Category: General

So I may have gotten a new toy. It may or may not have 4 propellers and an hd camera attached to it.

I am probably really excited about it.

 

I’ll admit that I knew going into this that I was eventually going to go off the rails. I didn’t think it would go so far off the rails that it couldn’t see the rails anymore.  I think I did pretty good really, at least for me. In hindsight, it may have been foolish to try and start this a matter of months before a major life change. When I started this project, I thought writing would be much faster. But that didn’t account for the stalls. Like that last sentence, it reads:

“…major life change. When I started…”.

But typing it was more like:

“…major life change. {stare at screen for 6 minutes}{check facebook}{stare at screen for 3 minutes}{flip record over on turntable}{check facebook again}{stare at screen for 8 minutes} When I started…”.

I have things to do, and it got pretty easy to say no to spending hours starting at a cursor. It got easier still as time went on and the amount of crap I had to write about piled up. Sometimes it feels like writing about stuff takes longer then doing the stuff I’m writing about.

So at the risk of taking for-freaking-ever here’s a synopsis of the last three years:

• bought a church
• sold a house
• moved into apartment
• renovated church
• moved into church
• hosted some concerts
• got sick of taking pictures
• photographed a music conference
• got excited about taking pictures
• found out my father was ill
• got a dog
• traveled to Sudbury and back (7 hours each way) every weekend for several months
• lost my father
• hosted some more concerts
• got excited about audio recording
• got sick of taking pictures
• photographed a music conference
• got excited about taking pictures
• got sick of audio recording
• got excited about audio recording
• realized I haven’t looked at my website in three years
• figured out how to recover my password on my website
• wrote this

So that’s it in a nutshell. I’d like to get this thing back up and running. I think I may make some changes to it; hopefully that keeps me feeling like I want to put things on it.

Less Rules:

Initially I thought that having a schedule of what to post when would keep me posting, but it apparently didn’t work. I’m going to throw the whole music Monday/wallpaper Wednesday/Photographer Friday out the window. If only because the alliteration makes me uncomfortable.

I’m still going to post wallpapers, write about music and profile photographers that inspire me; I’m just going to do it whenever I want.

More Things:

It occurs to me that I am more than a photographer. I do a lot of things. I like a lot of stuff. I should talk about that stuff. Maybe I review my favourite video games, old or new (my thoughts on Minesweeper: an essay?). Maybe I talk about a board game we are playing or best record of the year (but by best record I mean best record I found at the antique store one town over). Maybe I’ll talk about feelings. All the feelings.

Whatever.

“Rebranding”:

You may have noticed that I changed the logo on the main page (unless all the views of the page are mine, in which case, yes I did – good job on the new logo Mike). I have been thinking of going, artistically at least, by my full name. Michael Stanley Bourgeault. That got me thinking of my initials. MSB.

When I was studying audio engineering, we learned the structure of digital audio data, including the concept of the most significant bit. I’ve always liked the term, I like the initials, and I kinda like my name.

Stanley is my maternal grandfather’s name; his love of music helped to inspire mine. His record collection is often my photo editing soundtrack.

My last name reminds me of my father; his inventiveness and tinkering nature inspired me to be who I am.

The term itself, “most significant bit”, relates to how much time I spend with digital things, audio, photos, computers and such.

Not only that, but I think it’s a pretty spot-on description for what photography is supposed to be; capturing that significant moment.

Plus it sounds kind of British. At least I always hear it in my head in a British accent.

Also, I “designed” the new logo, tried it out, then realized I had accidentally deleted the original logo. I have backups, but I can’t seem to find them. So I guess it is good that I like the new logo.

Well, that’s all I’ll bore you with for now. We’ll see how it goes.

I am a photography, music, gaming, computer and gadget nerd living in London, Ontario, Canada.

I have been shooting since around 2003, when I got my hands on my first digital point and shoot. Since then I have become more and more compelled to shoot. What started as an interest in gadgets has evolved into a need to understand this wonderful craft. I’ll shoot with anything I can get my hands on, whether it is a state of the art DSLR or a simple pinhole camera.

Besides photography, I have a great love of music. I studied audio engineering in college and have played in several bands over the years. I sing, play trumpet, guitar, some keyboards and am trying to teach myself trombone. One of my favorite things to shoot is live music because of this experience with music.

My goal for this page is to turn it into a place to share the things that have inspired me, and maybe inspire others by sharing what I make.

I’ve tried and failed at this blogging game before so I am going to approach this differently. Rather than just force myself to make a post everyday, I’m going to make a bit of a schedule:

[one_third]Music Monday: I’ll post an article on a group or musician I find worth talking about. Wherever I can, Ill try to review someone I have photographed personally. There are a few I want to talk about that I haven’t had a chance to see live and get a shot of yet, so we’ll see what happens.

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[one_third]Wallpaper Wednesday: I’ll post a downloadable image that anybody can download and use as a wallpaper. I’m still figuring this one out, I may just post one size, or a couple. But I plan to have a short explanation about each image and the story behind it.

[/one_third]

[one_third_last]Photography Friday: I’ll take some time to talk about other photographers I find inspirational. Some are other amateur photographers I know personally, some will be big fish that have shot magazine covers and some will be masters. I’ll also post articles about books and gear I like (or don’t) from time to time.[/one_third_last]

 

I will very likely break this schedule within the first month. Hopefully it will be posting a review of a video game on a Tuesday rather than missing a scheduled post. We’ll see. Rules are made to be broken, even self-imposed ones.

I don’t have any commercial aspirations for this site, I’ve found I enjoy shooting much more when I’m not worrying about how much I can sell a picture for (of course, that’s not to say don’t ask if you are interested in a picture).