've finished it again by then. That "flow state" goes for photography as well, which is why November is not one of those months. There just isn't much daylight out there (or interesting lights at night) during this eleventh month of the year. Once people start putting up Christmas lights it starts to get interesting again, but before that...not so much. I've even struggled to find interesting things to put in my 365 project during this month, but at least I'm keeping that going. Next blog post will be my November summary of that year long project, which is approaching its final month.
In the darkroom of the photo club where we are looking at what negatives to print.
It's not been all doom and gloom when it comes to photography; thanks to the darkroom class at my photo club I've enjoyed developing my first ever roll of film and printing a photo from that this month. It was an old roll from 2006 that I shot, but then never got around to have developed, so it was a bit of a flashback to see what was on it. I even went and bought three more rolls of Tri-X 400 at the camera store afterward, so now I "have to" shoot some more film and develop it. It may not be this month though, because with a 400 speed film I need at least half-decent light to get anything on the film (I almost wrote "sensor", but nope...no sensor in that 1980 camera). If I continue after that it'll be online purchases though, because the store bought ones are pretty expensive!
Other than that I'm in the midst of planning for this year's Christmas trip. I am going to have the privilege of visiting Texas again this holiday season, and I definitely look forward to seeing old friends and loved ones again. We're talking about things to see and stuff to do and it looks like I will have some interesting things to photograph while I am there. Unlike last time when I was totally photographed "out" and didn't even take my DSLR out of the backpack I think this year's journey will have some interesting photos on the cards (and films) when I come back.
* I've written blog posts about NaNoWriMo before, so to many this is a bit of a rehash of old material...