Wedding photos a-go gO!

Oh what a glorious weekend! The weather was spectacular and I spent all of my day Saturday sitting at the computer, editing our wedding photos (adding special effects at times) and creating a home to host my burgeoning dreams of a huge photo gallery.

I used Adobe Lightroom to launch me into the Professional area of cataloguing, editing and designing. It’s been a really fun experiment at learning a new program. And what better method of tooling around than using our beloved wedding photographs to experiment on. Strolling through 1800 photos has been an incredible joy, a journey down memory lane (only a month ago, so still fresh and vivid and tangible — to relive that day is like experiencing a piece of heaven, over and over). Editing them has been a rather full-on task that has sucked up every spare moment that I may have to offer in my day, beyond the working hours. Logging consistently long evenings up and beyond midnight has left me rather ‘dog-tired’ when the 5am phone alarm sounds on slaDE~s cell. We have become masters of the snooze, allotting ourselves an hour or so of time just to slowly wake. However, when as tired as I have become, every sound-sleeping moment is revered and sought for. It’s at times like these that I would gently and lovingly want to throw the cell phone out the bedroom door and subtly into the toilet. But I am only half of the equation with this viewpoint, and it’s important not to have a rushed husband in the morning :), struggling to get out the door in time.

So instead, I have mastered a method of procrastination which keeps me in bed until the very last moment (alone time in our small bed is precious — oh Airstream king-sized bed, I can not wait for your return!), usually gasping for air as I rush through my morning tasks (brush teeth, wash face, apply sunscreen, throw a lunch together, get dressed and run!) before either heading to yoga, physio or work. I’m pushing the time boundaries here and skating in, usually just in the nick of time. Some things never change.

So back to my Saturday, I finally pieced through all of Mike’s photo and cre8ted a flash photo gallery @ rvthereyet.ca/gallery.html (a flash player is needed in your browser to see the pix), on our new website rvthereyet.ca. This site will be a continually evolving, open-aired window that gives a glimpse into our traveling world on board our Airstream, chronicling from the time we purchased our ‘dream bus’ and beyond. I’m hoping to maintain my livejournal blog in a different manner (different anecdotes, pictures, quotes, videos, etc), but I guess we’ll see how much time I have on my hands in keeping both up-to-date. One will pertain to my life as I know it and the rvthereyet blog will be about our journey together. We’ll see … I’m sure they’ll be some overlap and I’m still not certain of the parameters, per se.

I’m really happy with both the gallery (cre8ted in Lightroom, my trial version) and the layout of the site itself. I ‘cheated’ (being a cre8tive web designer) in that I used a template in the design. I’m thinking that I need to buy some blog software (manually cre8ting dates and entries is a real pain!) or learn how to use wordpress. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while now, but it seems that other projects get in the way. There is ALWAYS something new to learn (in my field of design work, and of course, beyond) and perpetual digital projects to do (programs to learn / photos to edit / cre8tive photoshop works of art to birth). I must admit, I’m feeling quite guilty of late for not keeping my portfolio up to date. To be honest, it hasn’t been updated since I left school 7 years ago. I’ve used my resume as my platform for a digital portfolio of my web clients, but I need to refocus my time into both my aromatherapy and web business. Once our wedding ‘stuff’ is out of the way (thank you cards, photo books, videos watched and edited, etc), I can shift gears and step up to the digital work plate.

As I’ve quoted to many friends: “enjoying the journey is half the fun …. as it’s not just about the destination. RVThereYet is about exploring the world, one breath at a time. So I should approach all my digital tasks … a journey to be enjoyed and savoured.