Hey Ya'll!  How's everything going? Me? Well that's what this blog is about. I've had to have a minor surgery that has kept me in the house for a couple of weeks. (don't worry nothing serious ) Couldn't have picked a worse time for this to happen. I've got two photo projects I'm working on and the weather has been great and I'm tied to the house for a couple of weeks. So what have I been doing with my time? I'm trying to do as much photography stuff that I can to keep me in touch with the art that I love so much. Even writing this blog is one of the things that is keeping me busy and in touch with Photography. So in this blog I will give some advice if you end up like me all raring to go but can't .  So here I go with some suggestions.

-Go back in your catalog of photos and re-process them. Go find a photo you like from 5 or 10 years ago and process it like you do now. With all of the advancements in Lightroom and Photoshop I bet you can do all sorts of things that you couldn't do then and really make some of those old photo's really pop. This will give you something to do that will improve your skills and bring back to life old photos.

-Go through all of your equipment and make sure it's spotless and clean and ready to go. This will get the camera back in your hands and while you're going through your gear you might find that you need some gadget that you can order online and they will bring it right to your doorstep. Someone recently gave me an old film camera so I cleaned it and ran some test film through it to make sure everything worked fine. And of course I ordered some stuff like a new lens off of eBay to make this camera into a Kit. 

-Listen to photography related podcast. They are great and you can learn lots of stuff from them. Some of my favorites are "The Digital Story", "PetaPixel", "This week in Photo" , "Picture this" and " The Future of Photography" and there are many more.

-Do some indoor Photography. Set up a table and start photographing things from still-life  to water drops. There are all kinds of things. You can go on Youtube and look up a specific shot and see how they did it. Look up Photography ideas and there will be all kinds of neat stuff that you can find to shoot.  I took my medium format film camera and figured how to hook it up to modern strobes. You could also do some sort of macro photography indoors. Table top photography has endless possibilities. 

-I can't believe I'm going to say this but you can read a photography book. I have several (don't tell anyone Im a Nerd) They are pretty cool and you can learn a lot. Looking at a photo in print is much different than on a screen. You can study the greats without leaving your couch.

-Go on to YouTube and search for the type of photography that you like. There will be all kinds of tutorials on how to do stuff and short videos of trips if your into street and travel like I am . I can spend hours going through YouTube watching the how to's and the where they went.

-Do some online learning with Kelby One or Creative Live. Lots of learning from some of the best in their fields there may be some cost but its well worth it. You can learn things from iPhone photography to Astro or even using your iPhone to do Astro photography. Everything from editing to portrait lighting can be learned through these online courses.

These are just a few of the things that you can do that are photography related if you get stuck in the house for a while like I have or in the winter when its too cold to go outside. In Photography there is so much to learn and do that you could and I have almost spend a life time learning. And these days it's as easy as typing on your computer. I'm sure you have some ideas that I haven't even thought about please share. So until next week Get out and shoot!